Speaking of communication, do you have Skype or something? I would love to talk this out with you in private if you are interested; my Skype and Steam are both Kazerad.

Even if you didn't translate them, they are the first few pages people read, and contribute to that bad first impression I mentioned earlier. From what I have been told, your pages are slightly better than BoecSpecOPs's but still pretty shaky in terms of English comprehension.

Nobody has said that it is the "worst translation ever", they've just said it's done with a pretty average understanding of English, e.g. about what someone would get in school. It misunderstands a lot of stuff, but that is just because the story is written in very heavy informal English.

Hopefully you can understand why I would find it a little annoying =P. I wanted to eventually put together professional translation teams and create high-quality translations once I had more time to dedicate to it. Instead, this audience's first experience with the comic is going to be a kind of watered-down version you made.

I'm not sure, it does seem strange. I think their general feeling is that you will just disregard or disbelieve their criticisms, since that has happened a few other times with criticisms in the comments.

I might not speak Russian, but from what translators have told me and what I can gather through web translators, a lot of the mistakes are really embarrassingly bad and completely change the meaning of passages. Like, on the very first page, where she says "Rounding up to the nearest week, you've been sober for an entire seven days", the joke is that she /hasn't/ been sober for 7 days (since 4, 5, or 6, rounded to the "nearest week", would all be "7"). Some of your other assumptions, like on the next page where you comment about Tudor being a masculine name, are also completely inaccurate (it is a surname, making it gender neutral). And in general when you do understand things, your translation tends to over-explain it rather than leaving them subtle, which is a hallmark of bad writing.

It's not that I'm disappointed in this translation so much as that Russian-speakers are sending me complaints about its quality and notes about all the lore/translation errors it makes. As best as I can tell, you aren't really responding to their criticisms, which is kinda unprofessional and makes the comic look worse than it is.

I know you certainly aren't responding to my concerns with very much besides vague taunts written in fifth-grade level English.

This is the real Kazerad. Here, proof: http://www.prequeladventure.com/this/wowrude.gif

It is a drawing of Katia looking surly and disapproving because she is being poorly translated by someone who refuses to listen to criticism of his English ability.

Less than 500 people is not the "russian community". It doesn't reflect people who will see your translation, think the story is worse than it actually is, and then never try reading it again :/ I am going to work on making my own, approved translation, but I would still rather you stopped this one while I do.

:/ I take it there is absolutely nothing I can do at this point to persuade you to stop translating my comic?

I literally wrote the story, I am quite confident I can tell someone the intent of the writing more accurately than you can. Like I said, I've run this translation by numerous people who speak English fluently and Russian natively, and the general consensus is that it misunderstands a lot of the original English - some of the examples they gave me were rather cringeworthy. It's not that your Russian is bad, the problem is that you do not understand the English text well enough to really convey it accurately. It's like listening to a song where you can only hear half the notes and then trying to play it on a piano. You'll think what you're playing is right, but to someone who knows the full song it will sound completely different.

I know that your Russian grammar and spelling is going to be more or less perfect, since you are a native speaker, but your perception of the original English story is going to be a lot different from how a more experienced English speaker interprets it. /That's/ the part I find upsetting, since I worked hard to put a lot of nuance into the writing, and this translation flattens that into little more than a melody line.

I appreciate that you are willing to link my new translation when I make it, but I would really rather you stop making this one. Every new page and bit of traffic it gets give it more priority in search Engines for people who are looking for a Prequel translation. Every update you add to this will make it more difficult for a translation I make to take prominence.

Not to mention that if this keeps updating, I will have to work my translators twice as hard to overtake the number of updates you have translated. Prequel updates are going to pretty much slow to a halt while I work with translators to keep you from misinterpreting my story to Russian audiences. It is going to be miserable for me, and miserable for the people waiting for new updates, and cost me a lot of money while I put off work to assist with this.

You have no idea how much I would appreciate it if you would just throw in the towel and let me work on a translation I approve of.

Hahaha, sorry about the wall of text. It was written in harder to understand English and more directed at Yoburg. If you are just a reader, don't worry about it. There will still be a Russian version of Prrrequel, I just want to make an official one on my site.

I understand that you are trying to do a good job, but I am the one being sent complaints about the quality of this. I'm also the one whose success as a writer and artist pivots on the first impression people have of my comic.

Like, I don't want to be mean, but please understand that this puts me in a very tough position. I would have preferred if non-English-speakers had simply not read the story until I had time to make a professional translation to their language. Since there is now a Russian copy of the story available for anyone who searches for it, I risk having Russian-speakers read it and think the story just isn't that good. Like I said, it's not just people from this site - my comic is relatively well-known, and a lot of people are going to be led here because they are searching for a translation of it. From what people have told me, this translation does not meet the quality standards I look for - especially the beginning, which is the most important part of a story. By being the only Russian translation out there, this costs me readers I would have gotten otherwise.

I don't feel good about trying to invalidate all the work you did and keep people from seeing it, but doing something like this without permission is a very serious thing. I'm looking to start merchandising for the comic in the near future so I can work on it as a full-time job and update more frequently, but the success I will have there pivots on my ability to maximize my number of readers. Even if this gets me a couple hundred readers from JoyReactor, it risks driving other Russian readers away. If people are going to be reading my comic in Russian, I need to do everything I can to make it as good as possible! Sadly, that is not possible on this site or with the errors in your translation.

You've already kind of put me in a position where the only way I can respond to this is by making my own, more accurate Russian translation. I've been assembling a team of translators with a strong understanding of English and Russian who I think can handle it, and we're going to try to get started as soon as possible. At this point, I'm merely asking you to stop translating so I can do it myself.

I understand that you were putting a lot of effort into this and are trying not to let me down, but the way you approached this could potentially cause a lot of harm to me and my comic. The longer this translation becomes, the more work I will have to do to make my Russian translation the one people see.