Thank you for posting this - what an interesting interview!
Since I cannot read the source material, I am now curious about how many light novels that I experience as weak or trite are actually higher quality in Japanese and then butchered by machine translations versus just being pulpy in the original. I have been having this reaction more and more lately but didn’t realize this was a possible reason.
It’s not just text that needs translation for literal meaning, but metaphor. A good translation carries the intent of the author which includes handling some phrases in a non-literal way.
In the short term, if the reading public has no way to know the translator, then yes, speed will win. But in the longer term, as I start more series and find them unsatisfying, will that end up hurting sales across the whole genre?
Quof, if you’re reading this, or if any other decisionmaker is, I disagree that the story alone is why I read. Bookworm is by far the best light novel series I’ve read in English and I directly attribute that to the synergy of Kazuki + Quof. Once really invested in the characters, there’s motivation to find out what happens, but that’s only present because of the strong writing I enjoyed back in the beginning. So thank you.
I really enjoy getting to talk to other people about quality content that I am also consuming, which at the moment would include other light novels, manga, and anime. Ideally, from my point of view, there would be some new comments to read and engage with every day. The scope of the exact subject matter for the server is not that important to me personally if the comments are interesting.