Stressless They mainly make correction related to grammer like puntuations, sentence error, tense and silly typos.
Becoming an editor
As an editor, some of the things I do includes:
- Basic proofreading (verb tenses, typos, punctuation, etc).
- Logic checking (Person A just ran away from Person B into a forest, and in the next paragraph, Person A is talking to Person B casually, like they're right next by each other).
- Keep a character log/sheet. Dont want to call Person A by 15 different names.
- Maintain consistent word usage.
- Correct awkward sentences/check for word flow.
- Make a glossary for all names and places.
Some other things I'm suppose to do but am not currently doing:
- Maintain a character profile of each character. E.g.: How old is Character X? What skills does Character Y have? etc.
- Maintain dialogue consistency between characters. If a character is speaking in a country/red-neck slang, he better not be speaking in the Queen's English accent two chapters later unless he had gone through an intensive accent-training program in between.
- Release more chapters per week.
Grammar is great. Punctuation could be machine-assisted, if needed.
Understand clauses (independent, dependent)
Understand conjunctions (coordinating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, etc)
Understand how a comma/semi-colon interacts with clauses and conjunctions.
Understand that there will almost always be a terminating punctuation mark (period, question mark, exclamation point, and in speeches: comma).
Anything that interrupts the sentence is set off by either commas or em-dashes (the long dash lines).
For example: I, for one, like eating chicken. The phrase "for one" is interrupting the normal sentence, "I like eating chicken." Therefore, it's set off by commas. Or em-dashes, depending on how you want to emphasize it the "for one"_ phrase.
Quotes are (almost) always in pairs. You have a starting one, and an ending one. Same for single quotes. Look for them in pairs. Read the story backward if you must.
That's pretty much it for punctuation, I think.
Thank you for your answer :)
I'm not sure my English is good enough to do so :(
Stressless It's not too bad. Don't let my reply scare you away. Do try, and you'll see if it is "good enough" as you put it. Even I am learning new things every time I edit (since I rarely paid attention to English class). Do try!
Stressless Go on, try it. :)))
Thank you very much for your support :)
I'll postulate but i'll first wait the answer about my proposal for french translation :)
SidX
Plundering the Heavens. Very useful editor, too, in fact. Even just an extra pair of eyes means fewer minor errors (such as doubled up words from modified sentences), but he also provides valuable input from a logic-focused point of view and helps pick out potential inconsistencies. I jokingly and affectionately refer to him as a robot.
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i sent email atleast 2 times at recruitment@qidian.com , but didn;t get a reply. :C
the first time was on 24th of sept, and the next was a couple of days ago.
say, are the higher ups ignoring me.... or am doing some kind of mistake.
JunkieOverThe_Moon Just be a little more patient; I believe there was a holiday in China not too long ago, so they're probably sorting through the mass applications they received. Took me a while to get a reply as well, but they're usually pretty busy ;)
Stressless
Hey,
They will not answer you. It's highly unlikely.
I'm also french and i know a lot of people who are translating some qidian's novels from chinese or english into french and who asked qidian to become french translators. Only one got an answer, and it's because Qidian thought he wanted to be a english translator ...
If you want more informations about french translations, contact me on discord (Drizzt Do'Urden#6672) :)
:O DrizztDoUrden! Can I get a link to those FR translations? I'd like to brush up a bit on my long-forgotten highschool French skills. :S
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Supreme_Idler thnks! well, i am not confident about passing it on the first try, actually i was a lot nervous when i first sent the mail, but when i thought that they still didn't send a reply [cause, i sent the first mail almost a month ago], i got very dejected..... well, i had almost given up on going through the forums and all, but when i saw, someone saying, "give it a try, give it a try and u will become an editor", i felt that i should give some 'try' and see why i didn't got a reply [ by the way, i also didn't get a reply when i gave a test in another translation site, so i'm pretty... furious, as to why am i getting ignored by the webnovel world] .... anyway, thnks man!
Wait, so if you want to become an editor/translator, do you just email the recruitment email saying that you want to be an editor/translator? And then they'll send you an application? confused but interested
giantrabbit yes you get an application via emailing qidian then u can take the test for the position you want to apply for
17 days later
Nou So I did eventually get an email from Qidian about the test and was held up by a week or 2 finally sat down put in a little time and completed; it didn't take to long but found TONS of errors. Quite frankly the test was triggering all of my bad memories I have had of all the mental self editing I've had to go through over the past 2yrs when reading some of these TL's 'edited' releases. I think I did an alright job but I haven't actually heard back from Qidian since Saturday when I submitted it, this is the 3rd day since then since I submitted it at night.
I'm not the best at grammar but I made that story flow!
SirLobo93 The results are announced in batches and if I'm not mistaken, the previous batch was quite recent. So you might need to wait awhile, regardless, all the best to you :)
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Olivia It gave me a headache and was frustrating but nothing compared to fully MTL'd novels, there is also a strange satisfaction from actually being able to correct it for a purpose instead of doing it mentally and moving on to the next thing.
Lonelytree Ah thanks, if that's really the case I hope its done every 2 weeks or month. There are plenty of stories I'm having an issue enjoying because of poor or no editing. Are there not enough editors compared to TL's? I mean there is no excuse for Cultivator Chat group to have numbers instead of the actual name of the character, especially since everyone reading the novel knows the character from the original TL's... that's just one example of many.
Most commonly, there are less editors than translators, so some stories stay waiting to be released for quite some time until someone can actually be found to edit them.
lol, you don't get to edit stuff like what you saw in part 3 of the test. Everything is quite readable and your task is only to make it even more so, correcting some typos, some tenses here and there, or the flow. It can take some time, but nowhere near what part 3 did.
Are these tests with an expected due date?
CH405Kaiser Nope. Or at least I don't think so. There weren't any dates written in the email I received when I applied.
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I got pretty interested after reading this discussion, so I've sent an application email.
Wish me luck! (Or not? 
)
Plummette Good luck :love_letter:
Olivia Well I don't think this is a main job for those with real lives lol Its maybe part time at best. I don't think it took me an hour to edit part 3 but the over all test maybe took me close to an hour. I'm not great with punctuation I'm mainly good at story flow and grammar. For spelling its all up to god and auto correct!
They made part 3 purposefully worse than it should be I feel; so I think editing would take maybe 3-40 minutes per chapter max.
DarkGem Hopefully I drummed up some interest in Editing, god knows its needed. I have seen novels edited by their TLs and turn out bad
I turned in my test days after I actually got it so I'm hoping there isn't a time statement as well. Also was I supposed to keep those instructional bits in? I just copy pasted the entire thing and edited parts 1-3 without deleting those.
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Is it weird that I found the first part tougher than both the second and third?
For some reason, I had a lot of fun with the third part of the editor test.
SirLobo93The email said to take your time with the editing, so I don't believe that it would matter as long as you send it in before the new version of the test comes out. Also, I left all of the instructions in the document too. For the third part, I opened a new document and re-wrote it while looking at the original, which made it somewhat easier.
I very much hope that I pass. If not, I won't be able to look my Technical Writing professor in the eyes.
SunriseCV The first part may have been harder for you to get used to because you have to adjust your mind set to that of someone correcting someone's mistakes. That being said I haven't edited others works seriously before so I don't know.
You looked back at the old version? I would have found that distracting I just edit in my mind and make sure it sounds correct and has a good uninterrupted flow.
If I get it and you don't I'd be surprised lol I'm terrible at punctuations.
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SirLobo93 Yeah, the way my mind works when I read something, It kind of already starts correcting mistakes, which makes re-writing very jumbled paragraphs easier than just straight editing. On the bright side, it's more fun to edit these translations that it was to edit research articles and such back in college... Haha...
Maybe we will both pass, then we can start a new Editors Sect and begin the plan for world, no, universal domination. Muwhahahaha!
Passed the test. Although I do hope part 3 doesn't reflect the actual work of translators.
RegiusProfessor It rarely does.
Lonelytree of course you'd say that... 
Millman97 Don't tell me my translation reminds you of the third part of the test? :scream:
Lonelytree no of course not 
I'm not sure if I should bug Qidian rep about what's next after adding up on discord. They might be busy with other things right now.
RegiusProfessor :O They actually had you add them on Discord? I was only given the choice of QQ or Skype! Even then, they pushed strongly for QQ right as they give you your first novel.
Which discord server are you on?
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Nou I suppose previously it's the norm for them to use QQ/WeChat. But now seeing how the other websites have their own discord server and users prefer this, so why not use Discord as well.
Am on Webnovel.com
3 months later
Congrats for passing! :O