Free-For-All Friday

[geraineon]

Time for free for all Friday, a day for random chit-chat!

Do you want to talk about the other novels you are reading or find a read-along partner? Practice your Chinese? Request for fics? Ask for beta readers? Just talk about your day?

Go right ahead!

Comments

[aurumcalendula]

I finished volume 2 of The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish the other day! Highlight for spoilers! *It's fun seeing Li Yu be the metaphorical monkey wrench in palace intrigue stuff and I'm still amused by Li Yu thinking he has Prince Jing completely fooled w/r/t transforming between fish and human forms while Prince Jing's been sure Li Yu's a fish yao since volume 1.*

I also read some translated Thai GL novels this week. I finished volume 2 of Petrichor (tbh I think I prefer the first volume) and started on Cranium. I feel like the former needed a more thorough proofreader and/or editor. I'm enjoying the rivals-to-lovers setup of the latter so far.

[geraineon]

How's the translation scene for Thai novels anyway, and how's the translation quality generally?

[aurumcalendula]

I'm not sure, tbh. I should look into the fan translation scene. So far I've only read the (afaik) official translations of The Loyal Pin and Petrichor (and part of Cranium). Most official English translations of Thai novels seem to be on MEB (which I've personally found annoying to deal with), but some are also available on Amazon.

I really wish the translations were better. I can't read Thai, so I can't judge how well they're translated, but in some of the English versions I've noticed tense and other issues that imho an editor should have caught (randomly using him instead of her for a female character, calling someone's girlfriend her boyfriend, etc).

[douqi]

I've dipped into a couple of the official English translations and have found them extremely difficult to read. I got the disquieting sense that if I read on, I'd start losing my sense of what a solid English sentence should sound like. The official Taiwanese translation of Gap was pretty decent though (I did not like the novel, but I appreciated the translation).

[geraineon]

Ah, that's disappointing... And through my brief foray into Korean webnovels, the situation is not better there either /sigh/

[geraineon]

I continued reading Chu Liuxiang book 2, and he + his friends still deserve to get thrown into the sea sometimes... but he continues to have very strong homerotic tension with all the men.

I also got a little obsessed playing Cult of the Lamb, a game I bought for 50% off from steam sales. And now steam thinks I really, really enjoy Lovecraftian things (just because I played this, and Cultist Simulator, and Darkest Dungeon, and ... okay maybe it has a point).

[douqi]

I finally finished reading In Love with a Substitute, including all the extras. The final (xianxia) world was a huge slog and the ending reveal was very underwhelming after all the build-up. Moving on to some books in English next, and then I'm probably going to read a contemporary baihe by Yu Shuang (I've read one full-length novel by her, and it was satisfyingly melodramatic in a k-drama way so I have hopes for this one).

[geraineon]

Sucks when a story ends like that after a strong start. What books in English will you be reading next?

[douqi]

I've almost finished Diane Abbott's autobiography — she's the UK's first Black woman MP and a committed left-wing politician. Quite fun especially the parts where she throws shade on almost every single establishment politician she's ever had to deal with. And a lot of fascinating background stuff about the Jamaican community in London.

Next up it's probably going to be Asako Yuzuki's Butter in English translation , followed by Samuel R. Delany's Nova.

[geraineon]

That sounds like a very interesting book to read!

and aha, food + murder, two of my favourite things in my media XD

[ehyde]

I had been saying, ok, when I finish Volume 2 of Smiling Proud Wanderer I'll take a break and read something else, because although I'm enjoying it, I'd been progressing very slowly. But! Almost as soon as I said that it got super exciting again and I am well past the halfway point now. We've also switched translators. I think this second translator isn't quite as good at writing in english, but on the plus side, they are now writing Dongfang Bubai, instead of Dongfang Invincible (haven't come to any of the other names that the first translator translated yet). Really this novel deserves a professional translation...

[douqi]

That isn't great but it could be a lot worse, I guess? I've seen subtitles that turn Dongfang Bubai into 'Asia the Invincible'.

[geraineon]

I've definitely seen "Asia the Invincible" XD

there's also East is Invincible, or Invincible Asia, or Invincible East.

But Dongfang Invincible is just extra weird. Why even translate half and leave half?