What if someone took translated novels and cut the useless bits out?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Oroan, Mar 22, 2019.

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  1. Oroan

    Oroan Active Member

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    I know this might have been a topic or discussed at some point but what would people think if someone went and took a translated novel(probably a CN novel) and just removed all the useless bits from it? Not to take credit for it or get paid for it, but just imagine some novels if you took out all the useless words, repeat sentences, large useless info dumps that have been provided several times before, useless crowd banter(maybe leave some as reactions arent bad but when you have several paragraphs, or even full chapters of it, it gets annoying) etc, and just see if it would improve the story overall vs the original version. what do people think would happen to the novels in general and what novels would get the biggest benefit of such changes.

    dont have anything against alot of authors but some novels do tend to be needlessly long, and its to the point where ive read a few novels that could stand to lose hundreds of chapters of text just from stuff that adds nothing to the story besides more words. Not that the translators can really do it but i do think that if the useless things were cut out there are a lot of stories that would progress faster and be translated quicker if there wasnt so much useless text.
     
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  2. Toralk

    Toralk Certified Grouch

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    The problem is, the kind of people who would think this is a great idea aren't going to read a 1,000 chapter story to begin with. Let alone take the time to edit it afterward.
     
  3. lnv

    lnv ✪ Well-Known Hypocrite

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    Oh it's not hard...

    There once was a trash MC, he awakened to super powers. He then went and face smacked a bunch of young masters, doped on drugs, built a harem of jade beauties and became supreme god emperor that can crush planets.

    There, done with getting rid of all the useless parts.
     
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  4. 222222

    222222 12121212121212121212121212121212121212121212121212

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    Or use your eyes to power read the boring section.

    You can also power watch videos, movies as well. (video speed controller extension)
     
  5. TamaSaga

    TamaSaga Well-Known Member

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    This can end up creating a legal conundrum.

    While it's true that you probably won't claim credit for it, someone else will probably take your effort and do just that. And because it's pretty different from the original, they could even change some names around and then claim some form of originality in which they then proceed to monetize it. Then the author finds out, sues for damage, and it creates a legal mess which might drag you in.
     
  6. Unsaltea

    Unsaltea Well-Known Member

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    Just look for summary of the novel instead
     
  7. Myriadfold

    Myriadfold 『Silkmaid』『Ishhara's Devotee』『Daoist』『WW Vet.』

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    lol what a stupid thing to be irritated by when choosing to read a story knowing full well what the authors are like.

    now, had your suggestion been about taking stories, removing the pointless arcs and retelling a new version of a story (within the bounds of creative commons) as your own version of a story, similar to what authors do all the time then it would have been an interesting debate.
     
  8. elengee

    elengee Daoist Ninefaps

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    This could only work if the original author was involved or rewrote the story fit for a market where you don't earn by word-count. It'd be similar to how DBZ had a cut version , ending up with hundreds of less episodes.
     
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  9. Oroan

    Oroan Active Member

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    I only ask because i figured id see what others thought on the matter. Too many times have i read stories that have 1000+ 2000+ or even 3000+ chapters and found myself enjoying it far less then i should as time went on, mostly due to the tedious nature of reading the same useless commentary or info time and time again. i do understand just skimming(which ive had to do for several stories or id have probably dropped them from boredom.) through the boring or repetitive parts but i do think that you shoudlnt need to do that when reading a story to make it better for yourself. i just thought it would be an interesting idea(not feasible for obvious reasons both morally and legally) and wanted to see what novels people had read that would benefit most from it and how much they think it might end up changing them.

    looking at a summery of a novel is also the super extreme and in some cases far worse then having useless bits. i mean you can basically tell how 99.99% of stories will end if you have actually ever read a novel to begin with so it will either not help or you will deny yourself all the good parts of the story it wont tell you. i dont mind reading how the character goes form point A to B or that the MC got into a fight with X young master. i do get annoyed when Grunt 1-86754928649236874928367 keep harping on about how amazing said young master X is for half a chapter before the MC decides to either leave, they just start a fight, or the MC stops caring and just gives them a good beating, because i know this will happen or has happened atleast a dozen or two times in the story. you could remove almost all of this useless banter and it would change nothing going from 5 paragraphs of text to 1 since the beginning, transition and end are all going to be basically the same. just removing/ trimming situations like this you could easily remove probably 5-10% of a novels text. Especially during tournament arcs which are like 90% crowd commentary.
     
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  10. Haylias

    Haylias Well-Known Member

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    The Amber Sword's translation basically does this within its chapters, and it's one of the few Chinese series on this site that doesn't read awkwardly to a native speaker.
     
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  11. icedkocha

    icedkocha Active Member

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    One thing I've noticed is that in some of the light novels I've read, certain things tend to get repeated a lot, often in a single chapter,
    But I assume that is a leftover from when they were webnovels with shorter chapters that were condensed into one, and it's the editor's fault for not taking out those redundancies
     
  12. King0Mik

    King0Mik 【An Actual Idiot】

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    For some novels, wouldn't that just be the whole novel?
     
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  13. Karyehs

    Karyehs Well-Known Member

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    I'd love if all those repeated phrases got cut out. And I also don't want to read a summary of the last chapter at the beginning of almost every chapter... I understand that people who wait days or even weeks between chapters may need the summary, but it's disgusting to re-read what you have just read less than 5 minutes ago.

    I believe 'A Will Eternal' has a lot of the repetition cut out... I didn't read the raws, but I've read it in comments before.

    You won't find a lot of support in this forum. Many people here are even against translating the chapter as a unit, instead of simply translating sentence-by-sentence (which can be weird)... To conserve "the original feeling".... Pretty much the same reason why people keep untranslated pinyin.

    At least I would love to read CNovels without excessive repetition. (a little bit is important though... if you read the comment sections of some novels, you will notice that the memory of many readers is veeeeery bad... sometimes I even wonder if I am reading the same novel as some of the weirder commenters.)
     
  14. pyro5379

    pyro5379 Well-Known Member

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    They do this in English. You can get condensed novels. Readers Digest is known for creating sets of condensed novels.
     
  15. rijimon17

    rijimon17 Hope you can read the words

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    So you mean you wish someone would turn the 3000 chapter novels into 200 chapter novels. Interesting idea, but what constitutes as useless info. For all we know a useless info dump on chapter 350 was actually there to prepare us for 359 when said info is useful. Or maybe a chapter is dedicated to getting to know the MC's new friend so that we could properly feel sad that MC's friend has died instead of a remark in passing about someone close to the protag dying. What's relevant info all depends on why the reader wants to read the series. For all we know someone could decide to translate a cultivation novel and not mention anything about cultivation because that's "useless word padding ".

    Speaking of useless word padding (points at essay about word padding):whistle::whistle:

    Also when takin to the extreme you could end up with twelve different translators translating the same series but each having different parts. They would all have to start on chapter one, and for the readers who do want to read the whole series they would have to search through 12 different translation sites scouring the internet to piece the story untill they finally have it in its 8000 chapters of word padding, info dumping, and sentence repeating glory.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2019
  16. UDI

    UDI Writer / Emcee / Lime Blood

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    So you want heavy editing and re-writing for novels. that's already a thing, its called good translation.
     
  17. lygarx

    lygarx Lazy Translator

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    that is a lot of work. unless you are willing to pay for that, learn to mental edit. it does hurt the brain to see such shit english though. what a conundrum. since we are all basically poor here otherwise we would be looking for paid entertainment.
     
  18. Drake888

    Drake888 That one guy. You know, the one over there.

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    Slow down man, you're translating too many novels at once here. I can't keep up.
     
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  19. Katsurandom

    Katsurandom [The One That Does Nothing][Villager C]

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    thats a bad idea, unless the novel as ended..........since you don't know what's "Useless chatter" till the author ends the series........

    also, i'm more of a guy that thinks the novel should read as intended by the author, even if they stuck 2 arcs of useless crap that we never talk about (Looking at shield bro and a certain arc where the powers, history and changes never where brought to life again, and most of the characters "Lost their memory of that time")
     
  20. Kiki0246

    Kiki0246 Top Notch Fujoshi, Owner of ISO TLs

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    Grace actually did this for her Eunuch novel! Honestly it's great for most novels but it also really depends. It can't be done if you're licensed and working with the Raws company as it's in the contract that the translation is true to text. Maybe if it's completed and you're fan translating it. If it's incompleted though, it's better not to because minor details could be hints for huge plot twists (cough kuroshitsuji cough). Most experienced and good translators that ik at least do cut out the constant 'beautiful' and the ridiculous over the top descriptions anyways though.
     
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