The Current State and Future of Yado Inn and Flowingcloud

(Sorry if you saw this post in your email yesterday. I accidentally hit the publish button while I was writing the draft.)

Hi, it’s Flowingcloud. We have been releasing novels since 2017 and I started as a translator at that time too. Thinking back, I can’t believe that I have been fan translating for four years. We have picked up many (relatively) popular projects over the years and we used to have many novels constantly being released. Many things have changed, for example, one of my best translating friends, LysUltima shut down his site—Ebisu Translations—after his hosting expired. I would like to give updates to certain series and the direction I see the group (at least from the novel side) heading towards in the future.

Yado Inn reflection: 
Initially, Yado Inn (originally named Insane Translations) was a group of fan translators who just got together to translate whenever they liked. Many of the OG members have gotten an actual life, thus retired from fan translation. Over the years, as you may know, Yado Inn has moved a bit more towards scanlating (series like SKM), thus forming Yado-Inn Scanlations. I, myself, cannot say much, as I am not involved in the scanlations, but I am happy that my friends are still involved in translating, one way or another. In the past, we have picked up several popular novel series (that have been dropped now), such as Max Level Witch, Strongest Rearguard, SKM, Villainess’ Father, and so on. Personally, I’m kind of proud of picking up popular series (for no particular reason), however, I am saddened that most of our translators have to move on due to IRL reasons. We were never a group that was super-profit orientated, but just a group of weebs (or at least I think we’re weebs) who just wanted to translate novels.

The current state of Yado Inn:
Currently, the only consistently releasing novel is God of Cooking, which isn’t even a translator from Yado Inn, but a translator I have hired to do this project out of pure passion and love for the series. As I have mentioned, many of our translators have been affected by the times and are currently on hiatus or have retired from translating. I just would like to take a moment to thank all of the past and current translators for translating at Yado Inn, even if it’s just a single line of text. Our group right now seems to be focused on scanlating manga and I am of full support for everyone who is part of the process!

Status update of Flowingcloud – What has been happening:
As I mentioned earlier, I have been translating for four years now (on and off). Throughout these years, I would like to believe that I have grown. I do admit that I have motivation problems, which does keep me in the past from consistently translating series for a long period of time.

I would like to confess that I have dropped many novels over the years due to losing motivation to translate the novel I was translating at the time, or just motivation to translate in general.

I would like to give insight into most of the series I have dropped and whether I will pick them up or not. Overall, no, I will not pick up any series I have dropped or not been updating (except for the ones I will mention in my future plans). This might change in the future, but there are no plans for right now. Thankfully, most novels that I have dropped have been picked up (or licensed).

You might have noticed that I have not released almost anything in the past year. I was just completely burnt out translating and did not want to do any series at all. COVID did play a part in killing my motivation to do anything. However, I have been polishing up my translation skills and translating manga at Kirara Scanlations and even started two scan groups: Akari Sumire Scans (to practicing solo scanlating) and Yuri Trap Scans (R-18 scan group).

Future Plans for Yado Inn:
As mentioned earlier, this is a relatively dead group now. As for the manga side, they will continue to scanlate at their own pace, however, I am planning to change the novel side for a bit. (Read more in the next section.) I do not plan to add new translators to our group, but previous or current translators can feel free to release novels on our site.

Future Plans for me, Flowingcloud:
I have been considering what direction I should take in the past few months. I am graduating from college this spring/fall and with COVID and finding a job during the pandemic is looking rough. Taking a look at all the paths available to me, although my Japanese is not perfect and my translating skills are not as well, I have decided to try out full-time translating. Honestly, this is just a ‘trial phase’, to see how I cope with constantly releasing chapters and whether this looks like a future career I can pursue. To be honest, I probably won’t make a living off of this, but I kind of always wanted to try doing it seriously, so I’m giving myself a chance right now while I still have the leeway to test things out.

I am currently planning to take Loli Witch off hiatus and translate it again! Not only that, I am planning on picking up FIVE new series—some have teaser chapter(s) already released! (I’m counting Amago no Miko as a new series since it only has three chapters out currently.) These series are novels that I personally find interesting and I think most readers will enjoy. Most of these novels do not fall into the ‘standard template’ that most authors use, so I think you guys will find them very interesting.

Here are all the series I plan to translate (Abbreviated Names): 
Alchemist (WN) – One teaser chapter has been released.
Amago no Miko (WN) – Three teaser chapters have been released.
Honnoji (WN) – NEW!
Horror Actress Reincarnation (LN) – NEW!
Loli Witch (WN) – Picking it back up!
Modern Villainess (LN) – NEW! (Translating with LysUltima)

I do admit that this looks like a lot of workload, and I think so myself too. I am currently pushing myself to the limit to see how far I can go and whether I can keep up translating full-time. I might add/drop series depending on how much I like them. I’ll post a teaser chapter of each new series a few minutes after this post is posted.

Future Schedule of Yado Inn novels (subject to change at any time):
Monday: God of Cooking
Tuesday: Alchemist
Wednesday: Modern Villainess¹
Thursday: Loli Witch², Horror Actress Reincarnation^1,2
Friday: Alchemist
Saturday: Modern Villainess¹
Sunday: Amago no Miko², Honnoji²

¹ These novels are light novels, thus one chapter part (or two parts, if one part is too short) will be released at a time.
² These novels are released every two weeks.

Final Remarks:
I took over an hour to write and revise this post, thus I am thankful if you spent your time reading through the entire post. What I wrote does not represent the entire group, but just my own personal views as a translator (and the person who pays for the site costs) of Yado Inn. I’m not sure what else to write, so all I have left to say is thank you for reading at Yado Inn and I hope you continue reading here in the future!