I’m looking to translate a xianxia/cultivation-based xuanhuan webnovel to English. After a few days of failing to find one, any suggestions would be much appreciated. I’d prefer to translate something that has no harem, is not written in too literary a manner (looking at you 剑来), and is on the longer side with at least a couple million characters. As well as that, the novel must not be from Qidian since they’re quite lawsuit-happy. But works from 17k, Zongheng, etc are all fair game. Please advise, fellow Daoists.
I would recommend you to translate Sword Of Coming but it's Qidian and people do sat it's difficult to translate
Uhm, check out mtlnovel, comrademao, lnmtl sites for xianxia or xuanhuan liked by readers there? For example, lnmtl has the option to click on a word to see the raw characters, which could help you firther to screen novels in ways a casual mtl reader like myself can't. Reviews and comments of any site could be preliminary screening ( only prelim because a lot of people do stupid shit like randomly drop 1 or 5 stars with a dot or single word, "balance" ratings(Thanos much?), get hung up on tiny never repeated details leaving haunting rants as opposed to other reviews being in opposition to said rants,....). Now, for your other terms.... no clue. Its a sea of shit out there covering the precious pearls once can run into. I read mtl of Mo Qiu's Immortal Fate (is it a harem when your wife stays mortal and dies unlike you who cultivated, you come back to find her grave defiled and her corpse zombified, slaughter sects responsible for mass grave robbing, refine her body into an independent zombie-sadly she gets hit by something from a list sect master and gets thirsty for MC who took her in as disciple and noticed too late but avoids her mostly since-, meet her ghost part in an Underworld realm invasion,..... since its kind of 2 women then?) Its finished(rather lamely, so axed). Is it good or bad? There's a lot to the story sure, but the readers opinion is subjective.
That is 剑来 which I mentioned in the first post, thanks for commenting but it is insanely literary and beyond my ability to translate.
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-thrilling-sword/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/e-mei/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/nuwa-growth-diary/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/tian-guan-shuang-xia/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/ten-gods/ I just randomly picked these from Novel Updates (sorted by last updated). Maybe something here will interest you? None should be Qidian. Edit: a lot of these are probably wuxia instead. Whoops, misread your post. Edit 2: Actually, only one is wuxia. I retract my previous statement, so don’t worry about genre now.
Did take a look, but none quite matched what I'm looking for. Appreciate the links though. @Zeusomega were you able to remember the name of that novel by any chance? Still on the hunt.
I am currently reading a mtl on wnmtl of the novel Sword Dao First Immortal (劍道第一仙), I checked its baidu and it's from Zongheng, so I hope it fits your criteria (I'm not sure on the difficulty of its translation, since I don't speak it). The story is pretty solid, I'm at around chapter 1000 and so far no harem, the (reincarnated) MC has been alone in both his lifetimes (no love interests or relationships). I'll give you a general idea which can be considered spoiler (not really tho, I mean, it's more like a what to expect from the story, rather than actual story spoilers): ---- SPOILER Basically the MC is at the top of its world and decides to end his life and reincarnate since he's stuck at the peak and wishes to advance further but his foundation is lacking. So when he "dies" he finds out his disciples fight each other and betray his 100k year-old trust, this incident sets his goal till chapter 1000 (more or less). In fact he decides to return to his peak, building the perfect foundation preparing to ascend further and solve the mystery behind his disciples actions. Now we get to what I've read so far, he recovers his old spot, but now new enemies and higher cultivation awaits him. It may sound lame but the transition from "world 1" and "world 2" (not really separate, but the idea is the same) is smooth and makes sense, it is foreshadowed pretty early in the story so it's not the typical asspull the author uses to milk the story. ---- SPOILER END Let me know if it piqued your interest.
@Jalappy many thanks for the recommendation. I've looked at this book quite a few times during the course of trying to choose a novel, as it does indeed fit my criteria. However, I remember I set it to the side as reading the first chapter and doing a bit of analysis on the text file suggested it was quite difficult. But the story does indeed sound quite interesting, so I'll take another look — do you remember if later chapters were more simple, for lack of a better word, in their language? Obviously that might not be immediately clear from the translation, so it's more of a question of what the tone is like — very descriptive with little dialogue + lots of literary devices or more colloquial. To put things into perspective: Cultivation Chat Group: 4200 unique characters (and significantly longer) Soul Land: 3800 Coiling Dragon: 3500 This: 4550 The reason I'm avoiding novels such as these with more elevated language (Classical Chinese, poetry, historical customs, overly flowery descriptions) is because although I'm relatively fluent in Chinese, I'm not a native speaker and hence have some trouble understanding/translating passages like those. In any case, appreciate the comment and will be reconsidering it.
@CasualBrowser sadly I do not remember well, but I can tell you that it is very descriptive, that also a reason it got me hooked. So it probably won't be better later on translation-wise. Still I'm glad more people find it interesting, I totally understand your wish to translate a series slightly less difficult (I can hardly imagine the complexity of chinese translations), especially as a non-native speaker. So I wish you gl on finding your novel
Try War of the Supreme Mysteries, reaching to the sky (and the other Novels by the same author), lord of the star ocean and the sword of coming. You can find those novels here on nu.
Nope... Not yet. But I'll try searching for more. I'm sure there atleast good ones that were dropped mid-way. Are you ok with cold hearted ones? "Look for the path and see the sky" First part https://www.uukanshu.com/b/46365/ Second part https://www.uukanshu.com/b/59325/ I'm digging through my reading list now to find any good ones that were dropped.
@Jalappy thanks for the clarification. Am reading it over again — and getting hooked a bit myself — but it's one of the most difficult books out of dozens I've analyzed. @laxarlev appreciate the links. As I shared earlier, Sword of Coming is notoriously difficult, along with the books by the author of Reaching to the Sky. His works are famous for being written like heavily edited published novels rather than the simpler webnovels — I remember looking at some of the other works that aren't on NovelUpdates, and there was literally Classical Chinese in one of them, not to mention loads of historical references given their settings — which I don't think will go over too well with a reader either. But again, will reconsider. @Zeusomega no worries, just wanted to ping you in case you'd found something but forgotten to reply. I took a look at the link you sent, and in terms of difficulty and plot it seems to be fine, though I'm a bit worried about how well it is written — the author shares at the end that there were still some plot holes 'left unfilled' and there's little mention of the book online. Seems Qidian has all the books in the Goldilocks zone of being relatively easy but popular!