omg it's been 1 year
Mar. 8th, 2023 14:41![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elidelioEven though I created title_in_progress on 2021-12-04, my actual first post was 1 year ago today! So that's the date I'm taking as the anniversary hehe, and what a year it's been!
I started it just wanting to see the translation of Life Going Wild completed. Honestly, I was sort of expecting to either never get it done or that it would take me much longer, but I was done with it so fast! And then I picked up more!! And now I have like 170 translated chapters! How'd that happen?!
I'm not an expert yet by any means (there's a reason the journal is still subtitled "noob translator") but I have really learnt so much in just one year, and I always strive to bring the author's story into english to the best of my limited ability. Like, I could not count how many times I've scoured the internet in search of a term where I wasn't entirely sure of my interpretation, or how much cn internet slang i've added to my vocab (seriously when jikipedia went down earlier this year i almost wept in despair). Has it been perfect? Obviously not, but i've been trying my damnedest to get it as close to that as I could. I think it also helps that I consider myself as a sort of kind of good writer? So i've been able to make the prose flow well (obviously I feel like I'm much better at that now than I was when I started, and I'll continue to improve the more I do it) and not read "like a translation" as much. I feel like that's something i still sort of struggle with, but i've certainly gottenless bad better.
Honestly, at first I was kinda intimidated by the whole concept. Like, what business does a guy like me have translating works from a language I've barely been studying for a year? But then I realised that there are so many (honestly shitty) MTLs where it's clear the person translating spoke neither chinese nor english well enough to make it read like something better than what google translate would spit out. So then I thought, to hell with it, I can't be worse than that. And, if I'm allowed to toot my own horn for a bit, I wasn't worse than that. In fact, I think I'm pretty ok. Do I think my translations would hold up to professional scrutiny? well -- actually, let's not go there... but for an amateur hobbyist i think i'm allowed to give myself some credit.
Ultimately, I TL stuff because I love the original content and want more people to be able to read it and enjoy it. Of course it would be better if people would just read the original and support the author that way, but MTL strips out so much of the nuance and flow that honestly sometimes its a detriment to the work. I've also found that working with the translation and trying to figure out the author's intention gives me a much stronger appreciation for the work itself, I find myself enjoying a chapter way more once i've finished the translation than the first time i read it, because i had to read it with more critical eyes when i was TLing and now that it's over i see so much stuff i missed at first glance.
It's also really helped me in my language learning journey. I used to come across text in chinese longer than a sentence and literally go cross eyed lmao, like, i had to force myself to look at it character by character and carefully parse together their meaning like a shitty language puzzle. But now I can read sentences at a glance! I can just look at a thing and be like, oh okay i understand the thing, without having to do the whole process of identify character > get meaning > translate meaning in my head. The moment i realised i was no longer always translating stuff in my head as i read i was like, whoa, language is magic. Honestly the thing holding me back most rn is my need to learn more vocab and more complex grammar structures, but the TLing has helped me so much to see how the grammar is used and to expose myself to all sorts of new vocab. I've been supplementing a bit with more listening practice, and oftentimes if i hear "unfamiliar" words i just have to look them up and realise, hey, i actually do know that word! i've just read it more often than i've heard it out loud. and it feels like i'm actually making progress. (on another note, i used to think i'd be able to keep a table of all the new vocab i encountered when reading..... ha. that idea flew out the window pretty quickly when i got started)
All of this to say that i'm glad i took the plunge a year ago. I've come quite far and have a ways to go still, but we all have to start somewhere, right?
title_in_progress on 2021-12-04, my actual first post was 1 year ago today! So that's the date I'm taking as the anniversary hehe, and what a year it's been!I started it just wanting to see the translation of Life Going Wild completed. Honestly, I was sort of expecting to either never get it done or that it would take me much longer, but I was done with it so fast! And then I picked up more!! And now I have like 170 translated chapters! How'd that happen?!
I'm not an expert yet by any means (there's a reason the journal is still subtitled "noob translator") but I have really learnt so much in just one year, and I always strive to bring the author's story into english to the best of my limited ability. Like, I could not count how many times I've scoured the internet in search of a term where I wasn't entirely sure of my interpretation, or how much cn internet slang i've added to my vocab (seriously when jikipedia went down earlier this year i almost wept in despair). Has it been perfect? Obviously not, but i've been trying my damnedest to get it as close to that as I could. I think it also helps that I consider myself as a sort of kind of good writer? So i've been able to make the prose flow well (obviously I feel like I'm much better at that now than I was when I started, and I'll continue to improve the more I do it) and not read "like a translation" as much. I feel like that's something i still sort of struggle with, but i've certainly gotten
Honestly, at first I was kinda intimidated by the whole concept. Like, what business does a guy like me have translating works from a language I've barely been studying for a year? But then I realised that there are so many (honestly shitty) MTLs where it's clear the person translating spoke neither chinese nor english well enough to make it read like something better than what google translate would spit out. So then I thought, to hell with it, I can't be worse than that. And, if I'm allowed to toot my own horn for a bit, I wasn't worse than that. In fact, I think I'm pretty ok. Do I think my translations would hold up to professional scrutiny? well -- actually, let's not go there... but for an amateur hobbyist i think i'm allowed to give myself some credit.
Ultimately, I TL stuff because I love the original content and want more people to be able to read it and enjoy it. Of course it would be better if people would just read the original and support the author that way, but MTL strips out so much of the nuance and flow that honestly sometimes its a detriment to the work. I've also found that working with the translation and trying to figure out the author's intention gives me a much stronger appreciation for the work itself, I find myself enjoying a chapter way more once i've finished the translation than the first time i read it, because i had to read it with more critical eyes when i was TLing and now that it's over i see so much stuff i missed at first glance.
It's also really helped me in my language learning journey. I used to come across text in chinese longer than a sentence and literally go cross eyed lmao, like, i had to force myself to look at it character by character and carefully parse together their meaning like a shitty language puzzle. But now I can read sentences at a glance! I can just look at a thing and be like, oh okay i understand the thing, without having to do the whole process of identify character > get meaning > translate meaning in my head. The moment i realised i was no longer always translating stuff in my head as i read i was like, whoa, language is magic. Honestly the thing holding me back most rn is my need to learn more vocab and more complex grammar structures, but the TLing has helped me so much to see how the grammar is used and to expose myself to all sorts of new vocab. I've been supplementing a bit with more listening practice, and oftentimes if i hear "unfamiliar" words i just have to look them up and realise, hey, i actually do know that word! i've just read it more often than i've heard it out loud. and it feels like i'm actually making progress. (on another note, i used to think i'd be able to keep a table of all the new vocab i encountered when reading..... ha. that idea flew out the window pretty quickly when i got started)
All of this to say that i'm glad i took the plunge a year ago. I've come quite far and have a ways to go still, but we all have to start somewhere, right?
