‘Three-Body’ Review: A Chinese Series Beats Netflix to the Screen
中国版《三体》电视剧：忠于原著的平庸之作
The highly acclaimed trilogy of Chinese science-fiction novels collectively known as “Three-Body,” in which Earth is threatened with invasion by technologically superior aliens, is generally understood to reflect historical Chinese anxieties about Western domination. Which makes it a little amusing that, 17 years after the story was first serialized, the books are about to get more attention than ever because of a big-budget American adaptation, due later this year on Netflix. Comments about appropriation and cultural sensitivity will start to pour in minutes after the episodes are posted.
在广受好评的中国科幻小说三部曲《三体》中，地球受到技术先进的外星人入侵的威胁，人们普遍认为，这反映了中国历史上对西方统治的焦虑。有趣的是，在小说首次连载17年后，由于今年晚些时候Netflix将推出一部高预算的美国改编剧集，这部书将比以往任何时候都受到更多关注。有关挪用和文化敏感性的评论会在剧集发布后的几分钟内开始涌现。
In the meantime, little attention is being paid in the United States to an ambitious Chinese series, “Three-Body,” that has beaten Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” to the screen. No trade barriers or worries about state secrets here: The 30 episodes of “Three-Body” are premiering on Rakuten Viki in the United States, with subtitles in English (among many other languages), on the same day they appear in China, where they are reportedly setting viewing records for Tencent’s WeTV streaming service. Outside of the sci-fi fan base, however, they don’t appear to be causing a ripple in America.
与此同时，在美国，很少有人关注一部雄心勃勃的中国剧集《三体》，该剧早于Netflix的《三体》上映。这里没有贸易壁垒，也无需担心国家机密：30集的电视剧《三体》在中国上映同日，于美国Rakuten Viki平台首映，配有英文字幕（以及许多其他语言）。据报道，该剧在腾讯的视频流媒体服务中创造收视纪录。然而，在科幻粉丝群体之外，该剧似乎并未在美国掀起涟漪。
在根据小说改编的中国版电视剧《三体》中，张鲁一饰演一位物理学家，正在揭开一个庞大的阴谋。
The books’ author, Liu Cixin, has endorsed the Netflix series (he’s a consulting producer), though the show’s largely non-Chinese cast indicates that it tinkers significantly with his story. He doesn’t appear to have been involved with the Chinese series, but one of its hallmarks — the subject of many approving viewer comments on Rakuten Viki — is its faithfulness, in broad outline, to the trilogy’s first novel, “The Three-Body Problem,” on which it is based.
该书作者刘慈欣已认可了Netflix版剧集（他是该剧的顾问制片人），尽管该剧的演员（其中大部分不是华裔）指出，剧集对刘慈欣的故事进行了重大修改。刘慈欣似乎没有参与中国的这部剧集，但该剧的一大特征是它大致忠实于原著三部曲小说中的第一部：《三体》，Rakuten Viki平台上的许多好评者也对此表示认可。
A lot of Liu’s dialogue seems to have been moved straight from book to screen (though questions of translation, in both media, make it hard to be sure). Through 20 episodes, most of the major plot points arrive at about the same places they did in the book. For Liu’s hard-core fans, that may be all that matters. For a general audience, the show’s similarities to the book may be more problematic.
刘慈欣笔下的很多对话似乎直接从书中被搬到了屏幕上（尽管由于书和电视剧的翻译问题，这一点令人难以确认。）在前20集中，大部分主要情节点和书中差不多。对于刘慈欣的铁杆粉丝来说，这可能就是最重要的。而对于普通观众来说，该剧与原著的相似之处可能会带来更多问题。
Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem” takes place in Beijing during the novel’s setting in the mid-aughts, with flashbacks to the countryside 40 years earlier. It is superficially a mystery, with a mismatched pair, the reserved physicist Wang Miao and the Rabelaisian cop Shi Qiang, investigating a rash of suicides among high-level scientists. Discovering what lies behind the deaths involves uncovering a conspiracy that dates to the Cultural Revolution; it also involves Wang’s frequently donning virtual-reality gear to play an elaborate, cosmically expansive video game.
刘慈欣的《三体》故事发生在北京，小说背景设定在2005年左右，部分情节闪回到40年前的农村。它表面上是一个神秘事件，一对不协调的搭档——保守的物理学家汪淼和拉伯雷式的（指粗俗幽默——译注）警察史强一起调查一连串高级科学家自杀的事件。他们发现，死亡事件背后的真相涉及揭露一个可以追溯到“文化大革命”的阴谋，还涉及到一个精心制作的宏大电子游戏，汪淼经常穿上虚拟现实装备来玩它。
The story’s bleakness, its motifs of environmental destruction and the possibility of human extinction give it resonance, as does its allegory of the despair and vengefulness fostered by the Cultural Revolution. But what sets it apart is how science, rather than being a backdrop or framework, drives the action at every turn.
故事中的凄凉感、破坏生态的主题和人类灭绝的可能性令人产生共鸣，它对“文革”助长的绝望和复仇的寓言也是如此。但它的与众不同之处在于，科学在每一个转折点推动事态，而不是仅仅作为背景或框架存在。
Liu’s style reflects this: Structurally, the book proceeds like a mathematical proof, with arguments — about science, nature, society — building upon one another toward a conclusion that has been veiled, but visible, since the beginning. Wang’s unraveling of the mystery takes the shape of a capsule history of scientific and technological advances. And the plot advances less through action than through long, expository statements or recaps of past events.
刘慈欣的风格反映了这一点：在结构上，这本书就像一个数学证明，关于科学、自然、社会的论点彼此交织，得出一个从一开始就被掩盖但又清晰可见的结论。汪淼对这个谜团的揭开以科技进步简史的形式出现。情节的推进更多是通过冗长的说明性陈述，或对过去事件的回顾，而不是通过具体的情节。
In recognition of this, the creators of the Chinese “Three-Body” series have made some logical choices. Without materially changing the story, they have shifted the balance toward the present (in this case 2007, during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics) and focused more firmly on the serio-comic frenemy relationship of Wang and Shi (Zhang Lu Yi and Yu He Wei). The details of police work get more attention, and contemporary characters, mostly female, are added or greatly expanded upon, including a reporter (Rong Yang), Shi’s all-business deputy (Zehui Li) and Wang’s wife (Min Liu). Scenes that are formulaically funny (Shi gruffly babysitting Wang’s daughter) or suspenseful (murder on a long train ride), but have nothing to do with science fiction, have been added.
依照这一点，中国《三体》剧集的创作者做出了一些合乎逻辑的选择。在不对故事进行实质性改变的情况下，他们将天平转向了现在（剧中是2007年，北京奥运会前夕），更多地聚焦在汪淼和史强（由张鲁一和于和伟饰演）之间半严肃半搞笑的亦敌亦友关系上。警察工作的细节得到更多关注，增加或大大扩展了这一时期的人物，主要是女性，包括记者（由杨蓉饰演）、史强的全职副手（李则慧饰）和汪淼的妻子（刘敏饰）。还增加了公式化的搞笑场景（史强粗鲁地照顾汪淼的女儿）和悬疑场景（长途火车上的谋杀案），但这些都与科幻小说无关。
There’s no getting around the science, though, and the series hasn’t come up with a more interesting way of dramatizing it than having characters repeat the same speeches they make in the book. Onscreen, with a cast that mostly doesn’t rise above adequate, that’s not very exciting. It also doesn’t help that the vivid imagery of the book’s video-game scenes, which helped compensate for the flatness of the narrative and the characterizations, isn’t done justice in the show’s prosaic 3-D animation.
然而，科学是绕不过去的，而且，除了让角色重复书中的话，该剧没能找到更有趣的戏剧呈现方式。在屏幕上，演员大体上没有很出彩的表现，不太令人兴奋。书中视频游戏场景里的生动景象弥补了叙事和人物刻画的单调，却没能在剧中平淡无奇的3D动画中得到应有的展现。
On a more fundamental level, many American viewers not accustomed to Asian series will be bemused by the stilted, nonidiomatic quality of much of the crowdsourced subtitling. And they will notice that while there are some lovely images of nighttime Beijing and the surrounding country, the overall production quality — the staging, the performances, the use of music — is beneath that of the usual prestige series.
在更基本的层面上，许多不习惯亚洲剧集的美国观众会对众包字幕中很多生硬、不地道的翻译感到困惑。 他们会注意到，虽然有一些关于北京夜景和周边乡村的可爱画面，但整体制作质量——布景、表演、音乐的使用——都低于一般的优质剧集。
But if you have the patience and an appetite for thoroughly imagined speculative sci-fi, you can consider the show’s deficiencies the import duty for the delivery of a good tale. And while “Three-Body” displays the propensity, common in Chinese TV drama, for telling a story as if reading a book to a child, here that has an advantage: If a science-driven plot twist confuses you, it will be explained again before the scene is over.
但是，如果你对完全基于想象的推想科幻作品有耐心和胃口，你可以把这部剧集的缺陷视为呈现一个好故事所需的“进口税”。 虽然《三体》呈现出中国电视剧中常见的一种倾向——讲故事的方法就像给孩子读书一样，但它有一个好处：如果科学驱动的情节转折让你感到困惑，在场景结束之前，你会得到解释。
来源：好英语网
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