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Kaja Rainbow posted:I recently found Cultivation Chat Group. Basic premise: college student gets invited by accident to an internet chat group for cultivators. He thinks they're just deluded roleplayers at first. Some decent comedic touches in there. Krunge posted:It's really good in my opinion, at least in the group of translated novels that are competent and nonweird (top 10%?) Been reading this one for a while and it's probably become one of my favourite stories. I've been reading ahead with my limited abilities all the way to its most current chapters and it manages to remain funny, avoids or minimises the standard creepy or dumb tropes. Genuinely its biggest downside is the slow, but regular, rate of translations. At least they're decent translations however. Shanakin fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Dec 17, 2016 |
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Dec 17, 2016 00:44
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:06 |
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Counterpoint: plenty of English (and other western) names have meanings associated with them but they tend to be transliterated into other languages than translated. Also it's not like English is adverse to loanwords. Admittedly this argument can work less well for nicknames where I honestly feel it easily goes either way depending more on the nature of the name. EDIT: That being said most of those dumb arguments are because they have become used to it being in one way and changing it is therefore heresy. Shanakin fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 19:08
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jwang posted:In terms of new recommendations, Qidian International has begun localizing Gourmet of Another World (异世界的美食家). While I don't know how well Qidian has been translating its works, the story itself is definitely a fun lighthearted read that mostly ignores Xianxia conventions in lieu of literally magical cooking. Definitely worth the read, especially if you enjoy humorous Xianxia stories like My Disciple and Cultivation Chat Group. Its pretty generic but amusing in its own way. As for Qidian translaters, they seem to be going around and hiring existing fan translators to republish and continue their work on their site. Quality seems a bit inconsistent between works because of this but so far has been decent enough and definitely looks like English and not a half edited machine translation.
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Apr 12, 2017 07:43
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FrantzX posted:Why you should be reading Cultivation Chat Group: Like 500 chapters later, when Shuhang forcibly goes on adventures to the moon, a bunch of cultivators are in space murdering each other and chasing around all the rubbish-on-swords because they think there's treasure on them.
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Nov 9, 2017 01:11
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Megazver posted:So I decided to give I Shall Seal the Heavens a go and got to, like, the middle of Book 1. The sect was disbanded and our plucky hero who solves every problem by duping xp-granting items just reaches Qi 7. My question, the rest of the story is like this as well, right? It doesn't turn into a slice-of-life comedy about running an interdimensional tavern, which is what the people actually like about the story when they recommend it, right? You've still got some excellent shenanigans ahead but at some point it devolves into something of a cycle of scam/steal stuff, piss someone powerful off doing so, murder lots of people and that guy a lot, and probably a bunch of secondary people too.
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Jan 20, 2018 10:54
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Chinese machine translation tends to be a hell of a lot nicer to read than Japanese in the first place and sentences are generally structured a lot closer to English sentences. So you can polish up Chinese into something semi-readable with much less effort than a Japanese MTL which pretty much involves reading a sentence, guessing what the gently caress it meant and working around all the blobs that didn't get translated and then rewriting the entire sentence as your best guess. Which is probably why you have the site lnmtl only does chinese stories it scrapes of qidian etc. Although vastly inferior to an actual translation, the MTL + crowd-sourced dictionary/vocabulary for each story system it uses can spit out some pretty readable text. Regardless, Chinese stories, even with good translations still have a very distinct writing style, just as Japanese stories normally do. Translators really have to go the extra mile to make it sound natural in English (which is one reason why dubs can sound weird/wrong - people often just don't speak or phrase things like that). Shanakin fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Mar 22, 2018 |
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Mar 22, 2018 13:08
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Yeah that one was actually pretty interesting. It still falls into a lot of the same tropes of the genre but its taken the story in a fairly different direction and it was kind of neat how he was slowly becoming a necromantic Cthulhoid elder god.
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Mar 23, 2018 12:31
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Not to mention, 2 or 3 storey buildings were pretty common in medieval cities anyway because with everything having to be in walking distance (for the common man), building up let you pack all the necessities in closer. Walking past 10 buildings and up a staircase was a lot less than walking past 30 odd buildings. Especially if you need to make several trips to the well or something.
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May 9, 2018 14:56
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hmmm 120k words a month...... "I can see mana" the man says without hesitation. "Really?" The woman doubts, "You can really see mana?" she continues. "Of course!" He boasts and then proclaims "I can truly see mana!". Still doubting, she asks "If you can see mana, then can you see what colour mana I have?" "What colour mana you have?" the man questions. "Yes, what colour mana do I have", she states with a wry smile, sure in the impossibility of the task. "Well of course I can see what colour mana you have!" the man continues, still as boastful as ever. "Tr-truly? You can see what colour mana I have? I don't believe you" she stutters out in surprise. "No one has ever seen mana colours in people before?!" she continues. "Its true. I can see mana colours, even yours" the man proudly declares. "If it's really true that you can see mana colours then can you see what is the mana colour of the mana that is produced by my body?" she asks, now a little unsure of herself. "I certainly can see the mana colour of the mana that is produced by your body" he replies, ever more confidently. "If you truly can see the mana colour of my mana then you should tell me what the mana colour of my mana produced in my body is!" the woman yells in frustration. "Ah, I suppose I could do that" the man considers "but it will come with a cost" he lecherously glares at the woman. "Don't be absurd, I only want to know what you think the mana colour of my mana produced in my body is I tell you!" she shouts in defiance. "Very well, I shall tell you what the mana colour of your mana produced in your body is" he finally relents. "Excellent, if you really can see what a person's mana colour of their mana produced in their body is actually then you will be a very powerful prodogy who's future knows no bounds!" she advises. "This is true, all will know my name, Generic-Man-One" He beams, proud of his future accomplishments. "That is only if you can actually tell what mana colour a person's mana produced in their body really is" she reminds. "Yes. very well, then shall we discuss the mana colour of your mana produced in your body?" he politly asks. "yes, please do so, I would like to know if you can see the mana colour of the mana produced in my body" she gives permission. "As you please", he begins "well, if I must say, the mana colour of the mana produced in your body is very unique. It is so unique I have never seen it before." he muses further. "If I must give the mana colour of your mana produced in your body a name, then I would give the mana colour of your mana produced in your body the description as a grand rendition of many shades of luxurious vermilion" he finally declares. "The mana colour of the mana produced in my body is a grand and luxurious rendition of many shades of vermilion?!" She exclaims in surprise and admiration. How could he so accurately see beutiful many shades of vermilion mana colour of the mana produced in her body that only she ever knew about?
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May 15, 2018 23:36
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"Unfortunately young miss, third-female-lead I can see a problem with the mana in your body" the man sternly warned. "A problem, in my mana?!" the woman panicked. A problem in someone's mana was very serious and could lead to all kinds of mundane and terrible problems. "Yes. There is a problem with the flow of your mana", he elaborated. "Oh no! Not the flow of the mana" she lamented, flow problems were often very painful and could be of dire consequences - she needed to know more so she asked "What kind of problem is there with my mana flow?" "Unfortunately I can not tell yet what the problem with your mana flow is. I can not see through your clothing clearly enough to determine the exact nature of your mana flow" the man continued with the seriousness the situation demanded. The woman, stunned by the mans audacity was about to protest but was suddenly overcome by weakness and collapsed on the spot. "This is bad, your flow has become strong and eratic" the man coldly stated. "I must examine you, please forgive my rudeness" he hurriedly said as he began stripping her clothes. A minute later he was left staring at her, but not at her perfect jadite skin or immaculate form, no he was staring at the dense, pulsating gathering of negative mana in her lower abdomen that was ready to explode. He had read about such symptoms before and suddenly realised just how blessed he truly was. Thinking quickly he looked into her eyes and said "You don't have much time, I can save you, but we don't have much time. I must use a secret technique and so you must swear your eternal loyalty and servitude to me on your soul, or I can only helplessly watch you suffer". His pained voice making it clear just how serious this matter was. Too weak to reply, the strength of her neck finally gave out, causing it to tilt. Accepting this as sufficient acceptance, the man cast his binding oath of servitude upon her and then began to strip. "You have a critical build up of negative mana in your lower abdomen which must be absorbed away and replaced with an immediate injection of positive mana energies. I'm sorry, but this is for your own good, and will need to be repeated regularly" the man explained, secretly overjoyed at the boost to the growth of his mana well she would provide. "but my love, my betrothed...childhood-rival-two" she weakly protested, "Is me now" the man said, invoking the power of the binding oath upon her. With dead eyes she looks upon his face and declares with her weak voice, "my betrothed is you". An unrivalled sense of satisfaction ran through the mans body as he realised he had taken the betrothed of his nemesis, childhood-rival-two as his mana-well concubine. Is that better? edit: On second thoughts I think I'll have to give up my dream of being a Qidian writer. I'm too weak-willed to write more of the quality content of the above level. Shanakin fucked around with this message at 00:34 on May 16, 2018 |
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May 16, 2018 00:28
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Sadly that is all original content based on the ideas of "repeat as much as possible/make phrases unnecessarily long as much as possible to pad word count" and "the MC is comically selfish and villainous but present it as a virtue". It was loosely inspired by what I've heard in this thread and what I've read in some novels. I read a bit of DD which was just so drat cheesy-bad it was funny for a while and ATG but gave that up well before it got rapey (instead of just pervy). Shanakin fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 16, 2018 |
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May 16, 2018 00:54
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Bai Xiaochun is what you get if you took the typical arrogant young master villain and made him the MC. Er Gen seems to have realised the best parts of ISSTH were the scams and schemes and then made and really doubled down on it. Which is truly for the better.
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Oct 3, 2018 17:09
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atelier morgan posted:im (slowly) writing a pbta hack for xianxia cultivation shenanigans (core principle, the fastest way to cultivate is to steal poo poo from seniors, the second fastest way is to be shockingly lucky, followed at a distance by actual work) specifically because there's no good trpg for it In any accurate cultivation system, the best builds will have all stats as dump stats except luck, and maybe charisma (for scamming).
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Jan 12, 2019 07:07
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Spoken like a scrub who wont immediately find an all powerful magic mirror artefact that duplicates other treasures and explodes enemies' butts. (and then turns into a trusted scamming companion)
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Jan 12, 2019 13:49
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atelier morgan posted:alas, meng hao does not work in a game where multiple people have to be on vaguely even playing fields so everyone at the table can have fun Who said anything about being fair? The "Meng Hao"/Protagonist build is clearly the for min-maxing players with minimal sense of team work that want to break the game.
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Jan 17, 2019 10:49
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In the raws, Shuhang has been cultivating for 8 months. I'll leave the results to your imaginations. Story is still pretty great, and worth reading.
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May 11, 2019 17:31
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:06 |
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Jon Joe posted:Echoing gwrth - this type of formatting is super common, at the very least among japanese web novels. It also tends to be more common with machine translations that semi-professional ones, presumably because that's precisely how the source material is. Another factor is that for all that it is alien, Chinese (Mandarin etc) shares a decent amount of structure and conventions with the English language. This means if you throw a random chinese sentence into a basic machine translator it can probably spit out something that isn't too difficult to understand. So translations are just straight up easier whether it be fully human based or editing machine translations. Getting it to read and flow like an actual English text is a bit of work but it already somewhat does. Japanese on the other hand likes to be super unique and special and does everything it can be awkward to translate into English. Machine translators hate it and a person doing it has to do comparitively huge amount of work to have it sound like English - which is why you often end up with translations that are perfectly understandable but they read in a distinctly foreign way. The above notes about conventions on speech are an excellent example. EDIT: I will also add that it's not uncommon for these kinds of conversations to have the names inserted before (or sometimes after) the speech as if a playscript. [John] Is that a new car? [Ben] It sure is, just got it today! Shanakin fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 20, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 21:55
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