Question Why do translators...

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Insanityplea, May 3, 2019.

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  1. Grenore

    Grenore 《Member》

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    This is normal. At first translation used to be a pure hobby for some. But after that it became a profession. So, since it's a profession now, they need to have both: passion for translating and earning some cash.
    However, these days people don't have any passion for translating, and so that makes them not earning anything either. Which is boring!
    In my pov, if you turn it into a profession, then be professional...
    For that, some people thought of opening up groups for translations and recruiting staffs. But most of these groups aren't much reliable.

    And so, it continues..........!!
     
  2. Milanin

    Milanin [Reader] [???] [Freeloader]

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    That's mostly why I'm a [Reader] [Freeloader]
     
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  3. xiin

    xiin lazy <( ̄︶ ̄)>

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    As a translator... i really feel like i have to step in and say something :blobtired:

    But firstly, disclaimer before I start: I translate for fun. Most people probably translate for fun and not for $$ since the $$ is pretty notoriously... shit.
    (note: i've never worked for a big site like WW or Webnovels and tend to shy away from that drama so maybe they make enough, but i wouldn't know.)


    Release frequency vs chapter length is something that involves way too many factors for you to simplify like this. We (as unpaid translators doing it as a hobby) pick it up because we enjoy the novel we're translating. Length may or may not have been a factor in this decision, but let me ask you this - would you rather be able to read it slowly, or not be able to read it at all? Or even better yet - would you rather it be slow and good, or fast and basically gibberish?

    My suggestion to you: check release speed vs novel length, how readable the novel translation is, and how MTLable it is and make your own decision. Nobody's forcing you to read it if the release speed is too slow for you to accept.

    Teasers - we like something, we don't have time, but we want people to know about it. A lot of teasers get started in the hopes that someone else will see it and pick it up, or readers will see it and then go and read/buy/enjoy the raws. Again, why are you complaining about something that's offered for free and nobody's forcing you to read? At least they're marked out as teasers, which means the next baby-translator can come along and pick it up. And they'll already have somewhat of a premade audience, which makes it so much more enjoyable for us translators. (gimme the comments and loveee)

    If this is the reason the original poster started the thread, then I get it. Novel hogging is something that honestly, kinda sucks. I totally agree. :blob_teary: We all wish translators wouldn't do that, but given that most readers aren't translators and don't actually know what might be happening in the (mostly working for free, as a hobby) translators' lives, it's really not up to you, or us, to judge. There are plenty of other fish (novels) out there in the sea.

    At the end of the day, most readers wouldn't be aware of that novel that was picked up and translated slowly unless the translator picked it up. Which means, it went from being completely unknown, to being somewhat unknown.

    I personally feel that the NU rules have been pretty fair about the timeline/rules for another group to pick up a popular novel. People who hog novels will eventually have to either drop some (or get them snatched) or translate more. But no system is perfect. If you're not okay with it, you could always pick up that novel yourself and see if you can go any faster... maybe it'll give you some perspective on how things look from the other side.

    Most translators are doing this as a hobby. it would be nice if sometimes, instead of complaining about slow releases, people appreciated that the work was being done in the first place.
     
  4. IceLight303

    IceLight303 Well-Known Member

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    No. I lost interest when someone told me I would spend more time fighting to keep my position and more then half the people in the world would hate me and say mean things to me. I think I was about 6 and that was my teacher. Should have heard what she said to some of the other kids.
     
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  5. Kirill

    Kirill New Member

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    Actually it's more on about how translators kept on saying how busy they are with other stuffs so the release got delayed.

    That is understandable. No problem with that.

    But it actually make people curious why would they pick up even more work when they could barely handle the 1st one they picked up. They're just basically punishing theirselves

    So it's not really a complaint you know. Just flat out curiosity as to why
     
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  6. Kuro_0ni

    Kuro_0ni Cocooned in a Life transition

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    From my experience, I'd say the whole translating thing is a whimsical decision. I'm going to ramble a bit.

    I'm a workaholic in real life, and I have an urge to just keep busy. Translating is merely my hobby.

    I did consider monetizing my work (donations, patreon ko-fi.etc) but in this point in my life I feel it would tie me down. Especially since I'm full-time laborer and part-time college student.

    I just wanted to translate "2 missing chapters" which had dead links (V3 ch6 & ch 7) And after a few positive and encouraging comments I just kept on going. Now I'm 33 chapters deep into translating "Bringing Modern Weapons to a Fantasy world".

    Chapter length always changes, but I try to stick to a 2 chapter per month schedule. And I dont chop up my releases into parts even though it has a ridiculous character count. A regular chapter usually has 4000+ character count. There are some chapters which had double that amount or like 10,000+ characters. And I still managed.

    As for my teaser projects. It's mainly to bring awareness to a story and just because I needed a change of pace/style for translating.
     
  7. Amaruna Myu

    Amaruna Myu ugly squid dokja (●´∀`●)

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    it's amazing how you translate at good quality everyday :cookie:
    admiration
     
  8. Sabruness

    Sabruness Cultured Yuri Connoisseur

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    This is my biggest annoyance as well. I have no problem with random updates from TLs if they match their self-proclaimed schedules for their main novels but if they cant even keep their schedule then picking up extra novels for random updates is a pain
    +1 to this

    Yes, you are one of the awesome TLs out there. You stick to your schedule and your quality is great. You even are quick to respond to any mistakes. Keep up the awesome work. :cookie::aww::blobsalute::blobok::blob_patpat:
     
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  9. Insanityplea

    Insanityplea *Head Tilt*....*Fart*

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    I know. It honestly impressed me I got any decent replies and wasnt immediately flamed to death, thrown in a crematorium and then crapped on afterwards.

    This time around there wasnt actually any intended insult towards any translators in this post (thread) which is kinda new for me. Was purely asking out of curiosity why someone would pick up a novel and translate it at a speed that wouldnt see completion for 40-50 years (middle ground if not a single release missed at 52 chapters a year and it includes side stories). Figured id also ask about the teasers cause that one kinda pisses me off (own fault for forgetting) when I forget a simple rule of checking chapters on a novel before I even read its summary. Not much is more annoying in relation to NU than reading a novel summary and going "sounds good!" to notice its got 5~ translated chapters from X years ago. If its as some have stated that the translator wants someone else to pick it up cause their plate is full (THANKS FOR NOT OVERWORKING YOURSELF YOU WISE WISE PERSONs!) then alright, I get it (still annoying).

    Now a reply to the flames.

    I flunked English, the fuck you expect me to learn Japanese which pretty much has two languages (one formal and one informal) or Chinese which has something like 50,000 characters in its written language?

    For the "Go MTL it" groupies

    Why add to the problem? I know myself. I would start MTLing, then stop after X chapters (maybe XX if it was a good read) cause im lazy. Also the reason the laziness comes in is cause id go through a few MTL processes and not just stop at Google. As dumb as I am I still cherish what little brain function I have and refuse to give to to google translate or other similar alternatives.
     
    Last edited: May 4, 2019
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  10. cirrus74

    cirrus74 Well-Known Member

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    1. People get bored and don’t realise how much work translation is and how much time it requires (if that’s the case, please please give up the project to other translators who are willing to take it up, instead of stubbornly hanging on because you feel it ‘belongs’ to you or you like the ad revenue/kofi you get. Please)
    2. Because they hope that it will generate interest and someone else will pick it up so everyone else can enjoy it.
     
  11. xiansho

    xiansho Well-Known Member

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    Guy, give your parents a call, they are probably worried about you, and they may even have reported you missing. This may seems shocking to you, but you probably have been in a coma for 22 days. You should go to the nearest hospital, and get yourself checked. It would be better to call your friend to carry you there so that you don't faint and go back into a coma midway.
     
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  12. NovelReaderAnonymous

    NovelReaderAnonymous Well-Known Member

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    There few reasons, one is as most people stated lot of people do it as hobby. It usually start fun but translating can be pretty dry and boring. Sometime you just feel like shit and don't want to do anything. Many reason can cut in and as a hobby there no reason to force yourself so there more breaks. Eventually it could just become too much of a burden. Many things we all experience daily can cause this.

    Other type are people who are trying to fish for popular stuff. Basically they translating lot of random stuff because they feel like what they picked up wasn't popular enough. So they pick up more hoping to find that one will explode in popularity that they might be able to make a living off of it. The big problem with that has always been with slow release rate its rare things would ever get popular enough for people to be willing to support you financially so then you just end up with picking up a lot of novels but barely doing any chapters for each of them.

    Then for some people they translate a lot of novels slowly because they find sticking to one novel boring and would like varity as they translate so they translate multiple novels at once.

    Its hard for fan translation to have a release rate to finish any of these long ass chinese novels in a reasonable time. Like 1,000 chapters at 1 chapter a day would take over 2.7 years. Doing 7 chapters a day is already part time basically, probably take most people close to 20 hours a week to do that many. It's not a reasonable time to expect people to put into to it every week if its just a hobby.
     
  13. Dyne

    Dyne Well-Known Member

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    I'll try to share my point of view. When I enter the translation world, I'm curious whether or not people will be interested to read novel from my country. That when I decided to try translating novel but since I don't know which novel should I translate, I was planning to translate 3 novels for 10 chapters each and see which one gain more interest. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

    Several issues that I was facing and finally kill my idea for translating:

    1. My taste have changed.
    All three novel that I plan to translate are novel that I've read a long time ago. The nearest release date are 2001 so it have been more than 10 years since I read the novel. When I try to translate those novel, I read them again and I found that my taste have changed. The pace are too slow, the character development are scattered, the words are too flowery, etc. It become a good novel rather than great novel for me, and this wane the passion of translating those novel.

    2. I found that my translation are bad.
    English is not my first language - it not even my second language - but I was confident that I can deliver a good enough translation for people to enjoy. I was wrong. The first rule for any literature works are to read it again before you progress to the next step. Imagine my horror when I read the translation and asking "what the hell is that". It will not be so bad if at that time I'm not reading Coiling Dragon and douluo dalu where both are delivering high quality translation making my translation feel small and insignificant.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure if I release the translation it will be readable and understandable but I feels something lacking with my translation which make me pondering "should I continue this or not"

    3. I'm translating a paper book novel, not web novel
    It is quite difficult to change novel format to web novel. For example, my plan to translate 10 chapters for each novel encounter a wall. Paper book novel chapter are long as it not planed to be release daily, to breakdown that into web novel size chapter are hard. You need to read the whole chapter then determine how to break it down. Another example is paper book normally try to describe thing thoroughly and this is one of their charm, yet translating those description is not easy at all while web novels rarely do this.

    4. All those extra effort.
    Translating a novel is not just porting from one language to another language. There is a lot of hidden effort that you need to do if you want to deliver a good experience to your reader. Things like keeping track of when an event/char show up so when it mentioned in the future you can refer it to your reader, or keep track of item name/char name/skill name. You can have Jade green dragon sword in chapter 13, Jade dragon sword in chapter 29, Green dragon sword in chapter 50 and dragon sword in chapter 78 and you probably need to make sure to use the same name over those chapter for your reader. This took a lot of time to do

    5. The author family contact me.
    Actually this supposed to be a good news for me. I've contact the author (or their family) about translating the novel, and if they don't agree I'll stop. Two didn't response but one did contact me. They are enthusiastic about this project. They give me full blessing and don't care at all about all the "profit" that I can get from this project. They even willing to cover the cost for hosting if needed, yet this support and expectation crush me. I feel that I need to deliver the best result so I won't disappointing them. combining this with point no 2 cause me a headache. Even until now, every time they send me a season greetings they will ask about whether or not I'll continue the project, which make me feel bad.

    6. Changes in real life
    When I plan this idea, I have spare time to play games or cook a fancy dinner which I plan to replace some with translating but thing changed. My wife was pregnant with a twin so she need extra care and attention. Then the boys come out and I've no time to continue the project. This is the final nail in the coffin for me. While previously I still try to continue translating albeit slowly, it was almost zero progress (100 words in 14 months) that make me think that I won't continue this project for sometime.
     
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  14. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Your reply is very sad.
    Personally, I don't think your original post is what replying or even reading.
    You can insult someone politely.
    Let us not kid ourselves.
    You like most...well many readers want slaves : efficient and free.
    Apart from just being wrong. Life doesn't work that way.
    Free doesn't exist, someone pays for the translations.
    You complain about speed, but really you are complaining that the novel does not have enough donations.
    No surprise there, it is an unsustainable model: the few paying for the masses.
    I have seen many times if which a novel where 100 sponsored chapters is sponsored by one person, whales so the speak.
    The problem to most things is money
    1 Either you get more people to donate
    2 Train more translators.: https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/how-would-you-increase-the-number-of-translators.82402/

    I personally am trying to do number 2 and have been failing for the past year since this community is filled with people so ignorant that I want to hurl.
    Anything that you don't pour into will die, even if it's a very slow death.
    Over and out!

    P.S We don't have more translators. Just MTL passing off as translations, sometimes there are worse than Google translate. You have deluded punks who believe in 5 years Machine will be able to provide the nuances required to translate novels. Then again with the standard edited MTL which is simply fanfiction getting accepted as a translation then I guess 5 years isn't impossible afterall.
    Pathetic....
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2019
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