QI Poaching CCG

Oh, you're the translator on that novel, and here you are accusing someone of being a shill? Your translations are okayish, name choices are awkward as fuck.

 

... When it comes to Seven, that's just how dao names work for talented people in the Su Clan. Just like another sect uses fruit names. The topic comes up later in the novel.

I still won't read this on QI because the website hurts my eyes.

 

Are you also not a fan of infinite failure scroll?

 

Okay, things thus far:

• So far, QI didn't "poach" the other translation(not the urban word "poach" used in NUF, a literal poach. Also, please teach me the "poach" meaning circulating in NUF). Many did present their arguments, but it's merely based on speculation and intuition, not hard evidence. Thus, invalid unless presented again with evidence.
• So Wei, the other translator, was approached by QI then almost trusted GGP just to be f**ked over. However, The GT-QI partnership exploded making GT's founder, GGP, a liar(Based on Wei's Statement). Wei did say he'll show the contract that was presented to him by GGP since he's not under NDA because he didn't signed it, but until now, not a speck of shadow of the contract was shown(If there is in Reddit, please tell me so I can change this.)
• Lastly. GodBrandy, the QI's translator of CCG himself presented some reasonable argument if you look at it. However, he only tackled mentioning the positives there, given he was contracted, making it a little biased. So, we need his witness to verify his statement. P.S. let's just use "Copyright Ban" instead of DCMA. Unless Wei is American citizen(or based in America), DCMA is mostly useless.

So, regarding the general corporate "slave" contract, in actual, is quite tame than other work contract actually. One, QI's contract looks like a part-time job and you can play around if you achieved your quota. Comparing it to others, theirs is heaven, and ours are hell(heck, even I work 10hrs/day as an Online Freeter, and can only generate half of the salary these "slave" translators made). The only thing you're deprived of is, the right in your works(ofc it's a given since you work in a company functions in profits), and partial freedom of speech('cuz of NDA'ed contract clauses).

One thing though, I admire you guys' eloquence and knowledge, but please don't make a lawyer-ish answers and reply the argument as a whole, not the partial part of it, making it out-of-context. that's all.

 

Hurr durr, Herp Derp.
thanks for informing me about how the real world works. Surely my decades of independence and work have been a delusion. I am glad you took the effort to inform me on how in the real world a "good job" is one that is one that is comparable to fast food chain.

Fast food chain job:
Minimum wage. Get screwed out of healthcare. Be treated like crap.

Qidian:
Less than minimum wage if done right - Pay is either 40$ per chapter or 20$ per chapter via gravity tales subsidiary. If you collect additional tips they sue you. A chapter takes more than 1 hour to translate when done properly, including reading ahead and referencing older chapters to ensure consistency in naming and the like.

of course translators might just rush it to ensure that doesn't happen, but then translation quality suffers. So hey, at least we know where the incentives are. the more rushed and low quality the work is, the more money you can make. Heck, if you sign up with Qi instead of the GT trap, and you manage to rush through a chapter in half an hour, it is a whopping 80$/hour. Pretty good pay for doing half assed work.

No wonder we are having reports of translators in Qi literally omitting important sentences that are plot relevant because they are difficult to translate. it makes the difference between great pay and minimum wage

 

Well, it depends on a country, though. Some countries do provide healthcare even you work in Fast Food chains(After countless of people protesting about equality and all, so, some gov't are fed up with it and gave in). Also, depends in chain store of how you're treated at work, again.

Well, let's just say you chucked out 1 HQ chapter a day, so, 40$ in Qidian's standards. 40x28 = 1,120$. If you covert it to PH money, it's equals to 57,708, that means, you are in high paying job salaryman here. So, all in all, it depends on what world your country is. If it's a first-world country like in U.S.A., even a garbage man there has high salary than average salaryman here in PH, and that's a sad fact(Even I, only have 32k+ PH money per month salary). However, in the end, minimum wage in here is 7,000-8,000 PHP and that's equals to 140-160$ approx., per month. What I'm saying, it may not sound attractive to you first-worlders, but the pay is already a honey to some.

That though, even I question Qidian's standards of selecting translators. Might as well, go to LNMTL and kill my brain cells than some horrendous translations with "heavy editing" in there.

 

My point was that qi isn't as bad as some companies in the US. Not to mention other countries with lower average income.

Also, my point was that we've only seen the basic qi contract, not a contract some has negotiated. Of course it will be as bad as they can get away with, every company does that. My first job offered me $57k, and I ended up getting $65k after we negotiated various terms on my contract (not to mention 10% higher bonus and other benefits). So my question remains, have some of the translators with a proven track record actually tried negotiating a contract with qi?


And yes, I heard horror stories about badly translated works on qi, but the only series I read is quite well done (I've compared the raws), despite being a 14 releases a week series.

 

I can't seem to find the numbers, so you can instantly dismiss the rest of this post if you don't want to take my word for it:

I recall RWX saying that Qidian payrates were significantly below market rate for Chinese to English translations. My googlefu puts a professional translator earning around ~$30 USD an hour, or ~$0.10 per word (for a 2000 word chapter, ~$200). So offering $40 a chapter (or $20 as GGP did) is saying, translate ~1 chapter an hour if you want to earn market rate. I've read it stated it can take 2-4 hours to fully translate a chapter at high quality by Wuxiaworld translators, so it's more like you walked into a job interview for a job worth 60k a year, and they opened with 15k a year offer. Of course you could just MTL and make bank, like most Qidian translators.

Are most web novels translators at the level of a professional translator? Probably not, but the good ones are pretty close, and it gives a baseline to work from.

To be fair I think I recall some of the Wuxiaworld translators who moved to Qidian saying they got offers a lot better than $40 a chapter, I think it was like $80 or $100? But they had a MUCH better position to negotiate from, considering they had a sizeable fanbase for their novels before they started negotiations. So the moral of the story is, illegally translate and host a Qidian novel, somehow massively build up a giant fan base before Qidian notices you, then try to negotiate a higher pay rate, with Qidian always able to C&D you and replace you with a MTL translator and steal your fanbase that way.

You also mentioned that ALL companies give shitty contracts. That's really strange, considering pretty much all the other companies who host Chinese web novels seem to have been able to negotiate contracts with Wuxiaworld and Volare Novels for novel translations that don't read like slave contracts, and let the translator KEEP the rights to their translation and earn based on their ad revenue/patreons.

Here's how negotiating with Qidian goes:

http://forum.novelupdates.com/threa...he-devils-evolution-catalog-new-series.45114/

http://www.wuxiaworld.com/wuxiaworld-formal-response-to-qidian-licensing-issues-post/

 

what i learned:
1. qidian translates their own novels because existing fan translators don't sell their souls to them.
2. qidian uses goodguyperson as an agent to pressure translators into joining either his slave factory or qidian.
3. goodguyperson is a terrible shitty person. somebody should out him, so rabid fans can hunt him down and burn him in a bonfire.
i'm not taking sides. i just take what I can get.
i also want to say to qidian and goodguyperson that there are people who are crazy enough to do suicide bombings, so let's hope that none of them are fan translators or novel addicts. even so, some of those fans can nurse a grudge for years that they will actually do everything it takes just to satisfy their perceived pain of having been wronged. just like in chinese novels where the characters come back to destroy a family or an entire sect after several chapters or lifetimes.

 

UPDATE: It's $20 or ad revenue whichever was higher. It would have been $40/ch with no option on ad revenue (maths updated to reflect).
Just to clarify, the $20 that GGP offered was with ad revenue. The $40 was without. Let's do the maths below.

Obviously the above is just a sample and not necessarily an actual. The point is to illustrate that $20+ads can potentially generate more $$ for a translator than just $$/ch. I would also like to once again reiterate that QI & GT are not the same company. GT is a subsidiary of China Reading as much as QI is. We're still competitors, but we get a long.

 

So a translator only continues to earn on a novel he/she has completed if he/she is still an active translator on GT? If this is the case, that seems to mean Gravity Tales owns the translation, not the translator, right? So same as QI in that regard.

Also, let's not forget that the flat rate GT offers is temporary, only for the first six months (source). So that above math only applies during the first six months, when a novel is just starting out, then it's just ad revenue. QI pays a flat rate the whole time. So if one just wants money up front, clearly the better option is QI. Cause you'd need 2M pageviews a month (assuming the cpm rate is .60) to even match QI. A tall order.