Stop "localizing" stories webnovel!
I think what they want is to globalize a story. However, such an attempt should be done with the participation of the author. So, the story won't become weird.
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.
Because every novel is a universe that is separated from the real world. Law, culture, event, plot, character, etc are created based on author's understanding and imagination. Because of that, novel is categorized as fiction.
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.
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Dr_Radiaki Yo i am Victor
Dr_Radiaki Reginald
The translator is a TSM fan xD
SrtaA Such as billionaires CEOs
We dont use CEOs here as far as i know, the boss is "El Presidente" of the company
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Sleeping_Racoon the only difference is in mtl editor taking liberties from the novel
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.
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