[Translation Quality]
4/5
a. First thing, MTL vs TL. Even though I am not a Chinese speaker, i have consulted with someone who is (credits to Weirdo) and the latest chapter indicates a proper translation by Chinese speakers and not a machine translation. The TL is coherent enough albeit he didn't like how the "Demonic Sound Clan" was TL-ed among a few trivialities. So whatever the past teams did or whatever the past staff of this translation brand did, the current staff are not MTL-ing. I would suggest to the new staff to make TL notes on character names, faction names, chinese characters and their explanations on why they were translated that way and other possible translations, and indent that stuff at the end of chapters as it would showcase that they actually think about this and give the users some peace over how they treat this work in terms of translation.
b. Naming Standardization. I haven't re-read the whole novel, so i don't know what the current state of the past chapters is. Naming standardization was not bad.
The only thing i could complain about in the past was that the editors couldn't
agree upon the name writing styles (combined or separated).
Examples (each line is one character's name):
- YaJi / Ya Ji
- Cao Zhilan / Cao Zhi Lan
- He Qingman / He Qing Man
I don't know how things are now, so take this as a grain of salt, or the staff can take it as a suggestion to edit if they missed some character names so users can find it easier to google search characters to brush up on their past appearances and involved events. A poll on whether separated or combined are more memorable or not would be good, as user input is important and a poll can be indented at the end of a chapter like TL notes. I suggest the staff use polls from time to time since user-staff interaction is bad on this site, or at least indent a Discord channel or some chat channel or something where the staff can be reached instead of e-mail, as it is more interactive in regards to user feedback on grammar and spelling and other.
c. Grammar was sometimes great and sometimes horrible in the past. Again, i don't know how things changed in this regard now when it comes to past chapters. The new chapters were very readable with a few spelling or grammar mistakes.
After copy-pasting Chapter 299 into notepad++, i instantly found about 4 or 5 legitimate spelling mistakes by scrolling through it and observing what words were underlined, with 2 or 3 false positives, and it took me 30 or so seconds to do this.
[World]
The world is rich and vast, with cultivation and laws sculpting some places geographically and climatically. I would suggest to the users to write a glossary of places and factions and their descriptions as they may need it.
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===SOME SPOILERS BELOW====
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[Cultivation & Martial Arts]
This novel has an inheritance system for cultivation. Interesting concept which becomes less and less relevant the more the story advances because the MC becomes part of a cultivation world where everyone has powers. I wish the author focused a bit more on this, but i guess it's too early for me to say anything. I would suggest to the readers to especially write the skills and descriptions of the powers that the MC gains through the story, because it will immensely help with visualizing the battles and understanding what is going on. The author didn't make it memory-friendly. The battles themselves are damn fun in my opinion though.
[Story & Characters]
The MC is an anti-hero. He's not as evil as Warlock of the Magus World MC, but also not nice either. If you want a novel with someone who has a moral superiority complex and a boner for justice and ethics and all that boring jazz,
seek another work. The MC is selfish and cares mostly about survival and adventurism. His personality of an adrenaline junkie passed on into the new world, with his wisdom and intelligence rising as he goes through the story and has new experiences, but his soul remaining the same. You can regard him as a vagabond who only stays in places if they provide power.
He is not a hypocrite and admits on doing things on his whim. He is also lecherous, which comes with an "i can die any day, so i might as well" attitude as well as his way of steaming-off from his adrenaline and/or special cultivation technique.
The work is NSFW, so all easily triggered and frustrated feminists, conservative religious soccer mommies, and sexual moralists in general, seek another work instead of producing farts in the comments that only serve to stink up the room and achieve nothing beyond that.
The characters are varied, even among the powerful ones, and apart from the cliche like arrogant seniors you also have seniors who step back and think before building enmity with the MC. Some characters are forgotten, some characters come back to have interesting interactions, so i can't say there's nothing to lose in memorizing characters. Write a glossary as you read. Side-character focused scenes don't take too much of the reader's time most of the times as they usually take up a quarter or third of a chapter when they happen; but they all have a purpose and aren't exactly fillers.
The story itself isn't bad in terms of development speed; it's among the average level leaning slightly towards fast.
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To the staff i would suggest: Make a glossary page for the readers.
Make it in chronological order of introduction and emphasize it as that because this is a good spoiler-countermeasure as readers then know up to which line to check the glossary. It is not only for the good of the users, but also for the good of the staff in regards to naming standardization.
