Why Japanese Web Novels Have A Bad Reputation

The biggest problem of MTL is not them fighting over projects with real translators, but them completely destroying stories. People read that junk and believe it's true what's written there, despite it being almost 100% fiction. Pure MTL is the worst you can do to any story, and it's sad that people, who supposedly like said stories, screw up the novels by posting that crap.
Most translators also don't pick up a MTLed story anymore unless they have a personal reason to do so. So those MTLed stories are lost to the readerbase as you will have only the option to read the fiction of that story or learn the language yourself.

 

Exactly, MTL stories are essentially fanfiction. They have nothing to do with what the author wrote.
It is pretty sad when people use them to judge the quality of Japanese novels
I saw an actual comment thanking a translator and pointing out their eyes are bleeding from the translation
It is pretty sad since the person claiming to be a translator admitted that it was MTL and that they dont know English either as they just started learning...
I cant find the exact comment on Make My Abilties Average but this is a review on the novel

 

I've seen a few where lack of Japanese (or maybe research/translating resources/support) have changed either the plot or the tone of the story (mostly the former). Especially with ones where the text is more casual, which in Japanese means more slang, less words, and none of the basic grammar structure (SOV) or it's switched up instead, confusing beginners and sometimes even me.

It's only natural to be afraid of criticism though and maybe that's why a lot of translators don't like to either employ an editor, or don't listen to improvements. I'm fine if someone corrects me on a mistake (and I've been corrected multiple times) but that's cause I've been translating for years and have gone through this lol. Probably a way to help with that is a place/server where budding and veteran translators can mingle and help each other out without fear of being harshly criticized or being called dumb for not knowing something.

As for the title, I think you meant Japanese webnovels cause there are some pretty okay LNs and way more amazing ones for novels. LNs are sort of our version of young adult novels but worse. A lot of them are trashy because they're meant to be though there are times you do get some good ones (like Saihate no Paladin or The Girl Who Ate A Death God).

Another is because a lot of the Japanese works uploaded on here are mostly from the same freaking sites and are webnovels. vgperson has found some really good stories on 2chan. That one story that got adapted into LN and is being licensed, they got from there. It's the one with the store where you sell off the remaining life you have or something. But anyways, webnovels are like that one embarrassing story we all wrote years ago and uploaded online. If you want slightly better quality (at least less run-ons and spelling/grammar mistakes), LNs are a good way to go about that. If you do, you can go look at sites' rankings or you can google "[genre] おすすめ". And if you want, there's also cellphone novels. I think Ousama Game was one of them, which got adapted into either a novel or an LN (forgot) and I've found a few interesting ones here and there. There was one called the "Sacrifice Voting" but sadly, have no time to start a new novel project.

 

An author's pen name

 

This is so true. I dropped a few novels not aware that what I read is an unedited, MTL'd or the one troll post for the copy paste bots. I guess this is karma for not reading in the official translator's site.

As a cultured and gentleman reader I am, I blame everyone else. The pirate sites for having a crappy bots, NU for not telling me of the exact number of TL'd versions available, the OG TL site for being too slow, comrade mao for shamelessly taking up the first place slot in google search etc.

 

This is also a problem of NU though. Yeah, I know NU bans complete MTL from their database, but I consider the review/rating system on this site to be horrible. A proper system of evaluating a novel and a review check system would lower the risk of people reading MTLed stories while thinking that's a proper translation. It's one of the biggest boons I have with NU. Namely, you can write a review "This story sucks" and that's counted as a proper review.
Some time ago I created an account on an anime site and commented there on a popular anime. It took me a while to get to the commenting part since I had to first answer several questions, pertaining to the general aspects of the anime, but when I finally was allowed to comment on the anime itself, I wrote away my comment, comparing the anime to the novel.
Well, it resulted in me getting various hate comments of all the fanbois, but what really struck me dumbfounded was that my comment was later on deleted by a moderator for referring to the novel instead of solely commenting on the anime.
Why do I mention that? It's because there are sites where it's required to post a proper review. And where it's checked by moderators whether that review really follows the established rules for posting a review.

Personally I don't believe that MTLs can be avoided. There will always be people who f**k up a story by MTLing it, and likewise there will be people reading it. But I do believe that NU - as a site that attempts to serve as a site for hosting all kinds of Asian novel translations - should enforce a stricter ruling towards reviews. Why? Because it will cause people to take reviewing seriously, and other readers will regard these reviews as pointers towards their decision whether to read a novel or not. Naturally that will weed out any MTL crap as those are most of the times hardly readable in English.

Cheers,
Shasu

 

That's the secret of living a long live.
Even if the world is burning around you, just pretend that everything is fine.

Also, FUNA is an author pen name

 

That beautiful moment when some MTLer who can't even tell who's saying what in a novel takes over a project that you're working on, and that you started and advertised yourself, and NU shares the link to their chapter like you never did shit. That's when you really feel like doing things out of passion.

 

Another could be that the Japanese LN market is often so over-saturated with isekai novels that many people might be hesitant to seek out non-isekai novels.

 

Nah man, there are plenty of non-isekai novels, hundreds upon hundreds that won awards and whatnot and will probably never be translated because they're not easy to adapt into mangas or anime.

 

Japan's Market of stories is actually really broad. Like what @Defiring mentioned there are hundred upon hundreds of romance, mystery, thriller, modern times, historical (or time travelers), drama, theological, and more, which have gained public interest & have received accolades.

Isekai (Another world), wasn't recognized as a genre category until just recently (roughly 5 years ago).

The top searches are still Shonen & Shoujo. Then it branches out into the Yaoi/Yuri, and then we go into the Seinen & Josei.

As of late Otome is the rising genre in recent times. Most often they are the romantic games targeted towards young women.

 

Just a little correction: Shounen, Shoujo, Seinen and Josei are tags indicating the target audience. All of them can apply to a genre tag like Isekai.

Anyway, Defiring and you are right. There's many other genres besides isekai. Unfortunately those other genres have it more difficult in contrast to trending genres like isekai, romcom etc. That's very much owed to the fact that genres like "romance, mystery, thriller, modern times, historical (or time travelers), drama, theological" are mostly covered by Western literature. Why read something catered towards Japanese in those genres if you can read it regularly in your own country, catered towards your own culture, language etc?
Recently I've been trying myself to leave the isekai genre with my most recently started novel translations, but I can tell you, it's a difficult process as the number of readers for those kind of stories is sadly rather low.
Or in other words, everyone complains about isekai being a dead horse, and yet everyone likes beating on that dead horse. ;-)

Cheers,
Shasu

 

cause Japanese authors are more into lolis