Discussion NovelBear Translation/NovelTom

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Airisu, Nov 8, 2019.

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  1. Airisu

    Airisu Where is my daily GL

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    So, I saw a chapter of a novel I was following released by this group I never heard of. Tried to read it, but honestly it makes no sense at all... the names are clearly mtld (how can there be a “Tudor” in a chinese novel??) and the sentences are weird. And it’s impossible to contact them directly to ask, since there isn’t any contact information in any of their 2 websites.
    Plus, they picked up a novel that was never said to be dropped, so honestly I am confused.
    Anyone knows anything about it?

    UPDATE: (for who doesn’t wanna read the whole thread) yes it is a not edited mtl group, and it was taken down from NU for this reason.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2019
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  2. Prettyrabbit

    Prettyrabbit Active Member

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    This , what are you saying I understand but if that novels are not dropped then why not there is any updat or news .

    And for some grammatical errors I don't mind that much as long as I can understand it . At least they are trying there best .
     
  3. Dummy

    Dummy Need nyans

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    Based on what I've seen, novelbear is just another nastriumden, going around and picking up novels that haven't been dropped. They prioritise churning out chapters for the sake of view counts despite the quality(honestly, do they even know english or do they just not bother editing the MTL) and do not care about communicating with other translators at all. I have seen the translators of some of the stories picked up by them who said that those novels havn't been dropped so I don't know why they are completely disregarding them.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
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  4. Airisu

    Airisu Where is my daily GL

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    Yeah, I read a lot of mtls but... honestly theirs are bad. At least for the novel I was reading, it was so bad nothing really made sense :/ I don’t mind mtls, but I like to know that I am reading one so I know that I can’t expect a perfect tl.

    Well, I just hope groups of novels that weren’t dropped won’t drop them cause they are “picking” up the projects, cause honestly I may just take the raws and mtl them myself for the quality I saw (again, I am talking about a specific novel, so I dunno if all of their novels are that badly tld)


    Yoh know people have lives? Here on NU the listed translators do it for free, so you can’t expect them to translate like machines. Sometimes irl matters happen, and they can’t write news/can’t be bothered cause they have more pressing matters.
    But this wasn’t the point I want to talk about, I just wanted to know if this group is another hoarder of popular novels that mtls or not. Cause honestly, I don’t like to read bad done mtls if I can read good tls/decently edited mtls
     
  5. mechamecha

    mechamecha Well-Known Member

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    Agreed, at first I read their translations but then I just stopped reading them, it’s a pity because the novels they picked up were ones I liked and I’d rather have a quality translation than quick releases, quality over quantity
    One of the translators for the work they picked up said that they’ll continue translating the work and which one people read is up to us, just wanna tell all the previous translators before NovelBear that I’ll wait for their updates and they don’t have to drop just because NovelBear is picking it up
     
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  6. Airisu

    Airisu Where is my daily GL

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    Honestly the novel I follow is so badly tld that you don’t even understand who is saying what, or what’s the subject when they are speaking, or just the name of places/characters was totally wrong (like Tudor, it was a name for a place. Who knows what it meant originally), other than the super bad sentence structure. So, no, I really hope the original translators will notice how bad it is and don’t drop.
     
  7. mechamecha

    mechamecha Well-Known Member

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    Yeah I’m saying that the original translators won’t drop just because NovelBear is picking it up.
    The thing I’m probably most annoyed about is that they use wrong pronouns like even though the scene only has males the pronoun “she” will still be used. Commented that on one of their posts but they probably didn’t care.
     
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  8. Lineren

    Lineren Well-Known Member

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    Tried reading the latest chapter of Holding On To My Man. I have no idea what I read. Got so annoyed with them showing up on novels I love with chapters that are illegible I had to put them on my blacklist in release filtering. Does anyone know what will happen with novels that currently don't have a translator? Will they not get picked up, since it's technically been translated?
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
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  9. sunnyboy

    sunnyboy Well-Known Member

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    Someone one day might re-translate it properly, but who knows when.
     
  10. Nightow1

    Nightow1 Well-Known Member

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    It probably is MTL. And uneditted. One of the reasons why they are on my "ignore" list, it seems like they're going quantity over (nonexistent) quality
     
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  11. Prettyrabbit

    Prettyrabbit Active Member

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    Well it's not I'm telling you that you should also read it . If you don't like it then you don't like it . I can't do anything about that . If someone want to read it then Read , if someone don't want to then don't . Please don't take my word to your heart I just said what I want to say
     
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  12. Dummy

    Dummy Need nyans

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    As a translator group who has had someone like novelbears (nastrumdien) swoop in and release over 50 chapters at once ahead of my group while prioritizing quanity over quality, i would say that the chances of having another translator pick up the novel extremely low unless they drop it. Like in the case of Number One Zombie Wife(novelbear picked it up after nastrumdien stopped updating it), my team and I originally spent a long time on translation permission but then said translator came in. We continued translating but honestly at that point, we didn't see any future in continuing it(although it wasn't the main reason why we dropped it). We still had some loyal readers who promised to continue reading at our site but stats don't lie, the number of readers were significantly lower.

    Moreover, they completely disregard the original translator and insist that what they are doing is right(since they are providing readers with faster releases). I just want to say that such people really destroys the possibility, or bring it down really low, of other translators picking it up. If the translators do continue, props to them but it honestly is a losing battle because some readers don't care about the quality and efforts that translator put into them. And groups like novelbear are trampling over the translated novel scene
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
  13. Ai chan

    Ai chan Queen of Yuri, Devourer of Traps, Thrusted Witch

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    If they're really badly translated, report them. Let @Tony or @runsing decide.

    We've got so many terribly translated stuff these days that it might just persuade Tony to change the rules to raise the bar from 'edited machine translation' to 'readable translations'. 'Edited' means nothing when you can't understand what is being translated or edited. If Ai-chan did that, Ai-chan would lose all clients within a month.
     
  14. Lineren

    Lineren Well-Known Member

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    That's what really sucks about it, because you sort of lose several good novels like this. I tried reading some of the ones without a translator (the ones still with a translator are definitely worth waiting for) but there was so much that just didn't make any sense. If it's just grammar I can deal with it, but most sentences have no meaning. There was supposed to be a reveal of some sort in the chapter I just read, but after reading I'm even more confused than I was originally, and I have no idea what was supposedly revealed. Something about the ML origins? Maybe. Possibly. Or not.
    Is there somewhere we can collect novels with bad translation, showing translators we're still interested in them being picked up? There are definitely novels in there that I've been really hoping will get picked up, so it would suck not to get to read them. And I tried, I really did. I couldn't, even with re-reading every paragraph several times, understand about 80% of the chapter. And that's being generous. With several re-reads. It's not to diss anyone, maybe it's not mtl, in which case they need to work on their English. Nothing wrong with that, but if so don't pick up so many novels and rob us of the opportunity to read a legible translation.
     
  15. runsing

    runsing status : bleeding, health -10/s Novel Updates Staff

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    a lot of effort would be needed to really 'raise the bar'.
    first of all, 'readable' is subjective. logically, people with good english comprehension would be able to tolerate more compared to people with lesser grasp of english. but that doesn't mean they want to.

    for example, when i read some novels on lnmtl, i don't read them word by word, but instead read them as a whole. sure, the composition of the phrase is all over the place, but i can understand the story nonetheless.
    insistence or preferences (or standard) are also a factor. people who wants to enjoy what they like will still do so even with google-translating. i know at least one BL reader who shall not be named whos eating mtl'd BL like there's no tomorrow.

    it is like watching a movie where the language is not spoken with standard english pronounciation. being a non-english speaker myself, it tooks more effort watching UK series if some of the characters uses nothern accent. but that doesn't mean i can't enjoy nor understand what the story is about. just because a character speaks 'english' does not it mean it was easy to understand.

    if we really do that (raise the bar), we'll need someone who's proficient with at least two language, with english as one of them. unfortunately, most of the people complaining about inaccuracies, bad grammar etc, are people who based off their understanding using mtl themselves, not an actual translator.

    some people might say 'reading mtl is reading fanfiction' bla bla bla, but at the end of the day the reality is there's just not enough real translators. there will never be. rather than hiring someone to 'proofread' all chapters on NU per day, (which is ranging from 500-650), i'd rather have him choose a novel to translate instead.
     
  16. Lineren

    Lineren Well-Known Member

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    It doesn't need to be perfect, it's just frustrating to read a novel where you know there is something every other sentence you're not getting. It's right there, so you try guessing based on context but still don't get it. What's the point of reading a novel if over 2/3 of it is lost in translation? I've read the occasional mtl, because I really want that update, and yes, I'm getting it for free, but still... you don't even get basic information (ie. plot point, character info and just knowing who's talking), not to mention the feeling a really good translator is able to bring over (which I'm not demanding, but it's always a nice surprise).
    They've taken 21 novels since they started at the end of October, many of which still have active translators. I don't mind the occasional mtl, but most of these 21 novels will probably be dropped by their current (competent) translators because they can't keep up with releases. The rest won't be picked up because they've technically been translated.
    It's also not just about enjoying whatever translation is put out there when you know that if this mtl wasn't on this site, someone would probably pick up the novel and actually do it justice. Instead of just enduring and trudging through what might have been a really good novel.
     
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  17. runsing

    runsing status : bleeding, health -10/s Novel Updates Staff

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    2 novels were auto-added/approved by bots (it is a blanket setting for those two novels). since then, those chapters has been removed (from view)
    2 novels were started by them. no previous translators.

    all the other 17 novels have no *Active Translator, from what i can see.

    * A.T here refers to
    https://www.novelupdates.com/nu-policy/
     
  18. Dummy

    Dummy Need nyans

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    In conclusion, no matter how many people get angry, NU won't do anything :blobwink:

    Although it really isn't NU's fault. Honestly, of so many novels they can pick up they somehow manage to choose the popular ones with a large reader base instead of those novels which are honestly waiting for a translator. I've done teasers and read teasers that are waiting for others to pick them up, but yet they went straight for the one we had been actively translating (twice a week mind you and NU rejected my request so there :blobxd:)
     
  19. maevalily

    maevalily Well-Known Member

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    Soooo... this group has been picking up novels left and right without abiding by the 3 months rule (edit: my bad, apparently it’s 1 month) and to top it off the translation quality is pretty much MTL... I can’t tell for sure because I don’t mtl novels but I do know that all the novels I like that they’ve picked up (seemingly without asking the previous translators) have had a drastic drop in quality. So bad I’d rather they not translate it at all. Does anyone know what’s going on? :hmm:

    I know MTL sites exist out there but the links don’t usually show up on novelupdates. I’m scared actual translators won’t pick up some of the novels they’re translating (if the original translators have actually dropped them) and we’d never find a better quality translation of those novels :blobsob:
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
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  20. Dummy

    Dummy Need nyans

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    I think this is the same.... not sure if you want to merge the threads

    Also, idk why I also thought it was a 3 month long period but somehow, NU shows only 1 month before allowing others translators to list their site on their page
     
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