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nnozomiFirst draft of pseudo-romance-novel translation finished! (I've posted about it before but I really should make a tag for it, let's do that.) This is translation for fun rather than for work, it's a book by Miura Shion called The Seven-Day Romance Novel which I'm very fond of.
The book is narrated by Akari, a translator who has a seven-day deadline to turn out the Japanese version of a very standard, boring pseudo-medieval romance novel. She starts off dutifully rendering it into suitable cod-medieval Japanese, but then her own personal life starts interfering, including her happy-go-lucky boyfriend Kanna and his sudden off-the-wall life decisions, pretty Masami, a neighborhood friend who seems extremely fond of Kanna, and Akari's father, who has inconsiderately broken his arm and is demanding household help. Akari's translation starts veering further and further away from the original in response, and the deadline keeps getting closer.... The text alternates chapters of the "romance novel" with chapters from Akari's point of view, and it's way too much fun both to read her salty narrative voice and to watch her (or rather Miura) playing with tropes in both contexts.
Surprisingly short; my rough draft amounts to just over 51K, does that even count as a novel in formal terms? (For fun I did the math on the rough character count of the romance-novel chapters, and concluded that the seven-day deadline is not actually especially unreasonable as a professional assignment, assuming they're not expecting deathless prose.) I feel a little guilty for a) taking MUCH longer than seven days to translate the whole thing lol, and b) for having done my best to translate it faithfully, I feel like it would only be in the spirit of the book for me to mess with the plot/characters in turn. On the other hand, Miura is unquestionably a better author than the fictional one she's spoofing, so less messing with is needed.
Next step, to revise it, ugh, I hate revision whether it's translation or original writing. (My immediate instinct is: there are lots of other books I want to translate, why can't I just move on instantly to one of those?) The medieval parts do need to be more Medieval in tone, though (although authenticity not required), and there are various minor inconsistencies and infelicities throughout that definitely need dealing with.
If it ever does get revised properly, I guess the next step would be to figure out how to get it published, oh dear oh dear.
The book is narrated by Akari, a translator who has a seven-day deadline to turn out the Japanese version of a very standard, boring pseudo-medieval romance novel. She starts off dutifully rendering it into suitable cod-medieval Japanese, but then her own personal life starts interfering, including her happy-go-lucky boyfriend Kanna and his sudden off-the-wall life decisions, pretty Masami, a neighborhood friend who seems extremely fond of Kanna, and Akari's father, who has inconsiderately broken his arm and is demanding household help. Akari's translation starts veering further and further away from the original in response, and the deadline keeps getting closer.... The text alternates chapters of the "romance novel" with chapters from Akari's point of view, and it's way too much fun both to read her salty narrative voice and to watch her (or rather Miura) playing with tropes in both contexts.
Surprisingly short; my rough draft amounts to just over 51K, does that even count as a novel in formal terms? (For fun I did the math on the rough character count of the romance-novel chapters, and concluded that the seven-day deadline is not actually especially unreasonable as a professional assignment, assuming they're not expecting deathless prose.) I feel a little guilty for a) taking MUCH longer than seven days to translate the whole thing lol, and b) for having done my best to translate it faithfully, I feel like it would only be in the spirit of the book for me to mess with the plot/characters in turn. On the other hand, Miura is unquestionably a better author than the fictional one she's spoofing, so less messing with is needed.
Next step, to revise it, ugh, I hate revision whether it's translation or original writing. (My immediate instinct is: there are lots of other books I want to translate, why can't I just move on instantly to one of those?) The medieval parts do need to be more Medieval in tone, though (although authenticity not required), and there are various minor inconsistencies and infelicities throughout that definitely need dealing with.
If it ever does get revised properly, I guess the next step would be to figure out how to get it published, oh dear oh dear.
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Date: 2025-01-14 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-14 12:17 pm (UTC)