He changed Tiwat

Han Fulai took the final step.

“So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

As long as people can breathe and their eyes can see clearly.

My poem will endure, so that you may be remembered for eternity.

As the final notes of the poem faded, the conference hall fell into a deathly silence.

In fact, no one was talking anymore halfway through Han Fulai's recitation.

Anyone who understands Mongolian will be deeply moved by this poem, including the poetic genius of Mongolia himself.

The poem doesn't mention "love" in a single line, yet every line speaks of "love."

In the poet's eyes, the "fair lord" is the most splendid season in nature, an ever-blooming flower whose beauty cannot be diminished by anything. She is immortal in the river of time, living on with the spirit of poetry.

—The best love poem in Mondstadt this year has already been chosen.

After a long while, Wendy gently clapped her hands.

Thunderous applause erupted immediately.

Han Fulai bowed gracefully to the audience, stealing a glance at "Six-Fingered Joseph" who was still in a daze on stage.

Six-Fingered Joseph didn't clap; he just stood there, stunned. His expression could be summed up in one sentence: "It will shock Old Joe for a whole year."

Han Fulai's lips curled slightly as he thought to himself, "Do you know who defeated you? Shakespeare, kid."

An Analysis and Appreciation of Wendy's Poetry

The story recently progressed to the Mondstadt Badminton Festival Poetry Festival, and some English poems were incorporated into the plot in a "Liyue-style" way—I did this not only for plot arrangement but also to echo the story's presentation in the original work.

This research on the English metrical poetry of Genshin Impact is a bit hardcore. The main purpose is to show everyone some of the subtle details that Genshin Impact has done in terms of "localization," since most players won't notice the subtleties in the English text.

I've touched on the rhythm and meter of English poetry in my reader group before, but I didn't have time to go into detail then. Just the other day, a reader asked me how to appreciate an English poem, so I'll take this opportunity to share some of my insights.

I'd also like to share with you what makes Wendy, the "God of Poetry," so powerful, and how the most popular legendary quest back then, "The Song of the Song Goddess," portrayed this "Song Goddess."

Furthermore, the reason Venti doesn't have a second legendary quest is probably because the first legendary quest was so well done—it's really hard to imagine getting the writer to produce English poetry of the same caliber again. (Venti's poetry writing level during the second Wind Flower Festival has probably fallen below mine...)

Let me clarify beforehand: I am not a professional translator. My initial motivation for learning a few foreign languages ​​was mainly because, as an old-school anime fan from the forum era of the 90s, I had to "cook up" the raw content myself, especially the parts that would get censored, you know what I mean.

The author's experience largely comes from translating novels and fan fiction such as Full Metal Panic!, A Certain Magical Index, and Detective Conan on forums. He also had the opportunity to attend a few lectures on English poetry translation by a senior author when he was in school, but he can only say that he has a superficial understanding.

What follows is entirely my personal sharing; I'm simply sharing what I've observed with you. Due to my limited knowledge, there will inevitably be things I haven't fully grasped or have missed. I hope you will forgive any errors or omissions.

I. What makes a poet? Someone who can even rhyme when they're cursing!

The animation where the lady tears Wendy's heart out in the main storyline is probably memorable for everyone. Actually, if you switch to the English version and watch the dialogue, you might better appreciate miHoYo's portrayal of Wendy. (The Chinese version isn't as engaging as the English one, because Chinese doesn't strictly match the rhythm of English poetry.)

At that time, many of Wendy's lines were probably in English first and then in Chinese; you can see the obvious difference when you look at the English dialogue.

Below, I'll show you the original text of this exchange between the lady and Wendy, along with my more rhyming, literal translation of the lines in parentheses:

Miss:

At last, Mondstadt's rodent ruler in the flesh.

Oh well, I finally found my hamster! (The Rat King of Mondstadt has finally appeared.)

Scurrying though the streets, looking for leftovers... Mondstadt calls this a 'GOD'?

Gnawing on wooden stakes, biting into rice bags, causing so much trouble for Mondstadt… (Eating scraps, running around aimlessly… does Mondstadt even call something like you a god?)

The English version of the woman's sarcasm towards Wendy is quite direct, while the Chinese version mistakenly writes "you mother's servant" as "you mother's servant" instead of "you mother's servant."

Wendy:

Resident rodent beats invasive vermin.

You're not talking about hamsters, you're talking about rats—(local hamsters are better than invasive pests!)

The words "Resident" and "rodents" rhyme here, and his spiel is full of freestyle.

In addition, Venti's retort was actually a form of regional discrimination... If translated literally, it would mean "We Mondstadt bastards are slaying those begging outsiders," or you can imagine the little devil Venti saying, "You little bastards, you northerners have no peace."

That's why the lady slapped Wendy on the spot; he got hit entirely because he was being sarcastic and had a sharp tongue...

Miss:

Don't you dare speak that to me, insolent bard.

You have no right to speak now, you rude bard.

Absentee archon of Monsdadt... How impotent you have become.

Ah, the god who gave up ruling Mondstadt, this is all the power he has left...

Wendy:

The smirk you wear looks out of the place, did you steal it from your master's face?

Oh? So the reason you mock me is because you borrowed power from your master? (This crooked-mouthed dragon king isn't like you; did you learn that tongue from your master?)

Here, "smirk" is what we often call the "crooked-mouthed dragon king smile," and Wendy also rhymes with "place" and "face."

Just imagine this: the lady just gave Wendy a huge beating, and Wendy is here, casually spouting off a Mondstadt hip-hop routine...

So the lady disregarded martial ethics and ambushed the 2,600-year-old comrade.

Miss:

You should have kept your mouth shut.

Smooth talker. (Shut up.)

So, this is a Gnosis? Wound't be caught dead wearing this ugly thing in public.

This is... the "Heart of God"? Hmph, it's nowhere near as magnificent as my treasured chess set. (This thing is the Heart of God? I'd rather die than take something this ugly out of the house.)

The lady expressed her direct disdain for the Heart of God.

What is Wendy doing now that the lady just knocked her to the ground with her heart ripped out...?

Wendy:

Beauty is a waste… when the beholder has no taste…

That's probably because your taste... is really terrible, right? (If a person has no taste... even the most beautiful woman is wasted...)

Here, "waste" and "taste" rhyme, and Wendy is even using a couplet.

Yes... Wendy, even after being knocked down, is still trying to outdo others in couplet matching...

If you're watching the English version, this part is incredibly expressive, vividly showcasing Wendy's personality and the bard's style. The entire scene is a direct confrontation with the woman, giving off a "go ahead and hit me if you dare" vibe. It also directly spoils the fact that Wendy released the sea here, because he was still rhyming while getting hit.

As an aside, this kind of rhyming exchange of insults is very Shakespearean; it's a common technique in Shakespearean plays. This is arguably the most classic line of dialogue in the early stages of Genshin Impact, and the English localization is excellent.

2. "Breeze and Boy", Wendy's Shakespearean masterpiece!

1. Shakespearean sonnets

First, let me introduce Shakespeare's sonnets to you, esteemed viewers.

There are many articles discussing the ingenuity of Shakespeare's poetry, the depth of his thought, and the beauty of his imagery. In the novel, we even had Xiao Han sing Shakespeare's praises.

Goethe praised it this way: "Anyone with even a little dramatic talent cannot resist reading and studying Shakespeare's works. After studying them, he will surely find that Shakespeare has depicted the myriad aspects of human nature so vividly that there is nothing left for him, as a successor, to do."

—Of course, that's a perfectly valid claim.

Shakespeare was a playwright who created his works through poetry. In his relatively short career, apart from 154 sonnets and a few long poems that were independent works, the rest of his poems were attached to his plays, serving to advance the plot, create atmosphere, and shape characters (77% of the dialogue in Shakespeare's plays is in verse, or "rhythm").

These verses must adhere to meter and rhythm, and when recited, they should sound like a natural dialogue, reflecting the emotions of the characters and describing the conflicts that occur in the play. To achieve this, it is not enough to rely solely on general word choice and imagery; they also require rhyme and a rich, expressive tone. In other words, the poet must begin meticulously crafting the poem from its very first basic unit: the metrical foot.

The rhythm of English poetry originates from the stressed syllables in the lines, and a foot refers to the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. A foot has at least two syllables. There are about ten different types of feet, including iambic and idiomatic, but iambic, which follows the pattern of stressing the syllables before unstressing them, is the most common.

The basic meter for poetry in Elizabethan dramas is iambic pentameter (said to be the closest to the rhythm of everyday English conversation), meaning that each line of poetry has five iambic feet, each foot beginning with a down and ending with a high, repeating the stress and unstressed syllables five times. Ninety percent of English poetry is in iambic pentameter.

The sonnets popular in Europe at that time were called Petrarchian sonnets (also known as Italian sonnets), which were transmitted from the Italian poet Petrarch. They followed a metrical pattern of an eight-line stanza plus a six-line stanza, or a stanza distribution of four-four-three-three.

Petrarchian poems typically begin with eight lines describing the poet's predicament and problems, followed by six lines summarizing the issues and offering insights; this style leans more towards classical forms.

Shakespeare created the Shakespearean sonnet (also known as the English sonnet). His poems have the most regular and straightforward rhyme scheme and poetic structure. You can think of it as him inventing a simple formula that allowed the sonnet, once a "swallow in the halls of noble families," to fly into the homes of ordinary people. From then on, the Shakespearean sonnet became the most popular poetic form.

Shakespearean sonnets typically follow a rhyme scheme of ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GG, which is a 4-4-4-2 format.

These letters represent the pronunciation of the word that appears at the end of each line. Therefore, following this alternating rhythmic pattern, we find that the last word of the first and third lines must rhyme; the second and fourth lines; the fifth and seventh lines; the sixth and eighth lines; and so on, with the final couplet always ending in a rhyming form.

The poem is divided into four groups of stanzas. The first three groups are narrative poems, with each group consisting of four lines as a paragraph. They each serve the theme of the poem independently, either by giving examples or by exploring a particular theme. However, they all share a common function—pointing to the final couplet.

The last two lines are called "Heroic Double Rhyme Couplets," which are inherited from ancient European heroic epics. The rhymes do not overlap and are directly in the form of GG.

The main function of this couplet is to provide an insight or solution to the development of the preceding three quatrains. In the format of a middle school argumentative essay, the first three paragraphs present three examples for discussion, and the final conclusion elevates the theme.

Take the song "sonnet18" in our screenshot as an example. The first three verses describe how beautiful the girl is, but beauty fades with time, while the last verse says that she can be eternal in my poem.

In the game, Wendy's rendition of "Breeze and Boy" is a very apt imitation of Shakespeare's style. Although it doesn't strictly adhere to Shakespearean form, Mondstadt isn't England, so we aim for a similar spirit.

2. Analysis of "The Breeze and the Boy"

Below, we will present the original text of the PV from the game and provide an explanation.

This poem is not a sonnet, but a twenty-line poem. It uses the four-six-six-four stanza structure created by Mihoyo, but its spirit is that of Shakespeare. The first three stanzas are narrative, and the last stanza is a neat English couplet that summarizes and elevates the theme. It also uses iambic pentameter.

His rhyming scheme here is AABBCC... which is the "heroic rhyme scheme" we mentioned earlier, because Wendy is talking about ancient poems about heroes, so he uses the rhythm of epic poems.

Paragraph 1:

In old Mondstadt transpired the story to be told,

The story I'm about to tell begins in "Old Mondstadt".

Where a tyrant ruled, I met a boy, not that old.

In that tyrannical country, I met a boy.

The lyre he played, and for a song he sought,

The boy knew how to play the piano, searching for his own poetry.

But storm-walls blocked the blue sky, he was sincerely distraught.

But he was born within the walls of the wind and had never seen the blue sky.

Here I'll help you divide the metrical feet.

In OLD / MondsTADT / transPIRED / a sTORY / to be TOLD.

The capitalized parts are stressed, a very standard iambic pentameter.

The divisions within the slashes, such as "In old," represent a foot consisting of two syllables. However, "Mondstadt" is itself a foot, but it uses an incorrect pronunciation for poetic effect: in this line, "stadt" is stressed. The correct pronunciation of "Mond" should be stressed "Mond."

This mispronounced metrical foot is precisely where miHoYo's copywriting is professional.

Wendy deliberately mispronounced words for the sake of poetic beauty, similar to the operatic singing style in Peking Opera or the "Pingshui rhyme" in Chinese poetry.

For example, in Du Mu's poem "Mountain Journey" in the textbook, the line "远上寒山石径斜" (Yuǎn shàng hán shān shí jìng xié) is pronounced "xié" for the sake of rhyme. That's how my teacher taught me when I was a child. (However, the Ministry of Education has now stipulated that this character should be pronounced "xie" in the college entrance examination. This also involves an academic debate on "叶韵" (yè yùn), which we won't go into detail about.)

Regarding word choice, the word "transpire" is generally not used in spoken language; it means "to happen" or "to occur," and is actually the written form of "happen."

Why didn't Wendy use "happen" instead of the more formal "transpire"? Because "happen" is too short to form a single foot, so the more syllable "transpire" had to be chosen.

Similarly, "I met" in the second line can be replaced with "there's", and "and for" in the third line can be replaced with "with". Why not write it that way?

— In order to complete the "five-step iambic pentameter", several sounds need to be pronounced to form a foot, just like when we write classical Chinese poetry, we need to pay attention to the tones and rhymes, and find words from the corresponding rhyme groups.

Paragraph 2:

“I do so wish to see the birds in flight. ”

"I want to see birds soaring in the sky."

Said he. His strong eyes filling with light.

The boy's eyes were stubborn, and his pupils shone with light.

But his voice was lost in the howling wind's churn.

But his voice was drowned out by the howling wind.

For the whirlwinds takes, and gives naught in return.

Because the tornado only collects the chants and leaves no other sounds.

The true sky, and songs that cageless soar…