Quote:Shay Guy wrote:Indeed. Horse is one of the words which is basically identical in Chinese and Japanese, after all, and if I remember correctly, that's the 'ma' in 'Ranma'. Which is why I was fairly certain about the 'Strong Horse' thing, couldn't be much else. Well, I suppose it could be 'Snatch Horse', or 'Stolen Horse', but I doubt there's many Ranma fanfic stories about livestock theft in a Wild West AU.
That does help, thanks. And "horse" fits with the fandom.
To get more accuracy, I'd probably have to track down an explanation somewhere, or else an image of the title -- not that I'd expect to have much luck, since I didn't before. Barring that, the only option would be to find Hallstrom and ask directly, and even that's not guaranteed to work, because the story's almost old enough to drive and he could've easily forgotten.
Anyway, yeah, what I threw back at you sounds plausible. I should note that it isn't actually a grammatical sentence or anything in Mandarin, just a collection of phrases strung together...as far as I can tell. I don't think it's a specific reference either, but I don't have a particularly strong grasp of proverbs or literary references.
It sounds about right to be something that a non-Chinese speaking fanfic author might come up with after some time with a dictionary and no actual grasp of Chinese naming aesthetics - it's a little clunky-sounding for an actual Chinese title. Though I may be doing the poor author a horrible disservice by saying that. I'm not playing an 'ignorant Westerner' card or anything, just, y'know, I would assume he translated that out of a dictionary.
EDIT: By way of explanation, there seems to be a common belief that Chinese names for stories and things are all long and fancy. They're not - they just come out that way when translated into English in a manner that preserves the meaning. e.g. 'Dream of the Red Chamber' vs. 'Honglongmeng', or 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' vs. 'Wo hu chang long'.
-- Acyl