One year of Douluo Dalu

Amazing as it seems, it was on this day, one year ago, that I found myself with a bit of spare time, an interest in improving my Chinese, and something of an obligation to give back to the community I’d leeched so much from. And so I started translating Douluo Dalu.

It’s now one year and 148 chapters later.

On the way we’ve also gone through 29 40+ page comment documents in the Google Drive, started a largely inactive forum, and started a massively active blog. While the blog is more than three months younger than the translation, it’s still had more than 18 million views, and more than 13 thousand comments. Happily, almost all the comments have been overwhelmingly positive.

It’s amazing to think that this little hobby project has probably had more attention than anything else I will ever do.

Of course, I’m not alone in the project. I’ve been helped by other translators – Fraustarrow, Jax, Josh, DtAndroid, Asphyxia, Organicity, and Marcuz – as well as several editors and proofreaders – KingGod666, Ymeny, Kal, and a host of others who have chosen not to add their names to the staff list.

Since the aim of the project is to share Douluo Dalu with more people, everyone who reads and comments on it are naturally also a part of what drives it forward (yes, that includes those of you making novel-sized discussion towers in the comments – you know who you are).

So, as one year of translations have passed, I hope there will be another. Until the Douluo Dalu translation is completed.

~Bagelson

PS. I’ll add a small FAQ here as well.

Do you have a release schedule? When is the next release?

No, I’m doing this as a hobby project in my spare time, and my schedule is rather irregular. As such, releases happen whenever I’m done with a chapter. There is this schedule, but that’s only updated when chapters are done.

Why isn’t the Google Drive updated with the latest chapter yet?

It turns out that Google Drive isn’t really best suited for high volumes of readers. When the traffic is high, it’ll frequently bog down to levels where I can’t move documents to the public folder.

How many chapters or volumes is Douluo Dalu?

336 chapters in 48 volumes. The web novel volumes aren’t really “volumes”, but more like sections.

Have you read the entire story? What happens?

My reading is only ~60 chapters ahead of the current translation, as such I do my best to avoid spoilers beyond that. If you want them, you can read the spoiler timeline updated by DtAndroid.

[Anything about the manhua]?

Whatever you think of the manhua, please don’t go bullying the people who read it. It’s still around 10 chapters ahead of this translation, so please don’t go posting spoilers from there around here. Also, should this translation catch up again, please don’t go posting spoilers there either. It sets a bad tone for the community as a whole.

Why are the translations at the beginning so bad?

I was much newer as a translator back then. It’s not so much an issue about language skills – while my Chinese was much, much worse, that Just meant I relied more on dictionaries, and my English is still around the same level. It’s more about my confidence as a translator, my willingness to ignore the RAW phrasing and write in a way that’s more comfortable to read, and overall experience. Redoing those early chapters is on the to-do list, but it’s still second to translating new chapters.

Will you take donations?

I’m doing this as a hobby, and I rather enjoy being able to pick it up when I have time or motivation. As such I will never add any kind of chapter-sponsorship system. Were I to add donations, it’d be in terms of a beer fund.

I check the site every day!

If you happen to read any other translations and are checking those sites daily too, you may be better served using an aggregator like Novel Updates (it’s really handy).

If you have more questions, feel free to ask them in the comments here and I’ll do my best to answer.