Um I'll go vote but... in the case of scenarios like this when translating actual novels the translator actively decides when action is important (so details are omitted to keep the pacing fast) whereas for more psychological scenes or when establishing settings the full information is retained. You cant decide to just translate one way or the other, it has to serve the purpose of the story at that point.

Also there's no such thing as a magestress.

And i just want to say it should be "The soldiers of Qi start" rather than starts. Solders start rather than soldiers starts. (Sorry, I'm a fiction writer. :D Stuff like that stands out to me. :D ) And I'll go vote too. :)

As long as the original meaning is retained in the translation, I think it's fine to leave some things out. Direct 1 to 1 translations don't always sound fluent, so omitting small details that don't really change what is being said isn't a big deal to me. But if omitting that detail changes how the sentence is understood, or even removes a small nuance that adds development to a character or situation, then you want to keep that in.

First translations suffers from a lot of awkward long-winded run-on sentences. I'd vote for the second, but the second is also not flawless structurally and contains some grammatical mistakes. I've edited them for your reference:

- The soldiers of Qi started to break their formation in their attempts to flee. Those who weren’t able to get away were turned into minced meat under the chariots’ wheels.

- An island shrouded in mist stands in the middle of Lake Tai. At the heart of this island covered with blood, stands a group of female mages.


A few notes as to why it is edited this way:

1) Standing is in itself a motionless action. So saying the mages are 'standing motionlessly' is redundant. However, if you want to show that they are standing stiffly, you can say "... At the heart of this island covered with blood, stands a group of female mages perfectly still"

2) Like one of the comment above me, there is no such thing as a 'magestress'. Just call them female mages or witches, depending on what aesthetics you're going for.

3) "...started to break their formation.." and "... island shrouded in mist..." are changed because of tense problems.

4) In the last sentence of your translation, you need to figure out what the main subject of your sentence is. Is it the fact that the island was covered in blood? Or the mages standing still in the middle of it? That's why in my suggestion, I changed the phrases around, so that the emphasis is on the mages while the description of the environment is just a description to build the setting of your story.

With all that's been said, I don't think the way I have edited your words in the previous comment was the best translation. I think it is possible to grasp all the details of what was conveyed in Chinese into English without sounding awkward and long winded or losing its essence. Chinese is poetic, but so is English, albeit in a different way. I do not know the full context of the sentence samples, but here is how I personally would have translated them:

- Alarmed, the soldiers of Qi started to flee with little regard to keeping their formation. Unlucky ones were trampled beneath the relentless wheels of their compatriots' roaring chariots, their lost bodies gradually becoming mince meat among the shouts and chaos.

- An island shrouded in mist stood in the middle of Late Tai. This sombre island's soil was dyed red from being saturated with blood, a remnant of prior unimaginable devastation. At the heart of this island lies a lone banner wedged atop an altar surrounded by a group of witches standing perfectly still, toes soaked in the blood oozing out from the ground beneath them.


Hope this helps. I'm a native English speaker who is also somewhat literate in Chinese, if you want someone to proofread your translations feel free to reach out to me :)

Is it not possible to have more lines of dialogue instead? So you make the "sentences" shorter but still get all the information across? (I speak Chinese fluently, so I understand how Chinese can be more information-dense, and how frustrating that can be to translate into English. I also hear it gets worse with literary Chinese, which I can't understand, haha.)

For example, the first sample could be turned into three sentences, resulting in maybe 2-3 different "lines" to press through?
And the second example could be turned into more "lines" to break it up a bit, vary the sentence structure or length, and help increase the suspense.
It sounds more natural in English this way, while still getting the same information across? There would just be more to "click" through, but as English speakers, we're used to needing more words to get across the same information, so it wouldn't feel too annoying, I think.

No easy answer to this question. Chinese is a very concise yet descriptive language in which a lot of information can be packed in a select few characters. Tenses can be inferred through context rather than having to be defined explicitly. The same density cannot be as easily achieved in English, I don't think, while having to balance tense, syntax, and diction. This is coming from someone who speaks both languages. The level of detail for the texts will have to depend on the purpose it serves and the quality of the individual sentences. This becomes a challenge even for professional writers!