A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment

[HarmlessDave]

@doceirias said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

I read all of Death March earlier this year since I'm taking over the series for Yen Press, and was also pleasantly surprised by how into I got.
I feel like a lot of narou stuff is imitative, with authors trying to write what is popular, and Death March certainly has some obvious influences, but there's a specificity to it that makes you feel like he's just writing exactly what he always wanted to read. And I feel like that enthusiasm for his own story helps elevate everything.

Did you do the translation for Death March volume 23? I'm sorry to say the quality for that volume was much lower than for 1-22.

It had continuity errors, mixed-up characters, wrong skill names, and some very awkward prose. If you check out Amazon reviews you'll see a lot of complaints about this.

If you're part of a new team, then I'll keep my fingers crossed that Yen learned something from 23, even if they haven't fixed it.

[unknownmat]

@HarmlessDave said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

Did you do the translation for Death March volume 23?

Vol 23 and Vol 24 are translated by different people. Jade Willis and Andrew Cunningham, respectively. If you lookup @doceirias' profile, you'll see that he at least claims to be the latter.

[HarmlessDave]

@unknownmat - thanks, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it won't be a repeat of volume 23. @doceirias actually reading the older volumes is a hopeful sign.

[doceirias]

The problems with 23 were pretty obvious, but I did send Yen Press my assessment of it and a link to the Death March subreddit thread on the volume. Any fixes beyond that are out of my hands.

[Serah]

貧乏家族の長男ですが、家族のために頑張ってたら魔法の才能が覚醒しました might be worth a follow/look.

[Cosmic]

@unknownmat I share your same enjoyment of these types of novels. Death March was my first proper web novel and still one of my ongoing favorites.

I think there's a few factors involved that elevate these fics above other isekai novels. For one, the protagonist is mature and actually behaves like a responsible adult. Another aspect is that you can tell the protagonist actually enjoys helping others and takes pride in the development and growth of the students/children/teammates around them. The author also gives a sense of progress and accomplishment to the side characters.

Another minor aspect is there's often a focus of progress in not only skill/ability development, but also the equipment and territory. It makes sense why these fics focus at least a little on introducing modern knowledge and/or traveling to various places. Still, there's a few other unexplainable aspects that make these fics like capturing lightning in a bottle.

While not the same and not always meeting the criteria, I felt these fics to somehow satisfy a similar niche emotionally:

Dagashi-ya Yahagi: Setting Up a Sweets Shop in Another World
Making Magic: The Sweet Life of a Witch Who Knows an Infinite MP Loophole
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear
By the Grace of the Gods

[unknownmat]

@Cosmic said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

I think there's a few factors involved that elevate these fics above other isekai novels. For one, the protagonist is mature and actually behaves like a responsible adult.

Completely agreed. I think Satou's maturity is big part of why I like the series. He doesn't rise to every provocation, for example, he has an actual sense of perspective. He doesn't do any of the teenage romance awkwardness that I find so annoying. He puts his charges' safety ahead of his own ego. Etc. All things that responsible adults do. This contrasts heavily with stories where the protagonist has to come out on top of every social interaction. It's certainly refreshing and is one of the things that obviously differentiates Death March.

Another aspect is that you can tell the protagonist actually enjoys helping others and takes pride in the development and growth of the students/children/teammates around them. The author also gives a sense of progress and accomplishment to the side characters.

I hadn't considered this but you're right that by giving Satou's own growth a back seat (he's basically so powerful that it's impossible for him to grow further) it allows the other characters a chance to grow and to take center stage. Thus, Satou is content to sit back and let his charges take down the labyrinth floor master. There's no need for him to take center stage, but he still finds plenty of satisfaction when the kids overcome the challenge.

Another minor aspect is there's often a focus of progress in not only skill/ability development, but also the equipment and territory.

I enjoy all these things, too, but this is not unique to Death March

Still, there's a few other unexplainable aspects that make these fics like capturing lightning in a bottle.

Yeah. Definitely. No one thing full explains what makes these series so fun - it's likely a combination of things that just work really well together.

While not the same and not always meeting the criteria, I felt these fics to somehow satisfy a similar niche emotionally:

Dagashi-ya Yahagi: Setting Up a Sweets Shop in Another World
Making Magic: The Sweet Life of a Witch Who Knows an Infinite MP Loophole
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear
By the Grace of the Gods

Thanks for the recommendations. I tried Making Magic, but recall that I hated the the golem character and never finished the first book. I may try again if you tell me it gets better.

I liked By The Grace of the Gods until I caught up with the JNC releases, then lost interest. I think this might be a binge-only series for me, so now that it's been several years and they've released a bunch more, I'll likely give it another try.

Thanks for the other recommendations. Noted.

[Serah]

"As the eldest son of a poor family, I worked hard for my family's sake, and that's when my magical talent awoke." (title translated via Google) is probably one of the few where it seems quite focused on the big brother role. So yeah, let us know if that is the kind of thing you are looking for.

Currently I am trying to get into Now I'm a Demon Lord! Happily Ever After with Monster Girls in My Dungeon again, where the protagonist is definitely a big brother type to all the young girls, building himself a harem that way. I am just not very fond of it due to all the vulgar slang writing/translation.

[GeorgeMTO]

@unknownmat said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

I liked By The Grace of the Gods until I caught up with the JNC releases, then lost interest. I think this might be a binge-only series for me, so now that it's been several years and they've released a bunch more, I'll likely give it another try.

Now would be a convenient time to try, as it's in the latest sale, so you can get them for 599 coins instead of the new 799 coin price.

[unknownmat]

@GeorgeMTO Good catch. Saved me some tokens.

[unknownmat]

@Serah Thanks. I'm interested based on your strong recommendation. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a good English translation (the translation group listed on novelupdate won't let me access their content without creating an account first).

I can probably live with Google translate if the plot is interesting. Where is the WN published? I think I found it on kakuyomu.jp, but my Japanese isn't nearly good enough to know.

[unknownmat]

@Serah said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

Currently I am trying to get into Now I'm a Demon Lord! Happily Ever After with Monster Girls in My Dungeon again, where the protagonist is definitely a big brother type to all the young girls, building himself a harem that way. I am just not very fond of it due to all the vulgar slang writing/translation.

Sorry, I missed the second half of what you posted.

A big brother/father figure doesn't build a harem, especially not with those he's responsible for. That's just gross and not at all what I'm interested in.

[Serah]

@unknownmat yes, that is the correct one.

https://kakuyomu.jp/works/16818622170990767935

Not sure how it looks for you - I am using Google Chrome and the in-built translation function works sufficiently well for me.

If you have a subscription for something like DeepL it might be even better - but I do not recommend such unless you use that tool already for other things professionally.

Based on the popularity in Japan, it looks somewhat on the level where many other novels were before they got an anime adaption (I mean back then when I was already reading Ascendance of a Bookworm before it had that English title etc. - and then all of sudden that, and Apothecary Diaries seemed to "explode" in popularity in the west too). Hence why I think it is worth to give it a look in general in addition to setting which might fit your search very well.

Here are some tips of mine if you are new to giving that machine translation read a try.

a) depending on which browser you use, the results may vary: I tested it with Chrome and Brave - one would expect the translation is the same since Brave is based on Chrome, but the quality differed notably. So you might want to test it out with whatever you use - I settled with Chrome.

b) kakuyomu is by KADOKAWA and a bit more on the commercial side of things when compared to Narou. No need to think too much about it, since this story is not paywalled like others.

c) account creation is free and fairly simple - I use it for following Zilbagias the Demon Prince: How the Seventh Prince Brought Down the Kingdom and enjoy an email notification whenever there is something new. Instead of afterwards you can read diary entries of the authors which is nice and give many current insights.

d) when on the reading page (2nd & 3rd screenshot) the aA and the hamburger menu in the upper right are for adjusting text size, background and navigating through the chapters

I also recommend these
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh?pli=1

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone

e) regarding the translation to be aware of things like

• Japanese is a contextual language and the automatic translation does not always get it right regarding the pronoun - like when you think back of the first time "Akira" got introduced into the west, most people think of it as a female name and such stuff

• sames goes regarding singular and plural

• sometimes the kanji which the translator has issues in embedding into the translation gets put at the end of the sentence - again: contextual thinking

• it can be harder with some expression/ slang / proverb stuff - but usually light novel / anime fans should already be aware of them. To give you an example: uso! is translated by context since it is not something someone would write but rather say (like "nani?!" - such is not used in regular speech, but rather "na n de su ka and alike) and it can create weird machine translation "lie!" "that's a lie" "you lie" while a good translator would web it into the sentence / context like "that cannot be!" (it is basically that expression which describes "what you say is fantastical/cannot be true" borderlining at "I do not believe you" depending on context)

Last but not least, I do not know about "novelupdate" or any translation group for such. The only translation group I have good experience with for good quality work is for I Got Caught Up in a Hero Summons, but the Other World Was at Peace!

On second look, they seem also offer a translation of the one we are talking about .

Which is perfect. Here, have a look
https://www.foxaholic.com/novel/im-the-eldest-son-of-a-poor-family-but-my-magical-talent-awakened-while-working-hard-for-my-family/volume-1-profitable-gathering-strategy-for-solo-players/chapter-1-go-to-the-dungeon-solo/

You can check the first two volumes with ease and without the need of an account.

While they do a great job with my favourite I am reluctant to give those groups money. On the one hand they do a very valuable job and I am convinced it is thanks to such groups that the popularity is actually that high for all Japanese media. On the other hand, if they ask too much for it, it is no longer a donation but a paid service. Personally I recommend not to subscribe to such a paid service which act in a grey area. Donations I support, though.

Interesting for you to know: the machine translation nowadays caught up.

As in: putting aside the hiccups with the contextual parts of a text, Google Translate suffices to get almost fan translation quality (if I am nice and do not suspect them to use machine translations). But neither, whether machine translation nor fan translation can hold up with professional translation.

Though there are many things I am unhappy with nowadays professional translation (like mentioned in another thread: why has onigiri to be written as rice balls, while ramen is absolutely okay - that makes no sense! or why not straight away just use itadakimasu instead of using bon apétit - that is not a Japanese to English translation but just exchanging one foreign phrase with another which does not even fit the actual meaning) But that is clearly another story...

[Serah]

Machine Translation
Isshiki Itsuki has three younger sisters and two younger brothers.
With no parents, Itsuki is the only one who can support his family, having only just graduated from middle school.

In order to support his family, he chooses to enter the dungeon.
He desires an ordinary life.

However, rumors of his extraordinary talent gradually spread -

"I'll do anything if it means I can make money,"

Itsuki says, venturing into the depths of the dungeon for the sake of his family.

"Isn't there something strange about his magic?"

Fan Translation
Itsuki Isshiki has three younger sisters and two younger brothers. With no parents around, the only one who can support the family is Itsuki, who graduated from middle school.

To provide for his family, he chose to venture into dungeons. All he wants is a normal, peaceful life. However, his extraordinary talent gradually starts to spread as a rumor.

“I’ll do anything if it earns me money.”

For the sake of his family, Itsuki steps into the depths of the dungeon.

“Hey, isn’t his magic kind of weird?”

[GeorgeMTO]

@unknownmat said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

A big brother/father figure doesn't build a harem, especially not with those he's responsible for. That's just gross and not at all what I'm interested in.

Two separate groups. There's the wives candidates, and the 'little girl gang'. All are "found family", but there's no one who's a member of both groups (other than a couple of early jokes about letting a vampire suck your blood being a marriage).

[unknownmat]

@Serah said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

Thank you so much for all the info. You've just about written a wiki-how-to for handling MTLs. It's good stuff, but I feel a bit bad that it will only be seen by a few people in this remote corner of the internet.

With the Foxaholic translation, it looks like I can at least get started with the series, and once I'm hooked the MTL should keep me going.

FWIW, I use Google Translate and Firefox (and ublock as well as the normal bevy of ad-blocking/privacy-protecting plugins). I stopped using Chrome due to Google's poor privacy practices. Firefox has a beta translation feature, but it produces terrible results. I won't say that Google translate is at human levels yet, but the results are definitely much better than anything else I've tried.

While they do a great job with my favourite I am reluctant to give those groups money. On the one hand they do a very valuable job and I am convinced it is thanks to such groups that the popularity is actually that high for all Japanese media. On the other hand, if they ask too much for it, it is no longer a donation but a paid service. Personally I recommend not to subscribe to such a paid service which act in a grey area. Donations I support, though.

Yeah. I'm also pretty ambivalent about how to deal with such groups. In general, things cost money, and I prefer to pay for services that I consume. But these groups exist in a moral grey area. They are clearly violating copyright, so I don't want to support them. But they are providing a legitimate service that I find useful, so I feel like I should compensate them. I'd feel a bit better if these groups shared their proceeds with the original authors, but I'm pretty sure they do not. But there's a good chance that many such works will never make it to our shores or may not even get published at all. So I'm not really hurting anyone by supporting them, since there was never any chance of me acquiring a legitimate version, and they're really doing something quite good by helping to expose otherwise obscure works to wider audiences. etc. etc. etc. And I go around in circles.

In the end, I won't claim to be a particularly moral actor. I mostly just favor my own convenience and enjoyment - so whatever makes these works available to me the quickest and easiest.

[unknownmat]

@GeorgeMTO said in A New Type Of Self-Insert Wish Fulfillment:

Two separate groups. There's the wives candidates, and the 'little girl gang'. All are "found family", but there's no one who's a member of both groups (other than a couple of early jokes about letting a vampire suck your blood being a marriage).

Thanks for clarifying. While that does at least push the work out of revulsion territory, I'm just not a fan of harems, so it's still a pass for me.

[Serah]

@unknownmat addressing your privacy worries use this
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable

The version of Chrome which works without installation. Extensions can be installed.

Unpack

Use

When done you can delete the whole app folder an gone it is. Rinse and repeat.

Not sure if Firefly using Google translate yields the same results as Chrome. Hence the mention of my experiences with using Brave which is supposed to be much better with privacy. Otherwise I would have recommend TOR if the browser does not matter with the translation.

[wanderer_1204]

My 2 cents about machine translation.. I binged on Dahlia WN and Hannelore 5th year with google translate for a few chapters. Once I discovered chatGPT, I can never go back to Google translate. It is clunky and some times it totally spoils the immersion. ChatGPT does hallucinate sometimes which I solved by writing an explicit prompt to translate as is and not add anything.
Thanks to @Serah 's tip about free 1 year perplexity membership for paypal users, I have an overall much better translation experience of Japanese WN and it is almost eerily close to human translations. I even re-read some of the chapters I had read before in said WNs.
I would still support the licensed translators and the original author by subscribing to JNC and buying ebooks of my favourite series. But, it is great to catch up on series I love and not really wait for LNs and subsequently their translations to be published especially when the WN is much ahead than even Japanese LNs like in the case of Dahlia.

P.S. Link to OP regarding Perplexity AI: https://forums.j-novel.club/post/410462

[Serah]

@wanderer_1204 that is a brilliant idea to combine the free 12 months trial with machine translation WNs!

I have mentioned AI in form of DeepL above just briefly, since those AI translations are superior - but they can be quite costly depending on the volume of AI credits available.

Google Translate - weirdly enough - allows limitless translations at no cost. But it naturally cannot hold up to AI translation.