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The writing in The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu) feels tacky
(programming.dev)
The discussion of fiction books! Please tag spoilers and follow instance rules.
The translator is a novelist in his own right, and his Dandelion Dynasty series is quite good. It's not the translation. I suspect it's a combination of it being a hard-sf "ideas" book, and different national styles in novel writing.
Well as a translator myself, I can say translating and writing are VERY different skillsets! Entirely possible for someone to be good at writing in English but mediocre at translating to it (I am one such example 😔).
But yes, it seems likely the different styles and SF-hardness is more to blame than the translation itself.