Discussion NovelBear Translation/NovelTom

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Airisu, Nov 8, 2019.

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  1. Airisu

    Airisu Where is my daily GL

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    Unedited mtl is fine, just not on NU! If you want you can read whatever you want in raw mtl, and you can do it by yourself too. But you can’t list it as a translation, cause honestly if unedited it makes almost 0 sense in more complicated novels. I may as well just not read it, since I just waste my time reading something that makes no sense at all (which is what I experienced reading the novel I found released by the group. Absolutely 0 sense).

    Gladly NU has rules that says only edited mtl is fine, so at least projects with unedited mtls won’t be marked as “taken” and some group in the future can pick them up without problems and hopefully give us a translation that makes sense. That’s it.
    You are free to read whatever you want, I read mtls too, but if they make no sense I just drop them cause I find I am really just wasting the time I could use to do something else.
     
  2. Noveltom

    Noveltom Member

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    Hi, I am a member from NovelTom Translation group. I have something to say.

    First of all, we’re sorry for our offence to the translators and the readers.

    At first we just wanted readers to keep reading novels which were not to be continued updating. We translated with all our heart, thus we didn’t read the posts in NU forum or communicate with other translators and readers.

    Originally we thought that we could choose dropped novels according to NU’s time rules. However, after reading the posts in the forum we found that readers seemed to think that translators only could pick up the novels which were not updated for three months. We really have no intention to offend other translators.

    We’re sorry about the quality of the previous translation works, because at first we didn’t know what kind of translation quality is accepted, so we’ll spend much more time reading novels with high translation quality.

    We will continue translating novels with quality in the future. We regard this event as part of the growth, and we’ll slow down the speed of translation, mainly to improve the translation quality, and we will also go to find native English speakers to help us improve our translation.

    All in all, we wish everyone can enjoy reading great novels which can be a ray of light in your life. Have a good day!
     
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  3. Solus

    Solus 自分のことお嫌いです

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    Hiya, it's good to understand your wrong and strive to fix it. But seriously, you really need to proofread it a lot of times to make sure 'take care of your nephews and prostitutes' doesn't happen again. And don't give such 模棱两可 answer like 'oh, that's embarrassing' lol

    And it really helps if you would 'Read' the story first before even picking up a novel. Getting the chapter number wrongly by a yard away is really embarrassing.
     
  4. insteadofdeath

    insteadofdeath Faith

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    You translated with all your heart, therefore you said translation quality will depend on how many people read your translations. What a sincere heart. Hah!

    You only want to pick up dropped novels. You care so much about these novels that you will MIX UP and mash together different chapters.

    I hope your future actions prove your sincerity, because your past actions definitely haven't.
     
  5. notfound404

    notfound404 New Member

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    I believe they mean they did not pay much attention to the comments and communication out of reasons, that’s all, no? If you are a reader purely, you would not be so picky like I didn't. They corrected mistakes after all,why bother to drag those trifles with long tongue? Or, perhaps they interfered in someones interests? That's the point of thing, isn't it? They made those dropped novels came alive and made charging chapters free.... As a neutral newcomer, I don't think the both side were right... but you guys are being too mean.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2019
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  6. Fuyuneko

    Fuyuneko winter cat

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    If they hadn't copied and pasted MTL and tried to pass it off as edited MTL, probably no one would have complained.
     
  7. Little Potato

    Little Potato Sexiest Potato Alive [SpaceBar's Master]

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    I think what a lot of readers feel is called being deceived. Imagine a novel that you really like with well done translations that got dropped for whatever issues. Your expectations went up really high from seeing it released in the feed and then shot down at mach speed when you realized you don't understand the first few lines of unintelligible nonsense.

    Also, I don't think it's right to assume that every reader should be like you, that they shouldn't expect anything more since they're getting chapters fast and for free. Some of us readers have a thing called 'standards'. Heck if I see a novel that's completed and it turns out to be all MTL-ed I wouldn't even bother trying to read it, I'd wait for the next translator to do it justice because I want my reading experience to be optimized. I'm not here for the fast drug, if I wanted that, I would've just used google translate but no, I'm here for the journey. My time is way too precious to be spent trying to decipher who or what the fuck is going on.
     
  8. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    But then, when is the next translators will come?
    I'm still new, but I already saw plentiful novel being dropped, stopped, unofficial hiatus and cancelled with various reasons. I also saw plenty novel will not get translated at all.
    If you really have and must stick to your standard, good for you, you can wait for the next translators and not be sadden when your expectation shot down . Or you can pay decent translator to pick up the novel.

    Me? i can't.
    Yes, I can mtl myself rather than read those unedited mtl, but then what's the difference? I will only complain when there's the next decent translator comes and pick it up and I can finally read. When there's no one to pick up and work on it, who'd (and why should) I complain to even if my expectation shot down???

    I'm confused, why and what kind of standard you have when we're getting it fast and free unless of course you buy them kofi every damn chapters.
     
  9. insteadofdeath

    insteadofdeath Faith

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    We are discussing NovelTom specifically in this thread, as mentioned in the thread title. If you were speaking generally, you wouldn't be wrong. However, I don't think anyone can or should defend someone who just copy-pastes directly from MTL and claims it as their own "translation", let alone a translation done with "heart" - it does the translation community, both translators and audience, disservice, and discourages or even eliminates the possibility of actual translators picking up dropped projects.

    I repeat, in case it isn't clear: This thread is specifically about NovelTom in general and similar groups that pass off pure MTL as "translation".
     
  10. Airisu

    Airisu Where is my daily GL

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    As they said up here, we are talking specifically about Noveltom. No one says bare mtls shouldn’t exist, we are saying they shouldn't be listed on NU, cause NU is an archive for translations, and unedited mtls are not really what you can call a translation. It’s just copypaste on google tl, which you can do by yourself.
    Yes, I have standards in reading, sorry for that but I won’t read a novel “translated” so badly the sentences don’t make any sense.
    So, keep reading your unedited mtls, no one is saying you can’t, just search for them outside NU.
    If there is a chance to get a decent translation, I can wait for it, but I absolutely won’t be fine with an unedited mtl of a novel I love, cause that’s just reading some nonsense bunch of sentences with no meaning bundled together. I can’t say anything about a bad translation, cause at least the translator is trying to do his best (i read novels with kinda bad translations, but they were still understandable). But unedited mtls? No thanks, there is no effort there other than copy paste.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2019
  11. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    @Airisu @insteadofdeath
    Sorry, if my comments offended and not right. I jsut ticked off when I read that one comment and felt it a bit rude (and I felt it's generalized, not abt what's this thread abt) thus I replied rudely too.
    I'll keep it to myself and will not do it again. Sorry again.
     
  12. Airisu

    Airisu Where is my daily GL

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    Don’t worry, it’s fine to talk things out! I wasn’t offended or anything, I just pointed out my view on the matter. You can speak your mind too, nothing wrong in it
     
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  13. RoseColouredSin

    RoseColouredSin Well-Known Member

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    Totally agree with what you said. I can't believe they tried to say that they translated with heart when it was literally just MTL. I understand readers' impatience for updates as a reader myself, but NovelBear again, does something that requires no effort and is just copy paste. If you go to a certain website combining the words "MTL" and "Novel", there's a whole directory for people who just want to read and not use MTL themselves.

    I'm also annoyed because I don't feel like NovelBear actually cares about the novels they pick up. It's so sketchy that they pick up popular dropped novels and start releasing them with MTL. Readers call them out and they then say translation quality depends on popularity of novel. This seems like their "translating" ventures are all with the intention of profit??? Furthermore, the reason why all the chapter numbers are messed up or chapters are mashed together is because they're getting raws from pirating sites. NovelBear is trying to profit off of work that they won't even buy the legit raws from :/

    All in all, everything they're doing, from shit translations to screwing up chapters by using pirated raws is so utterly disrespectful to the author's original work and they're trying to make money off of it =_= Just WTF

    Btw, if you check out the NovelTom site, not the NovelBear wordpress, they screwed up the register button, making it "recharge" and it kinda confirms their intentions to make it pay-to-read. Qidian sucks, but at least they have some sort of legal right to the books they translate and monetize :/

    Also, anyone find it suspicious that the account @notfound404 was made close to when this thread was opened and only has one post ever which is the one here defending NovelBear? -_-

    Okay rant over, frustrations vented. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk
     
  14. Szara

    Szara Your average American Psycho

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    The translator for one of the novels I’m following, Holding Onto My Man, had been on hiatus for a while. I decided to MTL the novel myself after being impatient. Sadly I had to drop it because reading an MTL takes away the enjoyment out of reading a novel, since you spend most of your time being confused and trying to decipher WTF is going on.

    A few days later, I saw that the novel had been picked up again by a new translator! Yay! ...and it’s by NovelBear... WELP! it turned out that their “translation” was like, 95% similar to the Google translation I was doing just a few days before. The disappointment was real.

    The sentence structures are awkward. The word choice was... questionable. The he/she pronouns were all wrong. Had someone at NovelBear actually read the story, they would’ve realized the blatant mistakes.

    I’m okay with people uploading MTLs, as long as it’s been thoroughly edited and is mostly understandable. NovelBear is neither. I’ve looked at their site, and it seems they churn out dozens of low-effort MTLs daily to get pageviews (and ad revenue presumably).

    I mean, whatever, they are free to do so if they want, and people are free to read there if they want, (although idk why anyone wouldn’t rather just MTL the story themselves at that point, rather than waiting for NovelBear to MTL for them since it’s basically the same thing).

    But yeah, these low-quality MTLs shouldn’t be listed on NU since other translators might not pick up the project after seeing that there is already an on-going translation.

    Anyway, it seemed like the issue has been taken care of, and NovelBear has been de-listed. My point has already been made by other people, but I just wanted rant about NovelBear since I was sssoooooooooo disappointed to find out my favorite story was so poorly translated... AND THE TRANSLATION THERE WAS (practically) THE SAME AS THE GOOGLE TRANSLATION I WAS DOING JUST A FEW DAYS BEFORE AND I GOTTEN ALL EXCITED FOR NOTHING :blobsob::blobsob::blobsob:
     
  15. RoseColouredSin

    RoseColouredSin Well-Known Member

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    At least HOMM got picked up again :D
     
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  16. OverlyUnfriendly

    OverlyUnfriendly Well-Known Member

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    All the people who are posting that they don't mind unedited MTL trash have bad English. It's no wonder they don't mind. :blobpeek:
     
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  17. lykizan

    lykizan Well-Known Member

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    oh god i thought i was alone in wishing some of these translation groups could just stop

    i don't like to brag, but as someone who topped my year for english a few times in a row, i think my grasp of english is at least decent, and the translations some of these groups do pain me to no end. it would be ok if it was just bad grammar, but some of the translations are so botched even reading it backwards in the raws would make a modicum more sense. it only gets worse if the novel they are translating is not a modern novel. (i feel like they are writing riddles for me to solve.)

    this is probably the comment i related to the most really. nastriumden churns out like idk man 20 over chapters a day or something for banished to another world but i rather wait until another translator picks it up then even attempt to read it.

    honestly, i wouldnt give a single shit if there were other translation groups doing the same novel. it's kind of (very) rude to poach a novel and churn it out at a faster rate then the original translator while priding quantity over quality, but what really pains me as a reader is when the group ends up dropping it (i think it happened once or twice but i cant for the life of me remember which one it was.) even BETTER (can you hear my sarcasm) is when translators with actual standards decide not to pick up a certain novel because one of these mass production sites decide to hijack it.
     
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