What Classifies as a "Translation" that can be posted on NU (Bad MTLs)

Ehh, it would probably be like the current reporting functions. Yeah, there are people that might abuse it, but the majority use it for what it's intended for.

 

Fair enough. I'm not sure its actually a good idea to rate translators as it can eaily become a situation where the translator sees too many popr ratings and views it as "I should quit translating. I suck." Rather than "I need to improve my translating skills." Opposite is also possible where high scores result in a slip in standards.

Yea just added a reply for that. In the end market forces balance things out somewhat.

this is probably not a bad idea, if its implemented well. However NU doesnt currently have enough information about translators to implement it well at this point.

 

My personal view is that MTL is a sickness that has become so ingrained into the LN/WN translation scene that it's unreasonable to try to separate the two at this point. It's been going on for far longer than NU has been around. My only real desire is that people doing the MTL would actually do it into their own language. The examples posted feel like the 'translator' natively knows Language A, but is using Google to convert Language B that they don't know into Language C that they have a bare understanding of. This just does not work unless you have a decent understanding of both the work's language of origin, and the target language.

Amusingly, neither of the example series have that tag at present.

While this is an okay idea in theory, it'd probably require some serious backend work on the site for a feature that'll ultimately just fuel flamewars and bitterness.

I cant. If a person is using a machine to translate into Englishany language while being bad at said language, they can't possibly have any kind of confidence in the accuracy of their work. Sure you can have someone proof read it, but you still have no idea whether or not what you have in front of you actually says anything even close to resembling what the original text meant.

I feel like I'm a bit heavily opinionated on this, but I've seen too many interesting-to-decent series start with competent translators, who then get lost to the horrors of College/University/real life. Several months later the series is snagged by someone with a web browser who, while clearly passionate enough about the series, sadly doesn't seem to know how to actually write in English. I will give kudos to them though, I personally cannot bring myself to even attempt to comprehend the utter garbage that will be coming out of a machine translation interface when you toss the average web novel into it.

I don't want to feel like I'm being nothing but negative (even though its an unfortunate part of who I am), so here's my one and only idea to how an MTLer on NU could potentially improve the readability of their work. Study the English language, not just the communication aspect of it, but the literature as well. I was going to reccomend something like the Harry Potter series, but it's been years since I last read those and I can't remember how difficult the English actually is in those books.

This post far outgrew its original scope and I have no idea where I'm trying to go with it any more, I've spent far too long on it though to just bin it and start over. I'm going to stop here and let everyone tear it apart because I'm not a translator.

 

then put it, the reader of those novels are the ones that know if the transaltion is good or bad

 

Now here's the problem with cutoff's or whatever, there are translators out there that start horrible but as they progress with their translation they get better. If translators will be voted/cutoff/whatever they can and most will stop translating (bad feedback and what not).
Simple examples would be 'bagelson', translator of 'combat continent' (tried writing duolou dulo, even wrote it right the first time but was autocorrect to some bullsh#t and it's a name that I can see when I write incorrectly but can't remember the correct spelling ) that started horrible, I mean it was barely readable than progressively got better and better and today it's on godly level. Another example of translator that started bad would be 'void translator' (original translator of Xian Ni aka Renegade Immortal) which started as pure MTL but today translates godly
And the most important example would be 'nightbreeze', that while it's quite true and right to say quit translating not because of bad feedback on the quality of his translation it's still was a bad feedback (on quantity) which made him quit translating (first Stellar Transformation and then other projects of his)

So yeah, while it's nice to us readers/leeches/lurkers/whatever to know if the translation is total crap or not it can hurt the translation community

 

Or... i dunno? Have it mandatory to have the mtled version posted in the forum and have it someone from NU Editor community to fix it or what not?

 

Where did you take that from? I can't find any such tag...

 

Really? That is the most inefficient solution written here... and a suggestion that 100% will hurt the translation community

 

English is not the first, second or even third language of many readers, so it's expected

 

I think the only feasible thing that can be done is setting it up so that readers can flag the chapters that are badly translated. Once it reaches a certain threshold, say maybe 100 flags (this number may need tweaking), it will alert the admins of NU such as @Tony and then they can choose to blacklist that group for that title if it is indeed legitimately a bad translation.

As a redundancy measure, the translation group will only be blacklisted for that title and not for others, as there are translation groups that have different translators for different projects. Also, the translation groups blacklisted for that title can apply to have the blacklisting removed if they can show a better translation, probably after they've replaced the translator.

 

That's just a weakness of the site, and translation quality is extremely subjective. At best readers can point out qualities of the English version. MTLers who can edit better but have a less accurate translation than translators who are versed well in a foreign language, how do you differentiate? Even between translators there are disagreements. Outright pure MTL's already get rejected.

Also personally I don't put much confidence in the votes because I have no doubt that the feature will eventually be abused for 'politics'. You can see it in any story already with themes that the general audience dislike.

In the end such a feature will only fuel conflict. If you think the translation is bad then put it aside, at best you wasted the time required to reach a chapter. Or build your own site that curates translated works.

 

If they MTL and never bother to fix it so that it's at least understandable, then they deserve to quit translating. At least make an effort, if they don't even bother making an effort than they're not worth the pity.

But I do agree that it can easily go badly. I mean there are people with no life who lives just to make other's lives as miserable as theirs.

 

NU is a museum.
It admits works labelled as "art".
It has curators but no art critics.
Some paintings are magnificent work of art. While some... well quite unique...
The degree of the "art" quality judgment depend on the viewers' taste and art education.
Some viewers are so art naive, that they will accept any brush marks on canvas as painting, even if it something that a blind monkey draw. While some viewers were such connoisseur that even a single paint blemish would annoy them to world's end and could only enjoy something that master painter class had drawn.
Some painting genre lack such masters. Since the famous painting genre "Battle Scene in Eastern Asian landscape" and "Another World's Vista" draw many viewers, some newbie painters tried to imitate the master's work in hope of receiving money, even if their brushstrokes was something they painted on Paint and printed out from some desktop printer.
Take out the money and perhaps no one will bother to be MTL translator in the first place...

 

I remeber reading a jap novel "On my third time the first thing i did was get naked" that for the first volume had good translation, and after that it change translator and it become MTL garbage, at that time i don't remember if someone else put it or was I but that novel had bad translation tag don't know if mod or someone remove it (don't even know if the novel is still mtl garbage i dropped it more than 1 year ago)

 

NU has to remain neutral to make sure it won't be involved in trouble.

It's not worth the trouble to try and rate translators, will only cause hate within the community.

If you find a bad MTL, you can just ignore updates for that novel until someone else picks it up... Or you could actually try applying as an editor? To make this work you want to read so much become readable would surely be rewarding, right?