[ SECRET POST #5194 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5194 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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08. [SPOILERS for The Last Book in the Universe]



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09. [SPOILERS for The Penthouse 2]



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10. [WARNING for mention of sexual assault]



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11. [WARNING for mention of dubcon]



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12. [WARNING for mention of rape]



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13. [WARNING for mention of noncon/underage shipping]































Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #743.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. https://i.imgur.com/JtcPGca.jpeg

[(Anonymous)]

Oh boy, those are awkward. Probably well-intentioned, but awkward. I still have some sympathy for fan translators because I'm not fluent in any language but English and translating between two different languages with very complicated idioms while trying to retain the original spirit of the book... I just can't imagine how hard that must be. But every time I see sentences like this, my fingers itch to just rewrite the whole damn thing. It wouldn't be a proper translation, it'd be my interpretation of what I think the author was trying to say, phrased more smoothly. Something like:

Ancient plum trees bloomed in the courtyard, white petals falling on the snow. When the wind rose, it carried the scent of the plum blossoms with it.


As dusk descended, moonlight pooled in the shadowy eaves like cool water.

[(Anonymous)]

Do they do it for free?

[(Anonymous)]

I certainly wouldn't PAY them for this.

[sabotabby]

I still think they're great people who are doing their best and I respect them for it.

I've both worked in editing translations and had my writing translated. In fact, just today I was helping my friend, who speaks English better than I do, translate something from another language and while she knew the words, making it make sense was a two-person job. You kind of need to do the literal translation, which is what this looks like, and then you need a second person to make it make sense in the new language.

Don't get me wrong—I desperately want to do this with some of the fan translations I've seen. But it's a labour-intensive job and I don't have the time and energy to do that kind of thing for free.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that these translations are really awkward, but translating’s hard. I’m bilingual and a TA for a kindergarten class, so during Zoom, I get asked to translate even though I’m not an official interpreter. If it’s conversation and instruction, I can do it, but sometimes I get asked to translate the picture books we’re reading and that gets really hard, especially for books that rhyme like Dr. Seuss ones.

[kamino_neko]

I like fan-translators, as a group, but there really are some who just don't seem to care...at the very least they don't care enough to work with someone who can help them come up with something natural.

I've read a few manga scanlations that have been full of nonsensical calques, awkward sentence structure that suggested they just translated the words and didn't bother trying to figure out what it actually MEANT in English...and one where there were two pages where the entirety of the translation was 'I have no idea what's going on, here'.

[(Anonymous)]

As someone whose first language isn't English, who used to fan translate and really appreciates the effort of fan translators... Gently fuck off

[(Anonymous)]

Well, translating is a hard work, takes a lot of time and fan translator do it for free, most of them are learning the language they are translating from, and many are ESLs. Most people with the skills to do a better job don't do it for free and the few ones are willing to do so don't have the time to do regular releases or work in long projects.

[(Anonymous)]

*ELs (English Learners) or ELLs (English Language Learners)

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, OP. I apologize for my garbage comment. I know I'm like those lazy assholes who don't care, though instead of translating I just left a anon comment that is not up your standards :)

[(Anonymous)]

Not OP or making a judgement call, just clarifying the terminology. Hope you're feeling better, anon, I know everybody's under a lot of stress right now.

[(Anonymous)]

I am, not to blow my own horn, fairly good at English, and I am also a reasonably capable amateur editor. I often come across translation/writing choices in fan-translated works that make me grimace a bit, but at the same time, I understand and appreciate how much work goes into these things. I generally bite my tongue, especially because I know that many translation groups are always looking for more members and that I could join and make my suggestions directly - but I'm too anxious and fearful of commitment.

[(Anonymous)]

Most amateur translators don't understand that translating is as much rewriting the text to sound natural in the target language as it is translating from the source language. That's one of the biggest tells of someone who doesn't really have any experience with translating - they think that they need to be as literal as possible, and that's how you end up with stuff like that.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure example 1 is machine translation. Some of the translator groups d o that.

[(Anonymous)]

Professional translations have (at absolute minimum) a translator and an editor, often more than one translator as back-up, and often series editors as well. And those people get paid because it's a complicated, difficult job with a relatively unusual skill-set. I have worked as a translator (from another language to English, definitely not the reverse despite being very competent in that language) and an editor of translations.

If you're not volunteering as an editor or offering to pay the translators and editors, may I kindly suggest you shut up and wait for a professional translation? And if one never comes, that's your problem.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, at this point I don't need the translations and have done some one-off very short translation work for friends. And hey, I get it, it's labor-intensive and it's hard and there is a reason professional translation takes several people. But also oh my god, if I wanted gibberish in English, I'd put the text through Google translate, which is what these people appear to have done, and then there is the expectation that the "translators" are are owed some kind of exclusivity of the garbage text they produce ("DON'T REPOST OUR WORK we disabled copy/paste on this text so you can't steal it" - what work, you have done NO WORK) and also want asspats for doing almost literally nothing. What the fuck, man.

[(Anonymous)]

That's most likely machine translation - some has just put it through google translate and never bothered to correct / rewrite it (or at least do it properly). The weird sentence structures are a dead giveaway.

But many fans don't care and will read it anyway, because that's the only available version, so...

(Not that I blame anyone - translating is time-consuming, I would never do it for free, so I can't really be picky when it comes to the results of other poeple's efforts, I just don't read it when it looks like this)

[(Anonymous)]

Lol whoever did example 1 didn't even try. That's an obvious machine translation and no, that person does not deserve my respect for...inputting text into a free online service...HAHAHA no way, anyone could do that, come on! They would have deserved my respect if they at least tried to make it legible. A lot of these shitty "translations" prefer quantity over quality and seem to be more of a race to get more readers/donations/popularity than to offer a quality end product.
Everyone telling you to fuck off really deserves these shit translations. It's ok to criticise something shitty, anons, especially since it obviously involved ZERO effort. Just say "thanks, but it sounds weird" if you want to be polite. Don't settle for crumbles.

[(Anonymous)]

What I hate most about this is how people shit out these terrible mostly unedited machine translations for novels I would love to read and then they get marked as "translated" and nobody bothers to try actually translating them anymore. There actually are groups that do edited MTLs fairly well (as well as can be without actualy speaking much if any of the language being translated) and the whole "input in software and copypast without a second look" is just an insult to everyone.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I find it really frustrating how if something has been "translated" apparently it's now the only version allowed and it's taken as an insult if anyone else translates that same text. Even if they'd do it much better.

[(Anonymous)]

The correct response to the pervasive attitude that it's somehow insulting to pick up a project and do A BETTER JOB is "That's some fucking bullshit."

I am agreeing completely that it is incredibly frustrating, just in case that wasn't clear, lol

[(Anonymous)]

I do English proofreading for a scanlation group, and making translations flow and make sense in English can be quite tricky at times, even for a native speaker. I've never used a thesaurus so much in my life!

I got asked to proofread a chapter for a group once, and the translator really didn't have a good grasp of English. I reworded part of the translation so it made sense, and they said they wanted a certain phrase kept in. The problem was, the phrase as written didn't make sense in English, which is what I told them. They never asked me to do any more proofreading after that, and I saw one of their releases later on, and it was pretty much like the examples given in the secret.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel old - I remember debating this over anime fansubs.

Do you appreciate what you get, whether it's good or not or whether the subs are the best size/font/colour or not etc etc etc because it's free, fanmade and more effort than people realise?

Do you insist on best quality on the basis that bad subs cause confusion, unreliable translators result in unwatchable inconsistency, and sub fonts that are too flowery or large become difficult and inaccessible to read - because evdn though it's free it's pointless if it's not actually readable?

I always came down on the side of - it's free, it makes something accessible to me that wasn't before, nobody else is translating it, so thanks translators! It's very much appreciated!

And that's my current stance on cnovels as well.