Hi! Sorry for the bother… I’m rewatching season 1, and the subtitles are sometimes confusing. Season 1 also didn’t translate any text shown on screen, and I was wondering what this meant: This is from Episode 3. It even zoomed in on this particular text: I figured it was something important since they had to zoom in on it, and I don’t wanna miss out on that Thanks for all the work you do here, btw!

Hi! It’s not a bother at all, thank you for the question. This is indeed an important scene, and it’s very true that not understanding what’s written makes it confusing. Let’s take a look!

The left page, the one that will be zoomed in, is rather mundane in its meanings, actually. It’s imperial paperwork, essentially, referencing multiple governmental institutions.

Let’s talk text first, then the red seals.

The text on the right essentially says something like “this had been reviewed and approved by the Chancellery”. The Chancellery acted as both advisors to the rulers on various policy decisions and a channel for imperial edicts to be transmitted to other departments for implementation.

The text on the left says something like “Heavenly Empress of Wu Zhou”. Wu Zhou is the title of the dynasty Empress Wu started. So this is essentially the closing lines of an imperial edict, I believe.

The seals are: on the left - Censorate, on the right - Ministry of Justice, on the bottom you might recognize that it’s the Dali court.

The zoomed in part is the “Wu Zhou” text with the censorate seal over it.

Now, the right page provides context both for the document and for Li Bing’s mental state in that scene. You might notice that several characters repeat in multiple lines - that’s because the text on this page is names - and methods of punishment.

Many of the names start with the Li surname - Li Bing’s surname - and are the names of his relatives. Most - and all on the screenshot above - were decapitated. A few were banished.

I looked up some of the names, but haven’t been able to find anything, so I can’t tell you for sure which names Li Bing is circling. There are at least five, only one with the Li surname.

I hope this helped provide the context! I’ll be sure to include this in the translation if I ever get to doing season 1, but with my current schedule that’s probably not happening until at least mid-summer…