News About Qidian International Project

Well, almost every translator in the community is against joining QI...

 

As a Swede, I gotta say I don't believe in Capitalism.

But I will remain cautiously optimistic about this.......

If you end up fucking over the market and ruining my hobby, I'll hunt you all down and kill you <3

 

y is it millions dollar cost? Aren't all the novels there written by other people for fun anyways? I mean probably only successful ones make its their job to write more...explain plz because that sounds really shady

 

Because selling a golden goose is the epitome of stupidity.

And no, Qidian is not some Chinese royalroad, authors are actually paid which is why they actually put out chapters instead of abandoning their projects whenever they feel like it.

 

The author receives royalties (money) for every chapter viewed, which is a very dependable way of income for the author. The Qidian system also has other positive effects on the translation: if the translator buys the right to translate and upload the story to his/her website they will be more determined to finish the translations and optimize the release speed of the translations to ensure good readership so donations will be made. It will also ensure that the English grammar standards will improve, since to cross the treshold and become a translator with donations you will have to provide a often updates novel with good grammar, otherwise people simply won't read it and won't donate.

Worst case scenario: the current translators don't wanna buy the legal rights from Qidian, Qidian will hire other capable translators since it has been shown that there is an enormous untapped market potential for English translated Chinese novels.

 

ahh thank you

 

Communist, anarchist or socialist?
either way they are all bad long term solutions

but i will have to agree with your last stament, if you start an hunt let me know

 

we follow the true path

the path of Välfärd

It is a profound path, and not one we expect you foreigners to understand.

as for informing you... yeah, I think I'll take you up on that; doing it all on my own seems far-fetched at best.

we'll form a society or something.

 

In my entire life, I have whitelisted exactly one website for ads. en.qidian, if the ads are incredibly non-intrusive, might be the second.

Are your editors contracted as well? What skills would you expect from your editors? Do they need to have sufficient ability to read/write Chinese (Mandarin)?

 

Doesn't NU block sites that password lock chapters? Lololol stick to donations and ads

 

So current TLers have to buy in to get authorized to translate what they want, or hired TLers get thrown to a random novel. Doesn't this completely destroy the joy TLers get from translating stories they love and want to share with the community?

Does this mean that current fan translations get authorized for free (which I doubt).

So from what I gather and interested translator can:

• Pay money to get authorized to translate a novel of their choosing.
• Join Qidian but don't get to choose.
• Get sued.

As a reader of many translated web novels It's easy to tell when translators and editors enjoy what they are doing. Once they start disliking a novel, the quality plummets until it gets dropped. So assigning a translator to a random novel would end poorly for everyone.

But for a translator to pay for authorization to translate what they want kills the desire to translate in the first place (upfront costs). I feel this would end in a lot of cases where the translator ends up not liking the novel and quality drops (but due to pressure from Qidian to translate regularly keep going anyways), or you get a lot of unofficial translations - which could easily be hosted in DMCA ignoring countries so Qidian can't do anything about it.

Paying to get hired just won't work here.

I feel the translation community is based on people that enjoy translating for those that enjoy reading. Once that enjoyment withers, the community falls apart.

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Questions:

• What is the process for translators to join Qidian? Do they get to choose the novels they would like to translate?
  
• What pressures (release timing) do translators have? Can they take some breaks (like some have required military services for a few weeks, or take a week or two off during school finals)?
• Is the authorization only to host externally (not on Qidian)? And is this authorization the only part that requires translators to pay?
• What's the process when a translator wants to drop a novel? Or transfer to another translator (Martial God Asura comes to mind)?

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As a reader I don't mind your system of paying some amount to read. I do sponsor translators (Patreon)! So that aspect is fine. But I want the translators to be happy too!

Welcome abroad Qidian!

-atn

 

Good luck I guess.

There's definitely a market for your content so as long as you structure everything well, a lot of value could arise.

In the long run I'm excited about all the entertainment that will become available as more Chinese companies attempt expanding internationally as the years go by. Games, Novels, Manhua or whatever the fk it's called etc etc.

 

It's 3-5yuan (44-73 cents in US) per 100,000 Chinese characters (30-50 chapters)

 

Is True Martial World joining en.qidian.com?

 

Not at the moment. Seeing how things play out.

 

I can see how the curent patreon system can be used to buy authorization to be able to translate..
Thats a bit hard on a new translator since they dont really know if the story theyre translating will be popular or not.
And how they suddenly have an obligation to translate some bonus chapter for the patron from the very beginning, cause they have already invest money in it. Its hard to get a zero chapter story to get a patron in the first place..
Unless they join qidian ofcourse..
Rogue culti.. ehm.. rogue translator will have a hard time doing a whole new project..
I can see how this can be a ploy for them to recruit new translator and for them to gain their own standing amongst the comunity.

 

1 suggestion for Qidian if Qidian is expanding into South Korea.

Put the novels on www.Munpia.com instead of creating a Qidian Korean version. The market there is very mature so you don't have to start from scratch.

Munpia pays 63% royalties. It's 100 won per chapter. So each paid chapter gets the author $0.063 per paid reader.

1000 paying readers per chapter = $63 per chapter
5000 paying readers per chapter = $315 per chapter
10000 paying readers per chapter = $630 per chapter.

 

Munpia doesn't exclude novels that were original in another language.

As long as it is translated into Korean and the person selling have the copyrights, they can sell it on Munpia.

For example, Qidian translate I Shall Seal the Heavens into Korean and put it up on Munpia. 100% okay to do that. My suggestion is exactly that.

Instead of having a Qidian Korean site, why not work directly with a popular web novel site in South Korea that pay 63% royalties.