#i likely wont upload chapter 12 until later this week

[sunnimint]

Writing chapter 12 of Beginnings of an End has made me realized, once again, that I possess god-tier writing skills because WOW

[fantranslatorbychoice]

Oh glob, what have I gotten myself into? Just some long updates lol XD

Well, the year’s almost over, and it’s already the second half. The first half was too much and to be honest, I had to swim with the circumstances I am in right now so I had to put this passion non-profit project on hold, like seriously. But I did started translating the first few pages as early as December last year, as my very nice benefactor actually sent me the rest of the entire set of the Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi series after sending off the first 4 volumes. Probably read the entire thing first. But hey, free stuff is free so why complain. Plus my benefactor actually got the entire set for a steal, won’t say how much but in Amazon Japan, the last time I checked the whole set is roughly around $150 or a bit around that. and that’s just the first 7 volumes. Probably there’s an entire set now that’s about $200, as the final volume was released around August 2019.

Spoiler alert: the entire light novel series is made up of 10 volumes, so if you read it, the afterword by Yuuma-sensei specifically says that volume 10 is the final one, and Yuuma-sensei feels sad about it.

Yeah I highlighted that part in red, just in case many Kakuriyo fans still have some extreme hunger pangs or are unsure whether the novel series has ended. Here you go, straight from the horse’s mouth. Yuuma-sensei also has another Ayakashi light novel series, 浅草鬼嫁日記, roughly-translated to “Asakusa Wife from Hell Diaries”. Seems fun, they’re literally ogres - Oni living in the real world, like a reverse Kakuriyo thing. Who knows, maybe someday I can score that series too lol. The writer really likes Ayakashi, if it’s not that obvious yet 草 草 草 草  yeah I write kusa lol oml I should stop... But returning to the Kakuriyo series.. I won’t spoil what happened lol but I will probably make a commentary on that once I get the translations up and running.

Which leads me to my next announcement:

I PLAN TO UPLOAD THE DIRECT TRANSLATIONS OF JUST THE INTERMISSIONS/INTERLUDES ( 幕間 ) AND THE AFTERWORDS (あとがき) OF EACH VOLUME.

Chapter 5 is the only complete and full English Translation that I will be uploading here, and the rest will be summarized versions of the chapters plus my translation notes and commentaries.

Bummer, right?

Well, to be honest, after starting my initial translations I ran into several issues which made me feel sucker-punched and added to the stuff I’m worried about:

Issues regarding plagiarism (either my stuff getting plagiarized or potentially being accused of it)

Translating everything actually takes too long, even for me (I’ll explain that later)

More serious issues like possible DMCA-ish complaints (won’t want my hardwork just getting flagged and killed)

Personal stuff piling up and affecting my momentum

To be honest, when I received the books, I was so excited to work with them and upload as much as I can. But lots of things happened one after another, plus the worldwide issue that we have right now, so doing fun stuff wasn’t at the front of my priorities. So at the moment, I am mostly offline, by necessity, like connection is slower and with data cap, so I mostly do my translations with whatever hardcopies of dictionaries that I have on hand, offline. It’s good and all since I can put my skills to the test, but it can be expected that not all of the words are available in the books so I still have to hook on Jisho just to find the missing words I need. So my stuff pretty much looks like this:

I could just take pictures of these and upload them here but the maximum number of pics that tumblr allows is 15, and good glob I have more than 15 pages of translated material. Plus, as you can see above, some parts are untranslated and I had to find them in Jisho once I get online, so right now I have about 50% word-processed with the raw parts cooked, and I only have 12 raw pages remaining to be cooked and hashed lol

Which leads me to my next issues: my slowness (yeah I have to surrender on my slowness) and my fears regarding plagiarism.

I actually only started doing these translations in full blast around 2 months ago, and eventually I had to slow down so I won’t get bogged down since I also do other stuff. But I found out that ploughing through it can get quite draining. I started thinking that fan-subbing and scanlating were easier because aside from working digitally, these were also mostly done in teams so work time gets cut. Well, those were the days lol But for this one, aside from flying solo, I had to use all of my offline resources a lot, like doing everything by hand. It finally broke me about half-way and I had to step away from it, like reaaaaally step away from it. I thought I could finish 50+ pages in a span of a week. Well, I wasn’t exactly wrong there, but I also had other stuff to do, and if I just read it like I would any book without having to do anything, it’s a done deal. But having to translate stuff was draining, I felt frustrated so it broke me. I have to write each page by hand, leave out the words I can’t find or don’t know, and move on to the next page until my body stops working. Rinse and repeat until I could finish about 10 pages and get on with the typesetting and completing the missing parts. That takes a while so I just do my best to be patient.

Then the thoughts of plagiarism popped in and out, like I started thinking how to ensure that my stuff doesn’t get stolen and reposted elsewhere, or worse, getting my site shut down because fan translations are ambiguously illegal, like fansubs and scanlations, and I think those were what got me the most, so I just gave up midway. I’d say ambiguously illegal because if a series or title wasn’t licensed elsewhere then translating it is a fair game. But if it’s already released as a translated version by publishers, then releasing a translated version is like labelled as stealing, even if it’s non-profit. Of course profiteering is the worst, some steal what others work hard for, that they did for free, and sell them off. Scumbags to the bone smh I do my best to be within the fair use thing since I understand how much effort is made in creating content, so at present I have just decided to just put up the intermissions and the afterwords because aside from these being only a few pages long, it’s less likely to get whacked. Plus it’s easier for my psyche to just sum up each chapter and add some comments on it so it won’t be taken down, plus I wont’ be too-attached so even if some nutjobs repost it elsewhere because some people are just unempathetic like that, at least I won’t be as resentful. Plus the afterwords are just so cute, Yuuma-sensei gives off an adorable and relatable vibe, so I feel like aside from just showing off her stories, I think she needs to get signal-boosted too, so people would have an idea on who wrote this hunger-inducing light novel series lol.  I only started to pick up the whole thing again about a week ago, and I still wasn’t fast but at least I got to add at least 20 more pages translated, plus I started to type the first pages and add the missing words so at the very least, I felt some sort of achievement. It gave me some hope, and to be honest I have been doing this to maintain my sanity even for just a bit, so I guess I will do my best to bring Yuuma-sensei’s work out into the world. It’s a really good series, and it got animated into 2 seasons, plus the manga’s out, so that says a lot on how the series caught on. It can’t be denied that it’s a really engrossing series, so I don’t see any reason why this really good series should remain hidden. It probably has a lot of fans but aren’t being too attached into it because of language barriers, and even in my own way, I would like to bridge that gap. I mean, I may have slow internet that can only open mails in basic html but hey, this is the least I could do for the fandom. It’s not like I spew out doujin stuff or anything lol

OK, so summing up this long-ass update:

Chapter 5 - The Mysterious Capital Youto** - coming soon

Will just translate the intermissions and afterwords into English

English summaries of the chapters plus commentaries will be uploaded

Please don’t expect any fast uploads lol it’s not like I do ctrl+A into Google translate and slap it in here. Nothing against doing that but.. uhm, sometimes AI don’t get the nuances translated, and a lot gets lost in translation, so at best, anything done by some trash enthusiast, even noobs can still have some oomph in it that soulless beings can’t even top off. But hey, that’s just my opinion lol

So yeah, there you have it, a long update. Oh, and I changed the name of this blog because I have other raw stuff that I may be able to put here without any fear of being taken down because they’re in the public domain, so they’re all fair game since I don’t get any profit from them anyway and others may also appreciate them too. Hint: One is a series of Japanese classic  fantasy short stories, the other one is a set of instructional manuals on how to write kana and kanji in ballpen and brushpens. They’re a bit lighter so once I get Chapter 5 up I’ll do them as soon as I get rested.

See you all later and thank you for stumbling in this blog. xoxoxo