Deathblade, celebrating A Will Eternal's Book 1-9 Amazon launch!

[Deathblade]

4 hours ago, Haahaha said:

Can you provide exact chapters of Beyond the timescape?

Or Guess

 

I'm not really sure what you mean. The novel is ongoing in Chinese and is currently inching toward 1,000 chapters. I'm not sure how many chapters there will be in total.

[Deathblade]

4 hours ago, AwesomeGrace said:

Deathblade, do you think you would translate other novels after BTT? Or would you rather focus on creating your own novels? 

What do you find most challenging when it comes to translating? Has it evolved over time?

 

I don't think I will ever stop doing translating in some form or another. But the same goes for original novels. I'm currently on contract with the publisher of my original works. I have a trilogy to finish with them. The first book is done and will be released soon, which means I have at least two more books to write for them. After that, I have other ideas for original works that I want to bring to life.

[Deathblade]

3 hours ago, AwesomeGrace said:

Nvm. You just answered and mentioned poetry, songs, ancient prophecies are the most challenging to translate. I'll ask another question. 

What do you like to translate the most? Dialogue? Action scenes? Narration? Secondly, do you force yourself to translate regardless of how you feel? Basically, my question is how you deal with burnt out (or preventing yourself from burning out). 

 

Dialogue and character development scenes are my favorite to translate for sure. 

For the most part, I do force myself to translate no matter how I feel. Even when sick. There is a point in which, if I'm too sick, I can't physically do it. 

I have to have a schedule that I maintain to A) meet quotas and B) not burn out.

One way I avoid burnout is getting ahead on work as much as possible. I like to have a personal stockpile of chapters that I can use if I get sick or a family emergency arises. Unfortunately, now that I have two kids, it's harder than ever. Going into summer of last year, I had something like 40 chapters in my personal stockpile. But I had so many instances of sickness or family emergency in summer of 2023 that by the time the new school year started, I only had 3 or 4 chapters under my belt. That small of a stockpile stresses me out.

I still haven't really recovered from summer of 2023, and we're already closing in on summer of 2024, so that makes me nervous.

[Deathblade]

3 hours ago, Axcel102 said:

Hi deathblade, how are you doing? I hope you and your family is alright. How is little db doing?
I am a fan from the ISSTH era.
Any who, since that's where we first met, let the question be from that novel too.

Does Meng hao accepts Chu Yuyan as his 2nd wife?

Is there an after after story where they are together like AWE mc having most of the girls in the after story?

And how would you rank the mc of all the novels in power wise?

 

Hi there. My son is doing good. My daughter is now about as old as he was when I finished ISSTH and started AWE.

The situation with Meng Hao and his love interest(s) was left open-ended on purpose by the author.  I'm unaware of any after story with them.

I think the power ranking is subjective. The author could probably write an individual fight scene in which each MC beats all the other MCs. And we have no idea what has happened off-screen after the ending of the various novels. In other words, any given MC could have experienced breakthroughs or whatever that make them even stronger than when their novel ended. So I think such questions are inherently impossible to answer objectively.

[Deathblade]

At this point I think I've answered all the questions in the thread so far. If anyone else has questions, put them below!

[zxlowi]

7. Any tips you have on describing characters and a area a character step into so the reader can visualize what a character looks like and what his surroundings look like when writing a novel?

8. Will we ever get any more updates on your youtube channel?

9. In your opinion what novels would you recommend reading, that have the same type of humor ISSTH and AWE did have in its early volumes?

10. What is one troupe you can't stand to read in a webnovel?

11. What's your favorite video game, animated show, comic, food, color?

12. On average how would it take you to translate a chapter?

Edited March 15 by zxlowi
Missed something

[Deathblade]

40 minutes ago, zxlowi said:

7. Any tips you have on describing characters and a area a character step into so the reader can visualize what a character looks like and what his surroundings look like when writing a novel?

8. Will we ever get any more updates on your youtube channel?

9. In your opinion what novels would you recommend reading, that have the same type of humor ISSTH and AWE did have in its early volumes?

10. What is one troupe you can't stand to read in a webnovel?

11. What's your favorite video game, animated show, comic, food, color?

12. On average how would it take you to translate a chapter?

 

 

7. Be as thorough as possible when intially coming up with your character concept. That includes physical description, personality, backstory etc. That way all of those things, to some extent, come naturally, and you're not just making stuff up as you go along.

8. That's hard to say. I'm probably going to make a placeholder video soon to say "channel on indefinite hiatus." Life is too crazy right now for me to create content on YouTube. But as my kids get older and whatnot, i might go back to more regular content creation.

9. Try the Stainless Steel Rat series. It's traditional fiction, not web lit.

10. There are none that bother me so much I would say I can't stand them. What I do hate is filler repetition.

11. I don't really have one favorite thing in any of those categories. There are too many good things in life to narrow down preferences to only one thing

12. For an average sized chapter without difficult content (like poetry, foreshadowing stuff, complicated idioms or cultural references, etc.) I could probably do it in an hour if I focused. Maybe even less for a very easy chapter. That said, I have to take a break every half-chapter when I translate, otherwise I run out of mental bandwidth before the work day is over. So when you add in breaks, it's usually more like 1.5 hours per chapter. Plus I take a longer break for lunch. And that's not taking into consideration difficult translation stuff. There are times when delving into one paragraph might end up costing me thirty minutes, just that one paragraph.

Edited March 15 by Deathblade

[Zeusomega]

23 hours ago, Zeusomega said:

If anyone were to ask me to name one notable translator from the Eastern novels community it would be Deathblade, If they asked for another it would still be Deathblade. 

 

I don't think i remember much of AWE to ask questions about it but there are some burning questions in general I've had for a while

1) There hasn't been a successful novel like those in the past (issth, coiling dragon, awe, etc..), do you think xianxia genre is in decline like wuxia before it?

2) If an aspiring writer with no eastern background or knowledge in its authentic mythology and theologies, wanted to get into xianxia genre what resources would you recommend for research? 

3) Offline publication, do you think it is worth pursuing as a first time writer or is it better going the online route? By online i mean the free open source sites rather than Amazon kind. 

4) This is something I was curious about for a long time, what is the opinion of Chinese readers and writers on translation of their works into other languages? Also is there a community like us on translations for western novels into Chinese? 

Well that's all I have for now, thank you for being part of some of my most treasured adventures in fiction. 

 

7 hours ago, Deathblade said:

At this point I think I've answered all the questions in the thread so far. If anyone else has questions, put them below!

Ouch.... I think you missed mine lol 😅

[Deathblade]

On 3/15/2024 at 8:10 PM, Zeusomega said:

 

Ouch.... I think you missed mine lol 😅

 

Whoops, I apologize! Hmmm, it's kind of late now, so I'll pop back tomorrow and answer the questions!

[Deathblade]

On 3/14/2024 at 8:26 PM, Zeusomega said:

If anyone were to ask me to name one notable translator from the Eastern novels community it would be Deathblade, If they asked for another it would still be Deathblade. 

 

I don't think i remember much of AWE to ask questions about it but there are some burning questions in general I've had for a while

1) There hasn't been a successful novel like those in the past (issth, coiling dragon, awe, etc..), do you think xianxia genre is in decline like wuxia before it?

2) If an aspiring writer with no eastern background or knowledge in its authentic mythology and theologies, wanted to get into xianxia genre what resources would you recommend for research? 

3) Offline publication, do you think it is worth pursuing as a first time writer or is it better going the online route? By online i mean the free open source sites rather than Amazon kind. 

4) This is something I was curious about for a long time, what is the opinion of Chinese readers and writers on translation of their works into other languages? Also is there a community like us on translations for western novels into Chinese? 

Well that's all I have for now, thank you for being part of some of my most treasured adventures in fiction. 

 

Okay, so here's the thing. I DID respond to this. I remember typing out answers to all these questions, specifically because I left a link in one of the answer (see below). However, the response obviously didn't get posted to the thread. So... who knows. Maybe I didn't hit "submit reply" or something along those lines. In any case, here are the answers:

1) I honestly don't know about that. The boom is definitely over. And there seems to be a much greater supply than demand. But is the deman actually declining? That, I'm not totally sure of.

2) You could start here. Beyond that, just dig into whatever resources interest you that you can find.

3) They both have their ups and downs. Nowadays, you can't just choose to do traditional publishing. You need an agent to talk to any of the big publishers, and that requires having a complete manuscript and doing a ton of query letters. You might have luck snagging an indie publisher. The downside to Amazon is that the market is absolutely flooded right now, making success a challenge, especially for complete beginners.

4) My experience is that most Chinese people are pleasantly surprised, and in some cases, shocked that Westerners would even like this kind of stuff. There are some commmunities like you're talking about, but I'm not very familiar with them.