ANNOUNCEMENT! NEW PROJECT, NEW SITE, RAMBLINGS

NEW UPDATE:

I pick another project. hopefully this one hasn't been picked, this time I checked properly, but who knows..

it's called Who Cares

It's reborn story (again), and it's a classic reborn story that has plot and character that you'd be expecting from it, you know, face-slapping, revenge, stoic MC, those kinda things. Among the chinese novels I read this year, this is the one that I found the most exciting. But the reason why I didn't pick this to translate before was because this novel is really really difficult. 

The background of the story is a quite ancient, if I'm not mistaken is around Qin-Han dynasty which is before AD. the history undertone is quite strong which means I need to do a lot of research to make the translation makes sense. and this novel contains lots of lots of Chinese philosophies, Confucianism, Legalism, that sort of things, which I totally don't understand and the reason why I hesitate picking this up.   

But the story is sooo good and among the novels that I read (to find my next project) this is the one that stand out the most. So after the debacle of my previous translation which got canceled, I just want to pick this one even thought I know it will be a pain in the butt to translate.

I will try very hard researching the difficult subjects and explain things that need explanation. but if you still don't understand, please google it yourself.

If you are interested please check it on my new blog here

PS: the novel is already on Novelupdates and the ratings is so low, there's only 2 EFFING chapters right now. Please wait until there's more chapter to make judgment. I don't expect everyone to like it, but F word, the story hasn't even begin.

UPDATE:

Turns out the novel that I stared translating have already been pick up by other translator. WAHHH crying blood!! . Before I pick the novel of course I always look at Novelupdates if its already been translated. But I always looked at literal translation of the title, never thought that it will be something different, and I haven't seen the author name before.  

Well that's several weeks of work going down the toilet. 

Anyway stay tuned for next installment.

Hi guys, long time no see

After months and months and months I finally back, with announcement

First off I have a new site, it's like this site but without the blogspot, thisseatisbored.com

To be honest setting up my own site really way over my head. wordpress is really overwhelming for someone whose not tech savvy like me. AND I CANNOT TRANSFER THIS SITE TO THE NEW SITE. Originally I want to only have 1 site so I need to transfer all the post in this site to the new one, but I can't. There's something wrong with migrating the data. So for now I can only keep both sites and hopefully both have traffics.

If you're asking why I need a new site, I guess making my own website (that's not owned by other entities like blogger) is one of those thing I need to experience at least once in my life LOL

So please check out the new site. I will post everything there from now on, which brings us to point number two.

I started a new translation project, it's called "Greetings, Cousin"

similar to Greetings Ninth Uncle no?! Trust me it's different. It's historical story again, reborn story again, but more focus on political intrigue and power struggle (wait! I think GNU is also all of those things. Anyway I say it's different). I won't put the chapter in two parts like IBTSOME but the release schedule is (tentatively) 3 times a week. Head over there to see if you're interested.

Now some more ramblings... 

It took me months to choose a new project. Turns out choosing a new novel to translate is not as easy as I thought. Which make me feel so lucky to find IBTSOME.

To be honest it's weird that I decide to translate chinese novel, when I myself don't speak, read or even understand a bit of mandarin. which also a reminder that I just mtl the novel and edit it, so don't expect amazing work and set your expectation low.

I just love reading novel, it's my favorite form of fiction (I rarely watch movies, dramas, etc), and right now chinese novel is all I read. One day while reading other people translation I thought, Huh maybe I can do this. It's very random. I just want to find other novel to add to people's reading list, you know giving more options. 

But at that time I was still not sure which novel to pick. I tried to work on one novel that seems to be abandoned, but as the story progress I don't like it. And then I read GNU, I thought this one is really amazing, and because the translation still ongoing, I cheekily mtl-ed the raw. Because it was so good I thought of reading the other work of the author, but at that time there's no other translation beside GNU. 

I thought maybe I can work on this author's other work, anyway I like the writing style. So I choose randomly, read the synopsis, feel a bit weird about the plot, but let's try it, read around 20 chapters, decide it was good and then start translating it. 

And for around 7 months I had such a novel, sometimes frustrating, over all rewarding experience. I know my work is not perfect but people cheered on me anyway. Thank you all for reading my translation.

After that I thought I kinda like this translation.. I don't know what to call it, hobby? but I feel like it's more than a hobby, and I won't say work because it doesn't pay much. Anyway, then I started looking for my next project. Which is one of my most frustrating endeavor.

I don't know, maybe I'm too picky, but I cannot find a novel that I want to work on. If it's not  for bad reason like not logical enough, characters annoying, or in most case the story seems great at the beginning then it dwindle and become meh.. then it's because the novel is too popular that I don't dare picking it up. For most case the novels were good enough for me to mtl'ed for my own enjoyment but not good enough for me to actually slaving over translating it.  

Even though what I do is editing not entirely translating, it's still not an easy job. I still have to spent hours each day to do it. If I don't like the story enough then I won't do it. Which makes me realize what a rare find IBTSOME is.

IBTSOME is a great novel, it's logical, the characters are amazing, the writing style is great and best of all it's consistent. I got really lucky picking up this gem, seemingly randomly.

Eventually there are a few novel that I'm interested in, and I pick 'Greetings, Cousin' by Penglai Ke. 

It's a great story, the kind that put you at the edge of your seat (or a cliff, hanging). The style is very different from IBTSOME in my opinion. IBTSOME is character-based story, where the story revolve around the characters, while GC is plot-based story, where there's a lot more going on and more dramatic.

Anyway I'm rambling enough. Check out the new site thisseatisbored.com, and give me suggestion how to make it better.

Ollie