Talk:Mo Dao Zu Shi

Suggestions: Maybe we should add a Plot arc section, and also improve the Characters section.

Hi guys,

I'm a newbie here. This article is created by me and has a lot to improve on. Maybe we should start a Plot section and also make some elaborations on the characters' introductions. --Aceus0shrifter (talk) 06:40, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Add the full story plot?

Shall we also include the full plot of the story? We can make one based on the donghua or the novel. I can help to contribute the story of Yi City using the audio drama at this moment. Since the story is pretty much divided like "First Siege of Burial Mounds", "Sunshot Campaign", "Hunt at Mt. Baifeng", etc, we can also do the same. In this way, we can categorise the story and update as the donghua progresses? If need be, we can put a disclaimer somewhere saying something like the story in the donghua was animated a bit differently from the novel.

Edit: Or maybe, we can create an episode list for the donghua instead? Then the plot section will solely be for the novel? - ZoeZoeZoey (talk) 07:24, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

道 being "literally" translated as "Cultivation" is wrong

魔道 should be demonic/devil way/path/Dao/Tao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao

i.e. Grandmaster of the Demonic Way/Dao

And for the record, I'm aware that there's such things as "cultivation" and "cultivator" in the xianxia/xuanhuan(eastern fantasy)/cultivation/etc. genres, but that's 修 pinyin: xiū. e.g. 修炼 "Cultivation" 修者 "Cultivator", 修为 "Cultivation Base"

Also in some works (but also depending on the translations) qi, nei gong(内功), qigong 气功 aka internal force/energy/qi, and what not might be used interchangeably with cultivation and/or each other.

p.s. 祖师 being translated as Grandmaster is probably also wrong, but I don't know what it should be exactly. Maybe Founder/Originator or something of the sort, but is the story really about the first one to create the demonic way? (I wouldn't know cause I didn't read it)

Unfortunately there's no English page I found, but there's https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/祖师 and https://baike.baidu.com/item/祖师爷/10845912?fromtitle=祖师fromid=2240504 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.196.111.208 (talk) 16:45, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree totally. "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation" is merely the very dubious non-official translation made popular by fansubs and the as far as I can see no less dubious fantraslation of the webnovel. The original "literal translation" in this article used to be "Demonic Path Ancestral Master" in the original redaction by Aceus0shrifter (talk, here's the diff where the change was made https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mo_Dao_Zu_Shi&diff=prev&oldid=888739776 where the translation was changed to the fansubs popular one, just carelessly leaving there the original "lit." mark. As far as I know, "Mo Dao" should be definitely translated as "demonic or evil taoism/daoism" – that's the traditional word for magicians and warlocks with daoist/taoist mythical magic abilities in wuxia movies and animes/donghuas (a tradition this webnovel, donghua, manwha etc. are obviously part of, this time a world where daoshi clans rule) and should keep being so. In the series, typical traditional "daoist" magic tricks can be seen as used by the protagonists. In any case, it is well known that 'literally' "dao" means "path", so for the time being I'll simply revert to original Aceus0shrifter's redaction until someone who knows better comes. Greetings, Fernando H (talk) 09:17, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

The current translation of 魔道祖师 as "Magic Demon Monster" is just flat-out wrong, it's literally Mo (demon) Dao ("the way") Zu Shi ("founder" of a school of learning, literally "ancestral teacher" or "ancestral master") For now I'm going to edit to "Founder of the Demonic Way" as the best English translation. Jaoakley (talk) 16:49, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Just took note of the precise meaning of "lit." and did the translation character by character - "Demonic Way Ancestral Master" Jaoakley (talk) 17:01, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

General content type

Generally, this page is reading very much like a fanon wiki - if this was to be a lesser version of the MDZS wiki, it should just go there. Also courtesy names should only be used when it's the most common name a character is referred to Jiang Cheng is referred to as Jiang Cheng - this is true in the original Chinese as well, so I will be reverting that. Generally as well, it feels like there may be too much detail to fit with how books are usually described on Wikipedia- I hope we can all agree that more detail is not necessarily a better page. I'll also be changing some of the romanizations and translations to better fit with the new official translation as well as official pinyin guidelines。

By the way, everything should be written in present tense. See very popular and edited show pages such as Naruto or Stranger Things — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blumenblatt (talk • contribs) 06:45, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Also we desperately need to figure out if this is a page for the donghua or novel - I didn't get rid of references to homosexuality here because I think it needs to be in the page, but since this bills itself as a donghua page, that might not be entirely accurate for the character descriptions - some of the events may not be accurate either, as I can't remember all the differences between donghua and novel. If this is definitely a donghua page, it still needed to be put in present tense with trimmed character descriptions. See, for example Stranger Things or Naruto. We also need sections on censorship and maybe author controversy. By the way everyone, head over to the fan wiki for much more detailed descriptions. Wikipedia is supposed to be more of an overview. Blumenblatt (talk) 07:21, 19 April 2022 (UTC)