Difference between translating Japanese LNs and Chinese webnovels?
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@jcochran Is it actually that many words? Are we talking a novel or just a volume? Since i try to get most of mine in physical forms, it's quite difficult to count the words. And otherwise i get them in Kindle format. Not sure how to count the words there either.
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@Quof brings up excellent points. I agree that the correlation between pay and speed/quality is not a simple one. It's not that paying a translator more will motivate said person to "work extra hard," so to speak, and supercharge their quality and speed. Like quof explained, that simply isn't how it works.
What better pay can do, however, is allow the option of not juggling a bunch of projects simultaneously, thereby creating the possibility of focusing on a single series. Then, when there's downtime, the translator might not be as freaked out about no money coming in the next month. It's the surrounding circumstances that might be improved, not the raw typing rate.And since we're discussing this now, Quof also touched on a point that frequently goes unconsidered by those not engaged in a form of labor similar to translating. Unlike a lot of work, translating demands the translator's full and constant attention. As someone who is a practicing pharmacist, I can confidently say that working at a pharmacy is many many times less taxing on the mind than translating. Note, my choice of wording. We're specifically talking how mentally taxing it is. I suspect this is a feature of how the human mind works. Many "traditional" jobs are actually a combination of many different activities that are repeatedly cycled through over a work day. An office worker might enter a few spreadsheets, attend a short meeting, grab some coffee, write a report, get yelled at by their boss, and discuss ideas with a coworker all in one day. Furthermore, as an employee, they are paid during all these activities, because we generally understand that the human mind cannot be expected to be functioning at full capacity all the time. When you sit back and stretch after a few hours of work, your boss (I hope, at least) doesn't go "HAH! CAUGHT YOU SLACKING! THAT'S 3 MINUTES OFF YOUR PAY!"
Meanwhile, if you're not actively punching words into the document while translating, you're making no progress and effectively no money. Think there's a better word for your sentence? Well, checking a thesaurus is (if we're being really argumentative about this whole thing) going to lower your effective payrate. Do you try to polish your sentence? Rearrange it to fit English conventions? Or just use the first thing that pops up in the dictionary and move on? Furthermore, every lapse in concentration is, in a way, time you'll have to make up afterwards, to say nothing of monotony-induced Twitter/Youtube escapes. There's nothing else to translating. It's just you and the words on your screen. Page after page. Your mind doesn't shift from activity to activity to allow periodic respite for the various functional areas. The same faculties are constantly being forced to work at full capacity. After a while, productivity does start suffering.Quof has clearly researched the topic, and the consensus does seem to be ~4 hours a day of honest, concentrated work is more or less the translator's equivalent of the average 8 hour workday. I seem to be able to manage ~5 hours right now, and I'd like to do more, but I haven't found success maintaining any semblance of consistency at that pace. There are definitely crazy people out there, but barring genetic enhancement, their pace may be out of reach for many of us less superior humans. Heh.
So yeah. There are a lot of factors. I know I've personally doubled my pace before by not bothering with any polish for sentences. I'm not going to announce where I did this, but suffice to say, those were some very lucrative paragraphs.
The evil me with horns on my shoulder is always whispering... -
@SomeOldGuy said in Difference between translating Japanese LNs and Chinese webnovels?:
The MTL translation... has no consistent context. As I mentioned before, the gender of characters is all mixed up, because the MTL doesn't know it from past encounters with the character's name.
I believe human translators who knows the material they are translating will always do a way better job. Since a lot of things is easily missed if translated into english without taking into account the nuances and differences in language and culture. Like you mentioned about the "Onii-sama" that Miyuki uses. That was wierd to read when i first started the legitimate stuff. Since by then, i had also watched the first season of the anime. I'll admit i was a bit late in actually buying the legit stuff. Guilty there. Since i was in no rush after having read the fan stuff. Wich was of varying quality to be sure, as there were different translators working on different chapters even in the same volume.
Not to mention what i read in the post LegiPancake linked in his post about speech patterns. I can immagine what a nightmare it must be to unwrangle that knot. -
@DeiLight said in Difference between translating Japanese LNs and Chinese webnovels?:
I can confidently say that working at a pharmacy is many many times less taxing on the mind than translating.
I'm quite guilty in not really taking this into account. The mental taxation it must be. Not to mention the fact that i keep forgetting how translating is just a sidejob for many of you. Something you do in addition to other work. In my mind, when i think of translators, i honestly just think that is all you do for a living. And so i often wondered to myself "Is this all they can do with 8 hours?"
Sorry about that. I've learned quite a lot from this post of mine, thanks :) -
@KopiCAT said in Difference between translating Japanese LNs and Chinese webnovels?:
In my mind, when i think of translators, i honestly just think that is all you do for a living. And so i often wondered to myself "Is this all they can do with 8 hours?"
Sorry about that. I've learned quite a lot from this post of mine, thanks :)Quof and Dei have covered most of the bases brilliantly. Speaking as someone who actually does do this full-time, I'd like to highlight something I think Dei touches on in one of his responses, which is that not only do you get diminishing returns over time, but it's affected by variety. I work on projects for several different clients at a time, and while this is partly an economic strategy (don't want all your eggs in one basket as a freelancer!), it's partly a survival tactic. I know from experience that I can maintain a high level of attention and interest in any given project for a certain amount of time per day, after which continuing to grind on that project starts to feel more and more like a chore. I would hit Dei's "point of diminishing returns" much faster trying to mainline a single project than I do by working on several different things in turn. In other words, in theory, I could (if the pay were enough) work on a single book, like, say, something for J-Novel, for an entire workday, day after day, and pump out a volume in some fraction of the time it currently takes. But I guarantee I would also burn out like a cheap candle after the first week or so of that, and then there wouldn't be any more volumes of anything from me :P
Anyway, that's just another data point (or anecdote). I'm glad you've found this discussion informative, and really appreciate your willingness to be open to our perspectives as translators.
