Discussion Why translate certain novels?

Be terse and say in a sentence what is the point of this thread?
Do keep in mind that a majority of websites and translators on novelupdates are amateur translators.
If George R.R. Martin , a seasoned professional can take over 2 decades and still not finishing a story.
The bar for speed is quite low

 

Here's the thing. Translators pick up novels based on what they like, not what they think will please the most readers. You might think novel A is better than B and a better use of the translator's time, but honestly who are you to tell them this? The translator might not like A and just want to translate B, even if B is objectively a worse novel than A. It's already great that EITHER novel is getting picked up at all, after all the translator is doing this on their own time, and most amateut translators do it without expectation of payment. It's demotivating to see posts like this. Honestly.

If you want to read A so badly then translate it yourself. Simple as that.

 

The point is that I would like to understand why many translators take novels knowing that they will not complete while having many good and minor novels to translate, and only one person answered that. I don't know if I expressed myself badly, but it seems that most people here just think I'm baggy and want 10 chapters a day.

First of all, it's been a while since translating novels is no longer just for love, a large part of translators do it for money, I don't know if you're being ignorant or innocent. And who am I? Well, I do my part to support financially.

 

If you edit your post to ask why translators choose very long novels vs short ones, you might get more relevant answer.

I don't pay attention to length when I choose a novel to read or translate. The only criteria is that I really really like the novel. There are probably shorter novels that I'll also enjoy translating, but I don't go out of my way to find them.

But, money-wise, it would probably be more profitable to choose a longer novel than a short one because it takes a while to build readership, so there's a high incentive there.

 

If I were a translator, I'd rather you not donate so that you won't be standing over me with a whip and demanding things. Donations are donations, not a master-slave contract.

You're just being massively stupid and whiny and demanding. Of you think they're translating too slow, you can go read something else, they don't have to answer to YOU about why they chose the series that they did. Who do you think you are? Their parent? Their boss? The government? If not, then why do they need to answer to YOU?

 

It's unbelievable how certain people seem to have less than 20 IQs. It's not worth me to go down to your level and curse you, you can clearly see that you're stupid. I didn't demand anything, I wasn't aggressive I just pointed out a FACT and wanted to understand their side, but certain people like you, with your mediocre life, need to be aggressive, I think it's a way of self defense, right?

 

No, it's disgust at someone who likes to make unreasonable demands. You're too irrelevant to even need me to take any form of "self defence". What are you going to do? Call 155mm artillery on my house? Send assassins? Get the police to arrest me? If you can't even do these, then why do I even need to do "self defence" against a nobody like you? You're just scum who can't be contented with what you have and only know how to demand more.

 

Lmao. Just grow up kid.

 

You forget that humans are stupid.. I am kidding ... well not really.
Here is the deal, I might have not have been clear
Successful novels are over a 1000 chapters
It is hard to see any that are less.
That is simply how it works
The Chinese website and the author makes more money than way.
Female protagonist novels on jjwxc are usually shorter but on Qidian they can be as long as 10,000 although the chapters are quite short
https://www.novelupdates.com/series...is-wife-the-rebellious-good-for-nothing-miss/
The business model is to write as many chapter as you can as long as readers are paying.
That is why I mentioned Sunday newspaper comics. There is kind of no end in sight

Translators are readers like you and pick successful novels to translate which usually have that many chapters.
You have exceptions like Pivot of the Sky

Also, I have translated novels with shorter chapters and people didnt like them so I dropped them.
Novels with a lot of chapters are guaranteed to have popularity too.. well usually
since there were so popular already in China which lead to so many chapters written by the author
No author will write 3000 chapters when no one is paying

 

Bwahahaha... unless you're above 50, this "kid" might be older than you. "Child".

 

Thank you, that was the kind of answer I expected to receive.

 

If you want a short novel that will get completed in your lifetime then read this:
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/my-castle-my-castellan/

I am paying to get that translated albeit at a slow pace. It is certainly more affordable then paying to get a 500 chapter novel translated with no guarantee that it will be popular

 

I kind of agree with the op here, choosing to translate a 4k chapter story is just setting yourself up for failure. I understand that translators want to translate something that will be popular and something they enjoy, but 4k chapter is just too long. At a rate of 2 chapters a day it would still take over 5 years to complete, and I don't think 2 chapter a day is sustainable for a lot of translators too.

 

Failure is relative. A translator picks up a material to translatre whether they like to translate it in the 1st place or it was a request paid by donations. Nobody puts a gun to their head - thesame reason why they drop a project and donators can also donate somewhere else. Whether it is worth their time and donations is something they know and acknowledge.

 

Well, I think the rise of CN novels brought an enormous rise of leechers, hence why we feel like suckers now when we translate for free.