Light novels coming into my life…

You may know me by my handle; you may have read my translations. Now, it’s time to know me as a person.

The very first life lesson that my parents taught me — independence.

I was taught that nothing comes free, and you have to work for it. They would always tell me 先学会赚钱才学花钱 — learn how to earn money before learning how to spend it. Perhaps part of it was because I came from a low-medium income family for that to be the first life lesson that they taught me. They were loving parents, and I love them!

But like any other teenager, I underwent the ‘rebellious’ phase when I was a 14. Getting myself into fights and having my parents invited to school was the norm.

Not long after, a good friend of mine introduced me to anime. I still remember the very first I watched was Kateikyoshi Hitman Reborn, and I soon found myself spending my time every day after school watching anime. Before I noticed it, I watched every single action/shonen anime out there. Thirsting for more action, I dove into the manga community.

After 2 years, I completed reading all the action/shonen manga out there. At that time, I was already 17, and I was about to start a new phase of my life in college with a part-time job.

It takes 2 hours for me to travel from home to college and vice-versa during the weekdays, and working as a laptop salesman on the weekends.

Imagine the amount of time I have traveling… 4 hours traveling back and forth to school. So I soon started reading light novels. The first novel that actually got me into addicted was Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, which I wound spend my journey staring into my phone reading like a geek.

But if anyone remembers, there was a small episode about LMS, which was put on hiatus. Thus, I gave Coiling Dragon a try, a novel translated by the Renwoxing. Back then, CN novels weren’t that popular compared to Japanese and Korean Novels.

Despite being a Chinese, it was a shame that  I can only converse in Mandarin and couldn’t read. Thus, I thought that translating novels myself might be an excellent opportunity for me to brush up on both languages.

I started learning how to read Chinese all over again from scratch. Getting myself familiar with the words and learning how to read novels in raw.

Then, I finally made the decision to translate when I was confident with my command in Chinese, both verbally and written. I picked 妖神记 (Tales of Demons and Gods) as my very first novel. At that time, the thought of translating novels as a career never crossed my mind. At most, it can only be considered as a hobby for me.

But thanks to the passionate support from readers, I quitted my job as a computer salesman and became a part-time translator, typing away on my keyboard behind my screen. It was the beginning of my journey in the Dao of Translations…