kate | (Reply)

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Yeah, I know that tendency, particularly when someone is foreign or alien in some way, but it's interesting, then, that only Lan Wangji would get this treatment. I suppose his character is supposed to be a bit standoffish, compared to Wei Wuxian's breezy loquaciousness.

I guess I would assume that everyone had a bit of the formal register when talking between generations, for example, or even the older generation in general (Lan Qiren for sure, right?). But no - in fic, it's just Lan Wangji, at least in most stories in English. And I think it might even be specific to Wei Ying, though that's probably because of the fact that he hardly speaks to anyone else.

There's a lot I would blame on Netflix's subs, but honestly, not this. It's been a while since I watched it, but even before I was learning Chinese I could tell that the characters say names and titles way more often than they would in English, or did in the subs (as you point out). Since Netflix is less formal, (let's not talk about the way they often just use "first" names instead of full names) and fanfic writers seem to be trying to create more formality, Netflix isn't to blame for this one. Maybe fandom zeitgeist - I feel like I started doing it after I read it somewhere, though not consciously, of course.

And you're right, not in love with the way Netflix translated the names and titles, for the most part. But I'm of a particular school of thought about translations - I prefer it to be closer to the original, even if it isn't as "smooth" in the language it's translated into. Netflix, I'm sure, is more interested in making it plain to English viewers, so a lot of the nuance gets lost.