I've read several of Ken Liu's own books written originally in english and imo he is an excellent writer who does dialogue well. If the dialogue in three body feels clunky I assume that it's a purposeful decision on his part to retain the original flavour of the text.

I do often find that dialogue translated from very different languages doesn't always feel natural in English. I guess that's just part of reading in translation.

I think I mostly agree with that.

I like it when characters feel so real that I imagine them having a life and motivations off the page - good or bad or whatever the author needs to tell a good story. I didn't get that at all with The Silence Of The Girls.

It left like a story in which the women were victims without also being people.

I had a very similar experience with 'The Silence of the Girls' which I had every reason to believe I'd enjoy, but which fell completely flat for me. For a book which sold itself as a feminist retelling, all the female characters seemed very one-dimensional. I felt like I was expected to relate to them by default but wasn't given any actual reason to. There was no interesting perspective on the female experience - all the female characters' stories were told through their relationships to the main male characters. As you said, it read like a list of various types of abuse.

I thought that the female characters in Song of Achilles were infinitely more interesting and better written, despite the story not explicitly focusing on them.

It's validating to hear you feel the same, as so many people have recommended Pat Barker to me. I wonder if perhaps they haven't actually read the books themselves, and are just aware of the associated buzzwords.