User:EnigmaticAxiom

About Myself

I enjoy reading LNs when I have the chance, and I prefer fantasy-type series over the romance and slice-of-life types, mainly because there are too many harem elements otherwise. When I'm not reading LNs here, I read through light novels, first with a dictionary/wiktionary to learn kanji, then with a machine translation so I can actually make progress. Any "translation" you see under my name is going to be a machine translation, even if I put the effort to translate with a dictionary, since I am absolutely confident my skill is currently below a machine translation. Below are some of the series I have invested time in or plan to do so.

Machine Conversions

I'm getting this question more than I expected, so I'll put what I do up here (roughly).
Preparation
1. Find raw text or convert raw images to text. ABBYY FineReader does well for the image to text conversion.
2. Insert any line/page breaks that might be missing. I match this up with the raw novels so it's easy to find any mistakes I might notice in the future.
3. Change any common terminology/name to English with Find/Replace. It just makes things easier.

Conversion
Program: Translator Aggregator w/ Atlas, Google, and Excite always running. I will use other free machines (i.e. Bing/Babelfish) if I need them.

Process: Convert by line (i.e. block of text)
Convert by sentence if conversion by line is difficult
Convert by fragment if conversion by sentence is difficult
Mark anything I find difficult to understand, poorly converted, or difficult to convert
Read the converted chapter to check for inconsistencies (i.e. lines which were poorly converted, or re-converting if more information was derived later in the chapter/book
Read the converted novel for a general English edit.

Pacing: 2-3 pages/hr (Personal Translation followed by Machine Conversion), 5-20 pages/hr (Machine Conversion only, depending on the complexity of the novel)

As a side note, I am currently not doing any of the above. If I'm reading it, I'm reading it with a dictionary in one hand and Dover's in the other. I also use Denshi Jisho's online dictionary. Due to this, I am not doing Machine Conversions anymore.

Madan no Ou to Vanadis

Volume 01: Machine Translation Complete
Volume 02: Machine Translation Complete
Volume 03: Machine Translation Complete
Volume 04: Machine Translation Complete
Volume 05: Machine Translation Complete
Volume 06: Supporting the current translators
Volume 07: Supporting the current translators
I doubt I'll release anything more on this series unless I'm in the mood, and since I've gotten a rudimentary understanding of the language, it's become much easier for me to explore other LNs that haven't really had any discussion regarding translation or haven't shown any signs of being touched. As such, I'm getting side tracked from this series.

Shissou Suru Shisunki no Parabellum

Volume 01: Machine/Personal Translation Complete
Volume 02-07: May or may not read.

Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei

Heavily invested in this series. Mainly checking portions/terminology/names that I feel may be mistranslated or oddly worded, using the web novel as a reference as to where things might seem off. Support Dreyakis and Seitsuki for their hard work!

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desuyo

Volume 01-02: Read
Volume 03: Slowly reading
Volume 04-08: Supporting the current translators
Call me a bandwagon hopper, though I started reading when I found out it would be an anime and not after it was made into one. I don't think I'll be reading Volumes 4-8 for a while.

Gakusen Toshi Asterisk

Volume 01: Read
Volume 02-03: Supporting the current translators Volume 1 didn't strike me as great, so I'm probably not touching this one too much.