Introduction!
Chrissy~
Hey guys, Chrissy here! Well, that’s what I usually type when I hijack the “translator’s thoughts” section of my novels. As such, I hope a lot of people in the forums would recognize me!
As for my introduction, let me divide them into three short stories. First, my life, second, the beginning of addiction to novels, and lastly, joining QI, where I will recount how QI started from way back in December as its first editor!
As a start~
I’m Chrissy, real life name’s Christian, which can be accounted to me being born in December 24, 1996. I was born in the Philippines, a tropical country in South East Asia, as such, I have never experienced snow, a dream I’ve always had since I was a child. I’m currently studying psychology, and my hobbies are reading, reading, and playing some games.
I’m not really sure how to describe myself, perhaps the words forged by flames would be a good one? Growing up, I was very extroverted. I wanted friends, lots of them, and I’m not really sure how I’m opposite of what I used to be today. That aside, let me speak of a memory I’ve always been fond of many many years ago. It was when I was elementary, so I’m not sure the exact year whatever. But, oh well~
My family wasn’t really well off. We had to change houses every now and then, and only when my father decided to go abroad did we finally acquire a permanent home. Every time when shift to another place, I’d lose my hard-earned friends, and I’ll find myself in a new unfamiliar place—these times, it’s such a pain to start over again. But, let’s skip, skip, skip, skip…
After finally moving to our new permanent home, with my bike, I decided to roam around. The neighborhood was quiet, and there were not many children at my age, so finding friends was incredibly hard. At that time, I met a boy not much older than me also riding a bike. A potential friend, I thought… So what comes next is basically approaching, talking, making friends… a very simple process. But well, that MFer sped up. As a boy, I was dead fix on the thought of approaching to converse with a new friend and as such, I didn’t even think about maybe he just didn’t want to make friends.
Well, it turned out was a race. A goddamn race, a race that lasted for a week because my stamina was so weak to catch up to him. Everyday, at around 4 PM, I’ll ride my bike out and I’ll see him biking around the neighborhood. The moment he sees me, he’ll grin at me then he will wait till I’m almost beside him before speeding up! For a week, this was my routine, chase, chase, chase, chase… and not once did we speak a single word to each other!
It was incredible. I’m not sure if he did treat me as a friend, but I do. A friend without speaking anything. This status lasted for quite a while till the end of the week until he finally stopped and asked me, “What are you doing?”
I asked him, “Bro, let’s race!” Haha, then that started a bromance that lasted till now, from 2 people now to 4, helping one another court girls, travelling to far away places with our bikes… Sad that all of us are away from each other now, so we seldom meet up anymore.
Well, that aside, time to move on~
High school, I believe, it was the time when I discovered novels after watching animes. Not satisfied with just watching, I discovered that a lot of animes actually started from novels. From brilliant minds to paper, I can’t help but get shocked by the number of novels that appeared in front of me. That was the year I discovered baka-tsuki, where I read some of the most memorable novels like SAO, Campione, and Log Horizon to name a few.
Two years later, what I discovered are Chinese Manhuas, which opened the doors of Chinese webnovels for me. From Battle Through The Heavens, the list just started, from the generic ones to the unique ones, and eventually, I found myself full of ideas…
2015, well, that’s the time when I started writing my own novels. Problem is, I really only have the knack for writing prologues, but never a proper story… Though I did manage to reach chapter 50s with one of my novels with a decent amount of followers, I just realized that it was such a failure… Well, a massive writing block stopped me, and that’s when I decided this isn’t really for me. So, what’s next after that?
That’s right, the world of editing! Well, to sum it up, I failed nearly all editing tests because I suck in English! Yey! It wasn’t until August last year when I had an apprenticeship with a prominent editor, who probably doesn’t know I’m working for QI now (thanks bro!), that I actually improved more and more, until the point that at November, I actually passed a few editor tests! And not just editor tests, the tests of the really big sites at that time! Well, I’d like to be mysterious, so I won’t mention which sites are they (I believe they are very obvious), and what novels I worked on.
At that time, I finally saw myself as one of those editors who are “actually” editors. But, well, truth be told I still suck. Haha. It was in December when a few friends of mine started talking about the appearance of a big company. Curious, I asked them what’s up, and I was finally invited to join as an editor.
Of course, who wouldn’t feel dubious about it? Not to mention the contracts? Let’s just say things didn’t sail so smoothly, and the people who invited me were actually the first ones to denounce the same company. I, of course, was very reluctant. I played the wait and see game, until I heard that two friends of mine, @Arch, @Rain, actually joined qi, and after learning about the “privileges”, as poor as I am, I was basically tempted to join. No one can blame me for that. LOL
After joining, it was then that I realized that QI is a mess! Yes, it’s a mess. No proper assessment for new translators and editors, and the ones in are actually people who has problems in the head or just used google translate.
And then there starts my story as the man behind the scene!
As an aspiring young lad full of ideas, I thought about how the other sites are run, how to improve the system, and how to fix the mess. Well, through the help of my friends already in QI, we submitted proposals after proposals, from producing editor tests to hiring people to assess novels… So many things happened, basically, it was a revolution!
It’s finally the time when I felt I actually succeeded in something since I gained the title of “Head Editor” though that’s mostly because of how I instigated that revolution and because I was the first one to complain about it. February to March, although still a little bit clunky, the proposals pushed through, and QI from then on just became bigger and bigger, and that’s when my views broadened.
When people who take your editor test are so much better than you, how can your views not broaden? I remember looking at Geo’s test and saying, “is this a pro?”, then there’s also @Nou, @Lis, @Kurisu, damn, these guys are what I aspire to be as an editor.
Anyways, I never really intended to enter the limelight, so a lot of things I’ve thought were just brought to the bosses. The ideas about editor tests, the people who helped me create that abomination, and the small traps here and there that we left to the applicants to uncover.
Then there came the assessment job. To look through all the novels and have a say whether they are good or not is an enormous job that is both enjoyable and tiring. With so many novels, I no longer had the ability to keep up with all of them, and I had to form a team, though even today, quality assessment is still really hard. Good thing is, although it seems hard, the people in my team are working on a same goal, and although very slowly, we are trying to improve novels that needs to improve and commend novels that provide good quality work.
Complaints about quality will always go through me, then I’ll check the novel and ask my team to do the same. After which, we will try to contact the translation team behind the novels with complaints in order to speak of what needs to be improved or what needs to be changed. Although it is a very slow process, worse come to worse, we might suggest to have them fired.
Along the way, I met good translators and bad translators, and those I’ve stayed with, Rain, Alsey, Subu, and Penny, are buddies that are already significant people in my life. In fact, next year, I’m already planning to go to Taiwan to visit Alsey, then there’s also Rain who will visit my country. It’s just an incredible and exciting feeling to have foreign friends just through novels!
Today, QI is a growing community of translators and editors. I do believe there’s still a lot of improvements waiting to happen, but slow but surely, we are still moving to greener pastures. As for me, I’m still the same Chrissy from back then. I recognized my faults, know that I’m not as good as I think I am, and always ask whenever I have questions regarding editing. Though most of the friends I have are just internet friends, I am already fulfilled. That’s all, I guess. Let’s just say it’s incredible how it started with a simple invitation that turned into temptation.
Lastly, please do support my novels!
The Sacred Ruins
Once Upon There Was A Spirit Sword Mountain
The Invincible Dragon Emperor
Realms in the Firmament
Thriller Paradise
Well, I think this concludes my introduction and also a small story about my experience with QI~
