This graphic novel project is part a type of new media, a pioneering effort by a handful of creators in search of a new medium for presenting art, story, voice, and music. A pool of talents was gathered for an old-fashioned romantic adventure with elements of Arabian Nights, Cinderella, and the Shangri-la myth. The story depicts a romantic adventure that spans modern-day New York City and the ancient, fictional country of Gao in China. In the midst of modern and old, fiction and non-fiction, West and East, English and Mandarin, romance and mystery, the graphic novel indeed is exotic to watch.

The work has been produced into ten video chapters. To give you a glimpse of our translation work, among what has been published: Chapter 3 has the most translation voices so far. The significant amount of Mandarin presented among English voices indeed makes the graphic novel stand out as a unique and interesting entertainment piece!

Monterey Language Services took extra time to polish the translations into Simplified Chinese to ensure not only accuracy, but an enjoyable and colloquial read for native speakers. Some of the challenges for this project were derived from cultural differences in how to translate certain phrases created specifically for the graphic novel.

For example, we have the “golden doom,” which refers to a specific event in the story. Because the event transports people similarly to the Christian idea of the rapture, our translation was “极乐升天,” which means “bliss ascension” in Chinese language.

One more example of the cultural challenge is rooted in English homonyms. The sentence: “They follow the standard of Lord Kang and swear on his eyes.” In this sentence, what does “standard” mean? If we suggested “average or normal requirement,” it actually would be incorrect! “Standard” in this instance means a battle flag—something ancient soldiers would follow on the battlefield.

Another difficulty was dealing with the ambiguity of written words. In spoken English, a person’s tone can very easily denote sincerity or sarcasm — consider the phrase “good job” being spoken sincerely and being spoken sarcastically, and their meanings become very different. While the context and illustrations in graphic novels can alleviate this confusion in text, sometimes the tone could be just missed. One such problem occurred in our initial translation of “What a stunt,” a line which our translator took be said in admiration, when in actuality, it was an insult. Through our editing/reviewing process we discovered the issue, and the translation was changed from “真是好身手” (really good) to “真有一套,” which has a similar meaning in a more sarcastic tone.

We are incredibly proud of the work we were able to provide for this project, and would like to add more viewing pleasure and excitement by sharing the above behind-the-scenes glimpses to our translation work. We wish all the success to the audience and contributors to the graphic novel. The chapters will be published in video format weekly on YouTube until the tenth and final one is uploaded.

In Word, there are many different functions that can be used to speed up translations. Macros, for example, are a great way of simplifying and standardizing repetitive phrases or formatting. Macros take some knowledge to implement, but they are very useful for all translators. For instance, if there is a specific phrase that is continuously used over the document, then you can create a macro so that you can just press a button every time you need to insert that word or phrase. Imagine the amount of time you can save by instead of typing out a full word every time, you just press a button and the entire word or phrase comes out.

Some translators also prefer to use voice to text programs to do their translations. The advantage of voice to text is that it is overall faster than typing. If you have a long document, you can get through it faster than if you were typing. Voice to text does come with some disadvantages though. You will need to make sure that you have a good microphone so that it can clearly pick up on your voice. You will also need to make sure that you speak clearly so that it does not mistake any of your words. You will also have to get used to the voice controls and customize it so that it fits your work habits. However, there are some programs that you can use to help fine tune the listening so that it captures exactly what you’re saying even if you aren’t speaking clearly.

In terms of programs that can be used, if you are not looking to spend too much money, there are free options like Google Docs that have a decent voice recognition system. Microsoft Word also has a dictate function that its users can use to type out their translations with their voices. Then there are more premium options such as DRAG0N which have built in AI that can learn from your voice patterns, or can learn from your direct input. Many translators who use voice dictation and get used to it tend to not go back to just typing out their translations.

For Asian languages such as Japanese, there are also programs such as ATOK that can automatically convert the text you are writing into the appropriate characters. Instead of manually having to sift through characters, the program will learn and recognize when certain characters should be used rather than others and then enter them for you. It can save a lot of time for translators not having to take the time to look for the appropriate character every time they translate.