9S

[Krikit]

Okay, this is a proposal for a light novel series known as 9S, which stands for:
The Security System that Seals the Savage Science Smartly by its Supreme Sagacity and Strength

EDIT: Project Page is Created: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=9S
EDIT II: Project Page link can also be found in the teaser section on the Wiki.

Translator: Myself
Editor: Accepting Applicants
Supervisor: TBA

Story Synopsis:
The world of 9S is something like Type-moon's Tsukihime, and Metal Gear Solid, with plenty of Full Metal Panic, put together in a rather original way, I think. The story is set in an age of science, but not in too distant a future. The Mad Scientist, Crazed Genious or whatever you want to call him, Mineshima Yujiro, has dissapeared several years previous to the where the story begins. The inheritance he left behind, the technology and object he had created, were given the codename Legacy, and are highly sought after by government agencies and terrorists, for reasons both good, and...not so pleasant. One of these 'objects' he left behind, was his daughter, imparted with a mental calculating capacity that dwarfs supercomputers, combined with her physical body, which makes for a devastating combonation.

-Touma is an outcast member of an ancient family, who have refined their destructive impulses into a weapon. However because such a personality would not fit in society they developed a masking personality which hides their killing impulse. Touma awakened to his killing impulse due to training from his father years ago and struggles to suppress his other personality

-Mineshima Yu is the daughter of Mineshima Yujiro. Kept under constant surveillance by ADEM, an anti-terrorist force dedicated to keeping guard over 'Legacy,' she has never been outside since her father disappeared, and she was taken captive.

In Volume 1, Touma is the only one to escape during a terrorist attack, and is taken to ADEM's headquarters, and there meets Yu. ADEM forms a reconaissance mission, and the novel takes off. Touma struggles with his families bloodline, and the task he needs to complete, while Yu is simply thankful for the opportunity to see the outside world for the first time in over 10 years. Together it's a race against time to stop the terrorists, and regain control of the "Legacy," which is made more complicated when the leader of the opposition is...

A couple Screenshots:

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index ... ustrations

So far, I've got the prologue and part of the first chapter translated. Once I get the first chapter translated, I'll put it up on the wiki.

On the downside, I probably won't be translating PuiPui...but to me, this novel is eons better. It's not just a school story and a magic genie, and some magic and pretty people. It's a story. An Epic Story. At least that's what I think, but I'm only part of the way through Volume 2 ^_^

Hopefully you guys want to see this translated, and reflect those sentiments in the poll, please

That is all.

[Darklor]

If you already have some parts translated you could start it as a teaser - maybe this will generate some feedback for you...

[Enigma]

Sounds good from the summary, though I won't remember the true title, ever. I like it when my protagonists are psychopaths. Or really just any character. Can't provide too much feedback without actually reading or seeing images, though.

Anyway, since you seem like you're going to enjoy translating this, I'll be looking forward to this.

EDIT: Nevermind, I just can't see the illustrations normally. Nice artwork.

[Darklor]

This is the feed back thread for "9S" http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=9S

Please tell us what you think of it.

[Krikit]

Wow, I really like the support ^_^

I was expecting an "interesting" vote, instead of the #1 choice, because really...the prologue doesn't even begin to touch too deeply on the rest of what goes on during the novel.

Hope to see more comments, and a decently wide support, because that's all the consolation I get for doing this ^_^

[onizuka-gto]

hmm...I....I....I like it.


Has a Full Metal Panic vibe.

Enuff said!

Carry on.

:]

[dragonst]

Sounds interesting. I think I'll go grab the raws from some obscure corner of the web and start reading o_O

[Kadi]

Since you're interested in feedback, here you go:

First reaction was "AWESOME!!!11two". Heroine sounds amazing, protagonist seems useful as well, story not too dumb.

Read the prologue. Well. The trick was clear as hell, I wonder where those guys have their minds. Kishida and Date seem interesting, but still, it's honestly a bit of a letdown. Not surprising after the high expectations, though. The quality of the translation however is great. I can hardly believe you don't have an editor yet.

Well, after sleeping over it twice, some doubts surfaced, especially about Yu and Touma:

Yu: Too strong --> boring. Or opposition is randomly overpowered as well. And then the solutions are random/arbitrary? as well, "Deus ex Machina".
Touma: His personal issues might make him useless and unbearable most of the times. Happens often enough, unfortunately.
Other worry: Partially addressed with my doubts about Yu: bad storytelling. You start with a super-powerful gimmick, so the challenge presents something more powerful, and the solution is even more overpowering or totally arbitrary... is what I'm worried about here called storytelling? Well, doesn't matter, you should get what I mean ~~

Okay, that's all I can say for now, after just the prologue. You might be able to alleviate some of my doubts. I hope you can. And even if you can't, I hope my worries won't come true and I will have another great novel to read. I might even attempt it in Japanese, as long as I think it's worth it (or you are too slow ).


Regarding the editor-applications: Well, I'm not good enough. And not dedicated enough. Too lazy. And satisfactory communication with you would be impossible. So it's not really a job for me. Still, I might go over the text some time, change a may for might, leave a lot of comments and give you some ideas where to improve the text. As far as I can see it, it's not really necessary, though. As I said, it's beautiful already. And a lot of non-native speakers would even wonder where the mistakes were, if they can notice any improvement at all.


EDIT: ("Afterword" to editing the prologue)

Now, I did go ahead and went over the prologue with my editor's view. Since it's your project, I mostly commented and changed only minor stuff like typos. The comments are on pretty much anything I noticed, so it turned out to be a lot. Heck, the page-size increased by >60%, so take your time. I guess I should add that I edit by "feeling", so often my main argument comes down to sentences "feeling weird". In some cases that may be me being unfamiliar with complex/free English, but I hope you can still take it into consideration. I just hope you don't disregard them and just revert to the version before...

For overviews sake, I went over all the comments again and put them into their own line. Later, I commented on whole paragraphs, so there was no problem, but at the beginning I sometimes squeezed them in with the sentence they belong to, so there MIGHT be a comment in it's own line that refers only to the sentence before. Sorry for the inconvenience, after almost 4 hours I didn't bother checking every freaking comment.

Apart from that, want to stress that I don't want to force my ideas upon you in any way, although I didn't (always?) say so in the comments. They are just suggestions, although I do hope you follow most of them or improve the text even more with own solutions.

Feel free to delete any comment you've taken into account, because then, uselessly clutter the page... Good luck with the project and thanks for the effort so far, I guess. Now I need to go undercover before Eusth comes and kills me for cheating on him (by not editing UnH).

So far.

[Krikit]

@Kadi: I've looked through some of the edits, and generally they look good to me, if you want to go ahead an implement them? Really I don't have enough time to go back and fix edits, if I want to keep up with school work, and do the translation with any decent speed. Thanks though

to the rest, I say that 12% of chapter 1 is now uploaded, though it is about the length of the prologue. I'm thinking of around 5 updates per chapter, but we'll see how things go.

Anyway, you know where the teaser forum is, so if you have a comment, here or there is fine.

Happy Readings ^_^

[Kadi]

Damn, I knew this would happen. I guess I will do it for the prologue since I've already put so much thought into it. No promises for later stuff, since I'll be busy with my own studies and Utsuro No Hako Vol.4. Not to mention that I STILL need to finish UnH Vol 1+2. And go over all of UnH a second time. And... you get what I mean.

However, what really troubles me is that I cannot contact you to find out how you want the final product to be like (as final as it can get around here). And my editing style is rather... extensive, not to say rude towards you, so I'm a bit hesitant. And, on top of that, I'm no native speaker so what I do won't end up truly diverse and beautiful. I might end up changing correct English into something more boring. If you're fine with that (and Eusth lets me live long enough), just give the word and I'll give it a go from time to time. When I'm free and motivated. However, in that case I definitely want some way to contact you. E-Mail would be fine (just give me an address by PM), instant messaging is most of the time impossible to do efficiently due to time zones, after all.

*Off to start reading chap 1. And maybe write some comments. Let's see whether I can beat last time's 6k*

EDIT: Done editing Chap 1, 12%. Left 7 comments total, 3 short ones among them. Please check those (strg+F, search for Kadi), because I cannot do anything without input from you, or I need your consent for some major rephrasing I did. And just read through all the edits once in case I went too far.

EDIT: Done editing prologue. Implemented most of my comments, as you asked me to. Some stuff left. Mainly stuff I couldn't decide by myself, 1 or 2 instances where I had no idea (maybe I will do some of it some other day). As with chap 1, I hope I didn't go to far, I'd like some feedback on that. For the remaining comments: Please go over them once, many are just requesting your confirmation on what I did. Feel free to delete anything you don't disagree with. As always, comments are signed with "-Kadi".

Notes on the edits:
-I still don't have a grip on "cold-permeating" and "-permeated". Rephrase it? ^^
-tapping-issue remains (originally, the dude "struck the glass forcefully", later it's softened to tapping). Marked with comments.
-I especially want confirmation on how I handled the disposal-question and it's context.
-The scientist's order of calling Yu it and her is inconsistent. I should have marked all instances except for the beginning with comments. I know different people can call her differently, but Date uses both terms as well => incoherent => bad. Please check and decide.
-I differentiated between ability and skill. Skills can be learned, ability is by nature or at least predetermined. One instance might feel weird, so I marked it. Tell me what you think of the differentiation and how you want (me?) to deal with it in the future.

No more notes on my side. If anything else comes to mind regarding the edits, tell me.

EDIT3: Forgot this yesterday:: I changed Over Technology and Legacy to lowercase (to over-technology and legacy). They felt strange/didn't deserve being technical terms and uppercase or something. No change on Legacy Counter, though, of course. Is "legacy-crime prevention unit" correct English?

[Ways]

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG~~~~~~ THIS IS SOOOOOO GUILTY CROWN-ish >.< DAMNIT WOWOWOW~ definitely want more...yup -nods-nods-

[reimark24]

can't wait for the complete work

[Darklor]

Uhm, that could be a problem...

[Rohan123]

It wasn't anything exceptional but was a bit interesting. Will read if it starts being TL'd.