#novel translations

[rsmrnn]

A man who didn't have a father.

A man who didn't have friends.

A man who lost his mother.

He lived only when he read the book.

[intothedreamverse]

White Nights, Fyodor Dostoevsky

[restructuralcommittee]

REUNION IS COMING!!!

BREAKING NEWS: A NEW NO. 6 NOVEL SERIES CALLED "NO.6再会", OR "NO. 6 REUNION" HAS JUST BEEN ANNOUNCED.

YES! Reunion is finally coming! Congratulations to Nezumi, to Shion, to Asano Atsuko, and above all, to the No. 6 fandom for our patience and our faith!

The novel series has an amazon page: [LINK] Toi8 has also confirmed that they drew the official cover [LINK] Read a translation of the Amazon page by jaywishings here: [LINK]

In Asano-san's words: After fourteen years, I present to you once more: No. 6.

[the---hermit]

I am not saying here's a link to a free online version of the 1984 graphic novel but if it was there you should probably go read it.

[uhcasual]

All illustrations for The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Russian Edition Exclusives, Volume 5

Finally got my hands on the russian истари/Istari publication volume 5 for Mo Dao Zu Shi, so here are high resolution scans of the art exclusive to this particular edition. The art here portrays events that occur in the post-storyline extras.

Full resolution available for download here (tumblr compresses images a little)

Illustration Artist: Marina Privalova (Baoshan Karo)

[Vol. 1] - [Vol. 2] - [Vol. 3] - [Vol. 4] - [Vol. 5] (part 1)

[keyeee]

💘ANNOUNCEMENT💘

Hello everyone, Keyeee here! 😄 I am happy to announce that starting from today, I am going to work at official Russian localization for the visual novel "The kid at the back" ( @fantasia-kitt )

It's a big honor to participate in this project, and I can't wait to get started!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[guzhufuren]

gay poor little meow meow confirmed (pt. 2/?)

Uncensored wuxia BL Meet You At The Blossom (2024)

[arrothededushka]

for @littlekhada ☕️

[1000sunnygo]

I did write the summary on the wiki lol - happy to see that people use it! On a separate topic, and if you're interested, I remembered another bonus story released for Jump Victory Carnival 2021 about Luffy and Law bug hunting for beetles (imgur /a/Txt6ayl). It hasn't been included in any of the volumes (like the rest of the JVC stories)

LMAOAOA

the image quality got significantly worse after lettering, here's the raw link (credits: @walrsu)

THIS NERD NAMED 4 BEETLES IN 2 PAGES (the 'welcome ⬆️' signboard HAHA)

+ Luffy's face in this panel 😭 I love him being a little shit with Law

This made my day, thank you again!

[murasaki-cha]

Holy shit! Like holy fuck!! Oh my god this is amazing!!!! Wth dude!!!!

[shijiujun]

Newest Danmei Titles Licensed for EN from Haitang

Not sure if everyone heard the news yet but there is a new publisher Haitang in the US — they're the US branch of their chinese branch Cherry Apple, and Cherry Apple has been around for more than 5 years and licensed and printed plenty of simplfied CN danmei novels. Cherry Apple JUST announced its closure after they've cleared all the printing of their current on-hand licenses and they're known for their amazing covers.

So while Haitang (US) hasn't announced a PO, they've definitely got the expertise in the printing side of things. Everyone's pretty excited for their covers, because Cherry Apple had it down pat like no one else did.

The translators they've announced for their officially announced releases have been fan translating pretty long, and judging from their follow list some of the translators you currently know may also be on the roster.

Currently Officially Announced Titles:

嫁魔 Jiamo | Marrying a Demon (Translated by Lianyin, who was and is on Rose and Renaissance [VL], Nan Chan [Rosmei], QJJ [7S], Imperial Uncle [PFH] translations - highlighting cuz she's a friend LOL please support hahahaha)

魔尊也想知道 | Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know

网恋翻车指南 | Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating

Other Titles They Have (Confirmed - Taken from their website before it was hidden, they're still updating the website before releasing, presumably when first PO is ready to go):

Also adding some of the cover previews they had on their site before it was hidden:

某某 Moumou | A Certain Someone

我行让我来 | ICDI - I Can Do It

薄雾(无限) | Mist Unlimited

不要在垃圾桶里捡男朋友 | Don't Pick Up Boyfriends From the Trash Bin

从万米高空降临 | The Approach

浅蓝系列 | The Blue Dust Trilogy

[EDIT] NEW ONES JUST ANNOUNCED JAN. 11:

欲言难止 Boundless Utterance

五殿下还在受骗 His Highness the 5th Prince is Still Being Deceived

They're announcing every Saturday I believe - they'll be using their own distributor in the US to ship within US (open to Amazon etc. but primarily using own distributor for now) and working with distributors (seemingly the same ones as Rosmei so far) to get them to other regions, with more to be announced as weeks go.

You can follow them on their X/Twitter.

[zhouyes]

our master-disciple relationship ends here.

love of the divine tree, 仙台有树. [ TRAILER ]

[otpadsis]

damn he really wants to know

[hairtusk]

i genuinely think that middle aged eastern european women are / have been writing the best literary fiction we have for at least three decades

[bassboosted-moon-chao]

"Professor, look out!"

At that moment, the knight's sword plunged into the Professor's left arm.

Textless version, paragraph and ramble underneath!

So! Wandering Castle, what a fucking novel. I first read a relatively okay (somewhat rough) fan translation of it a year ago, and it had me FLOORED. Layton gets stabbed a few times in this one, there's fights over uranium and Scottish(?) (Northland-ish) folklore, and many, many shitty people I think Tumblr would love.

The scene of the silver knight impaling Layton in the arm, only for him to get back on his feet and keep fighting despite, is one that gripped me by the throat. He also... spends the rest of the novel with a gaping bloody sword wound in his arm just. casually. because why even bother when you're too busy dealing with some sick little bastard putting you through these shitty trials. Luke threatens to kill everyone via. murder-suicide electrocution in one beat and I was absolutely stunned. Wild fucking novel. It goes from 1 to 100 very very quickly. It's like if you took the batshittery of the original trilogy, and amped it up in intensity because now they're allowed blood, serious injury and mild bad language. Seriously recommend finding translations if you can.

[mxtxfanatic]

While flipping through mdzs to verify some stray thoughts of mine, I happened to fall into a translation discrepancy that I feel really, really emphasizes how important it is to have a proper grasp on the language you are translating before translating for a public audience.

Now before we get too deep into this, I want to reiterate that I am someone who does not understand Mandarin in any form but has been reading translations (both by humans and machines) for a few years now. However, because I have been reading translations that tend to follow the Mandarin more closely in grammar and because I haven't shied away from reading machine-made or bad human translations, I have noticed some places where mistranslations from Mandarin to English are common: pronouns, verb-subject matching, negatives, prepositions, and conjunctions. For this post, we will be focusing on the latter two.

In the lead-up to the Wen invasion of Lotus Pier, we are given a scene where Madam Yu whips Wei Wuxian, and in this scene, we are given a glimpse as to Madam Yu's average punishments towards the young ward.

While Madam Yu always pelted him with hostile words, she’d never really hit him hard before—two or three lashes at most, or being made to kneel or confined indoors, and it never took Jiang Fengmian long to release him from that.

—Vol. 3, Chapt. 12: Sandu: The Three Poisons, 7seas

In the past, although Madam Yu had always come at him with harsh words, she had never truly been cruel to him. The most that he’d been through were two or three strikes and being grounded. He’d also be let out by Jiang FengMian soon later.

—Chapt. 57: Poisons, exr

Reading these back-to-back, it should be very clear that though the same section is being translated from the same exact source, these translations do not say the same thing. The official stresses that Madam Yu had never hit Wei Wuxian "that hard" before, as well as saying that his punishments were a few lashes OR being made to kneel OR being confined, three separate punishments never taken together according to this diction. The exr translation, however, states that Madam Yu had "never truly been cruel to him" (emphasis mine) and that him being whipped was in addition to being confined. The emphasis on the strength of her lashings is absent, but an emphasis on the intent behind her actions—that she never meant to be honestly cruel to her ward—is established in its stead. (While this section as translated by exr does not mention kneeling, later scenes reflecting on Wei Wuxian's childhood in Lotus Pier do.)

Both of these translations... are wrong.

If we give exr the benefit of the doubt by virtue of being the original completed English translation of mdzs, then the official 7seas release should automatically raise red flags for the ways it seems to directly contradict the narrative that has existed for a few years before the novel was licensed. It doesn't help that the official has been riddled with many mistranslations and omissions from the very first volume, lowering any credibility it would otherwise have to stand on. But if we were to examine the rest of the exr translation, then the emphasis on Madam Yu's intent also rings false given the fact that we are told over and over again in this same translation that 1) Madam Yu is, in fact, unnecessarily, illogically, and erratically mean-spirited and cruel, and 2) Wei Wuxian knows this even at this time in his life (shoutout to the Lotus Pod Seeds extra) and understands her actions as targeted cruelty. What does the actual text say, then?

Although Madam Yu always spoke ill of him before, her hand had never been this viciously cruel. At most, she whipped him two or three times and ordered him to kneel down and be confined to his room, and he would be released by Jiang Fengmian sometime later.

—@jiangwanyinscatmom (emphasis mine)

Madam Yu has never been "as cruel" as in that moment when whipping Wei Wuxian, because normally she only whips him 2-3 times. She would whip him a few times and send him to the ancestral hall to kneel and be in confinement, which matches up to the memories that Wei Wuxian reflects on in other parts of the novel. This translation gets rid of the character inconsistencies that the other two translations create. So how did we get here? Remember how I pointed out those common Mandarin-to-English translation mistakes? Well, both the exr and 7seas translations fall into the trap of confusing conjunctions and prepositions. That's how we get a list of punishments rather than an order of events for a singular punishment type. That's how we get "not truly cruel" instead of "not as cruel." That's how we get these sections contradicting what we know about Madam Yu's personality and behavior from the rest of the novel through those two translations. Unfortunately, both translation teams just happened to flub in the same area in slightly different ways, and while I'm willing to give a multi-lingual grade-school student translating in their spare time the benefit of the doubt, a paid translator with a translation team hired by a professional publishing house should have better quality control than a spare-time hobbyist.

Also, just in case anyone wants more proof on what mxtx meant for us to take away about Madam Yu's treatment of Wei Wuxian from this scene, it was also apparently so important to mxtx for readers to know that Madam Yu was truly cruel to Wei Wuxian during his childhood that the act of her routinely whipping him whenever he was in her presence was something that was added into the revised mdzs. It was not in the original unedited version of the novel.

In the past, although Lady Yu always insulted or patronized him, she never laid a hand on him. At worst, she’d make him kneel for prolonged periods of time, but he’d always get bailed out by Jiang FengMian after a while.

—Chapt. 57. Act 12: Sandu/Three Poisons, Part 2, qinghe-nie