From old discussions: Time keeping in Douluo Dalu

One of the old Discussion thematics, which gets asked quite often:

Vinzzz001: Does the term “double hour” hold a special meaning in chinese?

Bagelson: It’s a figurative translation of (时 辰 ), an old Chinese unit of time which split the day into twelve parts - the equivalent of two western hours - and either existed simultaneously with or succeeded a system where the day was split into 100 equal parts. I could call them “watches” instead, but I haven’t so far.

DagothUr: Thanks for answering that. was looking through the net and all am getting is about an italian movie.

Bagelson: Try this link: http: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ke_(unit)

Honestly I really think its a bad system and one thing we might as well just convert to hours. saying a half double hour would be better if it was just simplified as an hour. The time really makes much more sense in standard hours and its one of those things that doesn't take much time to convert. While on the subject of Chinese measurements, I'd rather see things in meters than some of the Chinese measurements because even Americans have a general idea of how big a meter is where as 8 cun could be 8" or 8 feet for we know, I know there's footnotes at the bottom and a cun is about 10cm but its the principle of the matter. Also I'd rather go with metric vs American measurements since both TL are European and converting to metric is probably much easier for them.

Ok, so the half double hour is pretty redundant.

The main reason I'm using the double hour is to stick as close to the RAW as possible. The author uses it as an archaic term so I'll keep using it. The alternative would be to translate it as watches, but that's an even less defined time period.

I don't hate the double hour term. It's easy enough to understand as long as you realize they really mean a double hour. It adds to the immersion and time-period setting.

I understand the reason he uses the old system it helps with the setting. But I'd only use it when it's 2 hours. Half double and two double kind of redundant on the other hand just using 'a double hour' in place of 2 hours. Also watches are also kind of bad since they changed the length of a watch a few times. First there wer 100 watches in a day then they changed it to 96 so there were an even number of watches in a double hour. Now I think they just mean 15 minutes. Double hours are fine in most cases and do add some flavor to the piece.

My preference is: Either use the original term, don't translate it as all, but put a footnote explaining it at the bottom of the page (not a separate file, some people don't read them) every once in a while... or just use hours and metres.