After the long translation...

Hey, this is not part of EKT, just another afterword on a whim.

Yes, this is it. My long journey started in October 2016, when I resigned and was preparing to go to NZ. I was lazy and couldn't be bothered to practice English speaking, so I chose to indulge in translating the novel I had written a long time ago. That was the start. And I didn't expect at all that the end of it would be this late. It was a long, long journey. Not that I've worked on it fully during those 2 years, but still.

Why the hell have I done this? Well, to be honest I don't know. It might have been just a big waste of time, but at least my intention when I started was to improve my English. If I have to ask whether I've achieved that goal or not, well, just a bit, but still not sure if it was through this novel. Haha, now I'm being too negative, but when I went all the way back up to the beginning of this novel and read it again, I was like 'who the hell wrote this crappy one?' LOL so I guess I've improved indeed. At least in terms of writing.

The most difficult part to translate in this novel was the sword fighting scenes. I struggled for hours to figure out whether to use 'brandish', 'slash', 'wield', 'plunge', 'withdraw' or something like that whenever I had to describe them. Now I really hope that the words I used at least make sense. Other than that, it was also really hard work to keep the nuance of Korean sentences as I translated them. It was not just once when I thought I should have read old books such as Shakespeare, Ann Hathaway or even Bible to be able to copy those subtle differences well enough. There even have been some times when I stopped writing temporarily because I was not confident enough in translating certain things and thought I would be back after getting some insights from other novels. Not that I did it tho. (What on earth did you do?) Ah, Raiden's non-standard way of speaking was another pain in my butt. But no one to blame since I was the one who set that character. LOL

I will not keep this afterword long since I already rambled too much in the previous one, but just wanna say thanks to myself for being so patient enough to bring it all the way to the end. Apart from the days when I had been writing this in Korean, this English version contains so many precious memories as well. MOK café, where I went with my small note and was sitting for nearly 4 hours every day doing this with a cup of coffee, my foreign friends who I bothered a lot with tons of questions, my Lenovo laptop with which I wrote most parts of this novel, the soothing piano from Studio Ghibli that I listened to every time I worked on this, and et cetera. Just want to thank all the things I've been through on my way to put an end to this. I think I will be too busy, but wish I could visit here every now and then and feel the same way towards the whole thing as 'present me' looking at the first part, thinking 'Oh! What a terrible sentence'. At least that will mean my English has gone up to another level by that time. (Laugh)

30.11.2018, Clumsy Piano. The End.