The Chinese edition of How Not To Be Wrong, published by CITAC and translated by Xiaorui Hu, comes out in a couple of weeks.
The Chinese title is
魔鬼数学
or
“Mo gui shu xue”
which means “Devil mathematics”! Are they saying I’m evil? Apparently not. My Chinese informants tell me that in this context “Mo gui” should be read as “magical/powerful and to some extent to be feared” but not necessarily evil.
One thing I learned from researching this is that the Mogwai from Gremlins are just transliterated “Mo gui”! So don’t let my book get wet, and definitely don’t read it after midnight.
Is this the PRC version or the Taiwan version?
PRC. Not sure when Taiwan is coming out…
It would have been interesting to see what the translators did if they had used the UK subtitle, “The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life.”
Mathematically it’s always “after midnight” no matter when you read it…