Discussion Petition: No More Splitting Chapters

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by flowingcloud, Jul 22, 2021.

?

I support this petition.

  1. Yes

    83.6%
  2. No

    16.4%
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  1. yogesh12

    yogesh12 Hater of Generic Novels

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    I mean sure there might be some but 99% use free raws.
     
  2. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    Seriously, IDK where your statistics are coming from

    The guide explaining how to buy chapters on JJWXC and support the author isn't just being passed around for show :blobsleepless:
     
  3. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    I'd go one step further, to be honest. I'd do this, and then change the release rate indicator to be days per full chapter.

    I don't read raws, or MTL, and I'd still be strongly in favor of this. Too many novels have stupidshort chapters that just end up with awful pacing. You end up with a bunch of weird chapters that are either meaningless because literally nothing of even slight importance happened, or are meaningless because you don't have perfect memory and you're in the middle of a complex scene that's been played out in tiny chunks over the last month.

    NU might be an aggregator and not a translator site, but I don't think it's wrong for NU to have some level of standards they expect from places they link to. NU already does this with both paywalled content and stolen content - even when the original is no longer available. I don't think many people have a problem with this, despite such links actually being possible to aggregate.

    ((And while we're talking about standards, can I just beat on my own drum about Infinite Apostle and the Twelve War Maidens? They're literally posting images of text with watermarks on top of the damn text!))

    One option might be to leave it as a kind of tag. Maybe add a tag section for aspects of the translation and the website it is posted on. There are certainly many things about translator sites that can suck enough to make them not worth reading, so this would have utility beyond just chapter splitting. Then it can be basically as troublesome as the current tag system is in terms of moderation. The biggest work would probably be determining the best way to handle situations with multiple translators. However this might lack the, uh, coercive aspects that might actually stop chapter splitting from happening in the first place unless NU wanted to add some default filters. I'm sure people on both sides will have varying opinions on that aspect.
     
  4. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    After reading this... I can only feel :confusedcatblob::confusedcatblob::confusedcatblob:
    This doesn't seem useful tbh. A lot of extra work especially of the chapters are usually split due to length.
    NU's not an aggro? What are you talking about?
    :confusedcatblob::confusedcatblob::confusedcatblob:
    NU doesn't link to aggros??
    That's to prevent aggros from stealing content. Deal with it~
    But the tags are for things related to the story itself, not the translation of it. It'd only make the tag system messier.
     
  5. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    That's impossible because release rate is automated and the system doesn't have a way of knowing if a chapter is full or if it is a part. Even if the translator labels the chapter as "Chapter 1, Part 1", the system will still be unaware that it is a part. So this one is impossible.
    NU does not link to pure MTL. That's the quality standard NU has. If the novel has been translated purely by a machine with no human interference, then it won't be listed on NU.

    As for level of standards of the places that NU links to... There is that too. If a place has ads that are deemed dangerous to the end user, they aren't listed on NU (Usually stuff like redirect ads gets your site blacklisted). If the site is also clearly functioning as an aggregator with stolen novels from other sites, they tend to not be linked either.

    Splitting chapters though... While that may be an annoyance, it's not really against NU policies in any way and doesn't really harm the end users nor the translators, so... There isn't anything related to level of standards that can be applied here.
    Annoying anti-aggregator policies are left at the discretion of the translators. For as long as the release is available for free in a somewhat easy manner, then it should be linked on NU...

    I get that those annoying anti-aggregator measures can be super annoying though... But it's really not up to NU to judge those. I'd suggest just removing the novel from your Reading List and moving on. Maybe if the translator sees that they lost enough traffic due to those (especially if the aggregator's bots bypass those measures... >.>), they might change their mind... If not... Well, then that is that. You just removed a novel that was annoying to read from your list.
    As you said it yourself, tags/reviews related to translation aren't allowed on NU because they can be troublesome in case of novels with multiple translators...

    There are also the cases of someone changing their practices mid-way through the story, so only a part of the chapters would have the translation-related tag/review making any sense, so... That just doesn't work.
     
  6. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    I might not be using the term exactly how you are. I don't know about translations specifically, but generally "aggregator" is used to apply to something like reddit. Bunch of links to other stuff. NU fits that. NU doesn't host the content themselves - again in the typical sense that's usually true (yes, has gotten blurrier over the years).

    So? Everybody else manages somehow. And at the end of the day the point of a translation is to be read. Making it so terrible - or impossible - to actually read (say if somebody has shit vision, or even uses a screen reader, for example) to read at some point makes it not worth counting as a translation. I'm not going to argue with what the creator wants to call it, but when we're talking standards... it's worth considering. Like, if I make a translation and post it as an image where the background is (rgb) 255,255,255 and the text is 255,255,254... I mean technically the words are there, right? There's obviously a limit in here somewhere. It's worth talking about where it is.

    Well they are only for the story *now*. They don't have to be by divine fiat. Personally I don't think having a separate section for them would really make it messier. I wouldn't mix them in with all the other tags, but a new "Translation" section seems fine to me. Maybe not to you though, I dunno.






    If you get the labels in as a requirement, it's literally a single regex away from being automatable. Not a big deal.

    [
    Well that was the point of the discussion here. Some readers think chapter splitting is harming them, and that NU should put in place some policies to prevent that harm. Obviously not everybody agrees on the level of harm caused by chapter splitting, and probably also at which point NU should step in to prevent harm. Hence, you know, the discussion.

    And again, hence the discussion. When we're talking about potentially changing rules, it's kinda required to talk about rules different from those that current exist. And specifically in the case I mentioned, I think I could make a decent argument it's not available in a somewhat easy manner for some people. People with highly impaired vision or those that might even be using a screen reader probably are totally screwed if they encounter that novel I mentioned. Obviously not many people are in that situation, but where do you draw the line?

    Right, these are all good questions. I think it's worth talking about potential solutions to these problems though instead of just saying it's a problem and giving up. There are options here. I can think of potential ones for every problem listed, though I don't know how good they would be. It would take a bit of work to figure out the best way to do it, but I do think it would provide a lot of value too. If you look at reviews, it's not uncommon for the translator themselves to be mentioned as a significant deciding factor in the review. These things obviously matter to readers, so finding a way to make that information easier to access can only be a good thing.
     
  7. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    Eh... not in the novel context. An aggro is a platform that steals other people's content without permission. NU doesn't do that.
    Then readers just won't read, period~ Or they'll read off aggros.

    What the translator chooses to do with their site is not really up to you, though. Like I hate sites with white words on a black background, it's awful for me to read on, but I just either suck it up or don't read. You can do the same.

    And, nowhere in the definition of "translation" do I see the requirement "must be at a certain level of legibility". It's a translation simply because it fulfills the one requirement: the text has been translated from one language to another.

    And if by 'manage', you mean... have given up on trying to stop aggros because it's nearly impossible, then yeah, they manage.


    Again: no one's complaining about chapter splitting, the discussion at hand is about purposefully naming chapters wrongly.
    I don't have a problem with it if it's in another section. What tags would you propose, though? "slow translator?" "inconsistent releases"? "wrongly numbered chapters"?

    That seems like it'd offend people, and doesn't seem like something that belongs on the novel page anyway (perhaps on the translator group's page, yes).
     
  8. AliceShiki

    AliceShiki 『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』

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    It's not nearly as simple as you make it seem.

    For example... What if the author split the chapter into multiple parts? Each translate chapter part is actually a full chapter in that case. How would the system identify that?

    What about an intermission? Does this one count? What about Character Profiles? Do those count as a chapter? How about extras? Which ones count and which ones don't?
    Oh, and what about post-story extras vs short twitter extras? Which one counts~?

    Or what if it's something like... v2c4part2, can the system get this one right?

    Moreover, a translator that splits a 10k words chapter into 5 parts of 2k words chapters is translating at the same pace as a translator that translates 5 chapters of 2k words each. Why should NU list their release rate differently?

    Moreover, you're also going to need to transform the releases which are just text strings into something that the system counts on top of all that... I don't see how that would be feasible at all. It's just plain impossible.
     
  9. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    I do do the same. And it is also completely up to NU if they want to link to a translator or not. They already don't link to many places. You may as well say NU should link to novel aggregators and it's up to readers to decide if they want to read there or not. NU has discretion to link to who they want to link to. If they want to add more requirements, they can.

    What kind of nonsense is this? I can't honestly believe you mean to say NU should link to anything that purports to be a translation, regardless of if anybody can actually read the thing? May as well start linking full on black images and claiming there's a translation under there somewhere. Not my fault if you can't read it. It's there, I promise, so you gotta link it!

    Well, I am complaining at least. But yes, perhaps the title o the thread is poorly chosen? Though I agree with the mislabeling stuff too - it makes it impossible to tell at a glance that splitting is happening in the first place.


    You could probably find most of the important tags in common phrases in reviews. Reviews already frequently mention translators anyway. Those tags you mentioned would probably be there, same for things like "fast translator" and "consistent releases" and "good/bad english" and the position of notes, and all that kind of stuff. It would be a mix of good, bad, and neither things, I'd guess. I'm sure some people would end up unhappy, but that already happens with reviews and comments and all that anyway, which seem a lot more personal to me.

    You might be able to get away with simply preferring the positive version of most tags about translator qualities, and the lack of a tag do the speaking instead. That has it's own downsides, but is less likely to cause any kind of conflict too.

    I'd also like to see tags for website design - you could have things like text/background color, column width, text size, how well it zooms, and even how friendly it is to extensions like Dark Reader and other userscripts/custom css.

    I'd probably just keep it on the novel page itself though. Translator groups can vary a lot depending on the specific translator, so putting it there is a little too coarse grained. Translators also (hopefully) get better over time, but are unlikely to go back and redo their earlier work. Leaving it at the novel level would better capture what can actually be found in that novel.

    Website design is probably more likely to change after the fact though, so that might be better suited to be on the translation group page or something like that. I'd still like to see it more easily on the novel page somehow, but you're probably right that tags for it should somehow be tied to the translator group and not the novel itself.

    You're right. It's not literally as simple as a single (non-terrifying, anyway) regex. It's also not impossible, as you originally said. I swung a bit too far the other way in response. It shouldn't be too hard to get it right the vast majority of the time. There are relatively few standard formats most translators use, and a mistake or two isn't the end of the world - particularly if you include some way for users to manually fixup problems. You could probably even leave it entirely for users to sort out. It should at least be way more objectively true or not than many tags.

    NU already does list release rates different for authors that translate the same number of words/day. Right now an author that splits that same 10k word chapter into 10 parts of 1k words each gets listed as having twice the pace of either of the authors you mentioned. I don't believe there is a perfect solution here. The closest thing to perfectly fair would be using words instead of chapters, but that's going to be more painful to figure out, can still be gamed by changing their translation, and isn't even that helpful.

    1k words/day of a slice of life novel is also going to be pretty different for a reader than 1k words/day of some highly complex political thriller thing.

    There is no fair here, I'd just leave it as chapters as the author intended. The genre and the book itself can serve as a guide as to what that means.

    I'm really not sure what you mean by this. None of my guesses seem very good, so, could you explain a bit more?
     
  10. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    If there's no visible translation, then it's not a translation. I don't understand why you are going to such extremes with your examples.

    However, an image of the translation with a watermark, as you described earlier, is definitely a visible translation.

    Perhaps I should amend my previous statement to "your legibility standard is too high, it's unreasonable"
    I do not understand your point. Aggros are not translators.

    And they might add requirements, but not unreasonable ones like the ones you are proposing.
    The title might have been poorly chosen, but the main point that the thread is discussing has been clarified in both the first post and the 3 pages that followed, many times.

    The fact that you are showing some confusion over this just means you didn't read the thread.
    What about novels with multiple translator groups?
    Reviews and comments can be seen as biases, stupid, or just plain wrong. They are quite easy to ignore as well. It's way less hurtful than seeing an actual tag talking about how bad you are attached to the novel.
     
  11. Parth37955

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

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    ...sigh why do I keep returning to this thread...

    First let's organize the issues brought up by this thread.
    1. Splitting chapters - as mentioned earlier, it in and of itself is not a bad thing as long as translators don't renumber chapters
    2. Renumbering chapters - is bad. However...it does not detract enough from a readers experience to necessitate removal from NU. It's false advertising surely, but not directly harmful to the experience
    3. MTL - why this is a topic for this thread, idk. We have a certain internal standard for MTL that I do not want to disclose...though we make it fairly evident when people get rejected from NU what they can do to remedy the situation. Usually, these "translators" fail to take advantage of their second chance and dig themselves deeper into the hole. If anyone notices a group is simply posting raw MTL, report the novel/group. Be proactive.

    I unfortunately might need to stress this again, but we will not be banning groups over splitting chapters. Don't respond to my post by making up examples of splitting up a chapter into individual sentences. That is a ridiculous threat. If you have a problem with people renumbering chapters, go complain to the translator who is doing that.
     
  12. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    I went to that extreme to make a point that there is a line somewhere. At some point a thing is too illegible to count as a translation, and hence shouldn't be linked on NU.

    The watermark is literally on top of some of the text. Is it possible to figure out what it says? Maybe, with a healthy dose of context and some effort. But if every line of text was covered that way, I think you might be agreeing with me that it was functionally illegible. If only some lines are extremely difficult to read, does that count?

    And again, there's some amount of accessibility issue here. Somebody with really bad vision might well be SOL, and what about people using screen readers? Where do the draw the line for all this?

    Reasonable people can disagree, but I don't think it's as cut and dry as you're making it seem. It's not unreasonable to question it.

    They are not translators, but they certainly do host translations. And NU links to translations, not just translators. Otherwise every novel would just list the translator, and then the translator page would link to their website.

    I brought up multiple potential requirements. I'm not sure exactly which ones you mean. All of them? I don't think legibility is unreasonable, even if we disagree on how illegible is acceptable.

    In my original post I mentioned I agreed with the premise of the thread, and that I'd take it even further and do something about actual chapter splitting too (as the title said). The whole legibility thing was originally an aside. Since then I've just been responding.

    It'd probably be best to try a few things out and see how it actually goes, but I can see some options. For example you could make the translator tags apply to a specific translator. So if there's one translator just assume it's tied to the only translator, if there are two, when making the tag it can simply let you select which group it applies to. For the display, you could create smaller subheadings for each group under the "Translator Tag" section.

    Hm, I guess you mean it seems more 'official' and might be more hurtful because of that? Yeah, I can see how that might go.

    Maybe then you stick to positive things about the translator. The tags can list the positive things about a translator, and potential readers can make inferences from the lack of certain tags. Early on it might be a little misleading, but if the whole novel info section is pretty bare it should be obvious enough it's just a lack of information.
     
  13. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    Black on black image with no highlightable text means there's no visible translation.

    If it's highlightable, then it's different. Annoying, yes, just like those pop-up ads that cover half your screen and take forever to go away. But still legible.
    Can you show some examples? Aren't watermarks usually half-transparent? I don't understand what you mean by some words are covered up.
    I still don't understand. Aggros are not the original translators. Therefore they will not be linked. Why are they even in this discussion?
    I meant none of them. I feel like your standard of legibility is too high.
    Mnn... eh, I still think chapter splitting's fine.
    Seems complicated...
    ...That doesn't seem useful anymore then >.<

    What's your standard of "good English" btw?
     
  14. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    Are you saying there is no line anywhere beyond technically possible to read? What if we're talking about a JPG with black (#000000) with very slightly different black (#000001). If you jack up the contrast enough or otherwise modify the JPG to change the color, the translation is there. Would think it's acceptable for NU to link to this as a translation? It is technically possible for somebody, somewhere, to read it.

    The reason I am making such an extreme example is to try to highlight (ha?) that this is not a completely black and white (ha again?) issue. You keep saying things that seem to imply this is a very direct and obvious issue with no room for reasonable disagreement. I don't think that's the case. Hence, the crazy situation above.

    https://mythrapneuma.com/2021/07/28/infinite-apostle-and-the-twelve-war-maidens-chapter-120/ shows an actual chapter. There are two grey watermarks in the midst of the text itself. I won't say it's impossible for to eventually read even the lines that conflict with the watermarks, but it requires some time, effort, and squinting to figure it out.

    And that doesn't mean everybody can do that. People with dyslexia or some other visual processing problem might struggle far more. I think this falls into some of that grey area. There are some people who are going to find that chapter even impossible to read - such as blind folk with screen readers.

    To them, the situation with that chapter is not dissimilar to my hypothetical above. With enough know-how and effort they could get access to that chapter. Hell, they could pay somebody like me or you to read it aloud to them. But at some point the level of effort here is unreasonable.

    Again, there is room for reasonable people to disagree. I'd bet most people could read that chapter with just a little time and squinting. Maybe you think that's a sufficient bar and that anybody else who can't read it can just not read it. I might even agree with you. But it's still a reasonable thing to discuss.

    Yeah? My point is that NU isn't just linking translators. They link chapters. NU decides not to link to aggros. That's fine, and I think a good thing. But that is a decision NU is making. They are explicitly not linking actual translations to chapters because the translation is posted on an aggro.

    My point is that this is a rule NU decided on. They decided to have some standards beyond simply "being a translation."

    I feel like much of our discussion is going in circles because you are not seeing the distinction between discussing how things are and how things could be. NU could link to aggros. They do not, because they don't want to support aggros. This is despite there being legitimate interest in readers for content on aggros. But there is no divine fiat that NU shall not link aggros. They just chose not to. Just like they could chose not to link to JPGs, or split chapters, or mislabeled chapters, or... really whatever random criteria you want to set. They could chose not to link to translations done by translations that have worked at the circus if they wanted to.

    When talking about what NU *could* do, you can't just say what NU actually does and end the discussion. NU could do things differently.

    Not really. I think once you saw it laid out visually it'd be very obvious. We deal with displays like that all the time and it's not a big deal. Describing several ways things could look in text is always going to be annoying complex.

    Depends? It's maybe not quite as useful, but if you see a novel with 1k translated chapters and bunch of ratings and reviews, and then you look at the translator tags and *don't* see a "good english" tag... the meaning is pretty obvious, I think. That sounds useful to me, and it still avoids being potentially confrontational like you pointed out.

    This is probably more one of those "I know it when I see it" kind of things, but probably something that has few technical errors and no habit of particularly odd or confusing constructions.
     
  15. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    I don't really want to discuss extremes with you because it seems pointless, especially since you've just given me the example at hand.
    Two words: stunned speechless.
    Literally wtf.

    That is hard to read? The watermarks are covering up whole letters??? I could read it perfectly easily. The watermark was mostly transparent and most of it was placed IN BETWEEN LINES for goodness' sake!!! It barely touched the letters and it's easy to ignore and just treat it as a background color.

    I think, that barring any medical conditions or reading difficulties, you are exaggerating how long it takes to read this.

    Look, I'm not going to discuss blind people or people with dyslexia with you, as I don't know much about that.

    But I'm saying that kind of watermark and image, to the vast majority of readers, is completely legible.

    I don't get your point or your last setence. They could, but they don't. What more is there to discuss?

    I could steal other people's translations and post them on my site to be an aggro, but I don't. Therefore, I'm not one. End of discussion, there's no point to be made about 'what if's in this scenario.
    I bet some of those numerous readers would say it's a great translation with good English.
    So it's subjective. Therefore I don't think it works as a tag.

    What's your stance on pinyin in text?
     
  16. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    Yeah... I'm out of ways to try to explain to you how I'm thinking about things. It's clear we've got a fundamental disconnect that I'm not going to be able to overcome. We're at extreme opposites on the abstract/concrete spectrum, I think. I really wish I knew how to convey what I mean in a way that'd make sense to you, but I'm honestly out of ideas.

    Just to try to get the difference across to you... for example, I'd much rather deal with one of those hypothetical examples you consider to be pointless. Meanwhile I consider an actual example to be pretty pointless. It's just one example out of a huge range of possibilities. It's really unlikely to be on the boundary of any useful distinction. The only real purpose they serve is pointing out that there's a reason to actually talk about an issue in the first place.

    That's how I think anyway. I know not everybody is the same. Unfortunately I just don't have the ability to translate (does that count? ha?) this.


    Uh, are we looking at the same image? Sometimes it's not so severe, but sometimes it is. It doesn't line up the same way every time. But the overlap on some lines is substantially more than "barely." I can understand you might not find it that hard to read, but... the watermark on one line is literally both on top of and slightly below the text itself. It overlaps the entire line of text, not just "barely touch" it. For example, the second watermark on the very first page of the chapter I linked. The bottom of the 'p' literally sticks below the line of text, while about half the watermark is above the line. Fully overlapped is not "barely touching."



    I don't think I ever claimed it took a long time in general. I said it took a lot more effort than reading another line. And it does. I can probably read a paragraph or two in the time it takes me to read one of those lines. Part of the problem is it breaks my flow. I have to stop and figure out wtf is going for a moment before slowly (relatively to a normal line) reading it.

    I'm not sitting there for 5 minutes, but it's an undo amount of time and effort to read a single line.

    Changing from actually posting text to posting these watermarked images of text caused me enough problems that I dropped the novel despite otherwise enjoying it, if that tells you something.

    Many tags are already fairly subjective. For example, take the "romantic subplot" tag. Where do you draw completely objectives lines on the difference between romance genre, romance subplot tag, and no tag at all? You can't. It's fairly subjective. Even the most concrete-seeming - the genre - isn't as universal as even I thought until recently. A week or two ago I wrote a review after realizing a novel I thought was a romance really wasn't. It deals with romance, but it's not really a romance novel IMO. The novel itself was something I'd consider more romantic subplot, as the MC's romance was secondary to the plot.

    Yet those tags seem to basically work alright. Not being 100% objective is not needed to work as a tag. It doesn't need to be perfect to be useful.


    Depends. Sometimes I think it's a really great idea and does a good job of conveying more subtle ideas that are difficult to get across otherwise with the kinds of translations we get. It can also do a good job of reminding the reader that we're dealing with a non-western world, which also brings in it's own atmosphere.

    But it shouldn't be the default. It should accomplish something, and not just be pinyin for the sake of pinyin or pandering to all the folks like love to just yell "SENPAI" in the comments. Sames goes for stuff that's technically not pinyin but still very exclusive to a niche audience
     
  17. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    Oh, I see. Yeah no, still really easy to read. >.>
    Okki~
    See, I can understand "breaking flow". But not the 2 paragraphs unless you're speed-skim-reading.

    It's unfortunate that you dropped it for the watermarks, though. I just still don't see it being a big problem overall.
    Like...? If for example, someone translated a Chinese idiom literally (i.e. "hated iron for not becoming steel" instead of "extremely disappointed") or chose to just leave the pinyin in an idiom simply because it "expressed feeling" or translated "auntie" as "ah yi", what would you think?
     
  18. tweprebet

    tweprebet Active Member

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    I think I read fairly quickly, so maybe that's related? And I probably react more poorly to having my flow broken than most do. Takes me a moment to recover. The watermark is also just distracting on it's own, as my mind tries to read it too.

    To be fair, it wasn't only the watermarks. Though honestly that would have been enough on it's own. It's also the all the other problems that come with using an image. I do a fair bit to websites to get them to behave the way I want. I use Dark Reader, for example, because I prefer white on black. I also will use zoom to adjust text size and column widths, and if I'm lucky I can also get sidebars to rearrange themselves to get out of the way. I'll also use Reader Mode to do similar things. Sometimes I also apply my own edits to the text itself. A weird number of (mostly Japanese, I think?) novels like to use the name Chris for female characters, despite the fact the female form of the name is Kris. Every time I read it I think I've missed something until I remember the female character as the male form of the name. Very occasionally a translator will use a really weird spelling that just doesn't work when I read it in my head, so I'll make a small change (like making an 'a' an 'e' or whatever) so I can actually read it properly.

    Most of the above breaks when text is not actually text.

    Idioms vary for me depending on how understandable they are. Hating iron for not being steel is very understandable and I think it works well to translate more literally. Meanwhile an idiom that relies more on wordplay is pretty much always just not going to work and should not be done literally.

    Stuff like "ah yi" is more situational. I don't think I've ever seen that not translated as "auntie" so I can't say too much about that exact example. I guess I'd go for "auntie" just because that seems to be what ever translation I've read has done. Presumably they have good reason. Mostly I think it depends on how much nuance is attached to it in that novel, and how similarly matched translation options are.

    One novel I read once used pinyin for... I forget what exactly - but I think it was "master" or at least some kind of reference to seniority - because it let them show the degrees of formality better, and they thought it was important to how the characters were relating to each other. They also went out of their way to explain the nuance involved that wouldn't be obvious to all western readers, and I thought that was a great decision. It did a good job of really showing the sheer degree of respect and deference involved there, which isn't something a random westerner stumbling in would probably implicitly understand.

    So it all kinda depends on exactly how much extra the pinyin let's them show, and how much use the novel and translator get out of it. And even how much the translator wants to explain, potentially.
     
  19. Lissi

    Lissi 『Queen of Lissidom』『Holy Chibi』『Western Birdy』『⚓』

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    It is? See, I think the opposite. I hate it when idioms are just translated literally like that. If it's just in a casual context, saying "very disappointed" is enough, because that's what the author's meaning is. There's no need to encompass all the tiny nuances. The conversation is about neither iron nor steel, it's not even an English idiom, I would not count it as a good translation if it kept using literally translated idioms everywhere. It doesn't even make sense in English.

    Now, if it was a wordplay and 'iron' or 'steel' is involved and built upon later, yeah translate literally. Dropped in the middle of a conversation? No thanks.

    This just goes to show it's very subjective, yes? I really don't think tags about good translation or whatever would work.

    Oh, I see. You have a lot higher standard than I do... :sweating_profusely:
     
  20. Parth37955

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

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    This is no longer about splitting chapters. wanna complain about MTL or watermarks? start a different thread. locked
     
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