4 replies to this topic

[Endrak]

Why is it that independent translations of web novels and light novels are rarely proofread or formatted correctly? Proofreading and formatting are vital to scanlation groups, but all but ignored in web/light novel translation. In fact, I and several friends of mine have been turned down when we offered those services. The most common response we get is that the current format is a conscious, stylistic choice.

 

I'm frustrated, because I want to read these stories. I can tell that they're good, that they have potential. If only they didn't look like someone plugged Howl (not the one with the moving castle) into Google, translated it into Korean, back into English, and then replaced all the punctuation with dashes and brackets. I know that you, O Great Translator, are doing us a favor by posting it in the first place. I respect that you, by providing the content on your own webpage, have ultimate control over its use and that it would be disrespectful to re-post your content regardless of any corrections I or my friends may make.

 

Yet, this is the third time I've been linked to a particular light novel and told how utterly amazing it is. Maybe it is. I don't know, because my eyes hurt when I try to read it.

[Halo]

Too much ego and fans who will approve every shit decision they make. Good luck with your criticism and desire to help.

[svines85]

Spoiler

Why is it that independent translations of web novels and light novels are rarely proofread or formatted correctly? Proofreading and formatting are vital to scanlation groups, but all but ignored in web/light novel translation. In fact, I and several friends of mine have been turned down when we offered those services. The most common response we get is that the current format is a conscious, stylistic choice.

 

I'm frustrated, because I want to read these stories. I can tell that they're good, that they have potential. If only they didn't look like someone plugged Howl (not the one with the moving castle) into Google, translated it into Korean, back into English, and then replaced all the punctuation with dashes and brackets. I know that you, O Great Translator, are doing us a favor by posting it in the first place. I respect that you, by providing the content on your own webpage, have ultimate control over its use and that it would be disrespectful to re-post your content regardless of any corrections I or my friends may make.

 

Yet, this is the third time I've been linked to a particular light novel and told how utterly amazing it is. Maybe it is. I don't know, because my eyes hurt when I try to read it.

 

I personally found that the LN's.......and/or whatever variations of them........just weren't for me. And yeah, I think (looking back on it) the issue with the formatting (of at least the few I tried) was probably a part of it.

 

I think there's probably a difference (for some) in how much we're able to accept/overlook when it comes to that sort of thing. I think that level is most likely higher when it comes to manga/manhwa simply because of the format (i.e. it's all broken up to begin with) than it is in the novel-like works due to our conditioning with original English language works........if it's significantly different than what we've become conditioned to, your mind is going to reflexively/subconsciously balk at reading it.

 

That being said, they're quite popular, so (to a degree), it's apparently just my problem  

 

And.........apparently yours as well  

 

If your advice/critique/offers of help are going unheeded.....well, I guess they're not for you either. They're fan works, strictly a hobbyist type of thing..........so yeah, you'd probably do best by just moving on from 'em or limiting yourself to only those you can deal with.

[Zarin]

Why is it that independent translations of web novels and light novels are rarely proofread or formatted correctly? Proofreading and formatting are vital to scanlation groups, but all but ignored in web/light novel translation. In fact, I and several friends of mine have been turned down when we offered those services. The most common response we get is that the current format is a conscious, stylistic choice.

 

I'm frustrated, because I want to read these stories. I can tell that they're good, that they have potential. If only they didn't look like someone plugged Howl (not the one with the moving castle) into Google, translated it into Korean, back into English, and then replaced all the punctuation with dashes and brackets. I know that you, O Great Translator, are doing us a favor by posting it in the first place. I respect that you, by providing the content on your own webpage, have ultimate control over its use and that it would be disrespectful to re-post your content regardless of any corrections I or my friends may make.

 

Yet, this is the third time I've been linked to a particular light novel and told how utterly amazing it is. Maybe it is. I don't know, because my eyes hurt when I try to read it.

Indeed, and there are endless problems, that I can classify in 2 groups.

 

Problems that I can forgive the translator for:

- style problems, with endless repetitions that kill the story (especially in Chinese WN).

- again style problems, in Japanese mainly, where a lot of passive sentences are kept passive in English, which is just weird to read.

--> Here the global problem is that translators stick too much to the original content, instead of adapting it to English.

 

Unforgivable problems:

- Words kept in Japanese (Sometime in Korean too, but more rarely) because "it looks cool". I can forgive the usual name suffixes (san, kun etc), but more than that is weird. I've even seen whole expressions kept in Japanese with rabid fans actually defending this insanity... -> Ah, Ou, Hai, Un, Yare yare, ne, and even gomennasai... , why?

- Weird English. No I'm not talking about the obvious correctable errors that anyone can do, but just English so horrible that even me, a non native speaker, can spot. Sometime it's super lazy machine translated stuff, sometime it's just the author refusing any help, as you said.

- Translator so lazy that he doesn't care about corrections suggested in the comments.

 

As you said, I can understand that the translator is giving his work for free (although it depends), but some stories are so badly translated that it's an insult to both the original work and the readers.

 

edit: sorry for the necro, I didn't see that the thread was 1y old

Edited by Zarin, 27 November 2016 - 12:39 PM.

[pantsu]

WN translation editor here/have also read WN's online in Japanese (although my JP skill is kind of shit). As an editor who is marginally serious about grammar, I read some (a lot) rage-inducing translations (often sometimes from my own translator)...

 

There are a several problems here:

1) WN's are rarely edited themselves. I've read a lot of really crappy WNs with terrible writing and grammar. 

2) The way WN's are written are often not... like they are in books. E.g. "This WN is crap," he said. <- In JP WN's it's usually phrased as: "This WN is crap." He said. 

3) Translating is not easy, especially if your grasp of the English language is iffy. More than a few translators I've spoken to are not from English-as-a-first-language-speaking countries. I've done some translating myself, and, more often than not, translating directly makes everything sound ridiculous. Compound that with poor English and unedited work and you get one hell of a crappy piece of work. 

4) There are a lot of WN's out there, and often individuals themselves pick up stuff to translate. There's no QC-ing because the translation is not really made for the audience but the one who is translating. And, hey, since they're doing it already, they might as well share it with other people. 

5) MTL's. I need not add to that. 

 

I personally stick to a few translation groups that actually care about the quality of stuff coming out/have standards. The niche ones... well... fortunately I can read it well enough to get by, so I opt for those over the crap translations.