In a postscript to the English translation of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, Ken Liu drew attention to his approach to the translation work. Ken Liu writes that "differences in linguistic structure and cultural references, are actually easy to resolve". In some cases, he used footnotes for this. (The German translation has endnotes for most of the same names and concepts.)
However, Ken Liu also pointed out that (emphasis added)
there are more subtle issues involving literary devices and narrative techniques. The Chinese literary tradition shaped and was shaped by its readers, giving rise to different emphases and preferences in fiction compared to what American readers expect.
He adds that he he "tried to adjust" some of the narrative techniques that American readers (and presumably readers in the West in general) would be more familiar with, but he does not go into any details. This leads me to the question what narrative techniques and literary devices in the Chinese original would justify this type of adaptation.
Note that this is not about primarily about the very obvious change of moving the three chapters set during the Cultural Revolution to the beginning of the book, since this was Liu Cixin's preferred order anyway.
