Catching up to a series and deciding to MTL: A solution for one thing doesn’t always work for others…

[ElijahRyne]

Today I caught up to the translation of Witcher: I Can Extract Everything. It was very good. I read, almost nonstop, from chapter 1-234 all day today.

Spoiler: Review

(7/10) It is a series similar to Warlock of the Magus World(8/10), Super Dimensional Wizard(9/10), Abel the Wizard(7.5/10), or Age of Adepts(8.5/10). It plays off some of the concepts of that genera(?) so far. Things like MC starts on a small island with little magic, and is then trained as a knight. It trades the A.I. assistant for a system and is quite fast paced. That pace helps hide the conventions it does use, changing them to something new. It fixes two of my main issues with WMW because of both that and its imagery. In WMW, they would tell you the effect of a spell but not what that entails. They would describe an area as grim but not build on that. This series somew fixes that making the world feel all the more lived in. Its use of it does seem less impactful than Super Dimensional Wizard (9/10). Altogether I would rate it at a 7/10. To improve the score it needs to tread its own path. Its fast pace does allow it to improve where I believe WMW became drawn out, but it is still basically a generic isekai mixed with WMW. It is still early in the series though, and I believe it can improve.

So, Sometimes when I catch up to a translation I go to the original site and MTL it. This sometimes will work, and I will read until I finish/catchup to the series, and sometimes it fails horribly. There is an easy way to tell if the MTL might be good, being if it was originally written in a SVO language. So, typically, an MTL of a Chinese novel will be better than a Japanese or Korean one. This doesn’t always work, but is a good guideline. Another is whether or not the series creates unique words. If it does the MTL is basically going to be bad or confusing.

Since Witcher: I Can Extract Everything was a Chinese novel I decided to check the MTL and it was passable. It did have the quirks of a Chinese MTL, like instead of using the words everyone or people it decides to use adults and occasional missing words, but it was still okay. Nevertheless I figured out that there was only a little more than 100 chapters left until I caught up, so I decided to drop it.

All that was an explanation of my position on, and a reason to ask, the following question. Those being: Do you read MTL’s? Why or why not? How often? What are some of your experiences with MTL’s? What are some quirks of MTL’s you have found? With the emphasis on the last two questions.

 

[Ruriha]

I feel like this topic is better suited for NUF, but to answer the question: yes, I do. Typically for chinese romance novels since they're short more often than not and, as you've said, usually translates well in MTL. Can't say I'm fond of the experience, however.

As for quirks... how does losing your braincell sound?

 

[DarkeReises]

No. I avoid MTL with a passion. Not like I can't read some of most garbled eldritch vomit that MTL can output, but I read for enjoyment and going that extra mile to both MTL it myself and figure out what the fuck it means, defeats the purpose of reading for me. I don't read to think, but to forget.

 

[Renaxan]

I did read MTL, in fact, I love to binge them in the past. For the same reason as you are, to know more about the continuation of something I get hooked, just to satisfy my own curiosity. MTL tends to destroy a lot of character names though, sometimes the detail of scenes doesn't make sense and I can't say that I like doing it a lot nowadays. I stand corrected that it was certainly part of the blame for why my English was truly gibberish, and I would never recommend doing it.

Not to mention destroying brain cells meme is kinda true.

 

[BigHoodieBoy]

I only read mtl for two series SSS class Suicide Hunter and Transcend Race Due to System Error. The former is if I want to read ahead, and the other has no translated chapters besides the first one(which you have to look up online to find, not on novelupdates) but the story is actually really cool.

 

[AliceShiki]

Ah, MTL is just a thing of getting used to it, really.

I used to struggle with it quite a bit with JP MTL at first, but I kinda needed MTL to help me translate back when I started, yanno? So I just had to parse through it somehow.

The gist of it, is that you need to get used to the fact that "I, he, she, you" are completely interchangeable for the MTL, so every pronoun should be ignored, and you need to figure out who is speaking to whom through the context.

Special attack names and whatever are also gonna be totally butchered, so you shouldn't mind those much... And character names might also be changed with some regularity, so you should kinda identify what are the usual names for each person.

If you do this much, then you're probably good to go for almost any JP MTL Webnovel. It will just work out in one way or another~

... Though well, some novels have more complicated language than others... MTL can flop harder when the author isn't using the usual simplistic language you see in JP WNs, so like... Well, sometimes you just need to give up on a novel because the MTL is just too bad at it.

But that's the gist of it to me, I guess? It's not that hard to understand MTL once you're used to it.

... Well, I will say that it's also easier to understand the MTL if you're trying to actually edit that into a passable and readable translation though. You kinda have to force yourself to understand the chapter properly if you wanna do a good job translating it. This does often mean throwing the raws into multiple MTL softwares to have some comparison and also throw some more confusing sentences into dictionaries though... But hey, the end result can be pretty nice~

 

[BearlyAlive]

I started working as an editor for Visual Novels or RPG Maker Games, depending on who you ask, so MTL is the bane of my existance. I once had to re-translate the whole game before even thinking about editing and in the end I only got payed for half the work I did.

So, yeah. MTL = EVIL

 

[peelsdeeni]

I've read a few MTL before, and honestly, I didn't know that you could get negative brain cells, but I think that that experience was the closest I'll ever get to negative brain cells. No offense to anyone but, the grammar, it was terrible.

I, at one point, thought that it was translated by a blind orphan who had magically got the ability to temporarily see through sheer spite and willpower, and then sporadically decided to use their very limited time with said ability to try to translate an Asian novel. No offense to blind orphans, they don't deserve such an insult.

Terrible. One star.

And I'll do it again.
Mostly because I'm always bored and impatient.

 

[Deleted member 58005]

Oh, I have had fun experiences with MTL's. I'm part of a COTE Light Novel group, and one of the members always shares a MTL translated version of the newest chapter of the novel. Most of the time the sentences were readable enough, just some minor grammatical errors.

Then there were times when I felt like I was reading an amalgamation of unknown words.

But yeah, most of the time, I avoid it like the plague.

 

[AliceShiki]

Btw, some quotes from MTL that I got some months back~

"I've been getting a lot of bitches and sweets from my grandmother, so I want to be with her until she dies!"

Next, Kinno Rontarin (one year).

A little psychological boy who was always laughing. He seems to have been indulging in masturbation every day since he came to school (he was forced to teach, even though he hadn't heard of it).

《The level has risen》
《Karma value has dropped》
《Skill level has increased》
《The level of the servants has risen》
《Newly acquired 3D maneuvering skills》
《I have acquired a new fluffy skill》
《New title: Acquired turmoil》
《New title: Pandemic won》

MTL sometimes is really useful... At other times, it's just funny~