As you can probably see, I have acquired several of the various collections of fiction that accompany Kenkou Cross' Monster Girl Encyclopedia, and intend to translate them. Altogether, the volumes in my possession represent a little less than 1,000 pages of prose, each containing around twice as much text as a page of a standard Japanese paperback, so this will be a long-term project, but I mean to see it through.
The above link is my draft of the first ten pages of the first of the eight novellas that make up Fallen Brides. The story is around eighty pages long, and I will be posting regular updates as I make my way through it. Unlike the Encyclopedia, the novellas include quite a number of things that are not sex, so this preamble doesn't get around to mentioning that monsters exist, let alone our narrator's eventual transformation into a succubus (as shown in the first World Guide). What I mean to say is that, if flower-picking and classism are your cup of tea, these are the 3,500 words for you.
This is still only a first draft, so the translation is in many places rather too literal to make for really readable English, but that should be remedied in future drafts. That said, I can't exactly ask most of the people who normally help me proofread prose translations on this one, so comments, criticism, and suggestions would be much appreciated.
"The story is around eighty pages long"
ReplyDeleteWowow.
Literal translations aren't necessarily a bad thing either. Its just something that'll smooth over more with experience.
Oh and: FIRST COMMENT! Of all your news posts :x
All the Fallen Brides novellas are around that length. The whole book is almost 600 pages long. I plan to tackle one of them at a time and do sections of the other books in between.
DeleteThe thing is, literal translation, or translation in the true sense, isn't really possible. There are a lot of accounts you can read for an explanation of why that is, but my favorite general overview is Jose Ortega y Gasset's "The Misery and the Splendor of Translation."
Anyway, I'm doing this primarily for the intellectual exercise of it, so I just want to get the thing as readable as possible while still retaining as much meaning as can be preserved.
Here's hoping you get more recognition and views for this tremendous undertaking.
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