Discussion About Qidian power rankings

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Mangikop, May 8, 2018.

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  1. OldManGu

    OldManGu Legendary Member

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    Trump would say: FAKE LIST!!!!!
     
  2. AliceShiki

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

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    LOL, stop worrying about it, you still get free chapters even after a novel goes premium, you'll be able to read whatever you want just fine~
     
  3. SAimNE

    SAimNE Well-Known Member

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    Qi isn't doing a service. They basically just blackmailed the people who were doing a service to us into a slave contract for profit. Qidian does us absolutely no favors. They do a minor favor to the authors who needed exposure, they get more than enough back from that exchange, and now they browbeat the translators into servitude for free and easy money
     
  4. Raizhee

    Raizhee bubblegum bitch

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    If you won't vote there would still be some that would raise some novel up in the power rankings. Atleast raise the one you like.
     
  5. Keima-kun

    Keima-kun Well-Known Member

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    Honestly, I don't really know anything bout the contract, legistration etc. But what I do know, there are people who are taking up the jobs as translator/editors in Webnovel. Surely, the contract is not as bad as what people made it to be. Working in a corporation/company could never beat working freelance, having a stable job is a blessing already.
    I would refrain saying anything bad to any party as I do not know anything about the whole situation. What the Qidian's haters said might not be 100% true, even went to the point of inciting readers.
     
    AliceShiki likes this.
  6. SAimNE

    SAimNE Well-Known Member

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    Qidian pays the authors peanuts and takes almost half of their direct donations. I very much doubt their "join us or dmca" contract was very generous.
     
  7. Mangikop

    Mangikop Observer from the Fourth Wall

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    I think you misunderstand me sir, I don't hate Qidian. I'm an avid reader myself, I'm just saying my opinion. I might have missed some crucial information there but... you know, just an opinion.
     
  8. AliceShiki

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

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    Qidian isn't doing a service to you, but they are providing a wonderful service for translators, there is no slave contract or servitude for free, it's a paid job, and one that pays well.
    If it wasn't generous, those people would just drop the novels and start translating things from 17k or zhonzheng instead. Qidian's contract hired enough translators to get them, in a few months, more content than WW produced in years... There is no way their contract isn't good.

    What Qidian offers is, at the very least, much better than what any translation group (save from companies like WW, GT and Volare) would ever be able to earn.
    Essentially this, Qidian couldn't care less about appealing to the readers (since they know they'll get readers for as long as they got content), but they make sure to appeal to translators by offering sums of money the translator wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

    Honestly, if I knew even a small bit of Chinese, I'd definitely try applying to their site, I wouldn't be surprised if my monthly income tripled in case I joined.
     
  9. asriu

    asriu fu~ fu~ fu~

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  10. Yukkuri Oniisan

    Yukkuri Oniisan 『Procrastinator Archwizard Translator and Writer』

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    Qidian is not a fan translator. It is not doing free community service. It is a for profit business company who will do anything to increase the profits.

    I wonder why people still think QI using fantranslation criteria..... Novel translations community is not a community where good will and selfless sharing are the norm any longer... it is all about the dollah, the patreon, the ads revenue..... Translator who still doing this for shit and giggles are an almost extinct species as even new translators seek monetary incentives, not community spirit...

    Capitalism, ho!
     
  11. SAimNE

    SAimNE Well-Known Member

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    People joined because they didn't want to lose the following they built up. It takes time to build interest in a novel you are translating. I know plenty of people who won't even touch a story till 20/50/100 chaps are translated. If they just dropped their super popular translation, their income would drop for weeks or months and maybe not recover to Max depending on how much the new story was liked.

    Additionally some people were doing this as a passion project. They wanted to bring a particular story to English. Qidian held intent and ability to dmca the tls and put an end to their income/project instantly if they didn't join up, so it's obvious what choice they would be forced to make if they were reliant on the income, or if they wanted to translate that particular story... Therefore, them accepting, isn't a viable reason to think the terms aren't terrible.


    Also half the new qidian translators do blatant machine translation. Them accepting this job could easily be because the effort they have to put in is, frankly, much lower. So even if the pay is peanuts, it's stable peanuts for a job that isn't all that hard if bilingual.

    I don't actually know what they pay tls, but I've seen the figures and the terms on which they pay their authors, and that gives me strong reason to doubt that the non disclose contract is terrible for the tls. I've also still never got confirmation on whether they pay the author anything out of the English releases, which would be a scummy thing to do since qidian blocks half the direct support we can try to give them(I've looked into donating, and unless I want to give qidian just as much as all the translators together, there is no option at all to get money to any qidian author.... Which kinda sucks)
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2018
  12. AliceShiki

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

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    LOL no, that's not how it works, nobody earns money from translating WNs, the small groups earn like, 200$ a month if they're lucky.

    The only people that earn enough to pay bills are those ridiculously big sites that became companies and license their translations, everyone else barely earns anything. Qidian pays more in 1 week than most groups earn in a month.

    Ads don't pay much if you don't have lots of readers, and if you don't have a lot of readers you won't have a huge following on patreon, if you don't gain much from ads nor patreon, you don't gain much at all... Guess who are the only sites that have lots of readers? The humongous ones~

    Qidian on the other hand pays flat rates per chapter, it's a safe and stable job that pays way more than anyone could ever get on the fantranslation business, the people that joined, joined because they got a much better deal than they already had.

    Super popular translations don't exist outside of huge sites, those translators would have long been poached by any big site in that case~

    Ah, and passion projects? Nah, if they had a passion project, they would be more than happy to just let Qidian host all their releases for free and assign a new translator to the project, I know of at least one translator that did that, if all they wanted was to have the novel translated, they should be more than glad Qidian decided to pick it up and give it an official translation~

    Anyone that joined Qidian did it for the money, the people that felt it was a slave contract or that they were strong armed just decided to not join.