WARNING: This may be a very long post so I allow you to ctrl+f ( first launch ) if you can’t or don’t want to read it all in one go.
Since I like jamming every random thought I have into whatever I want to say, I may as well continue doing it. Happy almost one month anniversary to my WordPress!
I’m pretty sure none of you were here on the first day started this blog (aside from that random guy in India who popped in), because I made it on a whim. The first translated chapter (ATG Prologue) was posted two days after this WordPress was created, Anyway, I’m surprised at how far I’ve come with translating the random web novels that I found interesting. At the almost one month mark, I now have other casual translators with me who joined because they wished to help me release my projects faster. I repeat yet again, we, the team are a bunch of casuals that do whatever we want so there is no set schedule for any of the main projects. Please click the Manual Progress Report on the side if anyone of you are fidgeters. I believe only custom websites have progress bars.
Summer Plans
On to the main topic of this post: my summer plans. I had thought long and hard about this! My first about me page mentioned that I wasn’t sure about my mid-to-end of May plans. That’s because, like most of the translators, I’m still a student (surprise!). Now would be around the time I start looking for a summer job. However, with the current influx of translators that give readers a sponsored chapter option for extra chapters, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in me doing that as well. If this happens, there will be a separate sponsoring button unrelated to website/support donation button already present. If otherwise, chapter releases may dwindle even further than this random casual pace once I start my future summer job.
I’m also thinking of making separate donation buttons for the translators on my team if they chose to accept donations. You can say that I work with all of them on the main projects but since my current translation focus is (SUPPOSE TO BE) ATG, so I believe that they deserve any random donation that come their way for their translated stuff.
I got a little off topic. Back to my thoughts about my future summer plans. What do you guys think I should do? I was thinking of making that sponsored thing for ATG. It’s longer and classier than most modern Chinese web novels currently being translated (it should be 2x longer than average), so reading it is wonderful and all, but I’m getting bored of translating it every since rhyein poofed and Neko decided to live on a different continent (HOW DARE HE). Anyway, another reason why I considered this was because Neko recently told me that he planned to start his haitus come summer. That would make me the sole translator for ATG once he leaves us to slay his dragons.. 😦
If no one noticed yet, I have a pretty short attention span, which was why I dabbled in many things. If this sponsoring thing goes into effect, I could probably commit 3-4 chapters a week of ATG until the end of august. Currently, ATG has around 3500-4000 Chinese characters per chapter so far and its amount of idioms is at the level of NOT COOL and NOT MODERN. I came up with the number 3-4 because I have translated around that much before, so I’m sure I can continue to do so if I’m not distracted. Committed chapters may even increase if the novel hits a turning point. Well, the number’s just one I made up so I can have time to do any sponsored chapters, subtranslations (am I using this word right?) of my other main projects, and other stuff I want to do as well. Keep in mind that the 3-4 commitment chapters will not include the chapters other translators translate for ATG. Unless they want it to. Why would they want to? Am I that amazing for people to want to work for the money I would get? Or maybe we can split it? I’ll talk to them later about it.
So yeah, my readers! Give me your opinions about what you feel! Since some people’s favorite number happens to be 80, I will start around there too. I still haven’t verified the random paypal I made for the donation button (lol), but I promise I will do it before the first donation expires! Donations expire after a month so I still have until the 20ish, I think (>.<).
Another thing. I see most groups announcing the names of their donators but I'm pretty wary about that stuff. A question to donators: does it matter to you whether or not people announce your names before a chapter? I have a static thank you message on my donations page, but I wouldn’t mind doing it if people can be appreciated by the readers as well. Actually, I’ll just announce the names unless the donator specifically asks that I don’t!
Although the paypal account still has not been verified, donations can still be received. I just cant use the $$ until I verify the account. I will make the sponsor button when I get home today. If it reaches $80 in sponsored extra chapters by the end of next week, I will execute this plan! If it doesn’t reach $80 by end of next week, the $$ will transfer into the funds of our future website and I will get just find a job. However if this happens, since it isn’t really a solid guaranteed “job”, I will think about it whether or not to continue executing this plan near the end of every month if I have cleared the queues. As a reminder, this sponsor button is only for ATG at the moment.
tl;dr – Please scroll down for my thoughts after reading comments. They are the real stuff you need to read. xD!!
- alyschu wants $$
- alyschu will make the sponsor button when back home
- alyschu is thinking about opening sponsored releases for ATG over the summer
- commit 3-4 chapters a week (probably once every 2 days)
- will not include the chapters other translators translate unless they want it to
- would replace a summer job and last until end of august
- sponsor chapters via the sponsor button
- will start if a chapter has been fully sponsored ($80 total)
- will think about whether or not to continue sponsored chapter plan near the end of every month if I have cleared the queues
- commit 3-4 chapters a week (probably once every 2 days)
If I get interested enough in doing this or the novel hits a cool turning point, the committed chapters may increase. These are all my thoughts, tell me yours. Have questions? Ask now before it’s too late! Give me your opinion before I cement the committed chapters. Give me your opinion about the cost per chapter. Give me your opinion on cheesecake. I won’t apologize to anyone offended about me wanting a summer job because that’s just weird. Do not be afraid to share your thoughts!
Disclaimer: I think I think too much.. also I don’t really like cheesecake..
Random Rant/Question: I heard there’s a button that doesn’t make me moderate messages of new commentators, where the hell is it?
I think I found it
Stuff people (and my imagination) have suggested:
– 3 chapters a week, unlimited number of bonus chapters at $50 a chapter (of my choice)
– get a job! ppl r crazy!! beware of online predators!!
Stuff I don’t know
– how to progress bar?
Justification (?) of the number 80 for sponsored chapters by only character length
ATG – 3500-4000ish so far (cost??)
CD – he says 3500-4000ish 80$
MGA – 2000-2300ish (didn’t give count but should be like normal) 80$
GDW – 2000-2300ish 30$
SYWZ – 2000-2300ish 40-60$
My thoughts after reading comments so far:
– First launch! – I will be doing a 1 week trial period if sponsor button reaches 80$. The one week trial period will accept sponsored bonus chapters at 50$ per chapter if it passes the 80$ mark. If it doesn’t hit 80$ by 05/16/2015, launch will fail and I will go get a job.
– If launch succeeds: I may or may not increase the amount per chapter depending on how I feel about translating ATG after the one week trial. If you want cheaper bonus chapters, that trial period is the ideal time to throw $$ at bonus chapters. Even if I decide to increase the amount per chapter, I’m 100% sure that it won’t exceed 80$ per chapter because I’m too chicken to exceed another translator’s sponsored amount. Any extra $$ left over that can’t be rounded to $50 will transfer over to whatever amount I feel it should be after the 1 week period. It may even stay the same depending on my feels. Let’s all hope the next few chapters will be fun and exciting…
– If 80$ has been fufilled on 05/09/2015, the 1 week trial will start on the following Sunday, 05/10/2015. If 80$ has been fufilled by 05/16/2015, trial will start that following Sunday, 05/17/2015. In other words, it will start on Sunday.
– Will commit 3 chapters a week (or once every 2 days)
– Will try to do at least 2 bonus chapters a week. May be more!
– If this happens, I won’t be lazy and slack off on the # of committed chapters because this will replace my summer job
– Committed # of chapters by me will be consistent and won’t include other translator’s translations of ATG. But what about the bonus chapters? On the topic of getting over-stressed and what not, I was wondering how you guys would feel I used another translator’s translation of a chapter (edited&approved by me of course) for a bonus chapter and they receive your $$ for the bonus chapter. This would inspire and encourage more people to translate ATG whether for fun or for monetary reasons (and join my team, hoho). I don’t think it’s fair to exclude them from my money-making scheme of a summer job if they can also benefit from it too! I know that you can transfer money from paypal to paypal, so I just need to force them to make a paypal. The requirement to understand Chinese and translate an entire chapter would still hold though. No skipping!! Maybe I can get a cut of the bonus chapter they translated. Like 30%. Or 10%. Or 5%. Or 1%. Will depend on how long I take to edit their translation, I guess. This idea may be one way to lower the cost per chapter and may even induce even faster releases!! I can call it the alyschu Summertime Madness!! This devious summertime plan of mine may even encourage more people to brush up on their Chinese!!
– Sponsor button is now a dog button
The Ramblings of A. 
My only suggestion in all of this is to go the path of coiling dragon in regards to donations. Having the donation bar that you update makes everyone aware of how much is left/ encourages them to donate if they see the next chapter is not funded.
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Sadly, if I knew how to make a progress bar on wordpress.com I would have long ago done so… As mentioned before, I think that’s for custom domains. I do plan to manually list the numbers under my current status though!
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I believe he updates it manually.
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if you’re doing bonus chapters and such… you should either say 3 chapters a week or a chapter every 2 days then tally… don’t throw a random 3-4 =/
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Ohh! A commited chapter every two days sounds better than my random 3-4. Noted!
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I am not against a “sponsor” button for releases if it works towards your motivations, however the most important factor is how much you are gonna charge. my personal opinion keep it below $50 but at the end it depends on how much will motivate you.
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I agree. That perhaps will motivated both translator and readers to donate. If its too high it will only made reader fèel a little too frustrated. Its only my opinion.
NOTE: don’t take it too seriously. Its my honest opinion.
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I know who you speak of, but you should really not do it like that. I mean “the one who shouldn’t be named” is like a “bad celebrity” in the TL-scene. Most people lost all respect for him and respect is important if you want people to stay on your blog.
It’s not like i am against it, but:
1. It will wear you out. Some people are really “crazy” and would donate like hell. Your body wouldn’t hold out~ (He raised 200 bucks for one chapter, wtf)
2. You will probably be trolled a lot because of it.
3. The respect thing.
4. Also a shitstorm somewhere on the wide internet would be created if you did not post a chapter after raising the funds.
Also you should keep this as something like a hobby and not make this into a job. It is way less fun that way. Getting money and translating is like killing two birds with one stone, but well….
tl;dr Rather get a normal job, than getting donations.
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Yes not absolute number of chapters but motivation donations
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All true but at the same time who gives a shit what other people think of you we get to read faster releases (within reason) and he gets moola it’s a win win situation?
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No one with a brain had any respect for Elysion in the first place. He had a poor grasp of English and Japanese and had worse quality than machine translations. He only started getting trolled cause he decided he wanted to charge for those shitlations.
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I will donate to get me some delish 😆😆😆
I think you should make some trials and see how it goes before making any commitment. ♡
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Well, I was thinking that my end of every month evaluation thing would be like a monthly trial period. Unless you mean something else :O
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I meant give donations a go for a week and see how it goes and if it is worth it. Still outside experience is better in my opinion for you even if I wont get moar chapters.
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the chapters are rather short so $80 is a bit much. but as a jobless leecher, i cant complain. i hope everything will work out. many blogs started imitating our overlord ren and soon they were corrupted by greed and died. its a very serious commitment and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
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I assure you, the chapters only seem short because of the author’s writing style!! He said that CD is 3500-4000!! And the translation is more complex. Well, I haven’t looked at the raws myself but he does say that IET doesn’t actually use many idioms. In fact, most modern web novelists don’t use them anymore, aside from the occasional well known ones (talking about idioms here).
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The thing about donations is that they can be/are unreliable and no one knows what the future holds (damn that sounds intelligent) whereas a job will give you a more definite income (did I use definite right? should mean reliable teehee)
But I think the allure (wow using some hard words here haha) of 3-4 chaps of ATG should be enough to get people to donate… Then again it also depends on which one gives you more money, no? If you have no immediate need for money and if you like translating more then I suggest continuing with the translations. Maybe you could even get more money than with a summer job ;]
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I think it’s nice, 50$ per bonus chapter, but not unlimited per day, let’s say you’re commited for 4 chapters a week, than you do maximum of 2 bonus chapter a day, it’s the best or it will just make you really tired…
And about the progress bar I think Ren do manually, if you ask him I’m sure he would teach you…
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Oh and about others translations ATG and getting the bonus money I think it’s not a good idea, because if you’re commited to do the translation(and you said you’re the only one translating right now) If another person translates, if would be different style and others would only join because of the money, maybe not translating right or not doing properly…
Just my opinion haha
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I have worked with #2, rhyein, and Neko on ATG. I edit everything to the oldish style! If the translator is proficient enough, I would have no trouble subtrans-editing their chapter. At the moment, Neko (I think) is still with me and being lazy about ATG like I am. The cut I get from bonus chapters will depend on my estimation of time I take to edit before actually doing the edit. It shall not exceed 50% of the cost of a bonus chapter though.
I can filter the people who half-assed translated for the money by rejecting them!
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3-4 chapters of regular release a week sounds good.
As for sponsored chapters, $50/chapter seems like a decent point but I’ll keep it to about 3-4 sponsored chapters a day or the max you think you can release without overworking yourself instead of unlimited. Just let the queue overflow towards the next day like Ren does.
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I will just go with the flow as long as there are chapters of ATG. But yeah I hoped that it would turn to this cause this donation things ensure chapters. So I agree with your plan. BTW not just donation start posting ad like RAN. That way you will be even more committed and motivated, (Just what we readers want). Who knows may be some day you will become a overlord like “RAN”. Which means more chapters 🙂
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There are tons of annoying video ads and glittery ones, so unless I can control what kind of ads I put up, I won’t be doing it anytime soon! Thanks for your input
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First off, I really do appreciate translators like you and others putting the time and effort in translating these light novels/web novels to English. But I have to say/admit that the whole Donation/Motivation is starting to put a bad taste in my mouth.
Main reason is because when money starts becoming a central goal for translators, Then these sites are nothing more then profit pages that steals original works from authors. The whole bases in using Ren’s $80 dollar model is starting to really annoy me. We’ve already seen what money/greed has effected one translation group.
Donation pages for Fan fics like Royal Road, I have no issue with since it’s the author you are giving money to.
IF part of the money gets handed to the original author, then I have absolutely no issue in the 80 dollar charge that your thinking. This donation/motivation really needs to be revised. This seriously needs to be addressed. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why you would want to try the donation method, and you aren’t shrugging off your committed chapter that you said, but for “extra” chapters. I just can’t support the current model that everyone is following, without giving some of the donations to the original author. (This is not just you, but everyone else that’s following the whole donation/sponsor model” or trying to)
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What’s funny was that I had this discussion with #2 when I was wondering about how the original web novel author felt about me doing this. He told me that I should contact the original author. The author might let me publish my translated chapters (Solid book copy) once I hit enough chapters and split that earning between us. The problem I had with that is the fact that I have not read past the translated chapters so places and names may get changed later on when I translate them. Well, that and I’m only at chapter 30 or so.
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That’s actually great to hear alyschu. Please keep us inform (especially me). i’ll definitely fully support such an endeavor. This to me is the fairest compromise. Though, not totally sure about a physical book, but if it was kindle, epub. I think you have the ability to update the book necessary for people who have bought it. I know for kindle versions if there is a new updated version, my copy gets update.
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I was thinking of doing this after I’ve translated 100 chapters (entire volume 1) and finished editing through all the chapters. We shall see!
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I don’t really it’s cut-and-dry as you think. For example, someone like IET (not the highest paid author), makes ~2m/USD a year from royalties. I don’t think he gives a shit about someone making a few thousand a month from translating his work. While I don’t know how much Mars Gravity makes, I don’t imagine it’s under 7 figures.
Whereas Syosetu authors do not make money, but write in the hopes that they get picked up by a publisher.
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Donation for extra chapters is good, but only if you have a set schedule. That said, if you miss the set schedule for the week, be sure to post that you are moving it to the next week on top of next week’s workload. Responsibility and reliability are both important for people to have confidence in donating to you (well, at least for me). If you missed this week’s workload, don’t trash it; move it to next week. This should help when life gets you down, making you miss it.
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I apologize if I sound like a jerk with this reply because I’m not trying to, but I feel like it would sound mad if I just replied with these two words: I know
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Ah no, that’s fine. I apologize for restating.
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Not complaining at all, but for MGA/Xian ni chapters, flowerbridge originally had a lower price, but he couldn’t keep up with the donations so increased the price to $80. That said, I wouldn’t personally donate, but I support that donation system, as I enjoy ATG.
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I went along with the $50 people said for the first launch! I will think about whether or not to increase it after the first week of trial! 😀
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he couldn’t keep up because he had 3 other daily chapters to work on every day. his decision to increase it to $80 is a good one, but it might discourage people from donating. he should make it around $50, but limit to one extra chapter a day only
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not really, he already translates around 7000-8000 words for free, daily…
asking for 80 bucks to make it like 11 000 seems only fair.. like 11k words for 8bucks while it would be like 200 bucks ren style lol
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who? FBT? wasn’t that a 2k char count per chapter? but I must say, he’s sure eager about translating.. whereas I’m just a slacke .. r. .. .
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I still twitch once whenever I read the estimate for “character” counts in CD….
That count included every period, comma, apostrophe, etc. So it’s off by 300-600 characters unless something changed.
That aside, I think it’s perfectly fine to put up a donation button for bonus chapters and such. If people are willing to pay you for the chapters, and you’d rather do it instead of slaving away at a summer job, then it’s win/win/win.
And I’m pretty sure you’ll get enough for 3-4 chapters a week if it’s $50 per chapter, lol. But I guess we’ll see what happens.
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thanks for the support!
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Nothing in life is free. So it’s fair that you are doing this.
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Howww close are we now
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So even with those bonus chapters there will alwys be 4 ATG(non sponsored) chapters per week right?
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