Don't Be a Dong - Translating in 2019

Seems like someone is using the readers community to oppress their enemies again

 

Insightful post, nice food for thought. I've always had a good opinion of Wujigege and wished him success (nothing better than new sites and paid translators for this scene), yet I haven't visited Asian Hobbyist in months. This might be why. There really are just too many alternatives, and while I liked some of AH's titles, I haven't gotten hooked on any of them. At least not enough to put up with the page splitting, unformatted TOCs (no links to previous chapters on other sites etc), or invest in their patreon.

For comparison's sake, I've got two highest tier sponsorships on WW and I'm a patreon of five different english webnovels, so it's not a money issue either. AH just... slipped out of my mind until this post. And being forgotten / invisible is probably the worst position to be in as a translation site.

 

yup. translating a chapter takes around 45mins-1hour if u r fluent and understand the language

if there are some weird terms, it might take longer but normally 1 hour is the standard

 

And if you're not fluent like me and pretty much need dictionaries and stuff and/or you type slow, you would need about 4 hours to translate a 1.5k/2k word chapter. Yes, I take that long and no, I don't know how to make it any faster yet.
I'm jealous of people who could go that fast.

 

wow 4 hours
thats nuts.

i am aware that some people picked up translating to assist them in learning a new language but 4 hours to do a 1.5k character novel is just....you're better off doing homework....

anyway theres no need to be jealous. people who are fluent probably grew up learning it...

 

Well, lots of things you see on novels aren't things you learn in textbook to be honest.
Can people translate chapters that fast though? If we use my typing speed, which is around 50 wpm, or 1.5k words in about 30 mins, one would only have about 1.2 secs to translate each word to finish a 1.5k chapter in one hour, including making the sentence coherent. I find it a little idealistic though, since average translation speed of pro translators is said to be around 443 words an hour and at most 2.5k a day since it'll get more difficult to translate more.

Now that I calculated my translation speed, I could go between 375-500 words an hour so I don't think I'm doing so bad at all.

 

Threads like this are very useful...for growing my ignore list .

 

That's not the standard. You seem to have unrealistic expectations in how this works. It was the same with ad revenue when you called S1.00 CPM for display ads.
Translating a chapter depends on length most of all.
I Hate Pain : The translator at optimum can translate 4 chapters in a day but usually 2 to make sure that there are no errors.
For larger novels like Slime, it's a chapter every two or three days.
Of course, these translators are part timers. It's not their day job

 

when i say translating, i don't mean editing and stuff. i believe DB in the video is talking about just translating and not editing as well because editing itself takes much longer.

people aren't machines and i cant speak for everyone who is bilingual or knows more than 1 language, but we dont "translate" things word by word in our head.

instead it is much easier to translate an entire sentence, so we are kinda just translating chunks of phrases.
so yea, a 1.2k character chapter would take about 45mins-1 hour for me. i think 45mins is the fastest you can get and its almost impossible to get below 30mins because often, these phrases don't flow well and you have to think about how to make it flow better...

as for learning from textbooks...you're supposed to learn the language..

but yea..i dunno..i am bilingual...

studies have gone into how bilingual people process the things we hear and i doubt we'll get to the bottom of it on NUF

 

The translating word per word is more to see how much time you would have to translate one(or more words after calculating). Like you have at most 5 seconds to translate a five word sentence to be able to ever reach 1.5k an hour for example.

Meh, I translate the entire sentences too yeah, though I'm doing your so-called editing while I'm translating it in my head. Usually this means I only have to go through the chapter afterwards for a few minutes or so to see if there's anything wrong like missing words, redundancy, awkward wordings or bad word choice etc. Which translates into about 1.5-2k words per 4 hours. This also includes my mind being distracted a few seconds every so often. I don't know, usually it's four hours later when I'm done translating. Maybe I'm exaggerating the amount of time I actually spend translating.

I can be considered trilingual, unless my half-assed chinese doesn't count. And I've studied some japanese through text book and websites. I have pretty decent control in sentence structuring. I just lack the vocabulary, which I compensate with rikai-kun, jisho.org and some weblio dictionary site. I just learn the words and kanji on the go while I'm translating.

I don't know. Translating 1.2k words in an hour or so sounds quite a lot to be honest. I can imagine you need to be very good at concentrating to get that done in so few time. Maybe some other translator can say anything about that?

 

Word count is not really that good a meteric because you're not translating word by word but line by line most of the cases. But there could be short line that takes forever due to the complex language used or long line that could be shorten because author just repeated something 6x to pad out wording.

Still its give you general idea how long sometime take to translate if you roughly know what kinda of language its going to be using going in. Aka tons of sayings or shit author makes up (or author trying to be clever by taking an established phrase and changing out words with words with same sound but different meaning just to make it extra hard to find meaning of the original phrase.)

A bit more on topic, if you consider that right now 14 chapters a week pretty average for people that are doing it full time and most chapters are around 3k raw. You are looking at getting them doing at 3hr per chapter if you want a 40 hour work week.

 

I'm back.

 

Absolutely savage

 

Slippery slope arguments are tenuous at best. In this case, one only has to compare AH to other sites to see that the model adopted by AH isn't as successful as other sites that are going the more traditional route. If AH were to start raking in huge sums of cash, then your argument might be a cause for concern. As things are now, I doubt many translation sites will follow in AH's footsteps given the tenuous income stream and the largely negative view of the model as held by the community.

I think it's great that Wuji tried something new and different, but it's also important to reflect on your business model and pivot if what you're doing isn't working out. I've spent the last 5 months or so opening a small business with my brother, and we wouldn't be in business right now if we hadn't pivoted a few times when it became obvious that our initial business model wasn't going to work out.

 

Okay, so I know I'm just butting in here, but did AH every take on WW's bet? I just want to know if this bet happened, or if it went up in smoke.

 

As far as I know Greedygege ignored the thread mostly and only butted in very late to make some jokes about his ignore list and calling this thread a smear campaign while ignoring every argument made here while feeling like the true victor... Pretty much like the joke about a dove playing chess, knocking down the playing pieces, crapping on the board and then strutting around victorious... No offense?

I think the "bet" shouldn't have been viewed as a bet or challenge at all by Greedygege, but as a kind of financial insurance while trying out a different business model. As long he'd trust that RWX keeps his promise, he'd either make more money or lose nothing, while proving his "business model"...

Obviously there would be problems since he'd have to be transparent with his financial records to avoid fraud for both parties.

 

I keep getting pulled into your this thread with likes and replies like yours.
Let me correct your mistakes even though your point is largely correct.
I tried the traditional route and failed horribly.
I find it ironic that when I started the same people who ignored me when I asked for help and direction are now giving "advice".
Things get saturated. Someone who started a 2013 and one who started in 2016 cannot use the same model.
For one, translators are a limited resource: this I learnt the hard way.
After failing for a year, I decided to stop copying other websites. And my income increased by 2000%.
So I did pivot, I pivoted away from the traditional model.
It is like expecting a small grocery store to run their operations like Walmart.
They would fold in a week.
I don't know how I lasted 1 year with the traditional model that is a failure but being an ad provider that placed ads on the website on others for a share of the ad revenue helped a lot.
So you are right, pivoting and being flexible is important.
I would argue my website is the most flexible.
Look at all the dropped novels, I had to be flexible enough to drop a losing bet.
I had my sole Chinese translator at the time translate Japanese novels from Chinese sources when Qidian international launched because I am that freaking flexible.
Dreaming is good but sustainability is more important

 

Ok there seems to be a misunderstanding.
I am not feuding with RWX.
He is on my ignore list though.
He alluded to making this thread so I blocked him days in advance.
So I don't see his posts or threads.
I hope that clarifies things.
I only replies because I was mentioned.
@Tony we need a real block function.

P.S. If you have any issues with me do let me know. It's a long line but I will add you to my ignore list gladly. I might charge you for expedited service though.

P.S. 2 So many stupid dumb advice on here. I speak only English.
Asking me to do what someone who translates themselves is stupid.
I might be rich but I am no idiot

P.S. 3 If you think ads on a website is too much then you can pay the translators. I will remove all ads if you cover the costs of paying translators. Also pay me for running the website

 

Do you hate people who used dark-themed NUF or something? Please used default fonts colour.