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REVIEW: Accel World Novel 5

So can I jump into this novel from just watching the anime?

I have been working with Yen Press manga since shortly after they started up, and I do a hefty amount of their manga schedule — usually two volumes of manga a month. So when they made the move into publishing more light novels, they turned to me. While there was a learning process for working on prose novels, I got used to the different style eventually and now I handle lots of light novel work as well....

The first year or so of translating LNs was especially difficult because I was still picking up the idiosyncrasies of the writing and absorbing what certain prose phrases approximate to in English in a functional sense, rather than their literal meanings. So there are a number of little things in the first few novels I did that I would do differently now. This process of learning through experience is exactly the same as what I went through when first working on manga, and is entirely related to absorbing the particular stylistic details of the writing, so while it was difficult at first, and I often felt frustrated not being sure how to handle certain creative choices, I’ve grown much more comfortable and firm in my particular way of translating.

Assuming the AW translator is in a similar boat, that explains why the writing is getting better as the series goes on, though it also points to some limitations in the process if all the translators are juggling that much work.