Why Not Invest in Translators?

It is easy to keep asking the goose to lay more golden eggs but you have to feed the goose:invest in it
Better yet breed geese and lay more eggs.
Anyone interested, should share their ideas and contact me privately if you prefer that.
I believe a union of fan amateur translators is necessary

EDIT:
Investment does not have to be monetary. I guess, I should have made that clear
Eg you could help the translator with their website if you know programming

 

Why when Google and other companies are building Artificial Intelligence translators? Google are releasing theirs next year or so, a self improving one that has a huge data base of every possible outcome of that translation. Their aiming for the Chinese market so the Chinese language one will be released first.

 

Everyone is cheap.

 

Got no money

 

Read that as transforms with first read.
Most people won't invest though because most of them require a subscription or donation sort of thing and people don't want to pay.
Better alternative would be watching a advert or doing a poll since there is no cost like some other websites do.

 

Breeding a race of super-translators in your basement sounds like a long-term project.

 

Because its not worth the money? The time it takes to properly learn a language, and translate it means they need to learn our language well first, so 1-2 years to touch up English, 2-4 to learn a second language, then another 3-4 minimum to translate a full novel...nothing about this screams...makes money.

 

Investments already exist. It's called Patreon.

Also, Qidian is an example of a company investing in chinese-to-english translations. So if you really want a job for translating, Qidian can be a source. (I don't know if WW hires employees though, so I didn't count it).

 

Investment does not have to be monetary. I guess, I should have made that clear
Eg you could help the translator with their website if you know programming

 

What if the translator goes poof?
all the work gone to waste
Staff going AFK without warning is much more common than you think
Even if they give notice, there's nothing you can do.

 

cuz~
volunteer is rare creature

 

Hiring translator is really expensive. Why not buy cheap ebooks in amazon instead if you are gonna spend money. Hiring tl cost $40-100 per chapter while ebooks/novel only cost $1-10. I had an officemate who is also part time japanese translator and he told me one time a whole chapter earned him $100.

 

It would be quite cool but very expensive

 

Investment does not have to be monetary

 

It's not necessary to have fancy features on a translator's website. Is there any real benefit in making things more complicated? A translator only needs a laptop/phone, internet, and desire to translate. Everything else is superfluous.

 

I won't consider language courses as superfluous

 

good joke xd
You're talking about licensed translators working on published books.
You'll be lucky if you're earning half of minimum wage if you're translating light/web novels online.

 

my officemate is not licensed and he only did it a few times. he's doing it part time because he lived in japan for a few years and japanese translators are expensive, licensed or not. Just look at the rates in the former odesk
https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=japanese translator

 

You have people donating $1000 on Patreon, they are whales everywhere but that doesn't make it the norm

 

So those mtl groups will eventually produce something decent. And all the current mtls will have to be redone. Well I guess we'll know how much quality the group have if they answer yes to redo past chapters.
I get the feeling QI mtlers will be out of a job.