Demon Venerable Also Wants to Know vol.1 (Haitang Books) Impressions
Oh, I have a few things to say about this one. Some good, some bad. Long post ahead. (If you haven't got the option to shorten long posts turned on in dashboard settings, then sucks to be you I guess.)
Let's start with my assessment of the book as a physical product.
The cover itself is quite moody & minimalist, with a muted colour palette (& probably other descriptors beginning with 'm'). The people who judge covers by how much visual clutter gets added in presumably hate it, but I love it. Oh & the little star inside the 'D' is a nice touch.
The printed edges (pre-order exclusive) are really charming.
The spine is... ugh. This one is kind of on me, I suppose, as it was described as "bare spine binding" & had a mockup of how it would look that showed it, but somehow I naively assumed it would look better than this IRL. It looks so shabby & amateurish! I don't get why they didn't have that fabric strip go all the way down the spine? It's such a weird choice. Like I said, I was warned, but... seriously?
The pages feel nice quality, but I'm not a paper nerd so I can't say anything more than yeah the pages are fine.
I love the interior illustrations. There are only a couple of full page illustrations, but they're really good. And there are illustrated character bios inside the front & back covers. And each chapter heading features a drawing of Wenren E putting on a little puppet show of something in the chapter, which are very cute & funny. The Contents page says 'Yin Hanjiang's Private Collection' (yes, with the strikethrough) as if these are all memories YHJ is sharing, which is a nice touch.
There are some quality issues here though. The page corner decorations look like weird smudges. I actually freaked out a moment thinking the book had sustained water damage, then realised it couldn't have been as if that were the case then the page edges would be damaged too.
(And yes, this is the case on every page. I only took 2 photos to show odd & even numbered pages, but this is consistent throughout the book.)
This seems to be a printing error, rather than a deliberate (weird) choice, as the preview shows an inky smudge with some characters, & bamboo below. Low quality but you can still make it out.
I don't understand how this passed quality control.
The character bios could also have used some proofreading. I know stars are important, but if you've got the word 'star' 4 times in the same sentence in Wenren E's bio, it comes off a bit repetitive & clunky. (I admit this one is a bit nitpicky, but it does bother me.)
Qiu Congxue, on the other hand, has a few words missing. Either nobody even glanced at this, or it's meant to be a 'fill in the blanks' game.
Presentation assessment: 8/10. There's so many nice little touches (incorporating a star into the title alone suggests there was actual thought put into the title beyond picking a font that looked nice), & the art is great throughout. But that spine is a swing & a miss for me & those page corners are awful.
OK, onto the freebies. I got the retailer edition, because the bundle was ÂŁ11 more expensive & the only thing extra was a standee so nah.
The shikishi board is nice. Apparently these things are used for autograph collecting or something? I don't see the point myself & would rather have a poster, but it's something to display I suppose, & like I said above, I love the cover. It's the same size as the book itself, for reference.
The sticker set is cute, but I was expecting something a little bigger. I was going to say they're the size of a CD inlay, but then I pulled out a CD for comparison & it turned out I was being a little generous. Just by a few millimetres, but still. I don't get why they couldn't just give a proper sticker set.
The bookmarks. Would've preferred something with an illustration, but eh they're bookmarks & they do their job. ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Apparently there's a fake newspaper thing offered on Haitang's official store Nebelland, but I didn't order from there so don't have that. (BTW, I've seen people complaining about what a mess that store is, apparently not realising there are other stockists. Check the 'Partners' section on the main Haitang site. I ordered from Travelling Man.)
Freebies rating: 3.6. Not great, not terrible.
Okay, onto the text, which I know plenty of people were wary about, as Haitang have had some... issues before. And Mourningcrow's translation is excellent, so the bar was high.
Disclaimer: I do not speak Chinese. My assessment of any cnovel's translation quality is purely based on whether or not it is coherent & well-written, & if I've previously read a different translation & spot some differences in the text, I do my best to triangulate what the original meaning might be, & figure out which one conveyed the sentiment better.
With that out of the way...
Holy shit it's actually good! Well, mostly. There are definitely some errors. But I'd heard about Haitang's previous translations, so I set my expectations low & was pleasantly surprised.
Here are all the errors I spotted:
Page 18: A missing full stop. Fortunately at the end of a paragraph so there's no awkward-to-parse frankensentence.
Page 18: "It was precisely the antagonistic nature of her attachment to He Wenzhao that Baili Qingmiao for the first time, forgave He Wenzhao for having a tryst with another woman." There's definitely a 'because of' missing after 'precisely'. Also I'd add a comma after BQM's name, but then again, I'm fairly liberal with my use of commas, so that might just be my bias talking.
Page 72: "With a vengeful heart, he hid inside a stillborn baby & bade his time." Bided. It's bided. Weirdly, even though that's a regular verb conjugation, it sounds wrong. Meanwhile there's a similar sounding word like 'bade' (a past tense form of 'bid', as in 'he bade me farewell').
Page 121: "Since then, the Greedy Wolf [star] shined bright." Some googling revealed that 'shined' is apparently considered acceptable, particularly in American English. But with all due respect those people are wrong.
Page 137: "Senioer, how could you think like that?" Let's dial back on the vowels a bit, hmm?
Page 149: "Everyone, recite the Heart-Purifying and focus on the formation." Missing a word, & two pages later it's referred to as the 'Heart-Clearing Mantra'.
Page 172: "Neither Shu Yanyan's spider lilies nor Qiu Congxue's vengeful ghosts could hold a finger to it." Candle. It's candle. I tried googling to see if this is some American English phrase, but nothing came up, so you guys are off the hook for this one.
Page 213: "I'm sure there's nothing requiring our immediate affection at the sect." Are you sure that's the word you meant to use?
Page 250: "Wenren E suspected that the demonic had his eye on the divinity that resided within He Wenzhao." This should be 'demon'.
These things are more editing issues than anything. The standard of English is otherwise excellent, so these are clearly instances of brainfarting & not a reflection on the translator's writing skill, but there are 3 proofreaders credited so there is no excuse. (Plus an editor, two translation editors, & a translation checker, who were all reading through the text too.)
As far as translation issues go:
The Amethyst Spirit Pavillion (translated as Violet Spirit Pavillion in the fantranslation) is referred to as the Ziling Spirit Pavillion on one occasion, which I'm guessing is the pinyin form. Which is an annoying lack of consistency. I can forgive that in an unofficial translation where it's one person who maybe forgot which form they went with previously, but it's annoying in something official.
There's a substance in the book called lingzhi, with the ability to heal & regrow flesh, to the point of being able to fully flesh out (literally) a character who is a skeleton from the neck down. There's no real context given for what the stuff is so people who've never read the fantranslation will have no frame of reference to what it is. (It's mushroom.) It's so weird because given the similarities in premise & tone, there's sure to be significant overlap between the readership for this & SVSSS, so growing bodies from mushrooms is a familiar concept. (And if a danmei newbie freaks out at the idea of flesh mushrooms then it's probably for the best that they quit now before they get into the really wild stuff.)
Qiankun pouch is translated as Cosmos Bag. Normally I'm all in favour of English over pinyin, unless the translation is clunky, but I don't know how to feel about this one. I'm just too used to the other way.
Text rating: 8/10. Wait, but I just went on & on bitching. Yeah, I do that. Honestly most of these are more quibbles than anything. The overall standard of English is good, & the translation flows very smoothly. I actually prefer it to the fantranslation (& I enjoyed that, so no slight meant to Mourningcrow). It's just the proofreaders did not do their job properly. Assigning a numerical value is hard. 7 feels too low somehow, considering how good writing is, which only highlights the mistakes that showed up. There's no reason this shouldn't have earned a 10 from me, but here we are.
For the sake of fairness & a more representative sample, here are a few extracts, compared to the same passages from the unofficial translation. (Please note, any typos from the official translation are my own. I'm typing them out manually, & it's late & I want to get this post up for the sake of anyone who hasn't received theirs yet, as the preorder window for volume 2 ends on June 1st.)
The opening (unofficial):
In the main hall of the Xuanyuan Sect, the Demonic Sovereign Wenren Ă had already been in secluded meditation for seven days, door shut tight behind him, the food and drink sent daily by his subordinates untouched. Who knew what profound cultivation technique he had comprehended?
Altar Master Yuan, who managed the main hall, felt quite troubled. The Venerable Lord suddenly entered seclusion without any orders to his subordinates, and no one knew when he would emerge. If heâd really enlightened to a new technique or ascended in realm⌠shouldnât a celebration be prepared?
It had been seven days since Demon Venerable Wenren E secluded himself in the Profound Abyss Sect. The door to his room remained firmly sealed, with provisions brought by his subordinates left untouched. One could only wonder what profound new technique he had mastered now. As the one in charge of affairs at the sect headquarters, Altar Master Yuan found himself in a difficult position. The Venerable Lord had entered seclusion without so much as a word beforehand. Uncertain of when he might return, or whether he had grasped new cultivation techniques or made any improvements to his realm, Altar Master Yuan was left with a difficult decision: whether he should prepare for a celebration, or not.
EDIT: I originally typed out 'alter' instead of 'altar'. This was entirely a result of my sleep-deprived brain & not present in the actual text. I'm honestly amazed there weren't more mistakes tbh considering how absolutely knackered I was. I've corrected it now, but to make things clear for anyone who saw this post pre-correction, 'altar' was used throughout the book.
The moon-gifting (unofficial):
Wenren Ă looked down and saw the moon reflected in that handful of water which Yin Hanjiang held up with his spiritual energy. He was presenting a tiny image of the moon in his hands.
This had been Yin Hanjiangâs favorite game in his short, lonely childhood.
Wenren Ă gazed at the Moon-Fishing Pool and seemed to see a little child, picking up handfuls of water again and again under the full moon, trying to catch the ever-elusive moonlight.
He reached out a hand and kept the water together using his spiritual energy. From his sleeve, he produced a glazed glass vase and poured the water inside.
âThis Venerable accepts your moonlight.â
Wenren E looked down to see the pool of water in Yin Hanjiang's hands, held together with his qi. It reflected the full moon above, as if he was presenting a small moon in the water to Wenren E. This was the most joyful game of Yin Hanjiang's otherwise short and lonely childhood. Wenren E looked toward the Lake of Fetching Moon, imagining a small child under the moon's glow, scooping up water again and again to catch its elusive light. He reached out and exerted his true qi to protect the handful of water. Taking out a cup from his Cosmic Storage, he transferred the water into it.
"I will keep this full moon," Wenren E declared.
So there you go. I'm going to bed now & will probably find this post riddled with typos when I wake up tomorrow, but in my defence I am not getting paid for this, & there's only one of me.
