To all those rotten tomatoes,

In light of some recent events that have been happening on the internet, ExR, as a whole, decided that we needed to say our side of things since apparently this whole thing is because we, well… exist?

First and foremost, throughout this lengthy post, we will give a small English lesson, some words of the day.

Translation: The process of translating words or text from one language into another. This process isn’t perfect and will depend on the translator’s interpretation of the said text. Chinese is not, in any way, similar to English. While some more western languages have closer origins, Chinese and English are very far apart.

Translating requires a balance of both cultures; you keep something, and you have to lose some (魚與熊掌不可兼得). The words in the brackets mean you can’t have both the fish and the bear paws. We can’t say that it is a perfectly correct translation, but those with no Chinese knowledge won’t know what it says anyway. If we say it means, you cannot have everything, then a normal reader would know what the translation means, but is that actually a “correct” translation? This is one example to show how there’s no such thing as a perfect translation; please do understand that.

We are not saying our translations are perfect, nor are we saying that ours is the best in existence. We did this for fun, for free, and because K loved the original GDC novel.

Some say that ExR did not leave others with any other options other than reading our translation because we “bullied” other translators into dropping the project? Is it okay if we translate something that another group is working on? Is it okay to start from chapter 18, 45, 66, 90, or any chapter and not from the beginning? If it is, then there are loads of novels which we love and would like to translate, so is it okay for us to snatch it?

No, because then you would say we are creating drama and poaching. That is exactly what happened. We asked those who wanted to translate GDC to start from the beginning and to not start from the middle of the novel. We never bullied anyone into dropping a legitimate translation they did from the start.

To comment on some of the posts we have seen from others about certain translations, and we would like to comment on our translation for 夫妻. 夫(husband)妻(wife) is literally translated to “husband and wife” or “married couple.” Even if someone else translated it as plain “couple” (this is the Bing translation BTW), it doesn’t mean husband and wife is wrong, because, in this case, the Chinese is quite literally husband and wife. While fansubs have the constriction of not being able to discuss with the author on what to change, official translations do. In this case, other translations used a different interpretation than the literal translation, that’s all.

So, how is saying 夫妻 a nasty thing? Is it just because it is not gender-neutral? Is it because we did not change the original 夫妻 into 夫夫? In Chinese, 夫妻 is basically the only way of saying a married couple. Any language itself is fucking sexist.

The problem here also is that language is never clear, that’s why definitions in dictionaries exist. However, if you do know Chinese and disagree with any of our translations, it would have brought better results to give constructive criticism in an email rather than biased hate on a social media platform. Also, jumping the bandwagon thoughtlessly when you don’t know diddly squat about Chinese or ExR is pretty low.

Fujoshi (Fujo): Girls who enjoy yaoi (a genre in Japan that contains sexual and/or romantic relations between two men). Fujoshis do not always think of yaoi as something sexual or something to “get off” on, which does not make it a fetish. Fetish: A form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.

How does adoring homosexual love make us homophobic, exactly? Also, being a fujo and being a homophobe at the same time is nonsense. Are all of the other groups getting sudden hate for being fujos as well? Doubtful.

There are some who are saying we are gross, racist fujo fetishists because, somehow, in another translation (be it from another fan translation group or random commenter), there were parts of the original sex scenes missing. (We would never make up sex scenes cause we respect the hell out of the author. That’s what fanfiction is for.) This just means that they used the censored version to do the translation.

In Chinese social culture, it is illegal to publish anything featuring homosexual relationships. It wasn’t until 2018 that China even acknowledged that someone could love another person of the same gender… And if the problem is that you do not see a sex scene in the DongHua (animation), or if the DongHua has anything different content-wise from our translation, it just means that the DongHua trimmed the content or was censored to fit Chinese television.

If someone was to call anyone homophobic (having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people), it should be most of China or those who are saying we changed the original text to fit our “fetishes.”

It’s a translation of a novel we did not originally write and doesn’t reflect our views, and even if it did, none of it is homophobic (our views). Were others saying the novel is homophobic because there’s only one gay couple in the entirety of the whole GDC novel? It’s a world where MXTX decided to focus on just that one homosexual couple. There could be more gay couples out there, but it’s her work, her novel, her own characters, and how she wants to write it is up to her. Plus, she’s already done writing it, your words can’t do anything to change it now.

Cyber Bullying: The use of electronic communication to bully a person, typically by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature. We were called white, fat, racist, cunts, bastards, assholes, etc. by people who don’t even know us. K, the translator for GDC, is a small, cute, Chinese teenager, and yet people are saying that she’s a “fat white smelly bitch who should be set on fire?” Isn’t this the real bullying? Do most of you even realize that in today’s society, more people commit suicide due to cyber-bullying than anything else? Isn’t there an old saying that goes along the lines of “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all?”

The bottom line is, no-one deserves to be bombarded with this kind of hate and vitriol for providing a translation of a novel for other people for free. The panel on the manhua was a joke, and ExR didn’t drop the manhua because of that “one bully.”

No, we dropped it because of the hate that had been piling unnecessarily as it was thrown at our feet, in our faces, and into our personal lives. All for something we did for free. Let that sink in.

Don’t jump onto the hate bandwagon so quickly because “everyone” is doing it. Every story has two sides, and if you’re mature enough, you would want to try and get both sides of the whole story before actually jumping into your own conclusions or, you know, parroting something you saw off of someone’s tweet or post. We do hope you see this and decide to clarify all the misunderstandings you have about ExR and the drama that’s taking place right now.

We still will not pick up the GDC manhua again.

People have already started talking about how we dropped GDC manhua, and they went to flame the main instigator, however, please do not do this. By doing so, you are just like them. It is the same thing others have done to us, and we do not want others to feel the same hurt we do.

Be nice to each other, send love, not hate. ExR was not created to sow discord or to cause people to want to give up their lives. It was created because we are those rotten (homophobic?) fujoshis that love yaoi more than a regular harlequin novel.

As we are a BL and yaoi only site, expect more lovely BL from us.

Thanks for all the love and support.

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