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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.

N0xiety

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.

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...

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.

ActiasLuna I understand where you are coming from, but i would argue that 'having multiple concurrent translators and editors working on a single novel' and 'a novel being dropped and taken over by a different translator' are two completely different things. In the former case there is unity and communication between translators and editors to keep it consistent, while in the latter case the later translators have no obligation to keep the consistency.

Now i'm not necessarily saying that the translator 'will' drop the project before she can finish it, but i still have to say that this is a reality in most cases. Life happens and translators generally can't keep up with a project for such a long timespan like 8 years. Now again, there is no reason to believe this particular translator 'will' drop the novel in the future, but that doesn't change the fact that this is extremely likely to happen going by past examples.

I would also like to clarify that i'm not a reader of this particular novel. So i have no idea what's going on with the translators life. But what you said can also be another example for my statement 'life happens'... Be it a good or bad occasion 'life happens' and these events effect the translation. This is why most translators can't keep up with a project that goes on for so long. Life just happens... It is simply better to choose a project that can be finished in a shorter time, so that there will be less of a chance for unforseen circumstances to happen. Hell, some translators just get bored after translating the same novel for so long and just leave in the middle to start another novel. So it's always better to have an end goal than to not having one.

This is not about the translation being 'not fast enough for my taste' tbh. I read korean novels with 3 ch/week release rate. But why do i do that even tho i have an atleast 1ch/day rule for most chinese novels? Because the novel is only 120 chapters long. It can still be finished in 9 months. The translator quite likely won't be dropping this novel unless some really life changing event happens in the next 9 months. Most korean novels are like this. Because they are at most in the range of hundreds instead of thousands of chapters like the chinese ones.

I should also say that manga and novels are not the same when it comes to the humans ability to remember. Novels are much more detailed than manga, while manga has the advantage of being visual. What this means is that manga is quite a few folds easier for people to follow for years without forgetting things. Anything visual is much more easier to remember than just reading about it. It's just how humans memory work. Visual is always more striking and memorable.

For example, i have given about a year long break to Ze Tian Ji. At this point i can't even list the characters to you, let alone remember how they looked, nor their personality... I can't even remember how the main character looked! I have also given about 2 years break to Tower of God so far waiting for chapters to stack up. But i can still list the characters and even remember how they looked and act. This is the simple difference between a novel and manga. Now ofc i know that everyones brain doesn't have to work like mine, but this is still a reality for most humans ability to remember things.

Anyways i have rambled for too long, but i hope you can also see my point of view.

Ps. You have some good taste there with Tower of God!

Bhagyashri Kingfisher had a very good post.

Kingfisher 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.

My only additions are:
1. Bing Translator https://www.bing.com/translator occasionally provides a better reading experince.
2. I avoid systranet http://www.systranet.com/translate as it appears to provide more business and science translations. Their word choices tend to lead to a more stilted translation than what you will see in bing or google. Their main advantage is a user definable dictionary.
3. Google Chrome will normally ask you if you want to translate a page when you visit it. It is worth noting that you can also go to https://translate.google.com/ and enter a webpage to have translated there. I get different results depending on which one I use.

For PtH the worst thing when reading the mtl is MCs name (Fang Xing) is butchered (literal translations) constantly.

MCs name translated as:
Google Translate
Fang Line
Side Line
Side of the Line
Side Walk
The Line
The Party
Party Line
Square Line
Bank Line
Bing Translator
NdFeB (most used name probably about 80%)
Side Line
Bing Translator appears to be the most readable with the only annoyance is the MC's name being translated as (mostly) NdFeB (Which is a neodymium magnet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium_magnet