Monday, June 6, 2011

Thoughts on feedbacks for oreimo summaries

I wanted to post this in the comments for oreimo's chapter 4 summaries, but realized it will be too long, and thus decided to do a short post on it. So pardon me.

Firstly, thanks for all the positive and encouraging replies. While I understand that whichever summaries one like will boil down to personal preference, I personally don't feel that my summaries are better than Sergio's (as some had said).

I guess it depends on what you are looking for. To me, Sergio's summaries are more concise, and his paragraph format makes it a lot easier to read. Plus he is definitely better than me in the command of the language (Drkmerc had teased me endless times about my poor grammar). I've seen someone on /a/ complaining that my summaries are too long and tl;dr, and I accept that, because it is true. Finally, Sergio takes his content directly off the Japanese raws, which makes his summaries way more accurate than mine.

Ultimately, I started this as back at volume 7 (at somewhere else) as something for my friends to read so that they can know what happened in the novels. As such, I had tried to include as many details which I felt was important, and translate in important lines. I've carried over the style to here. However, the end result is a "summary" which is extremely long, and took me an average of 2-3 hours per chapter to write. Not exactly summarizing, if you ask me. I could have translated nearly a chapter of Onii-Ai with the time taken to do the summaries.

My personal thought after the whole thing is this. While I am glad that the summaries had gathered many views and hits for the site, it's slightly disappointing to see the hits for the summary shooting way past the hits for the chapters of Onii-Ai. I wish people will remember this blog as a 'LN translation blog' instead of a 'Oreimo summary blog', but I guess it is to be expected when you place a relatively unknown work next to one that has a huge fan-base and an anime port. Still, I am not complaining about the publicity this blog had received.

However, I'll like to take this opportunity to point out that the summaries done are just something out of my interest, and in no way will I be doing the same for any other works. Sergio had decided to focus on doing LN summaries full time, and I wish him all the best, and I have no intention to be a competitor in that. However, rest assured that I will continue doing so for the rest of the volumes of oreimo if things allow me to.

This may be teasing to some, but the traffic had made me seriously consider doing translations for Oreimo...... HOWEVER. Please do not hound me for it. It is just a thought I am currently playing with (which means that there is a high chance I will not do it), and I am still giving my full attention to Onii-ai as my top priority project. My first aim when starting this blog is to introduce and translate lesser known works to the English community which I felt are good, and Oreimo doesn't exactly fit into that category (and to be blunt, there are many other works that I like more than Oreimo). I am sure given time, there will be someone else who picks up the work, so currently, I am still leaning towards Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden as my second project. But things are not yet decided, and I will see how things go after the 2 volumes of Onii-Ai are done, and the outcome of the discussion with the other 2 of my friends.

So before I end, let me thank all the replies and constructive criticisms. I had appreciated the comments that are directed towards improving my grammar. Your positive replies are a huge source of motivation for me. Also, I will like to take this opportunity to thank Drkmerc and Alice. Without them, the translations will be a much shittier work, and things will not be what it seems right now. So give them your thanks accordingly too.

Now back to working on chapter 6 of Onii-ai. Till later.

17 comments:

  1. You do great summaries man altho the grammer wasn't great i could still understand it easily, i started reading your blog for the onii-ai translations and when i saw you post oreimo summaries it was a nice surprise so i'd like to thank you for that, and altho u say urs arent as good as sergios imo i think urs are just as good and can be better if u wanted to make them better, personally i think he ommited some things from his summary that u included in urs that were important to understanding the situation of the story, but w/e u choose to do is cool man as long as u have fun, keep up the great work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm just that guy that teases you about not knowing something's stuck to your face. It's not like your anguish and lament sustains me or anything...(◕ ‿‿ ◕ ) You'll thank me when that e-mail you send to that pretty girl you met online (that's actually a guy) have perfect grammar thanks to my traumatic trolling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Helloooo :D
    im a fan of ore no imouto
    and i ve read ur vol 8 of ore no summary it was very detailed...
    a lot more detailed that sergio's
    so im jus wondering if there any chance you will be summarizing the future volume as well ? :D

    Thx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your summaries were a lot more detailed compare to sergio's
    i've been having the feelin that sergio's jus doing it b cuz of what ppl expect from him.
    So in the future plz keep summarising :D
    ps. i like ur summary more than sergio's

    ReplyDelete
  5. No one is better or worse, it's just based on each reader preference.
    For someone like me who like details but can't read the actual novel, I really really really appreciate your work. And for the grammar, I'm not native English speaker and it's still understandable for me XD

    I won't compare your work with another writers, all of you have done wonderful work for all this series fans ^^

    Btw, any chance you'll do BokuTomo too? XD

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think you see that in a wrong way, In my case, I came here too read the lastest Oreimo summaries but ended look everday if the next chapter of Onii-Ai is out. Oreimo is in a certain way a good advertisment for a LN less famous so don't be too disturbed about that

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thx for your summary
    i cant read japanese :D
    but ur summary are very detailed love it >w<

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well, I'm one of the persons who got hocked by the oreimo summaries.

    I really liked your work and I believe the are "cleaner" than Sergio's, who I think is getting a little obsessed by his "Imouto harem end".

    About Onii-Ai, I really liked it and I thank you for bringing it to us. I went thought the two volumes(and as I can't read Japanese I mean looked at the pic's) and I can say the story get's better, but I still don't know what's Akito's(That's the boy right? I always mix them up) plan everyone keep's asking of.

    About the Oreimo translations, I won't lie, I would be really happy if you did so. As far as I know only volume 1 have been translated and I really love the story.
    Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden's story, on the other hand, is far different from both Oreimo and Onni-Ai(And is not quite my piece of cake if I'm allowed to say so) but still look's rather interesting.

    Either way you chose, I think it will do great as long as you do it with joy(That's one REALLY misleading piece of comment :P)

    PS:I'll have to congratulate you if you read everything I wrote, I know most people won't :P


    ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=┌(; ̄◇ ̄)┘

    ReplyDelete
  9. Man, if you are a translator, then be invisible.

    DO NOT GIVE A F*CK.
    DO NOT RANT.
    JUST DO YOUR THING.

    Keep doing your work (which is surprisingly good) and let the mouth to mouth do the rest. LN readings are fairly new in the scene, most people still only care about manga and anime. But the times are changing, have hope.

    BE F*CK*NG PROUD AND DON'T TAKE THE LEMONS.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Onii-Ai is HOT! I want it more...

    ReplyDelete
  11. I liked your summaries, no matter how many "grammatical mistakes" one could see, since I don't pay attention to that kind of thing.

    And I think it was a great initiative, providing another view for the oreimo followers, even if it wasn't your intention.

    So if you're ever willing to, I'm fully supporting you for other long oreimo summaries!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Its reasonable bc most ppl (who dont understand jap) didnt know about Onii-ai while its different in case of Oreimo, which already has a huge fanbase. My case is also the same, but now I dont really care about Oreimo summaries anymore, I daily visit here for Onii-ai (read it in one go, hungry for more, re-read it again XD)

    So doing Oreimo summary is definitely a good move to gain popularity, but I myself would love it if u focus on translating,

    And about ur and sergio's summaries, I enjoyed reading both

    ReplyDelete
  13. Sergio's summaries might be "concise", but they leave out details that give us extra insight into the chars. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that you do this as a hobby of sorts, so whatever you choose, have fun! ^_~

    ReplyDelete
  14. I agree with Anonymous June 9, 2011 6:48 AM.

    Oreimo may be a nice way to get more visits, but even though I love Oreimo I don't think that focusing on it would be a nice idea, if you did so, you would only be another blog that talks about Oreimo, and you can be way more than that.

    Onii-Ai is an "unknown" series that have a great potential, the story is incredibly interesting and there are many scenarios to be explored.
    It has everything to be a great series, as long as it has a good translator like you (;))

    What should you do after Onii-Ai? I don't know. But if you are to focus on translating it you will have quite some time to think about it, we still have to go all the way through volume 2 (I say we because I'll be here reading)
    And most important volume 3 gets released June 24th(Happy? I am =D)

    PS: I said it before and I'll say it again, "I really liked it(Onii-Ai) and I thank you for bringing it to us"
    I check this place like 4 times a day, and I fear that this number will increase as the new chapters come :P
    I know a little Japanese(Very, very little BTW) so I have and idea of what happens and its really, really interesting, I'll stop writing now before I spoil anything :P



    ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=┌(; ̄◇ ̄)┘

    ReplyDelete
  15. I don't care so much as the different in style of summaries between you and sergio but the type of light novels you would be EVEN interested to blog about. Being on Sergio for a few months I got to learn his tastes, and I can gurantee you without a doubt he would never NEVER go remotely near a story that like "Legend of Legendary Heroes," that gets just plain depressing at times but still awesome(Still hoping for a second season). Moe, Rom-Com, wincest, is great but more variety is a welcomed treat. So keep up what you're doing cuz I love your Onii-Ai summaries.

    ReplyDelete
  16. awesome summary, the best one without doubt! You should go with the oreimo ones :D

    ReplyDelete
  17. Well with seanver's blog closing down, will you pick up the other novels he's working on?

    ReplyDelete