The Saddest Smile in the World
THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS AND IT'S INTENDED TO TALK ABOUT THEM. IF YOU HAVENT READ THE NOVEL WE ADVISE YOU TO LEAVE AND COME BACK ONCE YOU'RE DONE READING!!
The Idea of this entry is to give the team thoughts about the product, in two parts, the first one in a technical aspect intended for other aspiring translators or people interested in that side of translation! After that is spoiler talk, just the team general feelings about the product.
Translator Side
The first →Quantize_ novel, In an engine that I had never used before, LiveMaker, an old system that has quite a few limitations, as you may have noticed from certain graphical glitches here and there. But, hopefully after you finish the story you'll agree with me, this story was worth it. The tools created for this engine helped me immensely: pylivemaker and its documentation made this process much easier and allowed us to move the project forward smoothly.
I adapted more in this work and I liked the final result. However, there were some difficult moments, the story is intricate and weighty, AND THE SCRIPT WASN'T HELPING EITHER! I'm not sure if it's the script, or how the tool handled it, but the file I had to translate was completely disorganized, from a powerful scene with Miu to Shige-san making dumb jokes. It made the translation a bit more difficult.
In the end I liked the story so much that I finished it pretty quickly, a project like this would normally take a bit longer but I wanted to share this story no matter what. But now I'm a bit burned out, so I'll take a few days before starting the next project, the second →Quantize_ novel, Rabbit Heart. It's a short one, might release it this month
Thoughts Side
The absurdism, the central theme of the novel, is something I was not very familiar with before starting the project. But these are issues that we will all have to face at some point, whether during difficult times or not. The focus of the story is on the dichotomy of Gaku and Miu. People with two different paths in their lives and perhaps, with a different value of their lives, Why are people giving their all not rewarded and maybe even punished, for no reason.
Then there is the addiction, I feel it was portrayed well, the joy of winning wiping away all the pent up frustration and making the characters feel that they are special that they can keep winning, that they won't be swallowed up by the void. But that never happens.
Something I would have liked to see, is the flipside, it might have been too blatant or too tasteless, but how about having another person, a third person in Shige and Gaku's group, a person who wins more than he loses, and who lives only for this and never changes, comparing it to Miu's fate, I feel it would have shown a little more the absurdity of the world and that not everything is happy endings. But hey, it might just be me, showing my negativism....
And the central theme, the meaning of life, the reason of it. This will be very personal for each one of you, and I hope this story will make you at least think (if you haven't done it yet) about this topic. There are many paths in this life, and it is important to choose something we like that will help us to keep on moving forward. Look at me for example, I really like translating these stories, even if it doesn't lead to anything professionally (hopefully not) I wouldn't regret doing this either way, because I like it and that, for some people, is enough.