Update and New Project, probably

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I guess I should start this post off with a short apology for my one week of absence.

The department I belong to in my public service held a really big festival last week and there were over 3 schools that came. I wasn’t really told about this event until 4 days prior to the festival and was abruptly thrown around the building in order to help set up for everything. It didn’t really help that I was trying to read 2 different series at the same time in order to figure out what project I wanted to pick up next.

In any case, that’s the reason why I suddenly went under for a week. I ended up staying 4 hours past my normal work time on the day of the festival. I’m actually sore all over and my ankles scream every time I take a step.

Anyway, back to the main topic. I’d like to thank everyone who left a comment on the last post. A lot of you guys were very supportive and seemed relatively fine with whatever path I ultimately chose to take. Although, I should point out a misunderstanding some of you guys seem to have.

I didn’t start out with permission to translate DD. I only got permission around the time I started to translate volume 3. I wasn’t the one who reached out to them first either, it was them who contacted me initially. They thanked me for the global popularity which I helped gain for their novel and said that I could continue.
Furthermore, the only reason I was able to quickly get permission to translate YaMA was due to the fact that the editor who works on DD also manages YaMA as well. Thus meaning, the people at NovelEngine(Publisher of DD and YaMA) are very lenient and kind towards me. But this is an incredibly, incredibly rare case that doesn’t really happen often to us translators.

I’ve been discouraged in regard to getting permission from other publishers because I’ve already been declined by two companies with big names. Some of you guys commented that I can just keep trying to get permission from other publishers, but that’s a finite number. If I’m correct, there are only 2-3 other publishing companies left that also publish Korean LNs. This is why I’ve been tempted to just do what I did when I started to translate DD. Wing it.

 

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Now then, to the second part of this post.

This is a new series that I’ll probably be picking up for now. It’s from NovelEngine, the same publisher for DD and YaMA, but compared to those two series, this is a more light-hearted read. I wanted a change of pace since I’ve been translating only dark novels with twisted characters.

The title of the series is called:
〈We Should Have Slept While Only Holding Hands, And Yet!?〉.
An amazing title. I prefer to just call it “Handholding”. This is a completed series with 7 volumes +1 interlude volume.

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Synopsis:

My childhood friend who lived next door since preschool, Ja Saeyeon. On the outside, she appears like an adequately pretty girl who’s like a drawing, but only her body has grown; she was a girl whose mental age was truly that of an elementary schooler. We’d spend time together from time to time, but Saeyeon’s parents, who were often not home, would pay me to take care of her, so we merely had a ‘work’ relationship. But this time her spoiled behavior was more severe for some reason. She fretfully asked for me to sleep together with her since she was afraid to sleep by herself. I even sang her a lullaby, but she thought I was going to run away so, with great care, she asked if we could sleep while holding hands. We then slept together. Really, seriously, we merely slept while only holding hands.

But the next morning⎯⎯⎯there was a young girl lying down between us?!

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Yes, I know. This novel sounds a bit cliche and there are other works that are similar to this. All I can say is that this was an actually enjoyable read for me. Volume 1 was rather hard to get through since the MC was really arrogant and hard headed, but after volume 1, you can actually see the characters developing and growing up. It was a very nice experience and it seems the Korean reviewers said the series become great starting from volume 3, so just think of volume 1 and 2 as build up(I haven’t read volume 3 yet cause of my lack of time).

At any rate, I’ll start translating at the end of this week. The festival may be over, but now I’m busy trying to clean up the aftermath and preparing for the other upcoming events. Why my department has all these events during the summer and not during the spring or autumn is beyond me. I’m going to die from the heat.

See you guys in a couple of days.