Interesting they mention and get quotes from the author of the Three Body Problem series. I just finished reading that series, and the whole time I had the feeling that it was written more to convince people of something than to actually entertain the reader.
The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the story and writing itself was quite sub-par.
edit: I listened (audio books) to the English versions. I thought the translation was excellent. I don't want to spoil anything, but the author has a very dark vision of mankind and kept having his characters ostracized to the extreme which got old pretty quick. I didn't feel like the books were missing anything descriptive from lack of translation.
I also really enjoyed the books, but definitely more from a "these are cool ideas" perspective than from great narrative storytelling. Something was probably lost in translation, but the ideas were really great. I especially like (and hate) the concept of the Dark Forest.
Did you read it in the original Chinese, or the English translation? I haven't read either, but it's possible that the English version misses a lot of nuance from the original version.
(It's also quite possible the original is crap, and the translation is doing a very adequate job.)
I actually thought the translator did a pretty good job (not to say that I can read Chinese or do a direct comparison). My only complaint was that I wish they'd westernized the names--they all sound too similar to my American ears.
I felt the translation felt very awkward at times. Just scanning some articles about Ken Liu, it was his decision to try and stick to the original literary style, I think a lot of it came from that.
In a lot of ways I liked it because the entire thinking behind the book was a different cultural thinking.
But the resulting style is definitely a bit awkward in English and sometimes it was a little bit of a slog.
The ideas in the books were pretty amazing, unique, and imaginative; but the story and writing itself was quite sub-par.
edit: I listened (audio books) to the English versions. I thought the translation was excellent. I don't want to spoil anything, but the author has a very dark vision of mankind and kept having his characters ostracized to the extreme which got old pretty quick. I didn't feel like the books were missing anything descriptive from lack of translation.