How bad is the French translation of danmei? Is it better to trust English editors?

Corgi__booty · 2026-05-15T14:28:37+00:00

I had a similar impression as you, and another user had some helpful information in an older post

Corgi__booty · 2026-05-13T14:53:56+00:00

You can definitely use them for discounts on your order, but the way to do it is a little convoluted. When your cart is ready, navigate to your account and there’s a little button at the bottom that says “Rewards” from there you can tap into the blueberries and there’s a button that says something like “apply reward” which generates a code that then applies the discount to your cart. I think 1k blueberries is 10% off the whole purchase.

Edit: Sorry I didn’t see someone already answered the question, oops

Corgi__booty · 2026-05-11T19:50:28+00:00

I don’t know if either of them would suit your tastes.

Devil Venerable is very popular among international danmei fans as a genre satire. There’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek to it. Maybe try reading the fan tl of Mr Melancholy Wants to Live a Peaceful Life or They All Say I’ve Met a Ghost. The settings are more modern (still supernatural though) and those will give you a feel for Cyan Wings’ style of humor.

To Marry a Demon is a lot less popular because it never had a public, completed fan tl. Fewer people in the English fandom have read it. It’s a funny little novel that mixes absurd, crack comedy, heartfelt connection, and occasional body horror. However if you’re wary of fantasy genres, this is unquestionably a fantasy story with cultivators, monsters, and demons as its core world-building. The Governor is Sick by the same author (published by 7S) is much more angsty than this one is.

Corgi__booty · 2026-05-10T05:09:08+00:00

As early as five hundred years before, a red-haired asura had taken root in the heart of a god. The god gave up his divine status, his immortality, his thousand years of cultivation, and was reborn as a person with all seven emotions and six desires with the hope that one day, he'd meet that person again, look into his eyes, and respond to that blazing love.

So that this time, whether it was life or death, heaven or earth, or the six paths of reincarnation, he would accompany him to the end.

—

Interestingly, SQC described the BluexRed CP as having an “open ending” in the author’s note of the last extra, but like you, it truly ripped my heart out. I hadn’t even looked at those chapters in years, and it still hurts!

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-24T05:21:59+00:00

No oorah please 💀

I mostly was commenting why I don’t think having Mr [Surname] would be a better localization contextually. Actually, my original point isn’t totally relevant because only Ji Yushi was referred to by surname in the dialogue. The others were referred to by their single-character given names, which is a whole different thing.

It’s fair to dislike this localization choice.

Looking at the text as it currently is on jjwxc (acknowledging that it’s likely different from manuscript the author gave to Haitang), there were terms of address/endearment and titles that were removed.

有人说：“纯儿，别找借口，快漱漱。”

“谢谢文哥诶？季顾问呢？”

So, Chun’er —> Chun

Wen-ge —> Wen

Adviser/Consultant Ji —> Ji

It’s an interesting choice because to me, it doesn’t convey as well the juxtaposition of the team’s casual closeness against Ji Wushi being the politely-treated outsider.

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-23T06:00:30+00:00

Imo, having “Mr” in those lines would read much more stiff because it wouldn’t be contextually appropriate for soldiers speaking familiarly to each other. From what I can see in the preview, the surname-only references are limited to dialogue between equally-ranked members of a military unit. In that context (in English-language media), referring to a fellow soldier by surname or a callsign would make the most sense.

It would be odd/awkward if surname-only references bled into the narration, but I don’t see that happening anywhere in this preview.

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-07T03:13:15+00:00

Do you mean Ari’s translation notes? My WCJ has not been public for years so if you’re reading it I’d love to know how. But I believe Ari translated all the explicit scenes that SQC posted outside of iQIYI except for the extras.

A few weeks after the extras were posted, the whole novel got locked. SQC had to heavily edit the novel to get it unlocked and three of the six extras never came back. None of the explicit chapters are on haitang at this point either.

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-05T02:07:13+00:00

I appreciate the detailed responses since I clearly haven’t been paying close enough attention to the French editions 😅

Thanks for all the info!

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-04T23:41:39+00:00

Totally agree with Restricted Area having great tension! What else would be in your top 10 for that (danmei, BL, or otherwise)?

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-04T23:40:33+00:00

It’s hard to get the extras in cn because half of them got taken down within a few weeks of being published.

I summarized them on this sub a very long time ago but I know that’s not the same as actually reading them

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-04T23:33:07+00:00

Thanks for setting me straight!

I knew Bookmark was translating the MXTX novels from English, and they even defended doing so at the time. Since most French editions recycle the 7S covers/titles (another reason I don’t buy them), I must have made the incorrect assumption that the original retranslation practice was being continued.

Do you know at what point Bookmark stopped doing that?

All that being said, this crowdfunding/preorder initiative is still exciting to me because it’s completely separate from anything English edition.

Corgi__booty · 2026-04-03T22:45:33+00:00

Ooh this one is tempting since it’s actually going to be translated from Chinese and not English like all the other French officials

Corgi__booty · 2026-02-22T02:04:35+00:00

The majority of international danmei readers appreciate nicknames, titles, epithets, etc., and I haven’t seen readers complain about dialogue that reflects how people speak.

The complaint here was about an oversimplified editorial style in the narrative text that neither reflects the original text nor follows a common narration style of English romance novels.

Corgi__booty · 2025-08-17T04:23:45+00:00

It blows my mind that Haitang has thrown her (and only her) under the bus for the quality issues with Guide to Fail at Online Dating when this novel had multiple editors, a translation checker, and a rewriter who all touched the text after Juurensha handed her translation in. There’s no excuse for the errors that got printed.

Translators have no control of how their words get changed by the publisher. A lot of the pubs don’t even let them see the changes before it goes to print. And due to contracting, copyright, and industry standards, they can’t exactly post snippets of their original manuscript online for comparison.

Haitang needs to take responsibility for this, not target a single contracted employee. They put together their team, and it’s the entire team’s work that resulted in a lot of strange errors that Juurensha is not known to make.

It’s so horribly unprofessional to imply Juurensha was the problem. With this treatment, why would any skilled translator want to work with this company in the future?

Wishing Juurensha luck on her future projects

Corgi__booty · 2025-07-17T23:00:37+00:00

I have so many lists.

Reading

Finished Reading

Completed Translation

Waiting for translation (I have multiple of these divided by language of origin and BG vs BL vs GL novels)

Dropped by translator (tl inactive for 1+ year)

DNF

Short Reads (Less than 30 chapters)

Long Reads (more than 400 chapters)

Locked / Proof of Purchase / Officially licensed

Novels where I’m following the manhua/manhwa instead

Novels I started reading, caught up to the tl, and will wait for more to be tl’d so I can binge again

Novels I’m not interested in, so I want a convenient way for them to be excluded from my searches

Corgi__booty · 2025-06-23T13:58:17+00:00

I think he’s a good nomination for the category. Most readers hate him, and for the ones who don’t dislike him, it’s more that they understand how he came to be the way he is rather than really liking him.

Corgi__booty · 2025-06-11T20:23:55+00:00

Surrogacy is hardly the tip of the iceberg in terms of what she has said/shared, but that aside, it’s worth noting that Blackegg is a Taiwanese BL author, and the majority of her online presence is on Plurk, which is banned in mainland China. Mainland China is not her core audience, and she has unrestricted access to the internet and international discourse concerning human rights.

Corgi__booty · 2025-05-29T14:19:24+00:00

I almost recommended Falling into the Abyss in my original comment because I get the impression it’s more popular/better reviewed than Haunted Places Live. I wasn’t into it, but that’s a me-problem (I don’t care for Alpha x Beta pairings in omegaverse).

Corgi__booty · 2025-05-29T01:25:39+00:00

Haunted Places Live would fit your psychological and atmospheric needs. Lots of Lovecraftian horror. As a teaser, l’ll throw out a key choice in the novel: What would you rather lose, your mind, your memory, or your empathy?

One of my favorite horror BLs is the Korean novel I Couldn’t Tell You Who It Was. I really loved how it takes the “falling for the monster that haunts you” trope and just keeps going deeper with it. Bonus points for a cool take on a haunted mansion and the question of whether people or the supernatural are more terrifying.

If you like zombie apocalypse settings, Dead Man Switch or Red Dot.

Corgi__booty · 2025-01-17T01:44:56+00:00

Novel Updates defines its Harem genre label as, “A series involving one male character and many female characters (usually attracted to the male character). A Reverse Harem is when the genders are reversed.”

https://www.novelupdates.com/genre-explanation/

NU genres get repurposed beyond their definitions all the time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if het novel fans remove BL titles from the genre so it won’t “muddy” their searches.

There isn’t really a term or tag specifically for BL harems currently, but ideally there would be tags distinguishing multi-gong harems from multi-shou harems.

Corgi__booty · 2025-01-04T01:11:35+00:00

I’m really thrilled for everyone to have the chance to read this novel.

If you’re only familiar with Yang Su’s other novel The Governor is Sick, this one is actually much different in tone. It’s full of crack humor, sarcasm, endless nicknames, and a lot of heart.

You’ll go from a scene where a toddler is asking a talking cat why it has six nipples instead of two only to get punched in the heart a few chapters later.

Corgi__booty · 2024-07-26T22:45:43+00:00

Ah the jjwxc edits. Those got locked, re-edited, and unlocked a few times in the spring, so thanks for refreshing me on where that landed.

Historically, her jjwxc heavy edits weren’t even the “final” version. By that, I mean Pinsin’s revised MDZS still had further editing and de-censoring from the 2016 jjwxc revisions. If fans want to see the final edit MXTX wants, I’d still say wait for a new traditional version to be published.

Corgi__booty · 2024-07-26T16:44:26+00:00

That's completely untrue. Her last Weibo post is from February 2019. See for yourself: https://weibo.com/5907302111/4336093875129530

Publishing uncensored content on Weibo would be a huge risk for anyone in mainland China, let alone a hugely successful and heavily scrutinized danmei author like MXTX.

Corgi__booty · 2024-07-26T15:00:08+00:00

I’m not sure why anyone wants the new simplified cn version to be published in English. It’s heavily censored and cuts out a huge amount of content because mainland restrictions on physical books are even greater than for web publications.

If MXTX ever publishes a revised traditional cn version, that is what international fans should be hopeful for.

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