The Code Lyoko Chronicles are a series of 4 sequel books originally released in Italian in around 2010. Set a short while after the season 4 finale, parts of book 1 recap a story similar to the TV series but with a number of small changes (there's no RTTP for example) while the gang uncover some new secrets in the Hermitage that set them on the path to finding Aelita's mother, Anthea. But XANA survived and is coming back for revenge, and the gang's investigation into the secret history of Franz Hopper, Project Carthage and the Supercomputer puts the men in black on their trail as well, not to mention the shady Green Phoenix organisation who funded Hopper's work.
The books were published in a number of languages, but not in English - so that's where the fans come in. As one of the first translation projects we did for CodeLyoko.fr, finishing in 2014, the original completed English release was pretty rough. 10 years later, armed with more translation sources, better resources and many years of translation experience, I decided to take another crack at it. And after many months of hard work and procrastination, I've produced a version 2.0 that I'm pretty happy with.
Links and notes on the various changes under the cut!
New translations!
My co-translator Kelsey and I didn't have a lot of serious translation experience when we picked up where Rhys Davies left off in his English translation project, and we were definitely prone to making mistakes. And it didn't help that for books 3 and 4, a few things got lost somewhere in the process of the text being translated from Italian > Spanish > French > English. I revised our original translation and this time I referenced multiple sources to try and make sure I got the interpretation right. It won't be perfect, but it's definitely better than our original attempt!
The second half of book 2 was based on the official French version, which I discovered was slightly condensed and abridged to lower the page count. The new English translation expands the text to restore the parts that were omitted. I also changed the title from The Nameless City to The City with No Name - there was never an official English translation, but I did find a marketing document with the titles listed in English, and that was the only one that differed.
Here's a page comparison with a few changes, mostly minor, but one big change to the context of Odd and Ulrich's conversation. With my apologies to Kiwi for the original mistranslation.
New formatting!
I got better at formatting Word docs and realised I should have the text alignment set to justify. The books look a lot neater now!
Accessibility!
I added alt text descriptions to all the images, and the PDFs all have a proper table of contents now so you don't have to scroll to the end of the book to find the navigation.
(Note I don't have a lot of experience with detailed image descriptions and I haven't done much testing with a screen reader - feedback is welcome from people who know more about it!)
New scans!
The centre of each book has several colour pages with images and text to supplement the story, and some of the original scans were quite small or had part of the image disappearing into the spine of the book. And the only way to fix it seemed to be to obtain physical copies of the books (probably in Spanish), pull the pages out and scan them flat. So I did. And I think they look great. (Black lines added to hide spoilers.)
My original intention was to upload these to CodeLyoko.fr, but I haven't been able to do that yet, so for now they'll just be available on Google Drive. This translation wouldn't have been possible if not for the other people on the fanslation team - not just my fellow translators, but also all the people who worked on scanning, formatting and editing. Special thanks also to Rhys Davies for kicking off the English translation. You can read more about the Chronicles and the fanslation project here on the website. (Yes I still need to revise the translation of those pages too. Someday.)
So yeah, it's taken a while, but I'm glad I can finally put out a better version of these books for people to discover. Enjoy!
Version 2.0 PDFs here! (Google Drive) ePub versions coming soon.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary: Her father is dead, but her mother might not be. Months after shutting down the supercomputer, Aelita decides to search for Anthea Schaeffer. In doing so, she unearths old secrets—and old enemies. Season 5/Chronicles rewrite.
X.A.N.A. stood and walked around the room, stopping at the kitchen door.
“Where are you going?” the young girl asked him, alarmed.
“I don’t know,” he responded quietly. “If you don’t want to help me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll find someone else to do it. The weapon of the First City is now in my hands, and I’m sure that the Green Phoenix will be more than happy to ally with me.”
That was all it took to make Aelita fall from her chair. She reached for the boy and tried to grab his arm.
“What are you talking about?! Stop! Please! Let’s talk about this!”
But all she grasped in her hands was a small plume of smoke.
chronicles did a nice job of portraying the awful relationship between ulrich and his parents with the whole “i have to phone call them today so they don’t get Actually Pissed and call me in the next few days and get Really Pissed when i don’t pick up” situation to which i am no stranger
but like dude, ulrich’s dad crying about lost memories and spoilers being on the opposite team as a traitor doesn’t even offer an explanation much less an apology for his abhorrent behavior towards both his son and his wife
i mean i did write a pretty intense argument on how having your memory forcibly erased even partially is not an ethical thing so fine you have some sympathy there but overall? yippy kai-yay mother of fuckers walter stern can go get vored by a kankrelat
(also it doesn’t sit well that a straight-a student gets roped in with a shady criminal organization, does it, angry white man mcgee)
