Hardest Part About Translating Webnovels

What do you think is the hardest part about translating webnovels?

If your answer is the translating part, then you can’t be more wrong.

Correct answer: Picking a good book to translate.

Just think, there are probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of webnovels out there. Much like putting up a website, writing/posting a webnovel does not require a lot of technical knowledge and cost of entry is low. Not to mention the if-an-idea-is-good-we-will-copy-it-till-the-cows-go-home culture.

So screening (reading) a webnovel goes something like this:

Start of book: Please have a premise that make sense. Please have a premise that make sense.

I am okay with one that is slightly illogical if it is an interesting premise that makes the story funny. But the suspension of disbelief can only go so far.

Middle of book: Please don’t drag on. Please don’t drag on. Let’s maintain a good pace.

End of book: Please don’t have some crazy life-and-death incident like car accident, plane crash, or kidnapped by a psycho killer… especially when I am reading a romance novel!

Male lead and female lead do not always need a life-and-death matter to realize how much they love each other. >.<

Finding a good novel is really no easier than looking for a needle in a haystack…