Question How do you mtl novels?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by just.checking, Jan 30, 2021.

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  1. just.checking

    just.checking Well-Known Member

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    I have a couple questions. 1st of all what exactly is mtl? I think it means machine translation but I'm not too sure. My 2nd question is how do people mtl a novel? Like in the comments of some novels I seen people say that they mtl-ed the novel to like chapter 102, when there was only like 13 ch out in novelupdates. 3rd what is mtlnovel.com . I have been using it for a while and I'm not too sure how it is different from a normal translation.
     
  2. The Hamster Overlord

    The Hamster Overlord Mad scientist/Revered wizard/Alleged antichrist

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    You're right
    They find the original name of the novel (usually given in the other titles section), find the original source and feed the site to their favourite machine translator.
    I use chrome and it automatically translates the foreign sites I visit, for example. Chinese novels usually translate well, Japanese - not as good, but bearable. Korean - nope. The rest I don't know.
    Haven't visited the site, but there's plenty of them that post machine translations of the novels. Some of them (like lnmtl) allow the readers to suggest some edits, making the quality a bit better, though it mostly depends on the popularity of the novels in question.
    Some sites provide mtl as actual translation done by humans (webnovel is very guilty of it in particular, I believe), and it's quite common, tbh, so maybe that's why you can't find the difference.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2021
  3. Astaroth

    Astaroth empty

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    MT (or MTL) = machine translation, in contrast to HT (or HTL) = human translation

    When people say they "MTL" novels, it usually just means that they read the machine translations of the novels, not that they translated anything. Ofc a lot of those are people who used google translate and had it translate the page, so they machine translated the chapters with google. But even if you read on a site that hosts readymade machine translations, people usually talk about it the same. (Unless the site is like Webnovel and other sites that host MTL as if it were HTL ;))

    As for that site you linked, it's presumably a site that hosts novels that have been machine translated.
     
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  4. Scyphoza

    Scyphoza Well-Known Member

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    mtl is indeed Machine Translation. Its a direct literal dictionary translation from one language to another done by a program. The problem with it is most languages dont translate well like that. So intent is lost puns or colloquialisms dont translate directly among other problems like poor grammar due to it being a 1 to one translations with nothing being moved around to make sense in the translated language or match the new languages grammar format.

    Translations that have actual people doing the work are usually fixed grammar wise and of overall higher quality due to the translator being able to interpret and make notes of, or change things as necessary to match the new language.
     
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  5. judeiiro

    judeiiro radish

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    that's right! mtl is basically translation by a machine translator (like Papago, Google Translate, etc) without, or with very little, editing
    1. search the original title in the native language (usually you can find it in the NU page under Associated Names after the Description) - for CN novels you can add 小说 (means novel) after the title if you're not getting the results you want
    2. put it through a translator page/app or if you're on Chrome, Google Translate should kick in automatically
    3. Happy reading!
    Chrome works fairly well with CN and a bit less for KR, but JP novels are usually a mess for me > <
    I'm assuming it's a website where machine translated novels are collected
     
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  6. just.checking

    just.checking Well-Known Member

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    Thank you so much for responding!
    I have one more question where do you read jp novels if you have the raws?
     
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  7. judeiiro

    judeiiro radish

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    for mtl? I just duke it out with Google Translate if I find a JP novel I really like and cannot wait to finish, which is pretty rare..
    I usually just wait for translations since a lot of context gets jumbled up through Google Translate:blobphone: there's probably a more accurate machine translator out there that I don't know of though!
     
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  8. Bobasis

    Bobasis Weeeeee

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    I used the good google translation. But it sucks it’s awful . But I get the general idea of it
     
  9. Kefie

    Kefie 《Lazy Pirate》《⚓️》《Step Red Sibling》

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    Yeah... MTLing novels is often not the preferred choice because of its bad quality. Most people only MTL novels when its their only choice (i.e. the novel hasn't been fully or even started to be translated). Personally, I've only MTLed once and got turned off from the grammar tense issues.
     
  10. Synthium

    Synthium Well-Known Member

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    I often use Yandex Translate rather than Google Translate because of the longer character limit. That way, I'm able to scan through each chapter without having stop and copy and paste another section into the machine translator.
     
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