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Working on some translations but always come across things like:
李二嫂
王二叔
三奶奶
张幺伯儿
For 李二嫂 I think I came up with something like: The Li family's second eldest son's wife, which sounds stupid in English. Should we opt for something more like Mrs. Li?!
幺伯儿 and 二叔 might just be better off as uncle.
三奶奶 might just be great grandmother.
surname + # + relative name names?What about this construction:
Jack the Ripper
So we can have something like
Uncle Wang the Second
Etc.
PS: yes, Mrs. Li the Second cannot precisely convey the meaning of 李二嫂; even Uncle Wang the Second is a little ambiguous. I doubt whether there is actually a concise expression in English, so maybe I will leave a footnote to explain it in the article/book/etc.
PPS: According to the wikipedia entry Chinese kinship, there were translations like
Second Uncle
—Yang, Rae (1998), Spider Eaters: A Memoir, University of California Press, p. 46, ISBN 0-520-21598-2, retrieved 2009-07-14, "The letter became evidence of Second Uncle's yearning for the Nationalists to come back."
Thus, Second Uncle Wang sounds quite reasonable too.
Why not get a copy of "The Dream of the Red Chamber", and see what the masters did with names like 寶二爺，璉二奶奶，尤大娘，尤二姐...etc.
Personally, if I were working on a novel, I would probably use first names and/or simple forms like Mrs. Li and Uncle Wang at much as possible, for the sake of readability, and then add a footnote explaining the names and address terms in Chinese culture.
Or, alternatively, use Wang Ershu as if it's his name, and then add a footnote explaining the meaning.
Just my two cents.
