Editing User talk:LiTTleDRAgo (section)

=====Mosswind's Edit=====
Hey, Littledrago!
I'd like to be an editor of this project; I was looking through Volume one and Two and was noticing a lot of room for some editing. I've put up changes to part 7 of chapter five of Vol 1 and parts one and two of Chapter 1 of the Second volume as examples of my work. Thanks for the feedback ahead of time ^_^.
--[[User:Mosswind|Mosswind]] ([[User talk:Mosswind|talk]]) 08:57, 22 December 2013 (CST)

:I understand that wish, but the problem is that sometimes when you keep the original LN meanings, they are completely meaningless in English or confuse the reader. It is my view that the LN should be preserved in most cases, but if it doesn't make sense in English, it should be looked at at least. For example, "The night scene from the east gave the sky a purplish glow". What is a night scene? Is it some kind of background card for a play? Lol. But I do understand your wish to preserve the LN. ^_^ I'll hold off on editing anything else until my work is TLC'ed. I'd like to see what stays and what gets eliminated to better understand how I should edit the LN. THanks.
--[[User:Mosswind|Mosswind]] ([[User talk:Mosswind|talk]]) 13:15, 22 December 2013 (CST)

Drago, 

I don't really understand in what way I have changed the source material in Vol 6 Chapter 2. Instead of blanket undoing the entirety of my edits to LH 6.2, you should at least give me the chance to sit down with you and explain each and every one of my changes. This blanket undoing of edits is why many people I talk to on here are afraid to edit: either they think it will be a waste of time OR they feel like their contributions mean nothing to the community as a whole.

Second, I will say this to you and to every project manager on Baka-Tsuki...there is a reason why when a novel is translated into English in a English publishing house that they apply for the creative rights of the material in question. The reason they do this is so that they can make the novel make the most sense in English as possible. We are doing the same thing here. We are trying to make English novels out of Japanese novels.

For example, adding speaking he said and she saids into the text. In Japanese, certain parts of speech are used to inform the reader who is talking; I'm sure I don't need to explain it to you, but for other people who may read this: writing boku is going to be (predominantly) male. Watashi will be used by all genders, but its predominant use is for females. In English, we have no such parts of speech. We say "'blah blah blah', he said" when we need to make a determination of who is talking. Too many times in LN's on this site, I have found myself confused as to who is talking. Japanese novels have no problem in stringing 4 - 6 spoken lines one after another. However, in English, this is unacceptable.

Adding a "he said" or something of the like is NOT a change of the source material. Adding descriptors or adjectives are NOT changes of the source material. Changing a word to a word that makes more sense in English is NOT a change of the source material. Making the LN readable in English is the goal of this website. I understand that you guys want to keep the LN's as close to the source material as possible, but what you are doing is stifling the chance for people to read this material and to edit this material to make it better. I have pointed people to here; my aquaintances, friends and others, and about two-thirds of the people I refer this website to tell me that it is a great website to visit, but the LNs are hard to read because they are so choppy and they don't flow well. They get confused with run-on sentences, multiple speaking parts contained in one sentence, no speak-descriptors...the list goes on and on...I feel that it is a personal failure on my part and a failure of the community to make material readable. --[[User:Mosswind|Mosswind]] ([[User talk:Mosswind|talk]]) 13:05, 24 February 2014 (CST)

:One more thing. When writing the inner thoughts of people, you italicize or keep the words normal, not set it off in parentheses. I understand it's parenthesized in the source text, but you have to set it off as if someone is speaking aloud in English. 

:You have this sentence in 6.2:

:Raynesia shook her head like a trembling rabbit. (Wrong move) Akatsuki thought. Maryele replied "Don't worry! Our seamstress tailored it perfectly for you!" as she moved in to capture Raynesia. 

:If one was trying to make this sentence work for an English audience, it should be...

:Raynesia shook her head like a trembling rabbit. 

:''Wrong move'', Akatsuki thought. (OR Wrong move, Akatsuki thought.)

:"Don't worry! Our seamstress tailored it perfectly for you!" Maryele replied as she moved in to capture Raynesia. 

:This is NOT changing the source material, rather it is making the source material more readable for an English audience. By adding sentence breaks and moving the 'Maryele replied' to after the comment (my only change in the sentence other than the italicization), I have made this an English novel-worthy sentence that still adheres to the writing style of the original author. It is changes like these that you undid when you did your blanket removal of my changes. If you had taken the chance to ask me about them before reverting them, then maybe I could have explained why these changes are worthy. I await your reply. --[[User:Mosswind|Mosswind]] ([[User talk:Mosswind|talk]]) 13:14, 24 February 2014 (CST)