I completely agree about how difficult it is to force yourself to read when you want to be yelling that this is hard instead. Oddly enough, I have the opposite reaction language-wise: I like the long, complicated Japanese sentences because they often involve enough redundancy to clue me in if I'm interpreting badly, whereas I have problems misinterpreting short Chinese sentences and not realizing until half a page later that something doesn't make sense.
And, huh, interesting on the translation reaction! I'd argue that the way light novels handle dialogue is so very different from "good writing practices" in English that it's hard to reconcile, and dialogue sets the tone of the book for a lot of people. Which is not to say they don't mess up, of course! There's this weird (and obnoxious) attitude that English and Japanese/Chinese are so infinitely different that it's impossible to translate both faithfully and eloquently.
(I'm in Taiwan now, and I know there are used bookstores in my area; I just haven't found them yet. There's a lovely "new" bookstore just down the street, though. :D Are there any manhua that you'd recommend?)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 05:45 pm (UTC)I completely agree about how difficult it is to force yourself to read when you want to be yelling that this is hard instead. Oddly enough, I have the opposite reaction language-wise: I like the long, complicated Japanese sentences because they often involve enough redundancy to clue me in if I'm interpreting badly, whereas I have problems misinterpreting short Chinese sentences and not realizing until half a page later that something doesn't make sense.
And, huh, interesting on the translation reaction! I'd argue that the way light novels handle dialogue is so very different from "good writing practices" in English that it's hard to reconcile, and dialogue sets the tone of the book for a lot of people. Which is not to say they don't mess up, of course! There's this weird (and obnoxious) attitude that English and Japanese/Chinese are so infinitely different that it's impossible to translate both faithfully and eloquently.
(I'm in Taiwan now, and I know there are used bookstores in my area; I just haven't found them yet. There's a lovely "new" bookstore just down the street, though. :D Are there any manhua that you'd recommend?)