Monday, 25 January 2016

C-Novel Translations

To improve and learn more Mandarin, I've decided to try my hand in novel translations. Mandarin isn't my first or second language, so bear with me as it takes me a lot longer to actually understand the texts, and I rely heavily on the dictionary, so the translations may not be as accurate. I'll try to avoid translating sentences word-by-word, as I know how choppy it can end up, but I really hate to botch up or miss the meaning underlying the words. It's a tough compromise, and I may change things as I read through it again. If there's a better translation, please let me know :) This is a learning experience for me, I'd love to hear anything that will help in my improvement :)

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Also, I forgot to mention that I will not be able to take requests at this stage, as it's been a while since I have practiced Mandarin (almost 10 years!), so at this stage I will have to be very picky about which novels I can translate.

3 comments :

  1. hi!
    well, i suppose it's better that i put my question here, haha! so, do you understand basic chinese structure, i was just wondering? i mean, some people use dictionary with MTL, while others use it just to assist with the basic language that they aleady know. i was thinking, you seem like the latter?

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    1. Hi! Thanks for your comments haha~ I was feeling a bit lonely :P

      To answer your question, I do know the basic structures, but only the veeery basics haha. I mostly use the dictionary to look up words that I don't know, and based on the rest of the sentence or paragraph, I assume what's going on and just fill in the rest according to my understanding. In other words, my translation is not the most accurate, hahah!

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    2. hm, i see---! all right, thanks for answering! at least you know the basics, ahaha!

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