Why did you even start reading a novel that has 4ch/week release rate? I just pass on novels if it doesn't have atleast 1ch/day or it's just unbearable to follow. Even 1ch/day feels kind of slow but it's my bare minimum requirement no matter how good the story may be.
Immortalreader I think the translator described the circumstances of the release speed in one of the reviews. Therefore you either completely switch the translator, which doesn't do them justice or you cooperate which is just not a good way to do it.
You always have to think about it like this... If you have a translator without a novel, would you have him to:
a) Cooperate in an already existing project, but with lower release rate due to sync and work-in period
b) a complete new novel with a stable release rate
I would not want to waste a translator on something like a)
Well at least this proves immortalreader’s point, because of slow releases this decent novel is missing out on larger amount of audience because readers like n0xiety omit the novel ( legit / understandable reasons).
And hence low popularity. Unfortunately, this novel is actually not bad, pretty decent but the slow release is going to make a lot of people miss out on an alright novel
N0xiety How sad is that? Merely one year ago I would have been extremely happy to get 1 chapter a day for most novels, 2 years ago getting even 5 chapters a week would have been amazing. I feel like the recent efforts of Wuxiaworld and Qidian have made me selfish.
Leylin_Farlier I know how you feel... It's so weird...
Leylin_Farlier its the QI mentality. Quantity over Quality, therefore they can demand more.
On the other hand its understandable too. If you think of Translators as employees, they have to deliver 5 chapters/week per Contract. But they are in a position where they are in demand and therefore QI has to make some concessions.
While I wish it was translated faster, I think the translator/editor are doing an excellent job. If the translation pace is too slow for someone, feel free to read the mtl. I've read the mtl for PtH and found it to be enjoyable, albeit it as mostly skimming the chapters since there is no glossary for the mtl.
With most of the slower translated stories I read, I usually read them in monthly batches. This gives me 16+ chapters to binge read. :)
Billdoor Honestly I find the quality to be fine. Even when people were bitching about Gu Daoist Master having bad quality I thought it was fine. Even if the quality were to drop by 10% it'd still be fine as long as release rates are kept up or increased a bit.
I just want to note that we were never in a position of "demand" before proposing to go to 4 chapters per week. On the contrary, our series is quite unpopular due to the usage of pinyin in our story. Steers away a good chunk of potential readers.
And I was actually in favor of having 3 chapters per week back when PtH was starting to be released because the translator was pregnant at that time. Now, at 4 chapters a week, we're constantly breathing on the poor translator's neck, hounding her every day for another chapter whilst she adopts to life with a newborn baby.
Leylin_Farlier :
Impossible request. We can't decrease the quality by 10%. It's all or nothing :S
Leylin_Farlier Well i don't think it's about being selfish. I have been reading these kind of novels for the last 5 years and i also did start like you. I would be happy to get a few chapters per week. But then reality hit me even before Qidian started. These novels generally have 1000+ chapters. Even with 1ch/day rate it's gonna take atleast 3 years for these kind of novels to be translated. So even before Qi started i set my minimum as 1ch/day even tho that also feels slow. If it's any slower these novels that have thousands of chapters are never gonna end... If they were like Korean novels with at most a few hundred chapters, a slow release rate might be ok, but these kind of novels are just too damn long for that.
For example just imagine WMW being translated with 3ch/week speed instead of 3ch/day. With 3ch/day release rate, it took a little over a year for it to finish but with 3ch/week rate it would take 7 to 8 goddamn years! Who can follow a story for that long right?
Billdoor Look, everyone likes quality, but when the novels has thousands of chapters in need of translation, a slow release rate ain't gonna work. For this particular novel it will take 7.5 years to finish at the current rate of 4ch/week. 7.5 years is such a long time that you can't even guarantee if the same translator will be working on the project when/if it ever finishes... For a novel that has over 1700 chapters like the Plundering the Heavens, 4ch/week is just too slow no matter how you look at it.
Nou I get that you guys also don't have a choice, but i think if the translator doesn't have the conviction to translate at a faster rate he/she shouldn't choose a novel such as Plundering the Heavens. The novel has over 1700 chapters and with the current rate it will take 7.5 years to finish. Yes! 7.5 years!
Lets do the math so you can see that i'm serious.
1735 - 167 = 1568 chapters left to translate
4 / 7 = 0.57 chapters per day release rate
1568 / 0.57 = 2750 days to completely translate
2750/365 = 7.53 years!
Can the translator even guarantee he/she will be leading the project for 7.5 years? I think when translators choose a project, they should think about the future of their project and see if they have the conviction to finish what they started. For this particular translator, i think she should have chosen a novel with less chapters.
I think the release rate is steering away alot more readers than the 'pinyin' tbh... The fact that the novel will take another 7.5 years to finish is a massive turn off. Everyone has simple math skills and it's not hard to see the novels future is bleak with such a release rate. Life happens and it would be hard for a translator to work on the same project for 7.5 years unless they are really passionate about their project... They may get bored, start another job, quit translating, ect. I doubt even you will be on the project as the editor in 7.5 years... Am i wrong?
Really? You ask whether the translator can guarantee they'll lead the project for 7.5 years, but can anyone guarantee they'll do so for a year, or even a month, really? There's not even a guarantee Qidian International itself will be around for that long; we just assume everything will work out and it'll last.
You talk about looking to the future, about how you have to think about years from now, but you're looking at it one-dimensionally. You dismiss the importance of quality and then talk about condensing 7.5 years into something as small as possible while disregarding the period of time after it has been finished. If quality is sacrificed for the sake of giving everyone a quick fix, what happens to the readers who come after things are finished and get a subpar experience compared to what they could have had? Retaining quality helps ensure it'll withstand the test of time.
Four chapters a week is plenty. I still keep up with stories that translate at one chapter a week, and they're even late upon occasion. Hell, that's pretty much par for the course for manga, too, and sometimes those things don't update except for one chapter a month yet stretch into the thousands of chapters. It wasn't even that long ago that four a week was considered a good pace to keep, the readerbase just got spoiled with higher release rates—some of which are extreme and excessive.
checkm8 hey there I would like to know the mtl source
Bhagyashri my tactic:
1) Find the novelupdates page (eg: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/plundering-the-heavens/)
2) Copy the Chinese name from the section under "Associated Names" (eg: 掠天记 I got from the novelupdates page)
3) Insert into Google and pick a page. Navigate using Google translate.
ActiasLuna I never said you should compromise quality, but i did say you should choose a shorter novel that won't take 8 years to complete at the rate you wanna go with. There are plenty of novels that doesn't have 1700+ chapters for translators that want to have a slow pace and quality translation.
Also if you wanna talk about retaining quality, then translator changing a few times along the project isn't gonna help it. For a consistent writing style and for consistent term usage, the same translator is needed to finish the project. There are novels out there which have/had 3 - 4 different translators take the project in it's lifetime. Every one of them change the terms used in the novel by other translators because they think it's not up to their taste. Even the writing style changes. So yeah if you wanna retain quality then you need a single translator finishing the whole novel...
ActiasLuna
There really are a lot of spoiled readers out there. I even once saw someone leave a comment that he was feeling blue balled when a translator could only get out 1-3 chapters per day. It's crazy. They think just because a novel has +1000 chapters anything less than 10 chapters a day is being lazy. Can't help but feel its some kind of bad binge reading mentality. They don't actually care about the story, but the amount of new content they can absorb. They would even purposely for weeks stack dozens of chapters to read all at once. Those kinds of people aren't really fans of a novel.
N0xiety And some of those stories that are getting 10+ chapters a week have multiple concurrent translators and editors working on it at the same time. You're completely right that having different translators translating it during its lifetime often doesn't do it any favors, but that's precisely how some of the other stories keep up the pace they do. If you want to talk about the potential drop in quality that might come about if the translator stops translating, I argue that's built upon the assumption the translator will drop it to necessitate such a thing, and I'm not quite sure where that idea is coming from. Her having a child was one of the biggest life-changing moments it could have happened, yet the only change was reducing the number of chapters from five a week to four.
And no, you didn't say we should compromise quality, you simply said the translator should have never started translating this novel in the first place because it's not fast enough for your taste. I've followed several stories for years now, one of which I have been following for I believe nearly seven or so years (the manhwa, "Tower of God") without any problems; I just enjoy each chapter as they arrive. It even looks like the story will continue for another seven-plus years at least, and I'm not concerned about that in the slightest. Perhaps it's simply a different perspective in consuming the content.
OMDGEAR Eh. I wouldn't go so far as to say they're not really fans of a novel or don't care about the story, as that's simply not the case; there are some people who legitimately enjoy the content and just want it to come faster. This is rather normal and even expected in many areas—who wouldn't want to have more of what they like?—but it annoys me when people decide that some stories are translated very slow instead of some stories being translated very fast. It's like using Olympic athletes as the benchmark; everything is going to seem slow if you're comparing it to the extremes some people can accomplish.
I do think it's pretty crazy that things have progressed to this point, but it is what it is, I suppose.
