I think it's time for the site to have a certain evolution, a certain globalization. The NU is certainly a reference for the translation of Asian books... into English. As this is the second most taught language in the world, and as several members of this forum have demonstrated, the reach of this site goes beyond countries that have English as their native language. And as is might expected, the translations didn't stopped in English. They are being translated from English into other languages. Several languages. I know there are novels being translated in my language... and that I'm also a translator. And I know there are novels being translated into Spanish, German, Russian... So why can not we also index these translations on the site? Put a language option in the "Latest Release", put the language option in the groups, put in the forum a space to discuss things in languages other than English... Perhaps the translation of the site itself into other languages through volunteers? A place to help ask for authorization for the translation into another languages? A place for the translator group itself to show that it agrees that what it produces can be translated? Let's take the UN to another level!
NU hosts English translations that are reasonably well edited MTL at the very least. For many of the languages other than English, the quality of the translation cannot be checked by any mood of NU. However, I believe that it is more of a question of NU policy. Policy changes are right up the alley of @Tony
Well ... there are a lot of bad translations on this site. And I, who don't even have English as a native language, can say that (and I will not point out what they are). Quality control of translation in other languages can be done with new moderators. And I'm talking about a perhaps drastic change in the site, which will really involve policy change.
It's a logistical nightmare. Tony would need to get new, reliable mods for each new language. If you can't read English well enough to read English-translated novels, you'd probably need the site to be in your native language, which would take Tony a lot of extra work on the site to make it ready for localization. So, Tony would need to do a lot of work on the backend and the frontend, and take on new mods. Let's talk about the payoff for this. Over 1 billion people on Earth can read English at a level necessary for simple novels like the ones on NU. How many people would actually use the site in another language? It's not a bad idea, in theory. In practice, it adds a lot of extra administrative and technical work for what is likely to be very little added marginal utility.
In reality, it's not. Do you know how many active members of this community are bilingual? And we're talking about a site that indexes translations that are often voluntary! Only with the announcement of the possibility of translating the site, will appear yes people willing to do this, will appear people willing to be moderators... And you just raised an important question, not only for this, but for the current website: there is nowhere for the reader to assess the quality of the translation, just for translation. Just this mechanism of giving X stars to the quality of translation, and would simplify the lives of everyone working on the site, and make the idea of putting more languages on the site could give less work. Maybe not dealing with new moderators, but with a few bilingual volunteer members to check complaints.
Tony is very much against the idea of rating translations or anything similar. NU is about encouraging translations and helping translators gain exposure and that would do the opposite. Tony is even fine with edited MTL as long as it isn't basically straight from google translate or something. But rating translations or anything like that will never come to NU. Tony has been very clear on that. There really isn't a way to maintain checking these translations. Say a reader does checking but has to leave due to irl problems. Does he stop accepting translations of those type if he can't find another trustworthy volunteer? That seems like something that would be much worse to try to manage and definitely more of a headache. Tony isn't looking to expand his site like that when he's still working on NU as it is and improving it. Trying to extend that to other languages wouldn't be worth it at this time. NU and NUF are both monolingual. Further they are strictly for select East Asian language translation to English. It's very specific and a choice on his part to limit what appears on NU and NUF. There are plenty of sites older than NU and NUF which are still monolingual. Remember in the relative scheme of things NU isn't that old in terms of the internet.
And we would be talking about joining in a consolidated website, a community that, as far as I know, is very diffuse, which is the readers of asian novels in other languages. I believe there is something similar to the NU in other languages (in Portuguese it has, but I would not say it is as user friendly as here - and I say this because I have been trying to contact the site for a reason for months, without an answer so far...), but they doesn't even have the extent of this site. And many people who are interested in "oriental things" doesn't even know they have novels being translated into their languages! Or what Asian novels exist! And not everyone can speak English. Many study English as something for school, but they never go deep, and have no interest in it. They only know their native language. They only speak the basics of English, or not even that. No matter how basic the English of certain novels are, this guys won't venture to read one. Not to mention what it would entail. A large platform with multiple languages means making novels more attractive and popular, increasing readership in several languages, and as a consequence, increasing the number of novels being translated. As someone who believes in the democratization of reading(I don't know if this is the correct English term, to offer free or affordable books so that more people have access to them as a form of culture), since the NU only indexes novels that are made available for free, that would fit the cause.
This is a lie. NU does not deal with "Well edited" MTL, NU has no right to judge rather the MTL is pure garbage or actually well done. MTL just needs to be edited, if it's edited it's in. Most quality control mods do is throwing the text on google translate and seeing if what comes out is the exact same as what is on the translation, and they only do that if there is some drama involved usually. I'm not saying it is impossible, but don't expect it before 2022. Tony-chan is a huge perfectionist with her serious projects from what I have seen, she would make a complete new site for this, or maybe even one for each new language if I know her right. It's a wonderful idea IMO, just way way too much of a hassle to make it viable... My suggestion would be to try contacting the novel community of your own language and trying to mobilize someone to make it instead of hoping Tony-chan will take this kind of huge project upon herself. In that case you don't need to worry, people of other languages are already organizing themselves. They will make their own version of NU in due time, even if not as nice as NU. (It's hard to make something as nice as NU because there are tons of bots working on NU and it has some 7 servers up at all times as well, Tony-chan spent a LOT of time programming for NU. It's a big project.))
And all of this, just for some chapters of Coiling Dragon... You can't argue with how good that novel is.
There are index sites like nu of other languages tho. I found the Russian one. You just gotta dig around a but o3o