Also interestingly the official english website of Zongzheng, Tapread, has an earlier chapter uncensored while the raws are censored (according to tl). So do they follow their own official website or a pirate website.
Is there a site where the translations will not be "censored" ? You know like the RAWs are censored but the translation is not
You are searching for it backward. If the translated chapter was consider "censored", then the raws where the translators got them from were also under China's censorship, so they followed the chapter there for their translation. So you have better chance finding "uncensored raws" from pirate sites, rather than hoping for an "uncensored translation".
But any time they get censored they get spammed around the internet as "uncensored version" so if you know the language 9/10 times it's less than hard to find the normal chap from before the Chinese government had hissy fit 94847/109038 that got it taken out.
Thanks for the quote. Every word remains true today. Honestly, I'm more in favor of stopping any translators from translating anything save the official version (which is what we are licensed to do) rather than the other way around. We're official, licensed translators, and that means we should translate the official, 'final' version which the author has put up on the platforms he has chosen to sign with. To make an analogy, JK Rowling wrote the first edition of Harry Potter on napkins. Imagine if she licensed us to translate Harry Potter into Chinese, and instead of going with the manuscript she gave us, the readers decided some of the stuff she originally wrote on napkins was cooler and so we went with that instead? We go with whatever the author's final official version is, regardless of reason. If there are parts where it doesn't make sense due to bad edits (for whatever reason, censorship or otherwise), it's honestly incumbent on the author to fix it officially so we can translate it officially.
I can see your standpoint, but the problem is the author had to remove the scenes entirely due to the over reaching of the Chinese government. Most of the times they are forced to make these edits they HAVE to overdo it. Most of them are scared to lose their entire career if the edit wasn't strong enough. Feels like the best option would be contacting the author/distributor and asking their opinion. I don't like going by the "up to date" version because many times it's not what the author wanted, it's what Chinese censors wanted. Now that it's not being sent to the chinese public, the author should definitely get to make the call he couldn't on his home ground. Also I'm willing to bet zong would approve of a story you can actually digest vs a hacked up one which is more likely to get dropped and less likely to get bought(I think someone mentions that they added back in censored text on their own site, but can't confirm) And while you guys do have responsibility to be official, you also are making a product you intend to sell. If it's got whole paragraphs missing and jumps from one scene to the next are you really confident in your products? Do you expect people to keep vip for "completed" novels that aren't actually even complete. It would definitely take a few extra steps... However if the guy at the start of an assembly line screws something up, or couldn't add one of the pieces on, do you just stick your piece on and ship the product incomplete? Cuz it sounds bad for business/reputation. When a product is inferior most people don't dig for "why", they just get mad they didn't get a full functional product. Just kind of a difference in motivation tbh. They don't care in China because they aren't selling the whole book, they sell by chapter and by the time this hits the people have already sank too much money into it to stop.
Since the official translation follows the official raws, you won't get any there. Your best bet would be mtl sites like lnmtl as I assume they grab raws from pirate sites (they catch whatever is on the original site instantly, i. e. the first version).
So once it's completed we get to the situation where you get to choose between paying for a screwed up story, or getting a relatively better one(one that pirated the official TL and filled in the missing bits with mtl) for free. Anyone seeing issues with this?
Pirate sites also often have missing lines, lots of characters wrong, and none of the changes and edits that the authors made ASIDE from any censorship issues (and often authors DO go back and change/fix stuff). There's no perfect solution here, even aside from the legal issues.