Read-in-Progress Wednesday

[geraineon]

This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:
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Comments

[anehan]

I read How to Survive as a Villain, vol. 1. Finished it today, actually. For the first half, I was a bit bored by it. It was fine, but I felt it didn't have enough substance. It started picking up later on, but I think it only really got into its swing towards the end, after Highlight for spoilers!*Yan Heqing left when the whole thing with the war and people dying and That Ending happened. It felt like now things were finally starting to get interesting.* And then the volume ended and I was left wailing because I wanted more. It was the perfect place to end it. It just was also very, very cruel to me personally. *g*

What's next? No idea. I've got Remnants of Filth, vol. 3 as well as Case File Compendium, vols 1 & 2 in my TBR pile. Or I could finally finish Seasonal Chill or Lord Seventh, both of which have been RIPs for far too long.

[geraineon]

I read How to Survive as a Villain when the fan TL was still up and I really enjoyed it overall.

Spoilers here

I like that the MC told the ML that he's not actually the emperor. I feel that revealing it so early in the story is actually quite rare. But even with the reveal, it just messes things up more and there's no foolproof plan to fix things because of their identities. I really like that

[anehan]

Absolutely agreed!

[duckprintspress]

Are you reading the Rosmei translation? How is the translation reading? I've got my copy on my tbr mostly cause I want to see how well the translation goes, to help me better determine how much I should kill my wallet to get the other Rosmei titles (like, if the translation(s) are really good, I want them all, whereas if the translations aren't maybe quite as high quality, I'd stick to the titles I'm most interested/want most. If they're disastrous I might not even get those but lbr I can't imagine not buying Global Examination at least...)

[anehan]

Yes, I read the Rosmei translation. It seemed good to me. I don't read Chinese myself, nor have I read any fan translations, so I've no point of comparison, but purely as English-language prose, it seemed fine to me. Certainly better than, say, Seven Seas' early releases.

It definitely isn't disastrous, so there's no need to worry about that, at least not for this particular novel. I don't know if I'd call it really good, either, but I think that's more to do with the fact that, at least to my knowledge, danmei writers are typically amateurs. I'm not sure how many of the danmei translators are amateurs, too, but based on the way their names are written (i.e., pseudonyms rather than full names), I'd say the translators for this one probably are. They seem competent amateurs, though, so I've no complaints.

(Using amateur translators is my pet peeve. Danmei as a genre and we as readers deserve competent translations, and far too many English danmei translations are clumsily translated. *shakes fist*)

[duckprintspress]

that is all good to know, thank you!

I have decidedly mixed feelings about the amateur translators thing. I've seen how professional translators who don't know the source material butcher Chinese novels in the name of bad localization and simplifying things (like, I've read the official translation of Daomu Biji, and I gather that the official translation of Legend of the Condor Heroes is, amazingly, even worse). Fandom translators who transition have the benefit of knowing and loving the source material, and they bring that love and it also ensures that, usually, the translation choices mirror what fandom has already adopted (with notable exceptions, most of which I approve of, coughcoughihatedstygiantigersealimgladitsgonecoughcough.) But the flip side is they don't always have the language chops and sometimes miss things a professional would catch. I personally think the ideal would be a team working in combo, one who is tip-top on both languages, the other of whom knows the fandom.

anyway. thanks for sharing all this, it's reassuring. :D I'm feeling more relaxed about reading it myself, feeling odds are good it'll read well.

[anehan]

Very much agreed!

I remember the official Prince of Tennis translation, which was overly enthusiastic about localization. When you have a 13-year-old boy calling a 14-year-old boy "sir" unironically, you've gone wrong.

OTOH, the amateur translators frequently produce bad translations, and I don't mean just mistranslations (which I wouldn't even catch myself). It often seems like they get stuck in the Chinese sentence structure, going for too literal a translation, which results in English that is either awkward and clumsy or plain grammatically wrong. I'm not a translator myself, but I did take some courses in translation at uni, and I remember this same thing from my own attempts. It was really difficult to make the switch to the target language's sentence structure. A professional translator would know to pay attention to pitfalls like these.

I agree with you that a professional translator + a fandom consultant would be the best option.

ETA: The Rosmei translation of How to Survive as a Villain is largely free of the sort of clumsiness that I describe above, which is a credit to the translators, the proofreader and/or the editor.