adventures in fangirl

I'm writing this mostly as procrastination from translating Chapter 23 of Ning Yuan's Tang Dynasty cyberpunk baihe To Embers We Return (which is a full 6,894 words long in the original Chinese). This is about Chapter 22, which you can read here. Lots of things happen in Chapter 22 (which continue to happen even more in Chapter 23, which has already required me to, among other things, study the biology of box jellyfish), but one thing that happens is that we get introduced to a new character, He Lanzhuo, the Military Commissioner of Muzhou. Or at least, we get introduced to her by name for the first time; she's already been mentioned several times by her title at this point.

This is the key passage which describes He Lanzhuo's appearance for the first time, in the original Chinese:

身边的人都穿着中式宽袖长袍，睦州节度使却是一身干练的西服。

她完全不绾发，柔顺的黑色长发披在肩头，戴着一副将双眼完全遮挡住的特制护目镜。

What this passage says is that He Lanzhuo, unlike most people in this Tang Dynasty AU, isn't wearing traditional flowing robes, but rather a Western-style suit (there is an in-world explanation for this, which the reader may or may not find persuasive; the Doylist reason, I strongly suspect, is that a stoic, super-capable woman in a smart suit is hot). Her hair is loose (instead of being done up in the traditional Chinese fashion), and over her eyes, concealing them completely, she wears a custom-made 护目镜.

A quick search of the usual sources will tell you that 护目镜 is typically translated as 'goggles' or 'safety glasses'. This translation would not be a problem in many contexts. It is, however, a huge problem in this context, because beautiful, stoic, formidable, super-efficient He Lanzhuo is COOL. And also HOT. The words 'goggles' and 'safety glasses' are very obviously neither. In addition, 'goggles'/'safety glasses' are intended to keep stuff out of someone's eyes, while the 护目镜 here are, as the story will eventually reveal, meant to keep something IN (this has to do with He Lanzhuo's superpower, which I won't spoil here). But the more important thing is still that 'goggles' is a profoundly uncool AND unhot word.

So I reached for possibly the most famous pop culture character known for needing to wear things over his eyes to keep their power in check. I reached for Cyclops of the X-Men. The thing that Cyclops wears over his eyes to stop them from involuntarily shooting out destructive beams is a visor. So I decided that was what I would call He Lanzhuo's 护目镜. The thing she wears over her eyes is a visor now.

And that's how He Lanzhuo avoided the profoundly uncool AND unhot fate of the word 'goggles'.

PS: skuzzybunny has drawn some amazing art of He Lanzhuo here and here (note the second one is tagged 'sexually suggestive').