Author: Diamond_Apple Diamond_Apple
Translated by: tetsusquared tetsusquared
Original article: SCP-CN-1767 - 爸爸的妈妈叫什么?
So this was a ride. I first heard of this article less than two hours ago when someone on the CN QQ group mentioned it had been translated into Japanese, and two hours later it's in English! At first I thought I would have to worry about Chinese kinship being a lot more specific than the English system - Chinese kinship differentiates older and younger siblings and whether the relative is on the paternal or maternal side. Luckily, none of those mattered enough to affect the article, so I didn't provide direct translations.
So what is this tape recorder, and why does the article cut off when it's being recorded into?
This explanation is roughly paraphrased from the talk page.
The tape is the master copy of all familial relations. The tape says papa's papa is grandpa, and so the father of your father is your grandfather. When the researchers play back the tape, the object "reads" the kinship data of the subject who presses play and synchronizes the subject's real family to match. So there's nothing wrong with the tape when it said "papa's papa is papa", because the person he thought was his father's father was actually just his father.
SCP-CN-1767 is the issue here - its playback is faulty, so the kinship data being read and applied is wrong. When SCP-CN-1767 said "papa's big bro is called auntie", the faulty data was applied to the subject, and all his father's older brothers were updated to match, and when SCP-CN-1767 said
"papa's mama is called big bro", that's impossible because your paternal grandparent needs to exist in order to conceive your father so that he can father your brother, so the entire paternal side of the subject's family ceased to exist as an impossibility.
Now, when the researchers made the mistake of writing to the tape, they overwrote the master copy of kinship itself. Now everyone's papa's mama is big bro, and since that's impossible, everyone ceases to exist, hence the caret and the seemingly incomplete, timed-out article.
I wonder what would happen if they recorded I'm My Own Grandpa onto this thing…
Thank you for your excellent translation!
In fact, this article took me only a few hours from conception to publication. I doubted for a while that it would be liked, but the following ratings, along with your translation, made me understand that it wasn't such a bad article. I am very happy to see my work recognized by you.
It's just that there seems to be a mistake in the information you posted on the discussion board. The title of SCP-CN-1767 is not "文字终结于此", but "爸爸的妈妈叫什么?". Perhaps you can modify it. Thanks!
哇是暖心小短文
Right, I copied the template from my comments on SCP-CN-1001 and forgot to change the title. Sorry about that.
Original article: SCP-CN-1767 - 文字终结于此
Hey, something is wrong here. The title of CN-1767 is "爸爸的妈妈叫什么?".
Sorry about that. You can see my response to the author above… orz