Hello, I wish for an MTL tag for novels. Because in the rise of ChatGPT, there will be much more people that are using machine translation. And for me it is important to differentiate between real hard work from good translation from translator and the bad translation and the lazy work from translator that are using ChatGPT or other machine translation. I have found out that 2 novels that I would love to read Adopting Disaster/ Game of the World Tree and are now using ChatGPT as a tool to translate and both translators have only rudimentary or no knowledge about the original language. And I don’t want to search every novel that I like for hints of machine translation or a comment from the translator that he is using machine translation. Or stopping in the middle because I found out the translater is using machine translation. Not only this, translation from people that know the language is just superior in every little detail. With machine translation like ChatGPT Nuances are gone, puns are gone and much more.
Tbh, “translations” like that should be reported like any other unedited MTL for violating NU policies. We shouldn’t need a tag for this, because such chapters shouldn’t be listed in the first place. Report a Problem here. Include links to the NU page and any proof you may have that the listed chapters have not gone through any human processing.
I am talking about edited MTL (This is allowed on novel updates( https://www.novelupdates.com/nu-policy/ 4. Your release is MTL with little to no editing.)) We will see a strong rise of people that are using ChatGPT and for me personally I despise reading MTL even if it is edited by a human. So much of the translation will be lost because of MTL. Thats why I want to have tag with MTL. I dont want to read a good novel and then find out later that the translator is using MTL. I think it is even better to completely ban MTL on this website.
The problem is that the pages and the tags are for the novels, not a specific translation of a novel. If a non-MTL translator picks up a previously MTLed novel, what happens with the tag? And about edited MTL, what skill level do you think is appropriate for the translator to have to make it no longer considered edited MTL but proper translation? I am about elementary school level in Chinese, would I qualify?
Spoiler: In regards to the policy Maintaining a hard line on use of MTL had been considered in the past. One reason it was not banned is that there are fully fluent translators who know the language and still use MTL as a reference / proof-checking tool or as a way to speed up their otherwise manual translations without losing much accuracy. Another is that it’s not always possible to determine which translations are or are not processed by human or ai. Not to mention that banning edited MTL from being linked on NU would not prevent MTL sites from being made. There is at least one completely AI translated site that has been around for years before chatgtp (it exists even if it’s not linked on NU) that I am aware of. I do know that if we had done so, we wouldn’t have the relatively open environment where translator sites admit they use MTL. At the very least NU can limit pure MTL as much as possible and allow readers to make their own judgement from there. There are actually a relatively large volume of groups that have had their submissions rejected for being copy pasted out of Google. Some are even persistent enough to create new sites and accounts with different names, but the same policy violating content… My point is that the current policy has a purpose that it largely fulfills and I see no need to change it at this time. It may need to be refined in the future due to the advancements chatGTP have brought to the table (ex. updating the definition of “edited MTL” to exclude a group attempting to use AI to translate, edit, and proofread), but these behaviors still fall under the policy at this time and can be reported as usual. There were other reasons as well, but these are the most obvious that came to mind. Back on topic, a tag would still be impossible even if it were meant to be used for readers to distinguish MTL releases. There are reasons that the NU novel page details should only include information related to the original novel whether it’s the genres, tags, or reviews. NU does not and will not judge translation quality per novel. Do not forget that multiple translation groups can be translating a single novel or that a translation group can have multiple translators under their banner. Not all of that novel’s chapters or that group’s translators will always be absolutely MTL. What happens if a MTL’d novel has a manual translator who fits your quality preferences pick it up? The tag would still apply because the novel would have both types of releases. This cannot be judged at the novel level. You still have options even if the method to track MTL translators site wide using tags is not feasible. I would most recommend using the custom tags and a custom reading list to personally track these novels. Public reading lists can be shared with other users if you have other friends with the same preferences. You could reach out to the translators on their sites to give constructive criticism on how they might improve. You could let more friends know about the positive qualities of the novels you like and try to attract translators, but I really don’t recommend this if there is an existing active translator. If you still find that your favorite novels do not have the quality you think they deserve, you could apply to join the existing group or even create your own translation group. Attempting to judge any grey area can be very arbitrary by nature. It’s much cleaner to single out obvious violators than to accidentally target users who have translations that are low in quality for reasons that are not in violation of policy. Personal Opinion: It’s not like having a language certificate can be made a requirement for putting free translations on the internet.
Besides reporting the chatgpt tl, and adding them to a reading list so those releases don’t show up... you can try blocking the tl groups in ublock origin https://forum.novelupdates.com/posts/2429069/ (I haven’t tried it but thinking if I do come across one on my pc browser will try it) or there’s is site feature of blocking groups from release filtering page linked https://www.novelupdates.com/release-filtering/
Depends. When you are only on A1 or A2, then I would consider it edited MTL. At B1 not anymore. And I dont see a problem to use MTL for a few words but but complete sentences? With complete sentences nuances are gone, puns are gone and much more. We have in Europe Language Levels. https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-e...cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-global-scale I have no idea how to solve this problem. But I can clearly see, that edited MTL with ChatGPT will have a strong rise in the future. And for me I see a problem with this.
It won't change anything. People who are willing to translate are willing to translate. They'll do it with whatever tools they have available to them. ChatGPT isn't that different from Google Translate, DeepL or other translation softwares. The people who want to go through the hassle of translating will translate with what tools are available to them. I started translating back when my Japanese level was N5. It was edited MTL and it wasn't that great... With time I improved considerably, but honestly, what helped me the most was improving my English and learning how to make the text flow better. Improving Japanese helped more with speed than anything as far as the readers can see (yes, it did improve accuracy, but readers can't see that). Which is a big problem with trying stuff like an MTL tag btw. Readers are incapable of judging if a story is MTL or not. All that readers can judge is the quality of the English of the translator. They are incapable of seeing if the translation is accurate or not. If you try banning MTL or adding an MTL tag, all that you'll do, is make it so no translator openly admits to using MTL, and they'll keep on doing the same thing anyways. It's a fundamentally impossible to enforce idea.
Hi @Murtagks I'm currently translating "Adopting Disaster" using ChatGPT. I know MTLs aren't perfect, but I've been dying to read this novel for years and no one's updated it, so I took matters into my own hands. I can understand finding out in the middle that you are reading an MTL and that the quality is poor can be frustrating but wanting to prevent even that is unreasonable. I let anyone know it's ChatGPT MTL translation so they can decide if they still want to give it a shot. There might be many people who are willing to read the story by compromising quality and if not just ignore it, No need to prevent it for others. And, if someone wants to do a human translation from scratch, I'd love to drop mine and read theirs instead.
why not highlight/mark the groups that is translating using MTL so that people know that the releases from those groups are less relible or something in that style
Just no. Imagine when one people using MTL to assist translation then everyone in the group get branded as MTL. People can improve too. One of the famous translator started their translation assisted by MTL. They are in one of the biggest translation group right now.
The quality of MTL translations varies greatly. I've come across MTL'ers who spend hours editing and researching for a chapter, apologising when they get some detail wrong. And then there are MTL'ers who seem like they don't even bother to read through what they put out, a dead giveaway are things like wrong gender pronouns or different spellings for the one name and so on. Lumping all MTL under one umbrella would not help anyone. I just learned to avoid certain translator groups with time. One thing that does bother me is translators splitting chapters into tiny parts and labeling them on their websites and NU as separate chapters. Sometimes these are barely several paragraphs long. That's misleading imo.
If you believe you found unedited MTL on NU, please report it. Those are against NU's Policy. NU is fine with MTL, but only if it was edited by a human.
Though Chat Gpt give readable translation it does not capture what the author what to narrate ( my opinion though )
How do I add a custom tag to a novel? I tried to search a how to in the forum but didn’t find anything I was hoping for this feature as well
I think it's a bit unreasonable, sometimes MTLers are guided/assisted by Language checkers, and frankly, i've seen many good edited MTL novels. Furthermore, most translators who use MTL note in their works that it was edited MTL so i don't see the need of tag here, and like someone above said, sometimes we can't even distinguish mtl and htl if the Tl's english is really good, and the plot is consistent. There are MTLer working hard too bruhh. Doesn't it just means that the TL was good??