Hi everyone, so I wrote a novel in Chinese, but imitated the writing style of Japanese light novels. Now the first 4 chapters as the first volume have completed, and I am trying to translate it into English and Japanese, and in the future I want to contribute to "syosetu". But, I'm a total newbie to translation, espcially in translating something to Japanese, even with the help of some tools like the glossary features of DeepL pro. So I would be very grateful for some advice on the following questions: 1. Is there any commonly used to-English glossaries you are using when translating some popular light novels? I just got stuck when translating the first sentence, because I don't know what word should be use for "Isekai"(異世界) in English. the DeepL pro glossary feature can only be used for EN<->JP, and for some reason, most online translator will do CN->EN->JP when asked to do CN->JP, and this make sentences very weird even with the help of glossary feature, for glossary feature is unabled when doing CN->EN. 2. Are there any novice precautions for rookies who are new to translation? It's still kind of difficult for me to search English websites for needed information, so it would be very helpful if some links could be given. 3. In general, where do people go to find Japanese-style light novels in English? If the translation start, I want to post my english-version novel somewhere, but English novel website is a whole new world for me. I have found some websites translating CN->EN but mostly for wuxia-style novels. 4. do I need to post my Chinese version novel link in this post? It has R18 and yuri(girls love) contents so I can't post it on common Chinese novel sites, and it is on "esjzone" now (which is a website mainly for translating jp light novels to zn_cht). If you would like to have a look I will put the link here. Finally got 5 posts xD My novel link is as follow: www.esjzone.net/detail/1655359271.html
Author/translator now that's something you don't see everyday. All I know is that you can just keep it as isekai in eng ver..it's already an english word now, just waiting for Cambridge to make it official.
Yeah by now Isekai is common terminology for LNs, manga, & anime, but if you were to translate it it's just Other/Different World. As a Genre tag though it's gonna be Isekai or "Transported to Another World" As for everything being translated into English, yeah Machine Translations like Google Translate are extra crappy when it's between two non-English languages because it only translates in from or to English. For a long time the JP/KR/CN translated novels have just been translated on random sites/blogs by the translators & then people go to their sites to read. Then to actually find out whenever there's a chapter people use sites like Novel Updates to get links to the chapters. So you can pretty much post your novel wherever you want, but common stuff besides hosting your own site or joining some group would be wordpress, scribblehub, wattpad, and probably a few more but I'm not much into writing novels myself You don't have to at all, but I'm sure there will be people interested to check it out
Thank you so much > <! Thats really a huge help to me. I will check out those sites and see what I can find the function of NU really surprised me :3 Never used something like this before. I will try it after I find a place to post mine. I tried to post my novel link here but I can't since I just registered lol. It said I can only add link in my thread after 5 posts so xD maybe later.
A quick note on Novel Updates wrt to translating your own story. Due to incidents in the past of people writing english originals, uploading machine translations of them as "raws" and trying to pass their originals off as translations, Novel Updates doesn't list translations provided by the author of a work. It's a case of some bad apples poisoning the well for more legitimate author/translators. You're entirely welcome to advertise your story (in raw and translated formats) here on the forums (within reason), but a translation of it wouldn't be listable. As the author and it being your own work, you could of course use Scribble Hub as a platform for the translation - it's a sort of sister site of Novel Updates, but for english originals. There are other platforms, too, and many authors crosspost their web serials on multiple for the wider audience.
Thank you! That's something really new to me, I didn't know that I will look for some help in SH, looks like there are a lot of tips for authors, maybe I will find something useful xD