Hey everyone, I'm looking for work as an editor and/or proofreader. I don't have experience, but I have good english proficiency and I'm meticulous. I'll be happy to work for free, but eventual paid compensation would be much welcomed. My working hours would be afternoon to late evening (GMT+1), but I can bend in case of emergency. You may contact me on NUF, I'll wait for you! Thanks for the attention.
Blob Translations needs editors, especially for the following projects: Demon Lord, Retry! Di Daughter’s Rebirth: Sheng Shi Wang Fei Side Character Transmigrations: The Final Boss is No Joke If you're interested, kindly fill out this form~ @changeling @Blob Translations
I think your best bet is to contact Qidian, they definitely need you. You can market yourself even better by criticizing how abysmal their proofreading/editing on many novels are. Most sites won't pay you, that's the reality. We have an excess of proofreaders. Also don't call yourself an editor, it requires a lot more skill than you imagine. Unless you can write your own stories and/or read the original language, you will fail as an editor. A literature degree to me is required to hire one to be an editor so.........
gl hope someone recruit your soon but i probably think you should try qidian actually i think editor are much harder then it look not getting paid might be too a bit lame well yeah translator might be hard but think about it if translator do a sloppy job translate thing it gonna be much harder on editor too
Thank you for clarifying the difficulty of the job. I've just started, but I'll try my best. In the meantime, I'm studying japanese, so maybe, someday, I could fulfill your expectations. Nothing to do about the Literature degree, though ^^'
I don't think a degree is an absolute requirement to be an editor or proofreader. Sure, if you want to be hired for a company, a degree is probably needed, but I feel like for most groups out here, requiring a degree is pretentious. I know plenty of good editors that aren't English Literature majors. A degree may show that you have knowledge, but you don't need a degree to have knowledge. I think that experience is a bigger factor in being a good editor or proofreader. As you work, you strive to improve yourself, and you can get knowledge on the job, and so on. It's a Catch-22 to expect a good editor from someone who has no experience editing. Everyone has to start somewhere. Try asking around at a TL group working on a series you like, and volunteer yourself to get experience, if you have your eye on maybe being paid to edit someday. Keep in mind that different groups have different standards, and people who are paid money don't always guarantee the best quality. Find a group with a culture and people that you like. Good luck, with both editing and your japanese studies!
Thank you very much for the advices!! By the way, I wanted to clarify that I don't actually expect to be paid. Who would pay someone with no experience who hasn't even proved herself yet? It was more like future goal, really. Something to look forward to when I'll get good enough. An incentive for future career?
Well, then you just have to find a group you would like to join. Most groups will welcome a helping hand. Some groups, like mine, give a test before, but as long as your sentences are intelligible, you should be fine with that (minor nitpick, advice is an uncountable noun here, so no plural.) Looks like Blob above is looking for editors. any of those series interest ya, go for it. If none of those interest you, well, my group is also looking for editors. The more the merrier!
Eh, still probably not going to be worth your time until some sort of seismic change happens to the scene. Editors, even the good ones, are not really valued. And if you want to make a career in professional editing, avoid novel translation like a plague. It's very easy to pick up a whole bunch of bad habits, and bad habits are hard to shake off later. I'll echo some of what Wujigege said. There is more to editing than just fixing spelling and grammar mistakes. You do, ideally, want to be at least a competent writer in your own right. Knowledge of source language is optional, so is a degree in English language. My advice would be to either: *) find a novel you really, really like and contact that translation team to see if they would take you on *) find a novel that you think is edited to a very high standard and ask that editor if he would be willing to teach you stuff Editing a novel can be a very mind-numbing work that, when done properly and with care, can take quite a few hours of your life every week. Often for no appreciable reward. If you don't care for what you work on, don't like the people you work with, and don't feel like you learn new things, it's very easy to just burn out and just kick the drudgery into long grass while you do something more interesting. Heck, even editors that work on things they enjoy can burn out and either start to phone in the edits or disappear for weeks. Whatever you choose, avoid novels with a high release rate - you will not have time to really think about what are you doing, and people working on them won't have time to mentor you in any meaningful way.