News Legend of the Supreme Soldier (师士传说) by Fang Xiang released!

(Edit: Wanted to share this cool cover art here but I have no idea how to resize it. Somebody please help me? xD)

Hello friends,
It's been a long month and I'm excited to announce on behalf of Qidian International that EndlessFantasy will be releasing our 6th title, Legend of the Supreme Soldier (LSS) by Fang Xiang today! The announcement is about 14 or so hours late because I had work. Sorry!

This web novel is one that revolves around the MC, Ye Chong, who stumbles upon a mech machine with artificial intelligence one day. The machine then guides Ye Chong's growth and they progress together to discover the secret behind their existence. This novel is pretty much QI's first mech web novel! How it fares in comparison to our fellow veteran JP old-timers will be left up to the readers to decide.

For starters, I'd like to explain our reasoning behind how the title of this web novel came to be. The first two Chinese characters, 师士 (Shī shì) is actually a word blend between 机械师 (Jīxiè shī, lit. mechanic) and 士兵 (Shìbīng, lit. soldier). Technically, it should mean mech soldier. The second part of the name, 传说 (Chuánshuō) is simple. It literally means legend!

Hence, the literal translation of the name would be Legend of the Mech Soldier (capitalization tentative for now). Since a literal translation of the name wouldn't look good, our translators Jstoryz and mole decided to read up a little to get better ideas on how to name the story. We then jointly decided on the title Chronicles of Fal! Fal is the star system in which the story begins in.

However, the author Fang Xiang, who was originally fine with Chronicles of Fal, decided that it would be cool to retain the initials S.S. from 师士 (Shī shì) even in the English translations. It was a hilarious few hours where we wracked our brains for vocabulary, both common and rare, that fit the adjective and noun parts of speech, to actually fit the S.S. initials.

Here are some of those words that didn't make it (in no particular order / too lazy to order it alphabetically).

First S:
Super
Strong
Structural
Steam
Steering
Singular

Second S:
Sailor
Steersman
Sentinel
Sergeant

There were some that we automatically rejected the moment we blurted them out in the conversation. It was quite funny to throw words that began with S's just so we would have a larger pool of words to choose from.

In any case, while the title has already been set in stone, might I ask what you readers would have named it as? Also, please give the novel a try! Feedback and criticisms will be appreciated. Please do PM or tag me so I won't miss them. Thanks everyone!

 

Read the first 15 chapters and thought they were excellent with only a few minor grammar errors. Will definitely keep reading.

 

waiting for more chapter

 

Legend of the Sentient Sentinel.

 

i honestly think that the covers for a lot of the novels on QI look really nice :'d

 

Sigh. Not much of a Mecha fan. But I will give it a try.

 

that looks like something straight outta titanfall2

 

If you're willing to go off the cuff, why not something like Super Soldier Saga for alliteration, provided you don't care about an additional S. Supersoldier Saga if you're really intent on S.S.

 

Cover reminds me of Robotech!

 

Look's promising, added to the stockpile list. Not in my main interests rn but keep up the good work. I like the communication with the author.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

Sentient... Sentinel? I think I'll pass on that my friend. xD

I know right! The one other thing I look forward to other than the release date of our novels would be how the cover art looks like. I'm really glad LSS got a nicely designed one. Thanks Qidian International!

Yep, lucky us we landed a Fang Xiang title. We are glad to be given this opportunity to translate a title by another one of Qidian's top authors.

Honestly, we didn't even intend to go for a double S. Since the author requested for only two.. we naturally didn't pick one with three S's! Imagine if he has requested for the title to contain SSCS. *shudders*

Have fun reading friend. Yes, we normally discuss things with the author especially if certain parts of their novels seem vague or require their input for a translated text. I'm sure every other translator with access to these authors would never pass up the opportunity just to have a nice chat with them!

 

Strength Supreme
A Soldier Supreme Through Eternity (if you get it )
Strength to Shatter the Universe
Supreme Soldier Tearing The Heavens
Swallowed Start (if you get it )
Strongly Striding Forever Forward (or without the Forever part)
Scaling Skies and Heavens (or Shaking )
Sliver Silver
Sky Shaking Legend

 

You really need to do a proof read some of the chapters. Some grammatical errors have shown up.

Also any news of when BTD is releasing.

 

Personal suggestion - how about Legend of the Steel Soldier? It keeps the SS alliteration, but also maintains the image of a mechwarrior (- "steel" warrior) while being faithful to the story.

 

This isn't a cultivation one right? It has the weak to strong tag, but honestly if all that increases is the MC's ability to fly a mech, i'd be pretty bored.

 

I like his Card Disciple,
You said the original title contained the meaning of mechanic, but you lost it in your translation. Hearing "supreme soldier", nothing about mechs appeared in my mind.

 

Pretty nice to have 30 release from the start, Qidian let them prepare those chap beforehand and yet most of them start with only 10... anyway thanks.

 

That is one really good title we missed out on. Don't think we are allowed to change it anymore but thanks for the input!

The author wanted to retain S.S. so we had to think of something else. RWX suggested Steel Soldier which would have been a much closer fit, though still not a hundred percent accurate translation, it would be the best for now.

It depends on the weekly submission rate for the translators and how long a novel has been in translation before release. For instance, Beseech the Devil AKA Qiu Mo (and its new tentative title Pursuit of Truth) has been in translation since March and the accumulated chapters are well over 100. I'm sure we would be able to release up to c120 (around where PiggyBottle stopped) and continue our release from there. I really can't wait to see its release!

 

Personal suggestion again - it's never too late to pick a better/right name. Several times when translators brought new projects to Wuxiaworld, I 'forced' them to make changes that they agreed with but were nervous about. Their worry was, "Readers have already gotten used to XXX and XXX, and we've used it for 200 chapters." My response was, "Yeah, but we both know that's wrong. It's better to change it now, after 200 chapters, than to continue being wrong for the next 1000 chapters."

This is NOT, btw, an attempt on 'insisting' on my suggestion; I just urge that the overall mindset be to focus on quality and the best long-term decision. Cheers and good luck!