XZadare
VIP
8 months ago
·
EditedNot recommended
Review as of chapter 325:
The Stars Beyond has a fantastic premise with a marvelously well-thought out cultivation structure and the interesting twists about how that cultivation works or doesn't work. The main character, Wang Xuan, does things in a decisive and ruthless manner when it suits the situation, but honestly wants to work towards harmony more than anything, and he isn't reserved about using friends as shields if they're stronger than him.
However, the quality of the translation itself is what earns this negative review. There isn't any set consistency to the nomenclature within the novel. Sometimes, a cultivation level will be called the Herb Gathering level, and other times, the Medicinal Herb level. Sometimes, a treasure will be called the God-Slaying Banner, others, the Decapitation God Banner. It reads like machine translation was used in the initial translation pass, and while some cleanup was performed to improve reading flow, not enough attention to detail was present. Additionally, there were a few chapters that changed the entire verb tense for the chapter so everything was present tense instead of all the past tense that was being used. Once chapter even sounded like someone writing a book review instead of a description from within the book.
I will continue reading this because I can, for the most part, ignore this constant shift. However, I would not recommend this novel unless and until a consistent editing pass is established, and also a homogeneous and consistent set of nomenclature for the cultivation aspects of the novel is established.
EDIT as of April 4, 2024: The quality of the translation is degrading further, where we are seeing repeat sets of paragraphs in the chapters, and they seem to be draft paragraphs left in the posted chapter, instead of edited out. This is absolutely ludicrous.
The Stars Beyond has a fantastic premise with a marvelously well-thought out cultivation structure and the interesting twists about how that cultivation works or doesn't work. The main character, Wang Xuan, does things in a decisive and ruthless manner when it suits the situation, but honestly wants to work towards harmony more than anything, and he isn't reserved about using friends as shields if they're stronger than him.
However, the quality of the translation itself is what earns this negative review. There isn't any set consistency to the nomenclature within the novel. Sometimes, a cultivation level will be called the Herb Gathering level, and other times, the Medicinal Herb level. Sometimes, a treasure will be called the God-Slaying Banner, others, the Decapitation God Banner. It reads like machine translation was used in the initial translation pass, and while some cleanup was performed to improve reading flow, not enough attention to detail was present. Additionally, there were a few chapters that changed the entire verb tense for the chapter so everything was present tense instead of all the past tense that was being used. Once chapter even sounded like someone writing a book review instead of a description from within the book.
I will continue reading this because I can, for the most part, ignore this constant shift. However, I would not recommend this novel unless and until a consistent editing pass is established, and also a homogeneous and consistent set of nomenclature for the cultivation aspects of the novel is established.
EDIT as of April 4, 2024: The quality of the translation is degrading further, where we are seeing repeat sets of paragraphs in the chapters, and they seem to be draft paragraphs left in the posted chapter, instead of edited out. This is absolutely ludicrous.