Websites like Novel Updates?

I think they were referring to those websites with broader scope that was mentioned near the bottom of the post.

As for sites i know..... id needa log into my wordpress to check who is linking to my page only one i can remember off top was wlnupdates or something like that....

Muuu it might be just that one and the rest were aggregators as far as i remember.....

 

nu doesnt have english novel updates

 

What about the similar site with western light/web novel? Is there any?

 

VNTS at fuwanovel.net for tracking VN translation status and official english release

 

I guess. RWX doesn't lose anything; NU is free and only links to sites, so all the more views for RWX

 

It's like going to McDonald and asking where KFC is.

 

and like the commercial for soda where the boy bought 2 coke in can then step on it so he can reach for the pepsi

 

is that wrong? I have done that a few times.

 

not quite like NU, but www.topwebfiction.com isn't a bad place to drudge up a good story (that others are currently voting for).

 

Savage

 

To avoid being copied by aggregator sites.

Some of us prefer to keep quiet and translate our favourite novels for those few readers for free and getting it known and as such scraped by aggregator sites will not help the original author at all. NU links are now likely being used to find new translation sites to scrape content from by aggregator sites. Since you can't really stop aggregator sites from stealing the contents that you provide for free, the only way left is to make it harder for them by avoiding being scraped by their bots that target NU links in the first place.

Users not adding them is just showing respect to the translator's choice. The translators do it because they love the novels and if they don't want to be scraped, no reason to list them. There are actually many sites that silently translate Chinese and Japanese novels and have never been scraped yet. Some of them have been online for years.

I won't give links but there are new and old translator sites who chose not to be listed on NU despite the higher traffic potential because they're doing it for free and traffic wouldn't matter in the first place. As I said above, NU links are being used to scrape content from translator sites by aggregators. So it's not strange for translators tired of aggregators to choose not to be listed on NU.

 

They don't need to have a thousand people reading. They just wanted to share with people they know won't betray the author. Besides, these cases were generally because they were asked to translate by the readers. They don't want fame, recognition or pageviews. They were asked to translate a certain novel or manga by a small bunch of people and they did. In some cases, their aim is not for the whole world to know that it is translated, just for their circle of friends to be able to read stuff they can't. It's community service, for friends, by friends. Many (not all or most) of these readers also bought a copy of the author's work in the original form. In some cases, people buy the books first and ask them "Please read this for me, I can't understand Chinese." and they read it for them and transcribe it in the way the requester could understand.

Remember, they are not doing this to spread the author's work to the whole world, they only do this to allow people who wanted to read those works to be able to read them in their own language.

 

Yes, as I said, it's for friends, by friends. And many of those 'friends' already bought the books they asked the translators to translate. And I said one thousand, not 7 billion. How many of these 1000s actually support the author? Likely none. So releasing it to the public is useless. Why would the translators feel guilt about denying people who feel entitled to read stuff for free without supporting the author?

There, I've made it shorter so that you don't get distracted.

 

Exactly, I've been saying this from the very start in this thread. They are supporting the author, not the translator. The translators are doing this voluntarily. As I already said in my first reply in this thread, the translators are not looking for fame, or name or pageviews. They couldn't care less about those. People bought those novels, but they can't read it, so they read it for them.

You are assuming that people who read it, support it in their own way. Readers don't really care. How many people can remember the name of the author of 10 of the novels that they read? At most they can remember two or three. How many of them bought the author's novels, paid for Qidian membership and ran pages after pages of something they can't understand on Qidian Chinese's website just to give the author a little bit of money? Very few.

What you get instead are mushrooming sites that continuously steal from the translators who in turn, steal from the authors. If the translators get money, then the authors should get them too. But translators don't give a damn about the authors and the authors have no one to stand up for them.

These people who refused to be listed on NU, steered away from all this bullshit. They are not here for politics or making money, they are providing a community service for people who bought the authors works. They are the authors' legitimate customers, they just can't read them, so these people read it for them.

 

I shall break this up one by one then.

Why would they care? The pros and cons of making their translation public is leaning a lot more towards cons, as their translation can be stolen and made buying author's novels a pointless endeavour. Once the aggregator bots got their url, hyperlink, IP address, it's done. That whole website is open to a whole universe of aggregators before readers even realize there's a new update on the translator's site. Completely done, there is no more need to hide because everything they post from then on goes straight to aggregator sites. The only thing left would be to close the site and do it even more privately.

Actually you're the one missing the point. Yes, people are willing to donate, but to WHO? To WHO? The author? They don't even know the author.

Okay, let's say that they are not hiding it. How in your mind are they supporting the author? Let's push aside the fact that aggregator sites snap up the contents faster than they can register to Amazon Japan. I'm right now asking you, how will readers support the authors when the translations are not hidden?

That argument means shit when the author gains no benefit at all. Did the authors get some of the money? Maybe, some translators do this, which I applaud them for it, but not many do this. Yes, fuckton of work, yes yes, you're right, but that brings back to the central question: What do the authors get from having their translations translated?

Yes, they pay, even I'm currently being paid to translate an otomege (games, not novels) from Japanese to my language. But that is the whole thing, they DO NOT benefit from amateur translations. They hire professional translators to translate their stuff. So having amateur translators translating their stuff makes no difference, they can't use it.

So how exactly are authors being supported? You still haven't answered this central question.