Is The Author The Most Important When Writing a Book?

Many in this community seem to look down on the work of translators. I know some translators who should actually be called editors as they fix plotholes and errors in the web novels

I have had some say machine translation will replace human translations in a few years.I find that very hard to believe. The quotes below support my point.

"Editing is the most important part of my job as an author. Before I gave up my day job to write full-time I was myself an editor....... And yet I cannot tell you how much I hate it. It is extremely dispiriting to sit in a room with your editor and be told that the book (in my case novel) you have lovingly crafted over a long period of months is not gripping, charming and perfectly turned out, that it is in fact repetitive, unconvincing, too sketchy here, too drawn-out there. But I'd be mortified were anyone other than my editor and agent to read the first draft. It is vital that an author has someone willing to be tough with them. It's in their best interests, and if that person is employed by the author themselves on a freelance basis, I question how tough they'll be willing to be."


"Editors of yesteryear wielded vast influence; a book could go through many, many rewrites before it was deemed worthy of selling to the reading public. Who knows whether Gone With the Wind would have been as successful had it been called, as it originally was, Pansy, after its eponymous heroine, Pansy O'Hara, before Margaret Mitchell's editor at Macmillan persuaded her to change the name to Scarlett? "


Web novel publishing, for the most part, has zero editing. It is a mass produced assembly system that promotes quantity over quality
I wonder how much better the best stories on Novel Updates would be if there was a bit of editing.
And how good those novels that just missed the mark would be with good editing.

"Choice is a good thing, but there's increasingly no delineation between an online publisher or author who bundles up sub-standard work and sells it as cheaply as possible and a publishing house that has some interest in curating their authors' careers. I think consumers deserve the same level of respect now as then, and so I wonder what the future holds."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jun/16/ebook-needs-good-editor
Peace!

 

Wouldn't translators that fix plotholes and errors in web novels, cause the plot of the novel to deviate into the realm of "fan-fiction"? Unless of course, said novel is "Invisible Dragon" or "Beauty and the Bodyguard aka School Beauty Personal Bodyguard".

 

Haahaha yes, I do agree but some errors are pretty easy to fix without turning it into fanfiction eg author forgetting the character's height. Forgetting a character is male instead of female etc

 

Fixing as in fixing the flow of the story. It is not a simple copy and paste of words as some seem to believe.
Rearranging sentences so they make sense.
Sometimes after translating a chapter. A translator needs to go back and rephrase sentences
I am simply quoting translators. It is not my own words
@UnGrave

 

But google translate changes sex from male to female repeatedly.
I would argue that it cannot do what you claim.
A human can go back and fix sex changes after translating the entire chapter and understanding it better
google translate cannot

 

I see. That's why there's one time in Japan an editor sue-ing something with how a book is theirs or how they are really are the one making novels.
Like this maybe?
https://japantoday.com/category/fea...’t-write-aren’t-the-ones-creating-their-books

 

I am talking about the present but I believe that improvements will not come as quickly as many seem to believe as there are many kinks that need to be fixed. Some not so obvious

Yeah, I would say that translating is as labor intensive as editing although many seem to think it is a lot easier than it is

 

This does remind me of the Manhua vs Novel version of "玄界之门".
Manhua: https://mangadex.org/title/26191/the-portal-of-wonderland
Novel: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-portal-of-wonderland/

The novel was extremely badly written(plotholes and flow/sequence errors), so the manhua studio ended up "fixing the plot directly" and "rearranging the flow of events". Manhua has good artwork but sadly unless the manhua studio "deviates from the main novel completely", it's as good as "Hunter Age".

 

While I don’t completely agree with your point, I get where you come from. I even know of a nice example with https://www.novelupdates.com/series/lets-be-an-adventurer-defeating-dungeons-with-a-skill-board/ WN version. The author has some really nice ideas and the characters and the story are also interesting but it has some really serious rough edges there. Which based on the manga ver. have been worked out.

 

Wolfie translation does a pretty good job at rewriting some of the annoying/weird/bad parts of the amber sword

and personally I'd love to see someone "edit" shitty drawn out novels like BTTH by basically removing most of the word padding

 

I really hate this mistake. When a character is introduced as a Female/Male in one chapter I usually try to visualize what they look like in my head. So after fifty chapters and maybe five chapters of not being seen when a character is suddenly gender swapped it makes it difficult for me to remember who said character is. Granted this only happens when I pay attention to the words "he" and "she" ,but still I dont think a book should require you to NOT pay attention in order to understand it. Not to mention the multiple times when I get back to reading after a month long hiatus only to have to go back and look for MC "female" best freind.

 

From someone who writes perspective, I spend 10X more time editing my own work than writing it. Editing is a lot of work.

Now having an actual editor would save the effort fixing flow issues and grammar issues and can probably lower it down to 5X. You also have someone you can discuss the plot with for things you might not notice.

That said, I would be careful about letting your book be written by an editor. I've seen plenty of light novels go downhill from the web novel due to what feels like the editor dictating the story.

 

I am reading City of Terror on Gravity Tales and that mistake is there. It is most likely the fault of the translator.
A character introduced as the dojo Master's daughter goes from being called she to he. And from her father to his father in the same paragraph
http://gravitytales.com/novel/the-city-of-terror/cot-chapter-65
Cheng Bi Wu is the father of the lady called Cheng Sisi

View attachment 41350

Here is another example:
https://www.novelupdates.com/series...e-path-i-walk-to-survive-in-this-other-world/
I could not get any translator to translate the novel because it was so bad what the author wrote and the translator changed so much that ti became a different story

I would not blame the editor but the publisher. An Editor should be someone that you trust.
I know that the Watergate author: Bob Woodward has been using the same Editor for 30 years

 

I get that you are saying that editors and translators are important and I do agree with that sentiment.
But what point are you actually trying to make with that clickbait title if the rest of the post is presented in a way that feels disconnected from the question and without further elaboration on that part?
Not trying to hate on you or anything like that, it just feels strange to read a ramble about editing that might well need some editing for clarity itself.

 

Haha. It's disappointing that you used words like " clickbait" but it will be greedy to expect everyone to understand.
I got a good 4 or 5 replies and I am satisfied with that.
Peace!