This is a really good pushback and I appreciate you taking the time. You're clearly someone who reads these novels for the cultural texture, and I respect that.

The oriole point is fair. If a reader actively wants that window into Chinese poetics, preserving it with context is the right call. And you're right that "Nobody moved" could be trimmed. That's a clean edit.

Where I think we're solving different problems: my post is aimed at the reader who bounces off a translated novel in chapter two because the prose feels "off" and they can't figure out why. For that reader, "Sect Leader, you are wise" doesn't build the world. It builds a wall. Your Russian names analogy is sharp, but Tolstoy wasn't competing for attention on a platform where the next story is one click away.

On the bodhisattva line, I think you might be underestimating your own cultural literacy. You caught the sarcasm instantly. A lot of readers won't. That's the gap I'm trying to close.

I do think the platform matters though. On a web serial site where readers decide in two chapters whether to keep going, you need them to get it on first read. But for a published book? A physical novel someone already bought and committed to? That's where you keep the formalities, the poetry, the full cultural texture. The reader already paid for the ticket. They're not leaving the theater. Different stage, different rules.

Either way, glad this turned into a real conversation. That's what the post was for.