Hi translators! Thank you for your hard work that the rest of us enjoy and appreciate! I often see comments left by readers (esp on corporate novel sites, less so on indie translator sites) that are begging for mass release or more frequent chapters - even when the translator is already releasing quite often! So my question is: how do you, as translators feel about these types of comments? Do you take these positively, negatively, or neutral? Do you find it pressuring or annoying? Do you find it encouraging that people want to read your translation so badly? Does it help you push harder and release more chapters? As a reader, I find these comments really annoying. They don't add anything to the discussion about the chapter and I'm assuming that it does little to encourage the translator to release more chapters. Worse, they might be irritating, pressuring, and off-putting. From my perspective, most translators have some sort of schedule they aspire to follow and donation functions to incentivize extra chapters. But I really don't know what it looks like from a translators perspective, so I'm asking here for some insight.
Simple, for new translators if someone tells that they love your work and want more chapters, they find it flattering as they are basically being indirectly complimented but after some time it starts to feel annoying specially if the translator is not getting paid for translating the work. Though if they do have patreon then things can be solved quite easily for both sides.
I have a hunch if the translator say "it really encourage me...." you will start learn the art of begging, mastering the spammer jutsu and learn hypnotic plus brainwashing technique just by read what you write in comment
They used to bug me until I realized there was a delete comment option. Frankly, though, what's more annoying is that I already have a release schedule in the sidebar and on a separate page but sometimes readers comment 'Thank God, I thought you dropped this' or 'Noooo please don't stop at the good part. MOOOREE', It's like they don't bother checking out anything else on the site other than the content. (I delete those cuz seeing them irritates me. I'm petty like that.) I would rather readers comment 'Thank you for the chapter!' or anything discussing about the plot. Life is too short to waste your time getting angry at some few demanding people. Do yourself a favor and either ignore/delete comments that are demoralizing.
Don’t actually feel much (maybe I’m weird) If it’s been like a month or so since the last release, those comments at times remind/motivate me to TL...if it’s like every day, I’d probably get annoyed Maybe I’m that one rare TL who has angelic readers lol...
I'm petty enough that I'll say "say that one more time and I'm dropping this novel". Works for a few chapters It's OK at first but when I'm super busy it gets really irritating.
I was once called a shill 3 weeks after I took a break for 3 weeks (announced in both the free site and patreon site mind you). Can you imagine how that felt like?
I was attacked and told that I am greedy because I don't release chapters as fast as webnovel.com Did you know how that felt?
It is not just about the work. Webnovel.com is backed by a company what about $500 billion in Tencent while I am just a dude running a small team. How the hell people expect me to compete with them in mindboggling