Last edited: 06 March 2025.
Welcome to my page where I store my Word of Honor re-translations. The impetus for this was starting a watch along in our Duckling group, so that's the references to Ducklings you'll find on here.
I don't really speak Chinese (although I'm learning fast) and don't pretend to understand many of the nuances, but there's a lot of places where the English subs that are on YouTube get a little confused or have poor English. Worse, both from my own stumbling efforts and from reading posts by others who understand the language better, it seems like they're pretty bowdlerized. The Netflix subs do the annoying thing where they don't translate relational terms, and aren't much better in terms of bowdlerizing.
More annoyingly, they are largely set to match the timing of the original Chinese subs, which means that often they are poorly timed, don't start early enough, and end too soon.
So, I am going through and cleaning up the English, trying to put back in the gay where I spot it, and re-timing the subs so that they're on screen long enough to read, and where I can, adding enough info so that you can at least look up the poetry Wen Kexing quotes. I'm also trying to make handouts for the Duckling group of the main important take-aways from each episode, and eventually I want to add notes on the politics for some of the people who are rewatching. I am quite certain that some of my interpretations are wrong simply because I don't understand Chinese all that well—please bear in mind while watching that this is done by someone who is not Chinese and has been studying the language on their own. All I can actually promise is that they're a little better than the default YouTube subtitles as of this writing (March 2025).
Obviously there's the option of adding the subtitles to a downloaded video, but watching on YouTube helps demonstrate that there's interest in the show and provides advertising revenue. So I'd encourage you to watch on YouTube if you can, and I've provided instructions below for how to use a Chrome extension to add the custom subs files so you can watch with these subs.
Please note that for several episodes there are multiple versions on YouTube, and unofficial reuploaded versions may be slightly trimmed or slightly padded. I have provided links to the exact YouTube video that I used to time the subs, and if you use the link provided, the subs should (assuming the extension works correctly) match the video neatly. If you use a different video version, they may be mis-timed. This is particularly a problem for episodes 6 and 17, where I have timed the subs to the "special edition" videos rather than the ones in the standard Youku playlist.
If you have comments or questions, please contact me at the email address translation at this domain. If you find these subs useful and would like to throw some support my way, I am kalany on Patreon and ko-fi.
Some world-building info (pdf) for people who are unfamiliar with the genre. Aimed at people who have seen The Untamed (2019), but not much else in the Cdrama world.
I cannot provide user support for this extension, as it's not mine and I find it confusing too. If you know of a better extension, or extensions for other browsers, please do let me know at the email address translation at this domain.
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
Episode 3:
Episode 4:
Episode 5:
Episode 6:
Episode 07:
Episode 08:
Episode 09:
Episode 10:
Episode 11:
Episode 12:
Episode 13:
Episode 14:
Episode 15:
Episode 16:
Episode 17:
Episode 18:
Episode 19:
Episode 20:
Episode 21:
Episode 22:
Episode 23:
Episode 24:
Episode 25:
Episode 26:
Episode 27:
Episode 28:
Episode 29:
Episode 30:
Episode 31:
Episode 32:
Episode 33:
Episode 34:
Episode 35:
Episode 36:
2025-03-14: added YouTube links for the rest of the episodes, because I'm lazy and don't want to have to find the file with the links myself.
2025-03-13: added episodes 5 and 6, and redid the formatting for the page a little bit.