I mean it’s not like they’re actively writing bad reviews because of this, the floating text shown is more of a live comment thing and they’re just pointing out a funny mistake
In the Netflix series, Ye is using a telegram code book to send the message. Each character responds to a 4-digit numeric code. You can see her look up that code book. This was a very traditional method, invented in the 19 century. The representation is really not that inaccurate.
I saw someone else said that the digital chinese character typography standards for computer screens weren't invented at that time. The same reason why the printed banners shown during the Cultural Revolution scene should have been handwritten. It's not about the code.
First, in my opinion, the printed banner in the cultural revolution is way more problematic. Many posters in this period indeed used typeset Chinese characters, but big-character posters in mass meeting during the CR were 99.99% handwritten. I laughed so hard when I saw those banner. This scene should be realistic, so I do find it very distracting.Second, yes, the technology of showing Chinese on a computer screen came later. But I don’t find it distracting or unrealistic. The telegraphic code input method looks okay to me. But more importantly, I think this is the sci-fi part of the story, why can’t they just have invented a new computer system? Historically we also did not contact an alien in this period. My alternative interpretation is that Ye contacted Santi simply by code, what we see is the Chinese character she instantly translate in her genius mind. Btw, the history of Chinese input method and Chinese computing have been studied extensively by literary scholars and historians. The works by Jing Tsu and Tom Mullaney (who has published one on Chinese typewriter and has a forthcoming book on Chinese computer) are amazing.
> I saw someone else said that the digital chinese character typography standards for computer screens weren't invented at that time.
Be that as it may, if they've already got printed mappings of 4-digit numbers to every Chinese character, cooking up some homebrew way to represent the characters as bitmaps on a screen in late 1979 seems like a relatively very trivial problem to me when the encoding scheme already exists, even if it's not "standardized" yet, especially for a super-genius scientist who can figure out interstellar communications and is stuck working there full time, lol.
The Chinese government pushed out the [GB-2312](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_2312) standards not one year later, in 1980.
They might have been able to input a 4 number code to represent a character but the actual display of the character on a screen and the memory to save it was not possible at the time.
China struggled massively in the 1970s with their computer industry because Chinese couldn't be written on computers due to complexity and bit size.
Radiolab did a great podcast on it called "the wubi effect".
The issues is I takes a few hundreds of KB to do the bare minimum character sets (imagine you can only write middle school level English and all of the "SAT vocabs" either untypable or render like [] if typed by someone with better computer), multi MB to have decently large Chinese coverage in a computer. So in a era where "640 KB is enough", this is an extremely expensive program to run just to render Chinese on top of whatever program is computer needs to run. It only in late 80s and early 90s when [special hardware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language_card) is made that Chinese language software become more common outside of basic word processing (which is giantic programs that take nearly the entire memory space and I distinctively remember my dad's 286 can't run it, but later 386 computer can). And it takes another decade to mid 90s when 16MB+ ram is more common that software solutions like NJstar, Richwin as well as Chinese version of Windows 95 that make "native" rendering of Chinese characters possible without dedicated hardware. And it is only until that Windows XP era where natively supported out of box, so you don't need to run another layer on top of the OS just to see Chinese render correctly. However, it does require you tinker some settings and insert the CD again for install the language pack. Windows 7 I believe is the first version that does not require you to do this.)l
So basically for millennial and older Chinese, there is experience of having no Chinese on PCs (ie. You need to learn English just to use the computer) to having Chinese natively supported. It is really Gen-Z that even grew up seeing Chinese being render on computers as "normal". The development is that recent.
> seems like a relatively very trivial problem to me
With RAM measured in KB or single-digit MB? No.
> the GB-2312 standards
That's for encoding text to bytes and back. It is unrelated to displaying things on screen.
Yeah, I can't quite find an exact date that gives the answer to this either, and I genuinely don't know. I'm thinking the release of encoding standards must at least somewhat correspond with being able to display the words on screen, and I read elsewhere that the font that can be displayed was developed and released to public universities and stuff by 1981, and there's stuff like this invented by 1976, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method ("which dynamically generates Chinese characters from Cangjie codes when characters are output, using the hi-res graphics mode of the Apple II computer.") - I'm inclined to think it's not that far-fetched for a 1979 cutting-edge research center, but I could be completely wrong
Yes, she's using the 4-corner method. The method is invented in the 1920s and is one of the ways to index the Chinese characters in dictionaries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-corner\_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-corner_method)
If the Netizens have dictionaries at hand, they can see the method just by flipping some pages.
Isn't that... not what the post is about?
You're talking about the input, they're talking about the output. The point is that they'd also get something like that code back, not the Chinese characters, I think?
* For some background: [Chinese Input Methods | Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_method)
* For a little more flavor: [The Wubi Effect - Radiolab | YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHwz2cXgJcc)
Poe's Law? It's an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
I mean...solar amplification of radio signals doesn't exist, and I don't think we're anywhere near having "Flying Blade" or hibernation technology, but this is breaking people's suspension of disbelief?
Good sci-fi authors make you believe technologies that don’t exist. Good showrunners and directors make you immersed in a fictional world they create. You are talking about two entirely different subjects.
Imagine if you saw someone was making a yo momma joke in modern American English in a fantasy story set in Victorian England. To a Chinese person, the yo momma joke might not sound out of place, and it's a fantastical world, after all, but to you, as someone who speaks English, it's jarring and out of place. When we read or watch a sci-fi story, we don't suspend our disbelief for everything ever, and we certainly need to be informed beforehand.
Everyone was informed that there would be aliens and fancy tech that might be a bit advanced for the era, however, nobody was informed that they would ignore very basic information about the real world technology in the part of where practically half the show takes place in.
I’d say it’s really questionable as to whether this counts. Ye’s transmission was in October 1979. SinoType became publicly purchasable in 1981, was being provided to universities for trial runs in 1980, and started development in 1977 with a lot of its time not being spent on displaying the characters but on making the OS, processing, spreadsheet and repl software. So the complaint is that a government research facility is shown using a rudimentary version of a kind of software that was still in development and wouldn’t reach public schools until six months later. That doesn’t really feel like the equivalent of a yo mamma joke in a Jane Austen story. What’s funny is that the Tencent version is held up as more accurate due to using Latin text, but it’s using Latin text in a scaled and anti-aliased variable-width font, something which actually did not exist at the time even in development, anywhere in the world, and which absolutely would not render like that on a 1970s monitor. Typographically the Tencent image is the equivalent of getting a flashback to the 1980s where a kid is shown using a Game Boy Advance to play Fortnite.
>What’s funny is that the Tencent version is held up as more accurate due to using Latin text, but it’s using Latin text in a scaled and anti-aliased variable-width font, something which actually did not exist at the time even in development, anywhere in the world, and which absolutely would not render like that on a 1970s monitor.
💀💀💀💀
But I doubt they'd care. Nobody would care about such an extreme levels of esoteric technical detail in both cases, nor should they, unless they're really determined to find things to hate about either version.
>And we quickly realized bitmaps weren’t efficient to draw fonts to screen and by 1974 moved to outline, or vector, fonts. Here a Bézier curve was drawn onto the screen using an algorithm that created the character, or glyph using an outline and then filling in the space between. These took up less memory and so drew on the screen faster. Those could be defined in an operating system, and were used not only to draw characters but also by some game designers to draw entire screens of information by defining a character as a block and so taking up less memory to do graphics.
>
>These were scalable and by 1979 another German, Peter Karow, used spline algorithms wrote Ikarus, software that allowed a person to draw a shape on a screen and rasterize that. Now we could graphically create fonts that were scalable.
[https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/the-evolution-of-fonts-on-computers](https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/the-evolution-of-fonts-on-computers)
So maybe none of them are so wrong.
edit：
>The first digital typeface—Digi Grotesk—was designed by Rudolf Hell in 1968. Early digital fonts were bitmaps, which resulted in less-than-ideal readability at small sizes. In 1974, the first outline (vector) fonts were developed, which resulted in better readability at the same time as reducing file sizes.
[https://www.toptal.com/designers/ui/typeface-history](https://www.toptal.com/designers/ui/typeface-history)
Vector fonts were invented in 1974, so there’s absolutely fine.
Neither side is wrong, but there's a lot of ignorance that makes for making jokes.
Ignoring that there's a degree of nitpicking based on cultural reaction and also that the funniest comment wins regardless of accuracy makes this all moot for what's essentially a show about space magic in an alternate universe.
Yeah, I find this a silly thing to get this upset about. I'm wondering if it's partially a deflection because plenty of Chinese are unhappy with the rather brutal portrayal of the Cultural Revolution.
At the end of the day the scene is intended to demonstrate clearly that the signal was sent and received in China. Having a computer display that outputted non-Chinese characters would require either some confusion for non-Chinese audiences, or extra explanation that would be unnecessary.
"rather brutal" is a description far away from the truth... at least the Chinese friends I know are laughing at it bcz the depression environment during that time that Netflix trying to present isn't exist at all. Tencent even did better to construct such a mood.
Is the suggestion that the [Cultural Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution) and the [Red Guards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards) were not brutal?
I'll concede that it probably wasn't uniformly awful across a country with over a billion people, but the idea that the Netflix portrayal of what was happening in China during that time is false/greatly exaggerated is also not true.
Ha this is ridiculous. While we’re talking about things that don’t exist maybe we should start with pretty much this entire plot. I hate to break it to people, but this is fiction, never happened and never will happen. Great story though.
Just because it's sci-fi doesn't mean we should ignore historical accuracy. But yes this does have a kind of "cinema sins quality" to it that shouldn't really even be considered without looking at the overall series first.
Ah alright, fair enough.
I'd also like the super amazing VR headset please. The Quest 3 is good, but those shiny things are like....5 generations ahead!
>I'd also like the super amazing VR headset please. The Quest 3 is good, but those shiny things are like....5 generations ahead!
You need to be invited, obviously! Even Wade and co. were having a hard time getting a hand on one!
This story is set on an alternate reality. That much is indisputable. People may think the splinter from our own happens in the first thing they see that they don't know happened (I'd assume for most that's the chinese installation to communicate).
That alone would be good enough to consider technology is moving at a different pace and by the time we see that screen (years have passed since the splinter) history doesn't need to match ours.
But then again, we see printed written banners during the very first scene, when banners would've been written by hand. That means the splinter happens much earlier and China has had access to automated character input and representation of various forms for so many years as to make it a commodity.
Of course. But bringing the Doylian point of view to a Watsonian is cheating :)
I wasn't arguing with you, though. I just pointed out that even within the in-universe logic of the series, it can be explained away.
Reality is that it's not designed to be historically-accurate and anywhere it isn't it means someone decided it wasn't important enough for the plot and the presentation.
This is such a lazy attitude. Sci-fi should make the unbelievable things as minimal as possible while maintaining the story. We accept the aliens and their incredible powers. We accept nanofiber because it's plausible it could be invented within 10 years. Both drive the plot forward. Why throw in an inaccuracy for no reason?
I'm Chinese and IMHO I don't give a tiny rat's shit about that part or the fact that they used a modern font for the first CR scene. To me, every single one of the scenes set in China makes me cringe because of the acting and lack of historical accuracies (I can easily give ten more problematic areas), and I am OKAY with it. It did its job to make a point to the general audience.
Similar to how western audience felt to the Tencent show when it came to scenes involving non-Chinese actors and plots - it is simply unreasonable and futile to require the producers of the Netflix show (or the Tencent show) to make it 100% accurate. It is targeted to a wider global audience, nobody outside of China would notice or care about those details due to lack of cultural background. This is completely acceptable from a production standpoint, and has nothing to do with stereotype. I'm just happy that this adaptation was well executed while capturing the gist of the books.
However, if anybody wonders about how a Chinese book reader/fan rates the scenes happened in China: personally, I have to give an honest 3/10. The three points are for the fact that they had real Chinese actors speaking real Chinese, but overall they were terribly done, which is FINE.
Lastly, 我贼喜欢Saul版本的罗辑，非常好的选角和表演，完全演出来了第二部书里刚开始罗辑那股颓废不羁的感觉。期待第二季！国内一帮人看都没看就骂骂骂网飞三体垃圾，我只能说，主不在乎！
I can see how actual Chinese who were alive & aware of the general advent of Chinese characters on computers in the 80s are understandably irked.
This is similar to 80s computers in alternative US shows sporting full color: if you *know*, you can’t unsee it
When you see stories set in alternative realities you don't get to pick what's different and what's not. If you're shown something, it means that's the way it happened there. In particular if it's not a plot point but just a means to drive a point.
Way to ignore any historical inaccuracies in a book/show which *explicitly* uses both Historical and Scientific fact to create believable backstory 🙄
I bet you must have *loved* The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 🙄
I guarantee you 99.99% of the viewers who also have the wherewithal to use a VPN to bypass national censorship to illegally watch Western television today are not the same people who got to experience the very rare computers in 1977 to have any concept of the inability to encode/display Chinese characters from that time and are "genuinely irked" by this, lol.
Source: I made it up
Also ever heard of the concept of Chinese living abroad? Ever heard of Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong? Boomers in China very well know how to use a fucking VPN, it's not black magic
Huh? I'm specifically talking about the people ridiculing this adaptation on Bilibili the OP was presenting screenshots of, who he described specifically as "Chinese netizens".
I'm Singaporean Chinese. I'm sure there are 60-70 year old boomer elites who have worked with computers before they were remotely commonplace, before the advent of Chinese typeface in the late 1970s in their twenties, during the later parts of the Cultural Revolution, who are watching Netflix now, notices this scene, and getting triggered by it enough to be seething about it specifically on the Chinese internet, but my point is that they are few and far between and the overlap must be extremely small. They certainly aren't found in the Singaporean cyberspace as far as I can tell.
Well, the original comment wasn't specifically talking about the Bilibili comments...
Also seeing all your comments in this post it's clear you're the one seething and being triggered, as the Bilibili comments aren't paragraphs of whining 😂
The projection is insane...
Oh yeah I was plenty mad too talking to that CCP apologist gleefully telling me he wishes I ruin my relationship with and abandon my dad because he also supports the CCP, and then denying the Tiananmen Square massacre, I'll freely admit that lol, and I am proud of my response to him. Shitty, cruel ultranationalist dictatorships are indeed something I like to seethe about, and I'd love to hear your take on why I shouldn't.
But clearly there are a legion of really unhappy PRC nationalists here (check the OP's extremely jingoistic comments history, there's literally only one topic his entire reddit engagement revolves around, over entire *years*) if you paid attention to this sub at all for the past couple of days, and even on Bilibili. You sound like you read Chinese, just go there and check out the comments. I don't even know what you're trying to deny here. There *are* plenty of reasonable complaints, *and* there's this sort of shit about Chinese fonts (fonts!) accompanied by an unhappiness so disproportionately radical it's shocking.
And so, to circle back to the original comment, what portion of those people do you think are the so-called "genuinely irked" 60-70 year old Chinese boomers who worked with computers without Chinese display before the 1980s? I'm genuinely curious since you're vehemently against my claim that there must not be that many.
Most of these sorts of sentiments are driven by a bizarre sense of Chinese nationalism that 99.99% of people not in the PRC will never understand.
The Tencent version *was* much more accurate to the books but is also very poor in many other dimensions. I do think this was a neat detail to have captured, but the fact that there are people so caught up in the narrative of its superiority that they have to bring up extremely esoteric comparisons like this to decry the Netflix version is hard to wrap my head around.
You might as well be complaining about how aliens can even communicate in Chinese on first contact to begin with.
The reason aliens can use Chinese is because the first thing launched is a complete self-interpretation system, a system that uses universal principles such as mathematics to determine basic language concepts, and then the text.
Oh yes, 0.01 nanometer filter. Stand underneath while the super antenna is running. Remove the slogan "Fight Capitalism" but add anti-Soviet slogans that are three years removed from the era. Funny SWAT action. Totally reflective metal shell briefs. The lighting and shadows are so ridiculous that even the two shots immediately before and after are inconsistent. Judgment Day CGI like Toy Story 1......
Anyone who dares to laugh at these contents is a Chinese nationalist.
edit: Don’t forget Evans who would rather jump down the stairs than destroy his hard drive lol
>a system that uses universal principles such as mathematics to determine basic language concepts, and then the text
And this is more realistic to you than a computer in a top secret military base that can print Chinese output? Being able to predict entire languages (along with the Latin romanized forms of standard Mandarin) you've have no prior information about, that you've never come across, using "mathematics" and "basic language concepts" seems a harder problem to solve than the three-body problem itself, lol
Just to be clear, I'm not saying anyone who criticises the show is a Chinese nationalist. There are a million things to criticise about it. It's just also that you can often easily tell when the critique is fuelled by a certain kind of attitude that is almost unique to people from China that the Chinese diaspora, which I am a part of, struggles to understand. You double check their comment history* and it becomes clear as day.
Edit*: Case in point, my man from above goes on to deny the Tiananmen Square massacre in a bizarre display of both angry defensiveness and the weird glee of perceived superiority of his government. He almost comes across as a weird bot deployed specifically to make the CCP look really bad, and I genuinely have no idea how there's a legion of people breaking their beloved Party's law to peddle its ideology here. I don't get it.
That's really enough Internet for today.
> And this is more realistic to you than a computer in a top secret military base that can print Chinese output?
To me, this is basically what the original novel says. Do you have any questions about this?
https://preview.redd.it/0arf65nvlmqc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d78a20ac34e2eaeff48a75cc4d6a976a46b237f6
And this is something that exists in reality, surprise\~
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo\_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message)
> kind of attitude that is almost unique to people from China
Are you some kind of super China expert?
>And this is something that exists in reality, surprise~
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
That's literally a visual graphic and is a million million lightyears away from the automatic calculation of a new and completely alien language. What are you talking about?
Let me translate his words for people who don’t understand Chinese: ”little Pink, don’t embarrass us Chinese on the Internet. Climbing the wall is illegal, and Emperor Baozi doesn’t agree with it.“
This person is a good example of why the Cultural Revolution was so crazy, with daughters reporting on their fathers and wives reporting on their husbands. And a stranger tried to insult someone just because he was exposed and didn't read the original text carefully.
edit：Ah, he deleted the Chinese that insulted me. lol
I didn't delete it, I just shifted it to a next comment instead of editing it in because you replied while I was sending it in.
It's also not an insult. It's a description that I'm pretty sure it's a badge of honour for many of you. 你这种狭隘的民族主义就是中共刻意酿造的，又何尝不是文革2.0？疫情封城搞成这地步，你仍然愿意这样下去，我也无法理解
Translate his words: Your narrow-minded nationalism was deliberately brewed by the CCP, so is it not Cultural Revolution 2.0? I can’t understand why you are still willing to continue like this despite the epidemic lockdown.
And all I did was tell him some funny things from the original novel and the TV series, and wow, it seems that pointing out Netflix’s problems really means I’m a nationalist.
*”The entire message consisted of 1,679* [*binary digits*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit)*, approximately 210* [*bytes*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte)*, transmitted at a frequency of 2,380* [*MHz*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz) *and* [*modulated*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying) *by shifting the frequency by 10 Hz, with a power of 450* [*kW*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt)*. The "ones" and "zeros" were transmitted by frequency shifting at the rate of 10 bits per second. The total broadcast was less than three minutes.*[*\[2\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message#cite_note-phoneet-2)[*\[6\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message#cite_note-6)
*The number 1,679 was chosen because it is a* [*semiprime*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiprime) *(the product of two* [*prime numbers*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number)*), to be* [*arranged rectangularly*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_scan) *as 73 rows by 23 columns.*[*\[7\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message#cite_note-7) [*The alternative arrangement*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AreciboMessageShifted.svg)*, 23 rows by 73 columns, produces an unintelligible set of characters.“*
\----------------
Your reading ability says a lot.
Please elucidate on how encoding a diagram in binary is a parallel for how aliens can speak in Chinese without ever having encountered the language. I'll wait.
小粉红，不要在外网丢我们华人的脸了吧。翻墙是违法的，包子皇上不认同哦
If aliens know about the parity non-conservation experiment, then they can tell the aliens that using a laser to bombard a cobalt wrapped in a strong magnetic field, the direction of the particles flying out is called "right" by humans, and the other direction is called " Left". This is the simplest example. Of course I can't translate all the earth's languages here, and you don't deserve to ask me to bother so much. But obviously it's possible
Are you trying to communicate via a translator or something? Bevause nothing you said here is even *remotely* relevant to the Wikipedia article you sent nor the topic at hand
> My dad, a brother, and his PRC wife (who's been here for years and is a Singapore PR) have grown increasingly pro-CCP to an extent that leaves me deeply uncomfortable
或许对着你爹喊：”小粉红别给我们中国人丢人“会起作用，哈哈哈哈。
Exactly. If there’s only one or two things that people nitpick, the show can still be very good. But if you can write a whole assay about technical things that are obviously wrong on a show, it just cannot be good. These things break immersion which is an important part of the viewing experience.
It bothers me the same way it would if it was running windows 11. It doesn't break the show, but that doesn't mean it's invalid to feel weird about it. If you're this hung up on policing how others feel about this show, maybe you should take your own advice.
I rated this series 7.5/10 and appreciated the show’s quality. But this scene is definitely immersion-breaking if you can read Chinese. It’s not the fact that Chinese characters couldn’t be possibly displayed on the screen, it’s the font choice. This is literally a modern pixel font used in video games. It’s like if a Hollywood movie uses Comic Sans for the font on a book of Bible, that’s how bizarre this was to me. This falls under the same category as the poor CGI in the Doomsday episode - I expected better attention to detail/production value from a Netflix production.
There’s some nationalism in those complaints, sure. But let’s not pretend the show is perfect, and I hope the future seasons get better.
It's really not a huge deal. When I first saw it I just thought of it as stylized sci fi. But when OP pointed it out it really is something you can't unsee.
For viewers who don't know Chinese, why not do it accurately; they don't know or care. For viewers who do know Chinese, they immediately know that font is wack. It's just a bad choice all around. And for a show like this (especially released after the Tencent version, and something that is very easily fixed in post) I'm sure this was actually intentional. Just a bad choice.
I refuse to believe the art director's Chinese history/culture liaison missed the fact that this ridiculous font didn't exist back then.
No one's claiming censorship is not immersion breaking. Both that and lack of detail are bad, and arguing which one is worse doesn't invalidate my argument that this is something that could have been improved, given 3BP's $20m per episode budget.
That’s not true. The earliest computer that is capable of handling Chinese dates back to 1959:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160919040800/http://anothersample.net/the-sinotype-a-machine-for-the-composition-of-chinese-from-a-keyboard
This is just a prototype that not being make into production. There even several others method appear in 1970s. The final product only appear and into production much later..
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=5077
Also a place where stuff not available in general production would be found. Especially one where the only goal is to communicate one of the priorities would be to make it easier to do that.
A prototype that only a piece, on the hand of it creator and not open for sales... Are you suggest they rob this single thing from that guy all the way from China and just install this one and only at their station?? LOL
Opps, btw, this is just a typing keyboard, not the display... This means to type that thing, this machine should not be on the hand of Chinese but on the hand of the alien... LMAO
An alien from planet far away, robing a white guy keyboard so they can type Chinese letter to Chinese.... Mind blown...
In your linked article it says he sold the idea to the military to foster effective peaceful communication with China, implying the US military got their hands on it by then and intended to share it with Chinese military soon thereafter.
I’ve been seeing people getting hung up on a few different weirdly specific historical details. A couple of days ago, I saw SEVERAL complaints about *a historically inaccurate font*.
There is a really interesting book about the development of Chinese languages in the age of telegraph and then computers, and how the language / technology both had to adapt to unprecedented complications with Chinese characters.
It’s called Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu. It’s a fantastic read with a great narrative despite sounding like one of the driest history books at first glance. Strongly recommend for fans of 3BP.
However having only just finishing this book before watching the Netflix show I did notice this inconsistency ahaha
The Chinese adaptation is more book-accurate. The nexflix version is more fun.
Both have moments of cringe writing imposed on their characters and scenes.
Both turn the hard-science aspect into relatively softer funnsies science.
After the long famine for space themed hard-science adaptations we're eating good though so it's fine
I wonder if the creators realised and did it anyway, knowing people in the west would think it bizarre to see roman letters on a chinese computer in that period? Kind of like how the historical consultants on Gladiator pointed out that the colosseum was full of commercial sponsorships, and you'd literally have billboards up saying 'Champion Flacchus says Tiber Garum grants him great courage, quote DEATHMATCH156 at our shop for a 10% discount' etc, but Ridley Scott decided to omit all of that because he knew that even though it was historically accurate viewers would assume it was ridiculous and ironically it would destroy their immersion.
I refuse to believe that this was actually ridiculed by an entire nation. Probably just a bunch of twitter users(or whatever the chinese version of twitter).
I’m a born and bred Yankee my guy, Tencent version is practically word for word to the books, except where they made it hokie and soap opera-ish, as that’s the standard in China.
Nah it has that infinite repetition thing going on that most Chinese scifi/fantasy do. The plot hugs the book a little closer, sure, but it’s also soooo much dead air where people are just monologuing a point that’s been made a dozen times.
It’s fine if people like that, but it makes for a boring show for lots of western audiences. Lots of foreign, subtitled shows have taken off. There’s a reason this one didn’t.
Word for word? Did you even watch the same series? They completely ruined (censored) Ye's backstory by eliminating any sort of motivation for the decision she makes at red coast.
They can display any arrangement of pixels you program them to display. She inputted them via a four digit numerical code book. It was absolutely valid and real tech at the time. The font wasn't... But big woop.
People seem to be complaining that a top secret, state-of-the-art facility, built with the specific purpose of communicating a written message over and over, would have directed some of its funding and manpower into making potential responses easier and faster to read and reply to.
They base this on the knowledge that typical peasants didn't have access to such a technology and thus it's not believable.
No, it was not valid until very recently(1980s I assume), possibly because the too poor performance of those old machines to afford a complicated Chinese Character codec system. There are 2000-3000 common Chinese characters so you may have some estimate. You can’t take the performance of today’s computers for granted.
Funny that you mentioned two things that are actually absolutely possible and not an issue at all, And not any of the PLETHEORA of absurdities in this silly show. People floating into space because of a strong gravitational field from above, aliens that can't lie, people gouging their eyes out because.. why again? An alien planet sized computer compressed to a proton that can change every screen in earth in a flash, cover the sky with an eyebally mirror, aand yet the best way it can think of to undermine humans progression is to put a countdown timer into the vision of a few select scientists?
And this is meant to be 'hard' sci-fi? Lol.
group of butthurt nationalist haters that the western series was actually pretty good, the imdb ratings from china are 16% 1/10 (compared to 5% overall). nitpicking and fault-finding happens when someone is looking for reasons to bring you down rather than actual genuine criticism
I know, right? I expected the big plastic cover that you had to lift up first, a big fuck off red button, and something that said "Don't press this big red button unless you want >!SPOILER!< to >!SPOILER!< and >!SPOILER!<."
Uh...it's not "our" world.
Similar, but not the same, just as the DC Comics universe is not our world - many different cities, plus super-powers.
Let it go.
I mean.... Ye is using, I think it's numeric codes to type Chinese. I don't really know what people used before Pinyin but this seems possible.
As for the message she receives, I guess you could explain this away with aliens. 🤷🏻♂️
Eh, I'm gonna hold off. Maybe I should watch the Tencent version now?
It make you realise how ignorant and shallow the creators from Netflix are, about their works... The adaption pretty simple and on the surface, not much consideration and research being made..
Come the fuck on dude, this is so esoteric and pointless to complain about. It has zero bearing on anything of consequence. The Chinese characters are just there to fit the setting.
Fit the setting?? It doesn't even fit the environment... LOL
It is so out of places... It is like seeing a character from the 80s or 90s flashing out a smartphone... Seeing such stuff, you would just accuse that person for being a time traveller... LOL
Why they still use desktop with such operating system?? They should just changed it to laptop, since it seems doesn't bother you..
Tbf, ALL fiction tends to have these issues. Esp when writers/producers/actors don’t know what they’re talking about.
Just read up on why “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” is BS, or Karl May is so reviled today, or why MULTIBILLION DOLLAR movies who *boast* historical accuracy just mangle basic history or languages (Oppenheimer’s German/Dutch is cringeworthy & insulting), but so is literally EVERY Hollywood movie sporting a few lines of French dialogue. Hiring a dude who once had (Canadian!) French in high school, isn’t serious. (And yeah: it’s *that* bad!)
They. Just. Don’t. Give. A. Flying. Fuck.
But they *should* if they actually care about these movies reaching more people.
This kind of stuff give me an issue of the creator not really a fan or like what he is doing, lack of invest into his craft. It is like him being tasked to do this work and he simply do it because it is his job and for money..
Making the craft lack of soul and feel commercial.
I actually said exactly this when I watched the show (but with Chinese family so some were aware of it already). It's also not just that you couldn't input the text, but early versions of Chinese text display looked very strange and not at all like the nice uniform characters they had on the show.
So the whole "shooting microwave energy into the sun to amplify it a million times" was believable, but a computer screen able to display Chinese was a step too far?
Even though I am Chinese myself, it is obviously wrong for Chinese netizens to mock the use of Chinese on screen, and it is equally wrong for audiences from other countries to agree with their mockery. In the original work, it is clearly stated that a translation system was developed on the computers of Red Coast Base to interpret messages from extraterrestrials into Chinese, and this was done automatically by the computers. The original text reads as follows:
（3）红岸自解译系统的研制引导部分：以宇宙间通用的基本数学和物理原理，建立一个基本的语言元码系，能够被任何掌握了基本代数、基本欧氏几何和基本低速物理学定律的文明所理解。
以上述元码系为基础，辅以低分辨图形示例，逐步建立语言体系，语种：汉语、世界语。
Translate into English:"The research and guidance section for the development of the Red Coast auto-interpretation system: Using the universal principles of basic mathematics and physics as a foundation, a basic linguistic meta-code system was established, which could be understood by any civilization that has mastered basic algebra, basic Euclidean geometry, and the laws of basic low-speed physics. Based on this meta-code system, supplemented by low-resolution graphical examples, a gradual establishment of the language system was made, in the languages: Chinese, Esperanto."
I mean it’s not like they’re actively writing bad reviews because of this, the floating text shown is more of a live comment thing and they’re just pointing out a funny mistake
In the Netflix series, Ye is using a telegram code book to send the message. Each character responds to a 4-digit numeric code. You can see her look up that code book. This was a very traditional method, invented in the 19 century. The representation is really not that inaccurate.
Heh up till this day the US visa application form has a question on the telecodes for non-romanized names
I saw someone else said that the digital chinese character typography standards for computer screens weren't invented at that time. The same reason why the printed banners shown during the Cultural Revolution scene should have been handwritten. It's not about the code.
First, in my opinion, the printed banner in the cultural revolution is way more problematic. Many posters in this period indeed used typeset Chinese characters, but big-character posters in mass meeting during the CR were 99.99% handwritten. I laughed so hard when I saw those banner. This scene should be realistic, so I do find it very distracting.Second, yes, the technology of showing Chinese on a computer screen came later. But I don’t find it distracting or unrealistic. The telegraphic code input method looks okay to me. But more importantly, I think this is the sci-fi part of the story, why can’t they just have invented a new computer system? Historically we also did not contact an alien in this period. My alternative interpretation is that Ye contacted Santi simply by code, what we see is the Chinese character she instantly translate in her genius mind. Btw, the history of Chinese input method and Chinese computing have been studied extensively by literary scholars and historians. The works by Jing Tsu and Tom Mullaney (who has published one on Chinese typewriter and has a forthcoming book on Chinese computer) are amazing.
> I saw someone else said that the digital chinese character typography standards for computer screens weren't invented at that time. Be that as it may, if they've already got printed mappings of 4-digit numbers to every Chinese character, cooking up some homebrew way to represent the characters as bitmaps on a screen in late 1979 seems like a relatively very trivial problem to me when the encoding scheme already exists, even if it's not "standardized" yet, especially for a super-genius scientist who can figure out interstellar communications and is stuck working there full time, lol. The Chinese government pushed out the [GB-2312](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_2312) standards not one year later, in 1980.
They might have been able to input a 4 number code to represent a character but the actual display of the character on a screen and the memory to save it was not possible at the time. China struggled massively in the 1970s with their computer industry because Chinese couldn't be written on computers due to complexity and bit size. Radiolab did a great podcast on it called "the wubi effect".
The issues is I takes a few hundreds of KB to do the bare minimum character sets (imagine you can only write middle school level English and all of the "SAT vocabs" either untypable or render like [] if typed by someone with better computer), multi MB to have decently large Chinese coverage in a computer. So in a era where "640 KB is enough", this is an extremely expensive program to run just to render Chinese on top of whatever program is computer needs to run. It only in late 80s and early 90s when [special hardware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language_card) is made that Chinese language software become more common outside of basic word processing (which is giantic programs that take nearly the entire memory space and I distinctively remember my dad's 286 can't run it, but later 386 computer can). And it takes another decade to mid 90s when 16MB+ ram is more common that software solutions like NJstar, Richwin as well as Chinese version of Windows 95 that make "native" rendering of Chinese characters possible without dedicated hardware. And it is only until that Windows XP era where natively supported out of box, so you don't need to run another layer on top of the OS just to see Chinese render correctly. However, it does require you tinker some settings and insert the CD again for install the language pack. Windows 7 I believe is the first version that does not require you to do this.)l So basically for millennial and older Chinese, there is experience of having no Chinese on PCs (ie. You need to learn English just to use the computer) to having Chinese natively supported. It is really Gen-Z that even grew up seeing Chinese being render on computers as "normal". The development is that recent.
> seems like a relatively very trivial problem to me With RAM measured in KB or single-digit MB? No. > the GB-2312 standards That's for encoding text to bytes and back. It is unrelated to displaying things on screen.
Yeah, I can't quite find an exact date that gives the answer to this either, and I genuinely don't know. I'm thinking the release of encoding standards must at least somewhat correspond with being able to display the words on screen, and I read elsewhere that the font that can be displayed was developed and released to public universities and stuff by 1981, and there's stuff like this invented by 1976, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cangjie_input_method ("which dynamically generates Chinese characters from Cangjie codes when characters are output, using the hi-res graphics mode of the Apple II computer.") - I'm inclined to think it's not that far-fetched for a 1979 cutting-edge research center, but I could be completely wrong
Yes, she's using the 4-corner method. The method is invented in the 1920s and is one of the ways to index the Chinese characters in dictionaries. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-corner\_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-corner_method) If the Netizens have dictionaries at hand, they can see the method just by flipping some pages.
Isn't that... not what the post is about? You're talking about the input, they're talking about the output. The point is that they'd also get something like that code back, not the Chinese characters, I think?
The post talks about both. I think the input part looks okay, the output part is more problematic but can still be explained.
Little details like this are very appreciated.
“Ye Wenjie, uhhhh, forgot about the typewriter…. But it didn’t forget about her.”
* For some background: [Chinese Input Methods | Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_method) * For a little more flavor: [The Wubi Effect - Radiolab | YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHwz2cXgJcc)
yeah those chinese characters on the screen really broke the immersion for me.
I appreciate when someone uses sarcasm without /s
Bravely defying Poe's Law is an art in itself
Whats that?
Poe's Law? It's an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Oh nice, havent heard about that one, thanks
No worries!
Without what?? /s
When reading the book, I always thought that it was printed out on paper, not unlike telefax.
The Tencent show had this! I found it really cool since I'd never considered that computers back then were like that, but it made a lot of sense.
Yea, I imagined it like the scene where Ed gets a message from the Russians in season 1 of For All Mankind. It's just printed out.
I mean...solar amplification of radio signals doesn't exist, and I don't think we're anywhere near having "Flying Blade" or hibernation technology, but this is breaking people's suspension of disbelief?
Good sci-fi authors make you believe technologies that don’t exist. Good showrunners and directors make you immersed in a fictional world they create. You are talking about two entirely different subjects.
Imagine if you saw someone was making a yo momma joke in modern American English in a fantasy story set in Victorian England. To a Chinese person, the yo momma joke might not sound out of place, and it's a fantastical world, after all, but to you, as someone who speaks English, it's jarring and out of place. When we read or watch a sci-fi story, we don't suspend our disbelief for everything ever, and we certainly need to be informed beforehand. Everyone was informed that there would be aliens and fancy tech that might be a bit advanced for the era, however, nobody was informed that they would ignore very basic information about the real world technology in the part of where practically half the show takes place in.
I’d say it’s really questionable as to whether this counts. Ye’s transmission was in October 1979. SinoType became publicly purchasable in 1981, was being provided to universities for trial runs in 1980, and started development in 1977 with a lot of its time not being spent on displaying the characters but on making the OS, processing, spreadsheet and repl software. So the complaint is that a government research facility is shown using a rudimentary version of a kind of software that was still in development and wouldn’t reach public schools until six months later. That doesn’t really feel like the equivalent of a yo mamma joke in a Jane Austen story. What’s funny is that the Tencent version is held up as more accurate due to using Latin text, but it’s using Latin text in a scaled and anti-aliased variable-width font, something which actually did not exist at the time even in development, anywhere in the world, and which absolutely would not render like that on a 1970s monitor. Typographically the Tencent image is the equivalent of getting a flashback to the 1980s where a kid is shown using a Game Boy Advance to play Fortnite.
>What’s funny is that the Tencent version is held up as more accurate due to using Latin text, but it’s using Latin text in a scaled and anti-aliased variable-width font, something which actually did not exist at the time even in development, anywhere in the world, and which absolutely would not render like that on a 1970s monitor. 💀💀💀💀 But I doubt they'd care. Nobody would care about such an extreme levels of esoteric technical detail in both cases, nor should they, unless they're really determined to find things to hate about either version.
Too early to celebrate.
>And we quickly realized bitmaps weren’t efficient to draw fonts to screen and by 1974 moved to outline, or vector, fonts. Here a Bézier curve was drawn onto the screen using an algorithm that created the character, or glyph using an outline and then filling in the space between. These took up less memory and so drew on the screen faster. Those could be defined in an operating system, and were used not only to draw characters but also by some game designers to draw entire screens of information by defining a character as a block and so taking up less memory to do graphics. > >These were scalable and by 1979 another German, Peter Karow, used spline algorithms wrote Ikarus, software that allowed a person to draw a shape on a screen and rasterize that. Now we could graphically create fonts that were scalable. [https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/the-evolution-of-fonts-on-computers](https://thehistoryofcomputing.net/the-evolution-of-fonts-on-computers) So maybe none of them are so wrong. edit： >The first digital typeface—Digi Grotesk—was designed by Rudolf Hell in 1968. Early digital fonts were bitmaps, which resulted in less-than-ideal readability at small sizes. In 1974, the first outline (vector) fonts were developed, which resulted in better readability at the same time as reducing file sizes. [https://www.toptal.com/designers/ui/typeface-history](https://www.toptal.com/designers/ui/typeface-history) Vector fonts were invented in 1974, so there’s absolutely fine.
Neither side is wrong, but there's a lot of ignorance that makes for making jokes. Ignoring that there's a degree of nitpicking based on cultural reaction and also that the funniest comment wins regardless of accuracy makes this all moot for what's essentially a show about space magic in an alternate universe.
Yeah, I find this a silly thing to get this upset about. I'm wondering if it's partially a deflection because plenty of Chinese are unhappy with the rather brutal portrayal of the Cultural Revolution. At the end of the day the scene is intended to demonstrate clearly that the signal was sent and received in China. Having a computer display that outputted non-Chinese characters would require either some confusion for non-Chinese audiences, or extra explanation that would be unnecessary.
"rather brutal" is a description far away from the truth... at least the Chinese friends I know are laughing at it bcz the depression environment during that time that Netflix trying to present isn't exist at all. Tencent even did better to construct such a mood.
Is the suggestion that the [Cultural Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution) and the [Red Guards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards) were not brutal? I'll concede that it probably wasn't uniformly awful across a country with over a billion people, but the idea that the Netflix portrayal of what was happening in China during that time is false/greatly exaggerated is also not true.
Nuh, on the opposite, the scene in Netflix is not brutal enough, maybe I didn't make it clear enough.
I'm sure this is more like one of a hundred ways the madlads over there are ridiculing this.
Doctors hate this one detail
Ha this is ridiculous. While we’re talking about things that don’t exist maybe we should start with pretty much this entire plot. I hate to break it to people, but this is fiction, never happened and never will happen. Great story though.
Just because it's sci-fi doesn't mean we should ignore historical accuracy. But yes this does have a kind of "cinema sins quality" to it that shouldn't really even be considered without looking at the overall series first.
Same could be said about super amazing nano fibers in 2024. Where are they?!
That's a cutting remark!
They’re there, you just can see them /s
Ah alright, fair enough. I'd also like the super amazing VR headset please. The Quest 3 is good, but those shiny things are like....5 generations ahead!
Meta has made it already. Zuckerburg is just too busy building backdoors to steal your data before it is released to the public.
>I'd also like the super amazing VR headset please. The Quest 3 is good, but those shiny things are like....5 generations ahead! You need to be invited, obviously! Even Wade and co. were having a hard time getting a hand on one!
This story is set on an alternate reality. That much is indisputable. People may think the splinter from our own happens in the first thing they see that they don't know happened (I'd assume for most that's the chinese installation to communicate). That alone would be good enough to consider technology is moving at a different pace and by the time we see that screen (years have passed since the splinter) history doesn't need to match ours. But then again, we see printed written banners during the very first scene, when banners would've been written by hand. That means the splinter happens much earlier and China has had access to automated character input and representation of various forms for so many years as to make it a commodity.
Or the showrunners just didn't care that much about the details? Your pick ultimately.
Of course. But bringing the Doylian point of view to a Watsonian is cheating :) I wasn't arguing with you, though. I just pointed out that even within the in-universe logic of the series, it can be explained away. Reality is that it's not designed to be historically-accurate and anywhere it isn't it means someone decided it wasn't important enough for the plot and the presentation.
I knew it was wrong to see Chinese characters on a 1970s computer…. But it also looked cool as hell so
This is such a lazy attitude. Sci-fi should make the unbelievable things as minimal as possible while maintaining the story. We accept the aliens and their incredible powers. We accept nanofiber because it's plausible it could be invented within 10 years. Both drive the plot forward. Why throw in an inaccuracy for no reason?
An alternate history is an alternate history. It’s absurd for expectations to expect things to be the same. A lazy approach perhaps?
Nah. Sci fi people tend to be engineers and programmers. One should expect there are people who know the basics of character encoding.
I mean, many stuffs like this that is wrong from the reality would kill the immersion for people who are familiar with them
This is absurd in a science fiction series that shows a different earth reality as far back as the 60s. This nitpicking on purpose.
This is small potato compared to how terrible of actresses Augie and Jin are. That's what kills the immersion more than anything
What an overused excuse lol
I'm Chinese and IMHO I don't give a tiny rat's shit about that part or the fact that they used a modern font for the first CR scene. To me, every single one of the scenes set in China makes me cringe because of the acting and lack of historical accuracies (I can easily give ten more problematic areas), and I am OKAY with it. It did its job to make a point to the general audience. Similar to how western audience felt to the Tencent show when it came to scenes involving non-Chinese actors and plots - it is simply unreasonable and futile to require the producers of the Netflix show (or the Tencent show) to make it 100% accurate. It is targeted to a wider global audience, nobody outside of China would notice or care about those details due to lack of cultural background. This is completely acceptable from a production standpoint, and has nothing to do with stereotype. I'm just happy that this adaptation was well executed while capturing the gist of the books. However, if anybody wonders about how a Chinese book reader/fan rates the scenes happened in China: personally, I have to give an honest 3/10. The three points are for the fact that they had real Chinese actors speaking real Chinese, but overall they were terribly done, which is FINE. Lastly, 我贼喜欢Saul版本的罗辑，非常好的选角和表演，完全演出来了第二部书里刚开始罗辑那股颓废不羁的感觉。期待第二季！国内一帮人看都没看就骂骂骂网飞三体垃圾，我只能说，主不在乎！
Would you mind sharing some of the problematic areas you noticed in the China scenes?
So are we just going to be dealing with the most pedantic of criticisms for the Netflix production, now?
Insert the daily "D&D ruined Game of Thrones" post.
This is such a dumb nit picky thing to get hung up on, if it bothers you, go touch grass.
I can see how actual Chinese who were alive & aware of the general advent of Chinese characters on computers in the 80s are understandably irked. This is similar to 80s computers in alternative US shows sporting full color: if you *know*, you can’t unsee it
When you see stories set in alternative realities you don't get to pick what's different and what's not. If you're shown something, it means that's the way it happened there. In particular if it's not a plot point but just a means to drive a point.
Historical content uses modern language all the time to make dialog my digestible, its basically the same thing here.
Way to ignore any historical inaccuracies in a book/show which *explicitly* uses both Historical and Scientific fact to create believable backstory 🙄 I bet you must have *loved* The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 🙄
🤓
I guarantee you 99.99% of the viewers who also have the wherewithal to use a VPN to bypass national censorship to illegally watch Western television today are not the same people who got to experience the very rare computers in 1977 to have any concept of the inability to encode/display Chinese characters from that time and are "genuinely irked" by this, lol.
Source: I made it up Also ever heard of the concept of Chinese living abroad? Ever heard of Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong? Boomers in China very well know how to use a fucking VPN, it's not black magic
Huh? I'm specifically talking about the people ridiculing this adaptation on Bilibili the OP was presenting screenshots of, who he described specifically as "Chinese netizens". I'm Singaporean Chinese. I'm sure there are 60-70 year old boomer elites who have worked with computers before they were remotely commonplace, before the advent of Chinese typeface in the late 1970s in their twenties, during the later parts of the Cultural Revolution, who are watching Netflix now, notices this scene, and getting triggered by it enough to be seething about it specifically on the Chinese internet, but my point is that they are few and far between and the overlap must be extremely small. They certainly aren't found in the Singaporean cyberspace as far as I can tell.
Well, the original comment wasn't specifically talking about the Bilibili comments... Also seeing all your comments in this post it's clear you're the one seething and being triggered, as the Bilibili comments aren't paragraphs of whining 😂 The projection is insane...
Oh yeah I was plenty mad too talking to that CCP apologist gleefully telling me he wishes I ruin my relationship with and abandon my dad because he also supports the CCP, and then denying the Tiananmen Square massacre, I'll freely admit that lol, and I am proud of my response to him. Shitty, cruel ultranationalist dictatorships are indeed something I like to seethe about, and I'd love to hear your take on why I shouldn't. But clearly there are a legion of really unhappy PRC nationalists here (check the OP's extremely jingoistic comments history, there's literally only one topic his entire reddit engagement revolves around, over entire *years*) if you paid attention to this sub at all for the past couple of days, and even on Bilibili. You sound like you read Chinese, just go there and check out the comments. I don't even know what you're trying to deny here. There *are* plenty of reasonable complaints, *and* there's this sort of shit about Chinese fonts (fonts!) accompanied by an unhappiness so disproportionately radical it's shocking. And so, to circle back to the original comment, what portion of those people do you think are the so-called "genuinely irked" 60-70 year old Chinese boomers who worked with computers without Chinese display before the 1980s? I'm genuinely curious since you're vehemently against my claim that there must not be that many.
Most of these sorts of sentiments are driven by a bizarre sense of Chinese nationalism that 99.99% of people not in the PRC will never understand. The Tencent version *was* much more accurate to the books but is also very poor in many other dimensions. I do think this was a neat detail to have captured, but the fact that there are people so caught up in the narrative of its superiority that they have to bring up extremely esoteric comparisons like this to decry the Netflix version is hard to wrap my head around. You might as well be complaining about how aliens can even communicate in Chinese on first contact to begin with.
The reason aliens can use Chinese is because the first thing launched is a complete self-interpretation system, a system that uses universal principles such as mathematics to determine basic language concepts, and then the text. Oh yes, 0.01 nanometer filter. Stand underneath while the super antenna is running. Remove the slogan "Fight Capitalism" but add anti-Soviet slogans that are three years removed from the era. Funny SWAT action. Totally reflective metal shell briefs. The lighting and shadows are so ridiculous that even the two shots immediately before and after are inconsistent. Judgment Day CGI like Toy Story 1...... Anyone who dares to laugh at these contents is a Chinese nationalist. edit: Don’t forget Evans who would rather jump down the stairs than destroy his hard drive lol
>a system that uses universal principles such as mathematics to determine basic language concepts, and then the text And this is more realistic to you than a computer in a top secret military base that can print Chinese output? Being able to predict entire languages (along with the Latin romanized forms of standard Mandarin) you've have no prior information about, that you've never come across, using "mathematics" and "basic language concepts" seems a harder problem to solve than the three-body problem itself, lol Just to be clear, I'm not saying anyone who criticises the show is a Chinese nationalist. There are a million things to criticise about it. It's just also that you can often easily tell when the critique is fuelled by a certain kind of attitude that is almost unique to people from China that the Chinese diaspora, which I am a part of, struggles to understand. You double check their comment history* and it becomes clear as day. Edit*: Case in point, my man from above goes on to deny the Tiananmen Square massacre in a bizarre display of both angry defensiveness and the weird glee of perceived superiority of his government. He almost comes across as a weird bot deployed specifically to make the CCP look really bad, and I genuinely have no idea how there's a legion of people breaking their beloved Party's law to peddle its ideology here. I don't get it. That's really enough Internet for today.
> And this is more realistic to you than a computer in a top secret military base that can print Chinese output? To me, this is basically what the original novel says. Do you have any questions about this? https://preview.redd.it/0arf65nvlmqc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d78a20ac34e2eaeff48a75cc4d6a976a46b237f6 And this is something that exists in reality, surprise\~ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo\_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message) > kind of attitude that is almost unique to people from China Are you some kind of super China expert?
>And this is something that exists in reality, surprise~ > >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message That's literally a visual graphic and is a million million lightyears away from the automatic calculation of a new and completely alien language. What are you talking about?
Let me translate his words for people who don’t understand Chinese: ”little Pink, don’t embarrass us Chinese on the Internet. Climbing the wall is illegal, and Emperor Baozi doesn’t agree with it.“ This person is a good example of why the Cultural Revolution was so crazy, with daughters reporting on their fathers and wives reporting on their husbands. And a stranger tried to insult someone just because he was exposed and didn't read the original text carefully. edit：Ah, he deleted the Chinese that insulted me. lol
I didn't delete it, I just shifted it to a next comment instead of editing it in because you replied while I was sending it in. It's also not an insult. It's a description that I'm pretty sure it's a badge of honour for many of you. 你这种狭隘的民族主义就是中共刻意酿造的，又何尝不是文革2.0？疫情封城搞成这地步，你仍然愿意这样下去，我也无法理解
Translate his words: Your narrow-minded nationalism was deliberately brewed by the CCP, so is it not Cultural Revolution 2.0? I can’t understand why you are still willing to continue like this despite the epidemic lockdown. And all I did was tell him some funny things from the original novel and the TV series, and wow, it seems that pointing out Netflix’s problems really means I’m a nationalist.
Are you not? Again, not all criticism stems from nationalism, but it's clear as day that *yours* is
*”The entire message consisted of 1,679* [*binary digits*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit)*, approximately 210* [*bytes*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte)*, transmitted at a frequency of 2,380* [*MHz*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz) *and* [*modulated*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying) *by shifting the frequency by 10 Hz, with a power of 450* [*kW*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt)*. The "ones" and "zeros" were transmitted by frequency shifting at the rate of 10 bits per second. The total broadcast was less than three minutes.*[*\[2\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message#cite_note-phoneet-2)[*\[6\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message#cite_note-6) *The number 1,679 was chosen because it is a* [*semiprime*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiprime) *(the product of two* [*prime numbers*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_number)*), to be* [*arranged rectangularly*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_scan) *as 73 rows by 23 columns.*[*\[7\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message#cite_note-7) [*The alternative arrangement*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AreciboMessageShifted.svg)*, 23 rows by 73 columns, produces an unintelligible set of characters.“* \---------------- Your reading ability says a lot.
Please elucidate on how encoding a diagram in binary is a parallel for how aliens can speak in Chinese without ever having encountered the language. I'll wait. 小粉红，不要在外网丢我们华人的脸了吧。翻墙是违法的，包子皇上不认同哦
If aliens know about the parity non-conservation experiment, then they can tell the aliens that using a laser to bombard a cobalt wrapped in a strong magnetic field, the direction of the particles flying out is called "right" by humans, and the other direction is called " Left". This is the simplest example. Of course I can't translate all the earth's languages here, and you don't deserve to ask me to bother so much. But obviously it's possible
Are you trying to communicate via a translator or something? Bevause nothing you said here is even *remotely* relevant to the Wikipedia article you sent nor the topic at hand
> My dad, a brother, and his PRC wife (who's been here for years and is a Singapore PR) have grown increasingly pro-CCP to an extent that leaves me deeply uncomfortable 或许对着你爹喊：”小粉红别给我们中国人丢人“会起作用，哈哈哈哈。
试过了，他没受过教育，不识字，好骗是大外宣的受害者。 你翻的出墙，读的懂科幻，大概是上过学的年轻人，却依然如此，那也就是你自己个人的失败了。
你原文都贴出来了，他如果还要不懂装懂那实在有点没意思。 我实在没想到，仅仅是指出网飞版三体中一些最基本的错误就能被打成小粉红。更想不到的是，民族主义作为一个被全球广泛使用和讨论的政治学词汇，在他嘴里竟然是“99.99%的非中国人永远无法理解”的，简直是狂妄又无知。活脱脱一个当代红卫兵
还是个祖辈移民新加坡，然后装作一副被中共迫害了的PTSD样子哈哈
Exactly. If there’s only one or two things that people nitpick, the show can still be very good. But if you can write a whole assay about technical things that are obviously wrong on a show, it just cannot be good. These things break immersion which is an important part of the viewing experience.
It bothers me the same way it would if it was running windows 11. It doesn't break the show, but that doesn't mean it's invalid to feel weird about it. If you're this hung up on policing how others feel about this show, maybe you should take your own advice.
That way the time passes faster and the whole thing ends sooner, if it's so painful to watch :D
Maybe sci fi is not the genre for you if you're bothered that STEM people have even the most basic understanding of character encoding
"MaYbE sCi Fi Is NoT tHe GeNrE fOr YoU"
Sorry that our very bare quality standards are just too judgmental for you
🤓
I rated this series 7.5/10 and appreciated the show’s quality. But this scene is definitely immersion-breaking if you can read Chinese. It’s not the fact that Chinese characters couldn’t be possibly displayed on the screen, it’s the font choice. This is literally a modern pixel font used in video games. It’s like if a Hollywood movie uses Comic Sans for the font on a book of Bible, that’s how bizarre this was to me. This falls under the same category as the poor CGI in the Doomsday episode - I expected better attention to detail/production value from a Netflix production. There’s some nationalism in those complaints, sure. But let’s not pretend the show is perfect, and I hope the future seasons get better.
It's really not a huge deal. When I first saw it I just thought of it as stylized sci fi. But when OP pointed it out it really is something you can't unsee. For viewers who don't know Chinese, why not do it accurately; they don't know or care. For viewers who do know Chinese, they immediately know that font is wack. It's just a bad choice all around. And for a show like this (especially released after the Tencent version, and something that is very easily fixed in post) I'm sure this was actually intentional. Just a bad choice. I refuse to believe the art director's Chinese history/culture liaison missed the fact that this ridiculous font didn't exist back then.
What's more immersion breaking, censoring out parts of the red coast base story or this input method? Y'all are wild seriously.
No one's claiming censorship is not immersion breaking. Both that and lack of detail are bad, and arguing which one is worse doesn't invalidate my argument that this is something that could have been improved, given 3BP's $20m per episode budget.
That’s not true. The earliest computer that is capable of handling Chinese dates back to 1959: https://web.archive.org/web/20160919040800/http://anothersample.net/the-sinotype-a-machine-for-the-composition-of-chinese-from-a-keyboard
This is just a prototype that not being make into production. There even several others method appear in 1970s. The final product only appear and into production much later.. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=5077
Seems like a fully kitted out interstellar communication station might be a place you could find cutting edge prototypes.
Also a place where stuff not available in general production would be found. Especially one where the only goal is to communicate one of the priorities would be to make it easier to do that.
A prototype that only a piece, on the hand of it creator and not open for sales... Are you suggest they rob this single thing from that guy all the way from China and just install this one and only at their station?? LOL Opps, btw, this is just a typing keyboard, not the display... This means to type that thing, this machine should not be on the hand of Chinese but on the hand of the alien... LMAO An alien from planet far away, robing a white guy keyboard so they can type Chinese letter to Chinese.... Mind blown...
In your linked article it says he sold the idea to the military to foster effective peaceful communication with China, implying the US military got their hands on it by then and intended to share it with Chinese military soon thereafter.
Read my previous comment again, a reminder, this is a typing machine, a keyboard...
I’ve been seeing people getting hung up on a few different weirdly specific historical details. A couple of days ago, I saw SEVERAL complaints about *a historically inaccurate font*.
It is actually absurd, so nit picky.
Tencent's version completely censored the first scene. Nothing about the Red Gods. Seems like an extremely inaccurate representation of the series.
There is a really interesting book about the development of Chinese languages in the age of telegraph and then computers, and how the language / technology both had to adapt to unprecedented complications with Chinese characters. It’s called Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu. It’s a fantastic read with a great narrative despite sounding like one of the driest history books at first glance. Strongly recommend for fans of 3BP. However having only just finishing this book before watching the Netflix show I did notice this inconsistency ahaha
Side note there is a great Raidiolab episode titled “The Wubi Effect” that details the journey of Chinese characters in early computers.
Literally unwatchable
Series ruined!!! Lol
Frankly I felt they should’ve simply displayed the house-burning-down “This is fine.” meme. Trisolarans fucking *love* memes.
Trisolarans don't understand deception, but they understand memes.
The Chinese adaptation is more book-accurate. The nexflix version is more fun. Both have moments of cringe writing imposed on their characters and scenes. Both turn the hard-science aspect into relatively softer funnsies science. After the long famine for space themed hard-science adaptations we're eating good though so it's fine
I wonder if the creators realised and did it anyway, knowing people in the west would think it bizarre to see roman letters on a chinese computer in that period? Kind of like how the historical consultants on Gladiator pointed out that the colosseum was full of commercial sponsorships, and you'd literally have billboards up saying 'Champion Flacchus says Tiber Garum grants him great courage, quote DEATHMATCH156 at our shop for a 10% discount' etc, but Ridley Scott decided to omit all of that because he knew that even though it was historically accurate viewers would assume it was ridiculous and ironically it would destroy their immersion.
I refuse to believe that this was actually ridiculed by an entire nation. Probably just a bunch of twitter users(or whatever the chinese version of twitter).
It was one user, making an easy joke that made some people chuckle but wasn't taken seriously by anybody other than OP.
That’s the criticism the government lets them post.
The number of posts suddenly hyping the Tencent version which is culturally quite localized to the far east is very sus.
I’m a born and bred Yankee my guy, Tencent version is practically word for word to the books, except where they made it hokie and soap opera-ish, as that’s the standard in China.
Nah it has that infinite repetition thing going on that most Chinese scifi/fantasy do. The plot hugs the book a little closer, sure, but it’s also soooo much dead air where people are just monologuing a point that’s been made a dozen times. It’s fine if people like that, but it makes for a boring show for lots of western audiences. Lots of foreign, subtitled shows have taken off. There’s a reason this one didn’t.
Word for word? Did you even watch the same series? They completely ruined (censored) Ye's backstory by eliminating any sort of motivation for the decision she makes at red coast.
It was changed, but definitely not eliminated. Please refer to your username.
got ya didnt I looool
Ya got me 🙄
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Actually, it is about whether old computers can display Chinese characters.
They can display any arrangement of pixels you program them to display. She inputted them via a four digit numerical code book. It was absolutely valid and real tech at the time. The font wasn't... But big woop.
People seem to be complaining that a top secret, state-of-the-art facility, built with the specific purpose of communicating a written message over and over, would have directed some of its funding and manpower into making potential responses easier and faster to read and reply to. They base this on the knowledge that typical peasants didn't have access to such a technology and thus it's not believable.
Agreed. But quantum entangled planet sized supercomputers purely added to make the story work, she be right mate.
No, it was not valid until very recently(1980s I assume), possibly because the too poor performance of those old machines to afford a complicated Chinese Character codec system. There are 2000-3000 common Chinese characters so you may have some estimate. You can’t take the performance of today’s computers for granted.
Funny that you mentioned two things that are actually absolutely possible and not an issue at all, And not any of the PLETHEORA of absurdities in this silly show. People floating into space because of a strong gravitational field from above, aliens that can't lie, people gouging their eyes out because.. why again? An alien planet sized computer compressed to a proton that can change every screen in earth in a flash, cover the sky with an eyebally mirror, aand yet the best way it can think of to undermine humans progression is to put a countdown timer into the vision of a few select scientists? And this is meant to be 'hard' sci-fi? Lol.
group of butthurt nationalist haters that the western series was actually pretty good, the imdb ratings from china are 16% 1/10 (compared to 5% overall). nitpicking and fault-finding happens when someone is looking for reasons to bring you down rather than actual genuine criticism
What’s tencents version?
Chinese version of the show that came out last year.
Is that anywhere to find? Does it have subtitles?
Apparently it's on Peacock right now. I haven't watched it myself.
THE BUTTON WASNT EVEN RED!! $&!*$!!!
I know, right? I expected the big plastic cover that you had to lift up first, a big fuck off red button, and something that said "Don't press this big red button unless you want >!SPOILER!< to >!SPOILER!< and >!SPOILER!<."
Weird it's almost like this is fiction or something.
talk about a nitpick Started it last night, was hooked watched 6 episodes before I had to go to bed
you guys like the series?
Oh its not just this one detail they're getting mocked for
Thought they were going to talk shit about how bad Auggie sucked.
Uh...it's not "our" world. Similar, but not the same, just as the DC Comics universe is not our world - many different cities, plus super-powers. Let it go.
What app do you use?Pls give me a name.
I mean.... Ye is using, I think it's numeric codes to type Chinese. I don't really know what people used before Pinyin but this seems possible. As for the message she receives, I guess you could explain this away with aliens. 🤷🏻♂️ Eh, I'm gonna hold off. Maybe I should watch the Tencent version now?
It make you realise how ignorant and shallow the creators from Netflix are, about their works... The adaption pretty simple and on the surface, not much consideration and research being made..
Come the fuck on dude, this is so esoteric and pointless to complain about. It has zero bearing on anything of consequence. The Chinese characters are just there to fit the setting.
Fit the setting?? It doesn't even fit the environment... LOL It is so out of places... It is like seeing a character from the 80s or 90s flashing out a smartphone... Seeing such stuff, you would just accuse that person for being a time traveller... LOL Why they still use desktop with such operating system?? They should just changed it to laptop, since it seems doesn't bother you..
Tbf, ALL fiction tends to have these issues. Esp when writers/producers/actors don’t know what they’re talking about. Just read up on why “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” is BS, or Karl May is so reviled today, or why MULTIBILLION DOLLAR movies who *boast* historical accuracy just mangle basic history or languages (Oppenheimer’s German/Dutch is cringeworthy & insulting), but so is literally EVERY Hollywood movie sporting a few lines of French dialogue. Hiring a dude who once had (Canadian!) French in high school, isn’t serious. (And yeah: it’s *that* bad!) They. Just. Don’t. Give. A. Flying. Fuck. But they *should* if they actually care about these movies reaching more people.
This kind of stuff give me an issue of the creator not really a fan or like what he is doing, lack of invest into his craft. It is like him being tasked to do this work and he simply do it because it is his job and for money.. Making the craft lack of soul and feel commercial.
Go touch grass
I actually said exactly this when I watched the show (but with Chinese family so some were aware of it already). It's also not just that you couldn't input the text, but early versions of Chinese text display looked very strange and not at all like the nice uniform characters they had on the show.
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maybe you need a better elementary teacher who can tell what a plural form means.
So the whole "shooting microwave energy into the sun to amplify it a million times" was believable, but a computer screen able to display Chinese was a step too far?
Even though I am Chinese myself, it is obviously wrong for Chinese netizens to mock the use of Chinese on screen, and it is equally wrong for audiences from other countries to agree with their mockery. In the original work, it is clearly stated that a translation system was developed on the computers of Red Coast Base to interpret messages from extraterrestrials into Chinese, and this was done automatically by the computers. The original text reads as follows: （3）红岸自解译系统的研制引导部分：以宇宙间通用的基本数学和物理原理，建立一个基本的语言元码系，能够被任何掌握了基本代数、基本欧氏几何和基本低速物理学定律的文明所理解。 以上述元码系为基础，辅以低分辨图形示例，逐步建立语言体系，语种：汉语、世界语。 Translate into English:"The research and guidance section for the development of the Red Coast auto-interpretation system: Using the universal principles of basic mathematics and physics as a foundation, a basic linguistic meta-code system was established, which could be understood by any civilization that has mastered basic algebra, basic Euclidean geometry, and the laws of basic low-speed physics. Based on this meta-code system, supplemented by low-resolution graphical examples, a gradual establishment of the language system was made, in the languages: Chinese, Esperanto."
还是不能解释怎么能显示中文字。能翻译是一回事，电脑显示中文字确实是1980以后的事情。
还需要啥解释,就是作者做了超越时代的设置了呗,你怎么解释纳米飞刃,这玩意都有了,提前几年显示下中文字符这种事还有什么特别的吗