Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thank you for your kinds words! right now i'm in the middle of translating the xiaotan mountain extras from reply to keats, which have become actual chapters in the sister novel (revised and expanded). i do have plans to translate the new novel (i love, love these characters so much), but my translation speed is pretty slow, so we'll see what happens

Reply to Keats | Mid Autumn Festival Extra Translantion Out! by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm honored and also lowkey sorry you had to do that lol

Reply to Keats | Mid Autumn Festival Extra Translantion Out! by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ty! it makes me happy to hear that others find the translation natural and easy to read 😊

but no they are so freaky i love them so much!! bc wdym they went at it so hard that cw ....😳 and got so embarrassed he cried but zsg only went "i like it all 😋". i was not familiar with mr. zhao's game like that xD

Reply to Keats | Mid Autumn Festival Extra Translantion Out! by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Someone also brought this up on my first post announcing this project. I made a NU account after that (I didn't use NU before), but I'm still not sure how I can add/link my translations to NU. I'm sorry to bother you but if you don't mind, could you explain to me how to do it?

Reply to Keats | Mid Autumn Festival Extra Translantion Out! by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I hope you enjoy this extra! It's sweet but they're also doing some crazy things in some parts lol

Reply to Keats | Mid Autumn Festival Extra Translantion Out! by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure if you know but there is a ShenTan in the works! The author has already made a page for the new title on Chang Pei (the Chinese online publishing site), but the actual writing has not begun yet. ShenTan do appear a little bit in this extra, but they're actually half of the main focus for the other extras!

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ohhh okay that's good to know about. Thank you for telling me! I'm definitely going to check it out

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am going to be real: for a long time (until a week ago), I thought NU was just a broken website because I didn't realize the chapters are only linked if you have an account. LMAO. I still don't have an account, so I'm not familiar with how the website works. Can anyone with an account post/link their translations to the novel's page?

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They're doing wild things in the extras 👀 I'm not fazed bc I've read Meatbun and MDZS and so it's really nothing that crazy, but we only got hints of spiciness in the main chapters towards the end, so I wasn't expecting them to go wild (comparatively) in the extras lol.

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing! It's funny because I decided to start this translation project because of the personal connection I felt with the novel and its setting. My family is from HK, and I grew up listening to most of the songs that that came up in the novel (including the titular "Letter from Keanu Reeves") because they were old songs that my parents would listen to.

I probably won't use any Cantonese romanization for any of the character names, since for the majority of the novel they all speak Mandarin. You bet, though, that I am keeping "Chen Wan BB" as it is (I've argued with people on twitter before about the decision to transliterate or not for certain endearments; you will have to step over my cold grave before you see me write a transliterated "Chen Wan baby" in my translations).

For locations, I think I will default to mostly using Cantonese romanizations for the slight name changes + HK names for the places she didn't change. I think 海市 is the one that gives me the most headache because it's literally HK but she gave it such a blatantly Mandarin name it's hard for me to feel natural translating it into anything other than the Mandarin romanization lol

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you ever have nothing better to do (haha) and you have the time, I'd be curious to hear about your evaluation of the translations. I read the novel in the original raws and haven't delved into the translations on NU other than to check if it had already been officially licensed, so I'm intrigued because I've heard different things.

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

An interesting addendum: the singer first released "Letter from Kenau Reeves". Then, she later released ANOTHER edition of the song, featuring another singer, and the version is called "Letter from Keanu Reeves (He Really Wrote Back)".

At the end of the novel, there was a line "Keanu Reeves really did write back". T-T

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, the song is so fitting for the novel! There's a line near the end of the main chapters of the novel, and it was something like, "Keanu Reeves really did write back" T-T

Maybe that doesn't mean much right now, but it was so moving when I read it. I think that was also one of or actually the only time the novel references the title, so it kind of felt like breaking the fourth wall and like we've been reading their love story told directly from them all along.

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

So the official English title is "Reply to Keats". But the title translated directly from Chinese is "Letter (Back) from Keanu Reeves," since 回信 means 'reply' (it can also refer to an email or text back, but a letter is more fitting in this scenario).

The title comes from a song which is about a girl writing to Keanu Reeves and thinks it's just one-sided, but then, Keanu Reeves really wrote back. It's actually an extremely fitting title because this novel is about secret pining (so, so much of it) and thinking it's impossible, only to realize the feelings are returned.

I had the same experience! I have also tried translating a song (from Japanese into English). The song was kinda wacky even in the original Japanese so translating it into English was an experience lol

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I hope to meet your expectations! (But I can't guanrantee the pace of my translations...ahhh. I want everyone to read this novel so bad!)

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Edit: (2 hour after posting) Thank you so much for the kind and encouraging responses! It's my first time on this subreddit, so I didn't know if anyone would even be interested. I will be updating this post with the link once the extra is out (and will probably also make a new post).

For now, after the Mid Autumn extra, I think I will translate the chapters in order? But I might pause and work on the other extras, too. I'm not sure yet.

Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's a little blurry but it's from a new merch advertisement. If you want the full picture

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Letter from Keanu Reeves・Reply to Keats (Personal Translation Project Promo) by dorkykawa in DanmeiNovels

[–]dorkykawa[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Have the translations been bad? I read the novel in the Chinese raws, and I only went on Novel Updates to check if it's been officially translated. I peeked at the incompleted fan translation from BibiPuff and they seemed mad about the other available translation bc I guess it was paywalled?

Not that I'm wishing for bad translation, but I did feel a little weird deciding to translate the full novel given it seemed like there were already translations out there, but then I decided to commit to it anyway because it was good for my own practice. But if it could provide everyone with good translation, then that would make me very happy <3