I've a question. So, for a while now, there's a novel our group wanted to translate, we have been considering even translating again from zero because the previous translation is barely edited or is not as understandable. The novel hasn't been updated since 09/11/20. Altho the previous tl said they would be taking a time out. We did contact them about this, and a month ago they said they would update "soon". However, a month has already gone by, and we'd really like to translate the novel. If after this month they haven't yet updated, and it's been on hiatus for a long while now (seems like it's gonna continue this way for more time). If we pick it up from where they left it at, would we be sniping? Just wanted to ask for opinions as we wouldn't like to do something bad. Thanks!!
If you start from the very beginning, then they really can't call it sniping since NU policies don't disallow competition and would list anything that's a retranslation from the very beginning of the novel. Plus, it'd be good to establish your own reader base for the novel.
Yeah, NU allows retranslations. I mean if someone wanted to retranslate a sh*tty MTL and it'd be considered "sniping", then what's the justice to this world. Anyway, contacting the translator is the "polite" thing to do, but come on it's been a year so you should just translate from where they dropped off or from the beginning. IIRC, NU lets you take over a translation as long as there haven't been 2 releases in 1 month. From NU Policy: Novel Updates will not add your releases if: There’s an active translator for the novel. An active translator is a translator who has released at least two releases within the past 30 days [...] This rule does not apply to you if any of these applies to you: If you start translating the series from the beginning. No, you cannot translate chapter 1 then do a chapter jump to chapter 50. Your chapter 1 would be accepted while your chapter 50 wouldn’t. Hope this helps. https://www.novelupdates.com/nu-policy/
But you just said that the earlier chapters were barely edited or was not understandable. Perhaps it would be better to just translate from scratch?
We will post chapter 18 first to claim the project, and our tl is on vacations from school so she'll be working on the first chapters. So it will be translated from scratch, we just wanted to claim the novel.