Timewaster's Guide Archive

yeah, just knowing Japanese is a good first step, but it doesn't make you a good translator. Like with anything else, practice makes perfect.

I really am not sure about the translation thing. I'll ask.

What did you think of tonight's unprecedented drama, where Nemov scored a 9.725 on the high bar and the crowd booed for 10 minutes until they changed the score (to a 9.775 which was, announcer Bart Connor agreed, still too low)?

I was astounded. And extremely entertained.

I would have booed too.

Personally I think they should change the scoring to be like diving scores, where the scores are totaled and then multiplied by a degree of difficulty. Earlier on the vault there were a ton of identical scores (which Bart Connor was amazed at, clearly superior or inferior routines being given the same scores) that had to be broken by annoying tiebreaks.

Also the whole "no more perfect 10s" thing sucks; that one dude tonight perfectly landed that vault he's been doing all week, the triple somersault half twist, an absolutely crazy vault, and they grudgingly gave it a 9.900. (Too bad he flubbed the landing on his next (much easier) vault and ended with the bronze.)

You should thank Ken Jennings for being a swell roommate!  

I talked to Nicole tonight. People who are interested in various stuff should definitely apply. Not just copyeditors but translators and rewriters.

What's a rewriter? Basically someone who takes the literal translation and writes a version that makes a good read in English. I've read some of the raw translations, and though they're grammatical and very faithful to the original, they just are terrible stylistically. The rewriter only gets $2000 though, I believe, for what is basically writing a whole book, though the books are only around 40,000 words or so.

They might just need writers too. Well, TOKYOPOP is going to be doing original fiction. Things are kind of in the air at the moment, but stuff we publish will probably be fantasy. At least the original writers will get paid pretty standardly, though the advance is probably not that great.

yeah Brenna I think you might apply anyway, since you've done TLE for so long. If it's something you'd be interested in. I doubt the pay will be very much at all though. Probably $14-15 an hour.

These novels are short. Each one probably has less text than an issue of TLE.

Spriggan: if you have translation stuff you can show as an example, you could still apply for translating even if they're not advertising. Not to Nicole though.

the book, story, and characters are nothing more than a weak method of getting the author's political agenda across.  Strip the book of its forced message, and the things left over barely make a novel.

Sounds like Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal books, one of which won the Hugo last year and another of which is up for it this year.

Is the whole book a prequel? That's what "the final hero" makes me think.