Douluo Dalu – Translator’s Afterword

You know, little San’s afterword feels almost like a taunt at me for taking 6 years to finish this translation. But overdue though it may be, here we are at last. I imagine most readers have found somewhere else to finish the series while I’ve been otherwise engaged, but to those of you who hung around waiting for these chapters, those who are coming back to reread them here, and even those in the future who know nothing of my lapses: Thank you for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

Thank you also to those who have helped more directly along the way. FraustArrow, Jax, Asphyxia, Josh, DtAndroid, Organicity, Marcuz, PiggyBottle, owl404, ArmoredRaven, as well as a slew of editors over the years (you know who you are, and you’ve never been good at putting your names on things, so let me know if you want to get listed here as well).

In a way, translating Douluo Dalu is probably the one thing I’ve done in my life that has touched the most people, thousands or even tens of thousands of people have, or will read my silly little rehash of a Chinese web novel. That, in a sense, is very humbling.

A lot has changed in six years, both my life and the fantrans scene are quite different from back then. A time when the only centralized collection of translations was BakaTsuki, with other novels appearing like weeds across a smattering of forums and Google Documents, and the only decent way to track any of it was through a forum topic on Bato.to. At the risk of seeming curmudgeony, writing it made me realize that nothing in that sentence corresponds to the scene today.

But I figure I’m entitled to being a curmudgeon by now.

One question I was getting even before I was halfway to chapter 100 was whether I was going to continue translating the other Douluo Dalu series once I was done with this one. I figure if I said yes now I’d get lynched, but no worries on that account. I doubt I’ll ever do another full series again, but I do have a couple of series that I feel sorry for never having had any attempts at translations, and I figure I’ll block out some time for getting teasers done. I suppose I should try and get those early chapters retranslated at some point too.

Until then, thank you very much for putting up with me this far. I wish you ahealth and happiness.

– Bagelson, May 3 2020

In memory of Alice.