Keeping the rage against Active Translation Alive

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by chulex677, Jul 5, 2021.

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  1. chulex677

    chulex677 Well-Known Member

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    Can we please share our rage against the AT guys?, I really hate the greedy bastards, asking 13USD per chapter, like LMAO i can get a best seller from Amazon for less than that.

    And thats for 1 single chapter, they say that its because they want to combat aggregators, but they dont even own the rights of the series they translate, how does it make sense?
     
  2. elengee

    elengee Daoist Ninefaps

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    Not even aware of latest developments, but i remember some of their translations were of horrendous MTL quality too. :hmm:
    It's part of my 'don't read anything by:' list, including AsianHobbyist and Foxaholic too.
     
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  3. nonononononono

    nonononononono NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO

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    :hmm:I'm genuinely curious about what you are trying to achieve.
    If you don't like them, then don't promote them.
    Any publicity is good publicity.
     
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  4. Parth37955

    Parth37955 NU #3, [Dead Inside], Mid-Boss, Dark Dealer Staff Member

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    ...
    Is this amount for releasing a bonus chapter like in the old days of "donations" or do you have to pay $13 to unlock a chapter that you will otherwise never receive for free?

    If it's the former, then that's kinda the norm. You just wait for the chapter to become free or you can pay to read ahead if you'd like.

    If it's the latter, then no, the aggregator excuse doesn't really work out. The main goal would be getting money and not "protecting" said content from aggregators. Real paywalls are dumb asf. All they do is promote aggregator use. Then again, this is Active Translation were talking about. They don't make smart decisions when it comes to readership.
     
  5. elengee

    elengee Daoist Ninefaps

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    If it's the former 13$ is rather cheap, the typical amount was 40-60 for high-quality translations like ISSTH.
     
  6. Parth37955

    Parth37955 NU #3, [Dead Inside], Mid-Boss, Dark Dealer Staff Member

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    Yeh. In hindsight, it was kinda ridiculous how high some of those would go. I remember the old days of PMG where people who donate for over 15 bonus chapter. Nowadays it's all patreon for consistent earnings

    Drop some screenshots. A little bit more info would be great
     
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  7. elengee

    elengee Daoist Ninefaps

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    Scarcity makes the heart grow fonder. Anyway, that'd be like half a month's income for most people and the donators would be appreciated by the rest of the readers. It's funny because PMG being the popcorn novel that it is wouldn't even require all that much work if you're a seasoned translator. But i guess the big money that started going into this is what attracted the bigger players that monopolized and centralized translation rights and then mass produced them behind paywalls, making high-quality translators move on to greener pastures.
     
  8. Parth37955

    Parth37955 NU #3, [Dead Inside], Mid-Boss, Dark Dealer Staff Member

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    Looking around the site without an account, I think the op is really just talking about paying $13 to unlock a chapter early unlike the real paywall like qidian has. I can't verify but if it actually is $13 that seems kind of excessive taking into consideration certain patreon tiers probably give you more than that for just $10.

    As opposed to the old way of getting bonus chapters each individual would have to pay $13 to unlock a chapter early... Which by the way is a mechanic I've never really appreciated and would never pay into. I can just wait.
     
  9. Godgrid

    Godgrid Well-Known Member

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    I rage against Active translations because they’ve blocked my entire country off and won’t whitelist me even though I’ve asked them several times
     
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  10. aShinyVaporeon

    aShinyVaporeon Well-Known Member

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    I don't have too much hate against Active Translations, but they do some things that are kind of annoying.

    Their security measures work, for sure, but it also blocks people from reaching their website sometimes. It's also a little weird for me to not be able to highlight and search a phrase, but that's not too bad. It's mainly their network blocking that annoys me.
    In response to OP's post, it's because it's a source of income, so aggregators hosting it would lower the amount they're raking in. They need others to know it's their site visitors buy chapters from, not the aggregator. It's also probably because getting your stuff stolen and hosted on another site is also a bit upsetting, even if you don't have the rights to it.

    As for their advance chapters thing, I don't buy from them so it doesn't really affect me. Maybe they are more expensive than other sites, but it's not as if you're being forced to buy the advance chapters, anyway. Even if they were $100 per chapter, I would just go "that's expensive" and move on.

    In the case of bad translation quality, I've never actually seen bad quality translation on their site, but it's probably because I generally start reading after chapters accumulate for a bit, and by then the editors have already been there and fixed it. I see comments pointing out bad TL quality sometimes, but it's usually been corrected by the time I get to it, so it's not too big of a deal for me.
    Unlike Asian Hobbyist, it seems the translators have a glossary for the terms, so the translation is thankfully pretty consistent.
     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2021
  11. Astaroth

    Astaroth empty

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    Tbh I can sort of believe that it's actually to 'combat aggregators'.

    Like many have mentioned Active Translations have blocked tons of IPs, entire countries even (Indian IPs are blocked, supposedly because of aggregators iirc).

    I remember trying to use web to epub extension for a friend who couldn't read because blocked country and apparently VPN IPs were blocked as well, and well they've got some anti-bot detection or whatever and all the epubs became gibberish and I got temp banned (though ofc in hindsight I'm not surprised over that or anything).


    Anyway, the site is going to such extremes to combat aggregators and probably not even half of their potential readers can read on the site because they're blocked, so maybe they thought it would be a good idea to somehow recoup their massive lost potential ad revenue with insane prices?


    Oh, and while I haven't looked into it too deeply, I remember checking whether some of their series were on aggregators or not, and at least the ones I checked were so they don't even seem to be successful at preventing aggregators despite all this, so like usual the anti-aggregators/bots/piracy/whatever just ends up doing more harm to the actual readers without accomplishing anything besides delaying the inevitable a bit.

    tl:dr considering all the poor choices they've done, I'm not at all surprised whenever I hear about something weird/dumb Active Translations have done/are doing.

    Anything that doesn't make sense makes sense because everything Active Translations do makes no sense ;)
     
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  12. kurisomething

    kurisomething Reader

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    What’s up with AsianHobbyist and Foxaholic? Don’t know much about this stuff.
     
  13. aShinyVaporeon

    aShinyVaporeon Well-Known Member

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    Dunno how much you know about the topic so I'll just say most of my impressions.

    Both Asian Hobbyist and Foxaholic are sizeable monetized fan translation sites/groups.

    [​IMG]
    Asian Hobbyist in particular has a lot of ads, and they used to not do glossaries at all, so when translators switched, so did the terms and names. Now they have them, but it's only for characters. I used to read a bit on their site (back in 2019-20), and I can't say that the TL quality is high. But it's been a while, so maybe they improved(?). Generally they pick up dropped novels to continue them, which is pretty helpful. The owner is @Wujigege, I think.

    [​IMG]
    Foxaholic is a group that's pretty active on NUF, I see a lot of mentions of them around here. Being a translator on their site means earning some ad money, and you can translate pretty much anything you want (at least, from what I can gather about them). The problem is that requirements are a little stringent (TL quality is not too bad on their site though), so since translators come and go, it's not uncommon to see dropped novels with only a handful of chapters. The owner is @fox23, I think.
     
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  14. animefan4004

    animefan4004 Well-Known Member

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    @elengee
    It's the former, he never actually paywalls his chapters and will eventually release all of his chapters for free regardless if people pay for crowdfunding or not.
     
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  15. Jadiii

    Jadiii Well-Known Member

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    This is kinda crazy to me. People used to charge $80 per chapter for a "bonus release", and people loved it. That $80 would cover translation cost, thus it would then be free to all readers. And you're raging because people can pay $13 so it's free for everyone? Okay? Almost seems like promoting the website to the smart people that read your post lol.

    The way it blocks aggregators is to not have a "premium" model like Webnovel, where individual readers can read ahead. Since pirates can just scrape the "premium" stuff and post it for free, then get more revenue off of the stolen chapters than the actual translator's site. If very few people then buy the "premium" chapters for themselves ahead, this can cause the cost involved to be in the negative. The current setup basically just crowdfunds the translation. By the time the pirates get it, it's already free to the public, and the translation cost got paid.
     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2021
  16. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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    which novel they translate?
    this cat randomly read so bunch of novel but forget the team/translator who translate it~
     
  17. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    You are wrong. The novels are free afterall a while from what I know.

    This is no different from Patreon.

    You just don't want to wait.
    I don't see their premium chapters on Agregators so their system is effective even if it crashes their site.

    I recommend that you leave your echo chamber.
    Just because a bunch of people agree with you doesn't mean you are in the right or NOT crazy.

    I saw the lie @Ai chan was spouting in @otaku31 thread.
    Sorry but I disagree there is no excuse for the death threats end doxxing I got.
    Even if I was a murderer, it is no excuse.
    I will also correct @Ai chan , I never tried to convert anyone.
    People contacted me behind the scenes for help starting a website and how to run it sustainably because this community is toxic and people on here don't seem to live in reality.
    People have contacted me because they are afraid of having ads since there will be attacked by readers.

    Look at this thread attacking a site for doing basically what everyone does.

    And yes, Asianhobbyist is now much better than before.
    Thanks for the mention. Since I did everything myself it was pretty poor at the start.
    But you can only grow.
    Read Past Life Returner or Skill Board
     
  18. Ai chan

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

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    Hold on a minute, when did Ai-chan ever said it's okay for death threats and doxxing? Ai-chan only said you kept trying to pick fights with non-profit translators and since you don't do that anymore, there is no reason to do anything about you anymore. Ai-chan said, that you have the right to say what you want, just as everyone else have the right to say what they want. Freedom of expression goes both ways, you know.

    As for converting, no. You WERE trying to convert people. As you are saying here. You said we don't live in the real world. We were saying that you kept asking people to join you in breaking the law. After all, if everyone breaks the law, then nobody will be punished. You were banking on so many people breaking the law so that you'd be safe from the law.

    When you stopped trying to convert people to break the law with you and steal potential income from authors, there was no reason to do anything about you. As long as you do it on your own time and space, nobody else care to disturb you. The problem is: You Tried To Convert People.

    Ai-chan is sure that this will just go over your head again, just like numerous times before, until Ai-chan gave up trying to make you understand.

    After all, you just want money, right? It doesn't matter to you that it's not your right to make money on that thing in the first place. Ai-chan bets if you can find an orphan on the road somewhere, you will sell that orphan too. Then you will say, "Hey, I found the orphan. I negotiated for the price. I deserved the money. It doesn't matter it's not my child. I've given him a better life."
     
  19. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    You seem to be misunderstanding something.
    There are 2 groups
    Your group I will consider purists.
    The other group I consider the crazies.

    Last I checked you did not send me death threats.
    You seem to be ignoring the fact that the crazies exist and this community is filled with purists like you.
    It is not.

    Given how small my website was and my reach in the community.
    It is a stretch to say I was converting people when my website was fairly new and tiny.

    I simply said in the open what people said in secret.
    I was fishing for ideas on how to make a fan translation website sustainable.
    And I came to the conclusion that the usual model isn't after seeing websites dropping like flies.

    Given how small my website is even now it as grown, I doubt I am responsible for " staining your pure fan translation community".

    You should direct your anger at the much larger sites.

    EDIT: One thing I am guilty of is buying websites and setting it up for new translators, providing web hosting and ads in exchange for 30% of the ad revenue earned. It was a dumb idea since I was just throwing money away as most people are lazy.
    Word of advice: Leave your echo chamber. You are an outsider who doesn't know what I am thinking. I am to admit I am flattered by your overestimation of me. I doubt that I have enough pull to convert anyone here.

    EDIT 2: The crazies are not angry at me because I am a capitalist. They are angry because I dropped novels or didn't release 5,000 chapters a month. So stop generalizing

     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2021
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  20. elengee

    elengee Daoist Ninefaps

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    Don't feed the TrolL. :cookie:
     
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