Talk:Shen-Lung

I think we should consider renaming this page "Spiritual". "Celestial" and "Imperial" are both English translations of the Chinese names; "Tien" and "Qin", the "Lung" add-on meaning Dragon. Since Shen-Lung has already been translated on this wiki as "Spiritual Dragon", or something along those lines, it seems sensible to rename it so it fits with the other examples.

With that in mind, should we attempt a translation of the other two known Chinese Breeds; Emerald Glass and "Scarlet Flower" (Several un-named breeds also exist, one being small and purple, and another being black with yellow stripes, although this could be a relation of an Imperial)?

IMHO article titles should be based on whatever the breed is primarily called within the series itself. Speculative "back-translations" to Chinese would be especially problematic-- a.) each individual English word may have multiple possibilities (frex cf. this discussion of shades of red); and b.) the English phrase might not be literal ("Scarlet Flower" might be a poetic rendition of "Peony"). I'm also wondering whether NN really thought about these elaborate breed descriptions wrt choosing a single character to fit into the middle of a three-part name like the ones we've already seen, or whether their names just end up with four parts or more. --Wombat1138 19:24, 11 August 2010 (PDT)

Additional note-- I've added some very speculative info to the Talk page for Scarlet Flower. Not much headway yet into researching the historical context of green glass production during the Qing Dynasty, esp. whether there would've been a special type with a single-word name. --Wombat1138 17:08, 14 August 2010 (PDT)

Tongues of Serpents

The new long-winged dragons in Tongues of Serpents have the individual names "Lung Shen Li" and "Lung Shen Gai"... should they be considered to be "Shen-Lung" dragons?

Con: their "Shen" could be a completely different Chinese word that also happens to have "Shen" as a non-tonal transliteration, and the new dragons are described as "a wholly new breed".

Pro: Temeraire does repeat that odd comment by Shen Li about "trying to stop thinking". They were redeveloped within three years, suggesting that it only took two or three successive generations of crosses from existing breeds to recombine the right traits (depending on the egg incubation time and the parent dragons' minimum age of sexual maturity). They might still be considered to be a Shen-Lung subtype, possibly with an extra modifier in the main breed name that doesn't carry over into three-part personal names.

Thoughts? --Wombat1138 13:04, 13 August 2010 (PDT)

It's confusing. At first I thought that it could just be the breed evolving over time, due to the skills of the Chinese breeders, but then it occured to me that a majority of the British dragons are not purebred, and are referred to by retelling the names of their forebears. In China, it could be that unless a new dragon is a visibly different breed from the last one, it keeps the name of one of its forebears, instead of coming up with an entirely new breed name (if that happened, there'd be thousands of different middle names). So perhaps these are just a cross-breed of Shen-Lung and another dragon. I'd say add it as a sub section in this article.

It also occurs to me that it could be part of a new breeding programme that isn't yet finished. Until the desired breed outcome is achieved, the offspring are referred to as "Shen-Lung".