Hakushaku to Yousei Volume 13 Chapter 4

Hey everyone, so I have some good news and bad news.

BAD news

We all want to continue this project as much as you all do, (possibly more since we put a lot of time in this) and finish translating the series. Even if you aren’t fluent in either Chinese or Japanese, or can only help in the short-term, you can help us machine-translate. So we’re recruiting once again! Please refer to our page for more details on the roles needed. We will provide you all the help and support you need, so you’ll be able to help us, for any of the positions. As you can see, it’s truly only by having members or people helping us in translating who keep the project alive.

Now that's out of way, I just wanted to let you all know, the mobile version of the site has now been fixed!

The best news? 500 likes on Facebook! Oh but here’s something even more amazing. Hidden from public, at the bottom of every post on our Facebook page, is an indication of how many people have seen each post. On average, we’d have around 450-500 people who’ve seen our chapter updates and the highest we’ve had was around 770 for v13 ch.2. Now for the previous post, we had 1,800 people who’ve seen our post. How crazy is that? o(≧∇≦o) I don’t know where 1,300 or so people have come from but thank you so much all of you! <3 Even before the number grew so large, it was exciting having already seen so much anticipation from the comments and feedback from everyone. Please do continue reading from our site and I hope that at least some of you may be willing to help us out in translating, now that we’ve grown so much. :) 

And without further ado we have FOUR drama CD tracks to commemorate this milestone! :D For those wondering what happened to Nico, Edgar and Raven after the Changeling! Part 2 track, this is it! You can start listening to part 3  and continue on. And if you haven't done so already, please listen to part 1 and 2 via the youtube link on our  page. 

​Besides concerning over the future of the site, it’s also good to look back at how far we’ve gone through. Last month was our 2 year anniversary since the inception of this site. For new readers who've just discovered us, this is a good read to learn about how it all happened. Posting this on behalf of our other admin, Vicky, here's what she has to say about it:

" Our Daydream Translations story

Hi, I’m Vicky and we’re Daydream Translations! Ashe, who was the founder and originally the only member of this group, began this site around early 2015. This was a little over a year after Nayla stopped releasing chapters. So due to her love for the series, this site was created by Ashe to continue Nalya’s translations. Translating in itself takes a lot of time and energy, and so Ashe was only able to release a few chapters before she discontinued (due to school and whatnot). Because she couldn’t finish translating, she recruited me not long after :)

I joined later that summer of 2015. Neither of us were fluent in Japanese, and so Chinese raws were initially used for translations, whichhhh we also weren’t fluent in. So just to clarify, I DO NOT know any Japanese or Chinese. Everything I’ve translated was through machine-translations. Because I really love this series, I wanted to be able to read it even though I couldn’t understand it and I know there are many other fans who felt the same way. That is why I decided to help Ashe after she announced her decision to stop translating. Despite not being a true translator, I still wanted to read all of Hakushaku to Yousei.

Ashe allowed me to take over the site, and since then, I had recruited others who felt the same as I did. Therefore, I want to make it known that most of us are NOT fluent in Japanese and/or Chinese. We are faithful fans and avid readers of the series like you guys, and we love it enough to try and see it to the end :)

Point being, we do these translations because we truly enjoy these books. So despite it being difficult and sometimes troublesome to do, even if we don’t understand the raws, we try our best to translate the novels in all its great glory. It may not be as accurate, but every chapter was done due to all the hard work of our members. Translating isn’t easy, but it’s certainly not easy to machine-translate a whole series either. (In fact, it takes a lot longer to machine translate compared to translating.) It takes a lot of time and energy and dedication in order to complete each chapter, and we have had many members come and go since I’ve been in this group. But regardless, the help we did gain was invaluable, big or small, and the chapters were always a great read!

So, I want to say that you guys shouldn’t be afraid to help us if you truly want to :) Every little bit helps. I myself am an average reader and I had never translated before I joined. Not to mention, I know nothing about Japanese or Chinese. So you can’t get any worse than me and yet this group has grown considerably with just that alone! If you do wish to help, feel free to let us know :DD

We have gained many fans since this site was made, highly improved our translations, found a few actual translators ourselves and even delved into translating Japanese raws, drama CDs, basically gaining many things! Most of us are still in school and have work/family-related matters that keep us busy or away from translations. I myself have been quite busy lately, finishing up school and juggling work as well. Therefore, Monica has done a great job with handling the site and the group while I’ve been away. Despite being busy herself, she contributed so much to the group and the series since she joined early 2016 ^^

Of course, there are other members I’d like to thank for their help as well! Rachel who’s been a very active member in the group for a year now also, and other MTs (machine translators) who have contributed since this site began. (This includes those who are no longer active in the group now.)

(Ashe, Alexia, Shyza, Mary, Giliath, Celine, Phoebe, Stephanie, Naomi, CC, Pii-chan, Doris, columbin3, Tiff, Lita, Rys.)

So translating is something we do in our free time and there’s a lot that goes into it before we release each chapter as well. But undoubtedly, I’m happy to see how far we’ve gotten. I’m thankful for all our fans especially those who have been supporting us from the beginning! Please do continue to support us and I hope we all can finish this series together :) "

And so there you have it, this is what Daydream Translations is about. I also want to also thank those in the past who expressed an interest in helping us out, or having boldly attempted machine-translating. Although people have come and gone from our team, (which is normal and understandable), I appreciated all the help that they have given us. 

Additionally, with the team pretty much consisting of non-fluent speakers, I do believe that by not having read the whole series, it motivates us a lot in translating the chapters. We do know bits and pieces of things that happen further on in the novels, but ultimately we are very much like all of you who come to read and enjoy HTY on our site. 

Interestingly, our methods of translating are probably very different and a lot more time consuming than how many others groups do it. For those who don't know, it does NOT take a month to have a chapter translated. Far from that. To put it basically, the chapters are first machine-translated from Chinese, then proofread for meaning and accuracy by a dictionary-assisted translator, then finally the translations are compared to the Japanese text. As for students learning either Chinese or Japanese, we only use dictionaries, while applying our knowledge of grammar when translating and proofreading. And of course, we have at least one Chinese or Japanese translator helping us whenever possible. This is why, v13 took around 8 months to complete. We always try to stay ahead in our translations, in order for each of them to be consistently released every month on time. As you can see, we do have a lot of passion for HTY in that we try to translate as accurately as possible, despite limitations.

​So I guess to summarize why and what motivates us in translating:

(If this clear illustration won't make you help us translate, then I don't know what will.) 

Chapter end