Weekend reads

[halfcactus]

Recently read

Joe Sparrow, "Fishing"
A comic that compares the concept of creativity, inspiration, and struggles to execute artistic ideas to fishing. Concise, well-communicated, and good choice of colors that differentiates what's above and below the water.


Snowlattes, "Grief Log" & Fatima Wajid, "Prism"
Both of these artists are ESL and could use a friend to help them copyedit (though I firmly believe that most amateur artists who get into comics need to run their stories with writing/editing and reading friends anyway); it still feels like a privilege to be entrusted with such personal and beautifully illustrated journals—one about grief and loss, the other about getting high with old friends. Fatima Wajid’s art and worldview are so marvelously depicted I got all emotional lol.




Megan Abbott, "The End of Everything"
The mystery cdramas I've been watching have me raring to read mystery, but unfortunately this... was not the type of crime/mystery I wanted to read. /o\ It's grooming and sexual harassment/assault framed in a missing persons case and told in the PoV of teenage girls who have daddy issues and are navigating school and sexual experiences. It's more interested in the psychology and the emotions than the crime and mystery, but the psychology and feelings aren't very interesting and the final twist is very standard.

The prose is attractive and the scenes of girlhood would fit really well in a coming-of-age novel. It has a writing style that I associate with fanfiction and amateur writers, ie. a lot of made-up verbs and "smelled like x and y and z"s but the word choices, at least, are quite logical and not just running on vibes. They still get a bit much sometimes though. XD

(I have a Kanae Minato novel lined up as my next mystery/thriller read, we'll see how that one goes since I've never read any of her work before.)

Recently sampled (then dropped)

Elizabeth Hand, "Wyldling Hall"
I... simply don’t have the brain to read a story written as a documentary/series of interviews. Also not sure how much horror is in this?

priest, "Stars of Chaos" (Sha Po Lang)
Sampled the first chapter of the first volume because I saw people in cnovels talking about how smooth the translation is and... well, the first chapter does read very smoothly. It's a lot less distracting than MDZS and Little Mushroom. But I still bounced off it because of a couple of oddities, and because I'm likely familiar enough with priest's writing style to feel the disconnect. And then I got distracted about my personal thoughts about what I like to see in a translation VS what other people like to see in a translation and the kinds of conversations I wish we could have about translation. I don't know how to talk about this without sounding ungrateful and nitpicky!!!

Anyway for this novel I might have to either cross-reference with the raws or supplement with the audio drama which is too much work and defeats the purpose of reading a translation. Stepping back for now and coming back in my own time, unprompted by any concurrent discussions.

-

Drama-wise I'm now at the final episode of Tender Light and trying hard not to laugh at the recent plot developments. Setting aside the issue of the plot not plotting, it's just really funny that there's this entire Devotion of Suspect X plot development when the author of the original novel has been accused of plagiarizing Suspect X in a completely different canon a couple years ago. I never watched Better Days but I would argue that Tender Light's setup is closer to Suspect X. I did hear that Tender Light deviates a lot from the original novel, which is allegedly plagiarized from a couple of other things, but I'm not interested in reading the original novel and checking. ^^;

Comments

[halfcactus]

SPL:
I think it's premature to make a judgement after reading only one chapter, but to me, it's just the lack of intent in the translated writing which makes it feel post-edited (even though I know it's human-translated), as well as little details that mystify me. For example, the name of the star is transliterated as "Changgeng" in the dialogue, while the main character (who shares the same name as the star) is transliterated as "Chang Geng". The given names Fatty and Lady are transliterated as Pangxiao and Niangzi, respectively, so I’m not sure why his name is Chang Geng and not Changgeng?

I think all of this normally would not faze me as much, except that I have some familiarity with this author and found some of the phrases uncharacteristically convoluted and formal when I imagine them being intended to be wry and witty.


LITTLE MUSHROOM:
The translation is serviceable, though the writing is kind of clunky in places. I remember there were also a couple of minor but noticeable mistranslations, My main complaint is that the dialogue feels very mechanical, which drove me nuts because in Chinese it is so much easier to read? But I'm beginning to see this as a common pattern in novel translations. Personally I feel like people need to pay more attention to cdrama subtitles and see how they translate dialogue haha.

There was also an instance of racial dynamics + in-universe racism (a slur was used) that went completely untranslated. It was pretty brief, but I remember talking about this with people (we were doing a groupread in both languages) and seeing how different our reading experiences were during that chapter.

PS. I was considering suggesting Translation as a discussion post topic for cnovels but as a Twitter survivor I'm afraid to discuss it publicly haha!

(No worries, I was mostly surprised and getting paranoid that people are seeing this post at all so ty for letting me wher how you saw it lol)

[geraineon]

I appreciate your thoughts about SPL and Little Mushroom translations + the link to dankodes! I think translating style is a little harder (talking out of my ass here, as I am not a translator), but I do not remember the fan tl of SPL being that formal...

I have been thinking about translation as a discussion topic too, but I'm still wondering how to frame it in a way that will be productive (I too, spent years on Twitter and have seen the height of all the danmei fandom nonsense on there... though Twitter is truly an awful place for longer discussions about anything, and people there are all geared towards bad faith reading of replies/posts because it happened too often [and then it becomes a positive feedback loop of bad faith interpretations]). My personal thoughts is, getting actually good, professionally edited official translations that respect the authors and translators with quality control and all that, from one of the big publishers, is probably almost impossible now. The moment Seven Seas did it for MDZS, that pathway is dead. Because now it's seen as "light novel"/"lesser", and it's an easy cash grab for a locked in audience. I am hoping to be wrong. (Seven Seas has other controversies with their JP light novel translations... it's something I found out recently).

The fan translation conventions is also something that has seeped in too deeply. Some actually do like the "you can almost see the Chinese words behind the English" type translation (it is slightly weird that I can back translate the English into Chinese sometimes [my mother tongue is Cantonese and I have very basic Mandarin]).

Hm, actually talking through this here, I think it might be a good idea to have a read-along for non-webnovel translations. Something like a short story collection: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250297686

Kinda like a compare and contrast I guess?

[halfcactus]

Hello, fellow Twitter survivor! o/

+1 ON NON-WEBNOVEL TRANSLATIONS for read-alongs!!!!!!!!! It'd be good for me to try to read more SFF too. And short stories are easier to pace and discuss. Not to mention there's no author or translator loyalty haha. I had another short story collection bookmarked (Taiwanese, with English translation) but I haven't skimmed the sample and I was still trying to see if the Chinese-language ebook is accessible anywhere.

I'd be curious to see what you think of the official SPL translation! I need to know if I'm just being a hater because it otherwise reads fine hahahaha. Like I don't hate it!!! I just have thoughts about where it can improve!!!

Some actually do like the "you can almost see the Chinese words behind the English" type translation (it is slightly weird that I can back translate the English into Chinese sometimes [my mother tongue is Cantonese and I have very basic Mandarin]).
Yes, I hate this and I find it exotifying lol. I also disagree with the reader preference for all titles/honorifics transliterated instead of translated, but that's a broader conversation to be had.

Also the Mando-Canto connection fascinates me! I experience the opposite thing--I can now sort of reverse-engineer some of the Cantonese from Mandarin when I watch a Cantonese movie (but only if I have English subs to guide me). XD

Because now it's seen as "light novel"/"lesser", and it's an easy cash grab for a locked in audience.
Yes, this makes me so frustrated!!! And publishers are always racing to get licenses of the popular books too! The lack of demand for quality work also bums me out, as well as reader attitudes that I consider, idk if this is the right word, consumerist?

But really, I just feel so bad for MDZS fandom for being the guinea pig, as exciting as it was to have it open the doors to more licenses.

[geraineon]

Ohh, what is the title of the short story collection?

I did buy SPL ebook version back during preorders... Will skim through it and let you know. I didn't read SPL in Chinese though so the only impression I can give is about how well it reads (or not), and style.

Re: honorifics: I'm kinda of two minds on this. When there's no equivalent, I think it's fine to keep (also need to consider how important having said title/honorific is to the story), but if everything is kept, it kinda impedes the reading experience a little.

Idk why is so controversial to complain when the quality is not up to scratch. They are there to do business, not charity. But I think part of this is because these publishers use fan translators, and critiquing official tl is like critiquing fan translators? While I appreciate all the work they did in their own time, for free, to provide other people access to novels in Chinese, when this becomes a job or a commission, officially translated, published for money, then it's different. Even free fan tl, once it's out there, people can have opinions on it.

... Most of my spicier opinions I just keep in a small friend group chat because danmei fandom is trigger happy and explosive (I have many theories about why).

Re: Canto<>Mando: I always thought that it's easier going canto to Mando, haha. It's awesome that you can go the other way round! (Funny story: I watch so much wuxia in Cantonese that I can understand wuxia dramas in Mandarin better than I can modern dramas sometimes)

[halfcactus]

The Butcher’s Wife and Other Stories
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/268445.The_Butcher_s_Wife_and_Other_Stories
It’s historical + literary fiction though and I expect the main attraction is Butcher’s Wife, which is a novella. I think the novella raws are online.

Ah, I also haven’t read SPL in Chinese and I don’t think I can, which is why I want a translation that holds up on its own. 😅

but if everything is kept, it kinda impedes the reading experience a little.
This is definitely how I feel a lot of the time haha

I think part of this is because these publishers use fan translators, and critiquing official tl is like critiquing fan translators?
Yeah a bunch of them basically BNFs and very online and are friends or enemies with each other. I remember that even before they got hired by 7S, some of them got really nasty about other fantranslators, questioning their cdiaspora identity, and defensive of the official MDZS one. Everything is just really personal, on top of the usual ship wars and megafandom nonsense.

I definitely feel that it should be fine to critique official translations and want better. :’) It’s not even that I don’t recognize how hard it is to translate, it’s that the publishers don’t caaaaaare.

[geraineon]

Sounds interesting! I've added The Butcher's Wife and Other Stories to me TBR

Ah, I definitely remember the multiple rounds of fandom wankery back then. The whole identity gatekeeping was weird and awful. Just watching it from the periphery has given me eye strain from all the side-eyeing I did.