Last Twilight is my favourite TV series, so I read the novel

 

Okay, who gagged? Yes, this is a call for everyone. Who was the one who gagged? Oh, wait. It was me, sorry. Sorry, again, I gagged because Last Twilight is a fantastic BL show that I watched last year for the first time and every single episode made me cry, and it was so good I’ve even gotten a tattoo for it. It’s not the first show I’ve gotten tattoos for and it won’t be the last. We’re not here to talk about a TV show however, we’re here to talk about the fact that GMMTV released an English translation of the Last Twilight novel by Ninepinta – previously only available in Thai.

The blurb says that “Day”, a promising badminton player finds out he has infectious keratitis and will shortly go blind. He has no other choice but to take “Mhok”, a reckless technical college student thug, as his caretaker. While Day is attempting to comprehend the significance of the remaining light, he discovers that Mhok’s face, which is only seen as a blur, is becoming increasingly essential in his life. Day has to make the most of his final vision, as well as answer for himself… why is he unable to get Mhok’s face out of his mind.

I’m immediately going to say that with this being a translation, it’s entirely possible for a lot of nuance in the novel to get lost in translation. I feel I’ve read translated books in the past that have had that issue, so I will be keeping that in my head throughout. Additionally, from the blurb, that’s more or less what happens throughout the show. I will say, the blurb missed out the part of Day’s frustration of having to adjust to his new life of not only having a caretaker, not being as independent as he’s used to. Also, in the show, Mhok goes to prison in the first episode, and the only reason he ends up as Day’s caretaker is because he can’t get any other job, and walks into the interview and talks shit to Day, which is the reason Day hires him – since he’s the only person at the interviews who didn’t pity Day, or see him as burdensome.

Anyway, the book opens on Day seeing his ophthalmologist and getting bitter towards his brother and walking off, trying to make it home on his own. He ends up getting stuck on a traffic island, since he can’t see, and then Mhok just appears on his motorbike and takes Day home. When they get home, obviously Day’s mother is mad, and Day lies, telling her that Mhok is here to interview to be Day’s caretaker. Day tells Mhok to just refuse part way through the interview, except he doesn’t, and Day tells him that the moment he starts feeling pity for him, he’ll be fired.

There were absolutely going to be difference between book and series. The first major one was when Mhok tries to see the world from Day’s shoes. In the show he covers his eyes to try and make his way around an open market, and in the book, he tries cooking soup blindfolded. Another one is the big love confession at the end of the book. I will say, every BL seems to follow a similar format in which they get together, break up near the end, then get back together. This comes when they’re getting back together. In the book, the two of them get stuck in a lift, whereas in the show it’s at Night (Day’s brother) and Porjai’s (Mhok’s best friend and ex) wedding, like when the wedding is over.

There definitely were grammatical errors that were a result of the translation. I’ve read several other BL adaptations with English translations – Theory of Love, Love Mechanics, 2Gether, and Vice Versa – and all of them have had the same issue in that the translation has probably just been a literal translation. I’ll be fully honest, like how I recently posted about how I DNF’d a book, mainly because the quality of the writing was bad, if I wasn’t already a fan of the Last Twilight show, or the shows made of these other books I’ve just mentioned (minus Love Mechanics, since I’ve never actually watched it), I would have DNF’d some of these books. The books have been translated into English, yes, but I don’t know that the quality it totally there. You can read the story, and it all makes sense, but there’s definitely cleaning up that could have been done and, honestly, edits made to the translation so that everything hits harder. I think this is an issue I’ve seen in every translated BL novel that I’ve read. They’ve all had the same issues, and it doesn’t matter who has done the translation. I mentioned before of nuance getting lost through translation, and I truly believe that. And if it's not the nuance, it’s the tone, the voice, the character. Because, yes, the characters do say things, but I feel like if you read something written in your original language, you can pick up on tone and personality, but they are things that I’ve found often get lost in translated text.

Saying that, however, since Last Twilight is probably my favourite fictional TV show, I’m more than happy to give this book a pass, I don’t care. When the show first aired, I cried over every single episode, and I have a tattoo inspired by the show. That’s how much I love it. I think I’ve made the following comment about every BL translation that I’ve read that’s had a show I’ve watched – I feel like the show does better justice for the characters. Porjai, for example, is pregnant throughout the book and show, but she’s barely in the book, whereas she is a little more present than in the book. I do think that’s down to the fact the show presented both Day and Mhok’s POV, whereas the book was predominantly focused on Day and his journey with becoming more independent as a blind person. Unless I missed it, I think the book missed out mentioning that as the plotline. The things throughout happen, Mhok gets Day out of the house, reunites him with his university friends, and gets him out running, so therefore integrating him as just another person in society who just happens to not be able to see. I believe there’s a quote from Mhok from the show that’s something like, “Day is a normal person, he just can’t see.” That is something I really enjoyed about the book, how the whole thing is about Day reclaiming who he is in his blindness, and it just happens to be under the guise of a romance novel.

I will say, when the show came out (I don’t know whether this was a point of contention with the book), a lot of people complained about the ending where [spoiler alert] Day undergoes surgery, and he regains his vision. I remember people having a problem with this in saying that the ending gave the idea that the only way for there to be a happy ending was for the blind character to regain their vision, and that goes against the point of the plot. I disagree with this, personally. For me, Day wasn’t blind in the beginning of the book, or the show, he was at university, an athlete, had a whole life, and then proceeded to go blind as an adult. It made perfect sense to me that he would want his vision back. If he had been blind from birth, I would be more on the side of it being a bad thing of him only having a happy ending with vision, but since he wasn’t, he’s obviously going to want to get his vision back and to be able to see all the things he used to. As for the case of the plot. While Day has limited vision, he does learn his independence. He eventually is able to navigate the world on his own – he literally ends up running a business while blind – and it’s after he is able to navigate while blind that he gets the chance of having his vision return. My biggest question is why wouldn’t he want his vision back?

Anyway, I love Last Twilight. This English translation is definitely flawed, I’m not going to pretend it’s not, and perhaps the translation doesn’t do it justice, but I still love it. I do think that’s been the case for literally every translated BL novel that I’ve read.

Okay, bye!