Architecture Of “not Bad”: Decoding The Chinese Source Code Of The...

In Episode 03 of my psychological thriller, Script in the Audience, there is a trivial moment where a character makes a correct deduction.

In English, I wrote: “He’d guessed right.” Simple. Direct. Boolean value = True.

But getting to that “True” value required wading through a surprising number of error messages. It felt absurd, yet it was hard-won.

“He wasn’t wrong” (Sounds like he’s arguing with someone).

“He didn’t guess incorrectly” (Sounds like a robot hoping to pass the Turing test).

“He wasn’t mistaken” (Too formal, like a manager auditing a subordinate’s work).

English would say: “He was right.” Or “He guessed correctly.”

Right is right, wrong is wrong. You don’t say ‘not wrong.’

I sat there thinking: He clearly guessed correctly, so why is my instinct to say “he didn’t guess wrong”?

Then it hit me: My native Operating System (Chinese) does not like to return a direct True. It prefers !False.

Source: HackerNews