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I don't think this would be locked now as the discussion makes sense.

It's good to talk on the ways of content relevance for different audiences.

I think if a story is too steeped to one culture, it should continue to carry those cultural elements. An example are Japanese honorifics in stories. Some people hate it, but if the honorific is removed it might also remove the charm of the culture's hierarchy respect from the story.

Hmm...wondering if this relates...sometimes when I'm reading Webtoons (for example, Lookism) the translator gives the characters Western first names, for example, the MC, Park Hyung Suk is Daniel Park in the English translation. I don't really mind it when translators do just this, since it helps me remember character names more and not butcher it in speaking. As a Chinese American a lot of my Chinese friends go by Western names as well. So my question is, how would people feel about this in a novel? Not localising, just not directly bringing over the pinyin for names.

Veronica8 SrtaA
Thanks guys! That makes sense. And yeah, I agree. That is weird.

Dwarkin Lat-Am version or American version?

SrtaA Latin American, of course! They are more dramatic. I had grown up watching Brazilian (Escrava Isaura) and Mexican (starring Veronica Castro) telenovelas.
I can already imagine how overbearing CEO Louis Alberto is chasing after young and naive Marianna Villareal

Ron_Azure There are many cases Chinese, Japanese, or Korean authors made foreign settings but with their cultural mindset. Most of the novels were welcomed by most readers after being translated

Indeed, but usually author does some research or writes about own experience.
I believe that the only way to "localize" the novel is to change the names of the countries to fictional. Don't write USA, just use M-country; H-country instead of Korea and R-country instead of Japan.
And pick reasonable human names that doesn't sound too weird

I deliberately avoid stories that have Western names copy/pasted in place of Chinese ones. It reads strangely, and translators do not seem to be good at picking names. Every one of them is old fashioned or strange. My man, is the divine-level cultivator really named Reginald, or are you just pulling things out of a hat?

Damn, I think that the most novels from the last batch of trial reads are from faloo too. @WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL did you buy faloo or you are pirating their novels? Because I can't imagine even a one good reason to do it.
I'm somewhat pissed off and laughed at the latest trial reads - do you really think we can't find them on faloo? Yeah, we can't do it in two minutes like before, but we still can do this in half an hour, if the novel is up to our taste

Dwarkin I want to know about this as well. Did they got the right for the english publication, or was that just good ol' taking notes from the competition? Iirc, some of them have slight difference, but still very much similar.

Dwarkin Nobody can pirate their novels haha. It is most likely a deal between Qidian and Faloo to have their works translated here, where there is already an established market.

Wolfick Yeah, I even slightly suspect that tencent (or whoever owns Qidian) had bought faloo.
But I don't understand why do they have to "localize" their novels, it only makes them weird

Dwarkin They shouldn't, and that is a culture thing. Readers who like chinese novels like and are used to the cultural side of them, so I am in complete agreement with you.

It is the same reason I generally won't bother reading a novel by a western author imitating eastern culture. They go "I like that, so I will write one of those" and try to imitate a classic xianxia or god forbid a wuxia. But they don't have that cultural background and are at best relying on second-hand imitation. Whilst there are a few that are good, even great, the overwhelming majority of them are garbage because they are trying to write in another person's style.

It's the same as when people try sing songs in the same voice as the singer.

Culture is important in writing a novel, and changing it so that it doesn't match is never a good idea. If they truly wanted to westernize these novels, they would have to basically rewrite the entire thing, to the point it would basically be a new story. Simply replacing names and stuff is quick and sloppy.