About Us

This project is born out of a desire to share the appreciation for Chinese webnovels across language barriers. I started out with manually translating some chapters, but soon realized that avid fans looking for more had resorted to extreme measures, such as scanning, Google Lens'ing the print version in the original language, and ChatGPT-ing to access the content they wanted; or, using the browser's built-in translator and suffering through barely readable translations.

I built Smooth Reader to provide a better experience for fans of Chinese webnovels, because I am one of them and happen to be in a position that can help. I have extensive experience in machine learning and natural language processing, and advancement in Generative AI has made achieving high quality translation in a short amount of time possible.

This is in no way a replacement for human translation. Instead, what AI provides is a great starting point for human translation. As I edited the AI translations, I built tools to help me and other fans with the editing process. This has led to the creation of the SR edit platform, which I hope can be of use to other translators.

Along the way, some other fans have joined me in this endeavor, working on editing, art curation, and support for different languages. I'd especially like to thank @Jomo_Life and @lttawnymadison, whose help with editing, art curation, and many other aspects of this project has been invaluable. In addition, many fandom artists have generously provided their works as illustrations. I am immensely grateful for their support, and very happy that this project has become a community effort.

I want to show respect to the original authors of the webnovels, who have created these amazing stories that we all love. That's why translations in our Contemporary Collection are delivered via Smooth Reader, a browser extension, at the original publishing source. This way, you can read the webnovels in their original context while supporting the authors.

This project is a work in progress. As I try to improve the translation quality and add new features, I hope more people will join me in this effort, and we can build a sustainable community together!

@ClearNoodle256