Twelve Kingdoms

Hello DW 12K community, for those of you who have relied on Eugene Woodbury's website these some twenty or so odd years since it first went online with his translation project of the first novel in the series proper Shadow of the Moon, he has officially decided to let his website lapse and to retire the site. The url www.eugenewoodbury.com will now (for the foreseeable future) redirect exclusively to his blog hosted at blogspot where his translations, notes and other articles relating to Twelve Kingdoms, Japanese Culture, Translation and Media still remain.

With his blessing (Comments in this post) I've taken it upon myself to scrape and re-host his original website with the addition of a modified index page he created shortly before its lapse (and I myself will eventually add a splash page to explain that the site is a mirror/static archive for historical/education purposes only) on my own domain where I host my personal site among other things. (Please note the nature of my website is Adult Oriented/NSFW)

I'm hoping to invest in a sub-domain name to host an ongoing web project dedicated to collecting and archiving 12K fannish creations, websites and information curated by the English speaking fandom over the past 30 years of this series' run, including this archive. I'll post here in the event the url for this mirror changes and will add a redirection page to help people maintain their bookmarks!

For now, Eugene's Website can be found archived as a static mirror,. fully accessible from now until the ends of time (or my untimely death and consequent inability to pay my domain reg and site hosts lol) here on my website at this link: http://www.trsatsuki.net/hosted/Eugene_Woodbury/index2.html

Many people have expressed interest in seeing this website archived and kept "live" for a little while longer, myself included, for its nostalgia, its place in the history of this fandom, and its easy accessibility. It is worth noting however that Eugene himself considers these versions to be the least up-to-date and considers his google doc formats to be akin to "living" documents, and so his (still accessible!) downloads, still linked on this mirror, are to be considered the most accurate and recommended reading experience of his translations!

I'm endeavoring in the future to make similar plans to back up and archive Mina and Aili's translations of Taiki's first two books from Worlds in Translation, the two books Eugene himself has notably not undertaken. Any help in contacting the translators for Shore of the Maze and Demon Child for formal permission to archive their work for future fans would be greatly appreciated!

For a fun little community survey, I'd be curious to know:

What is your history with Eugene's website or translations? How did you stumble upon them? Do you prefer his or other fan's efforts to bring this series to English speaking and/or reading audiences?

~ Lukadian