ばか！バカ！　馬鹿ー月！

Well, here's the idea. Rate the difficulty of the novel that you're translating (or how difficult you think it will be anyway). If we can do a youtube average rating system for this, that'll be good. However, since we can't (unless someone tells me we can, or we can use a workaround), I'll average it out.

If you want the rationale behind this:
Rule of the game, 1-2 for easy modo, 3-4 for normal, 5-6 for hard, 7-8 for lunatic and 9-10 for mystic difficulty.

For a yardstick , all of Nishio Issin's works are rated 10/10.

For my 4 projects now:

Baka Test: 2/10 (as of vol 7.5, may have lapsed into 3)
IS: 4/10
TAMnI: 6/10
SnS: 8/10

List:

Baka Test: 2 (+1)
IS: 3
TAMnI: 6
SnS: 8
ZnT: 4-5
HnA: 3-4 [2, 5]
CsR: 7-9
KnS: 4-5
-gatari: 10
Zaregoto: 10
DyD: 1 (+1)
OreImo: 4 (+1)
MM: 2
Kamimemo: 7
Kampfer: 2
Ben-To: 6
Campione: 5-6
Seizon: [1, 2, 3] (+1/2)
Nogizaka: 4
Accel World: 4-5
SAO: 4-6
Itsuten: 1 (+1)
Oreshura: 3
Haganai: 4 (+1)
Unicorn: 10
Horizon: 4-5 [4, 5, 5] (+1/2)

[] - Opinions
() - Optional
Note: Last mentioned ranking by given translator. Translators in agreement are not listed in [].

Add HnA 5/10 and BokuTomo the same grade as BakaTest, though its difficulty varies. ZnT should be around 4-5, but that's one of the most varying novels, since some chapters are all about descriptions and some about fights or love or else.

And CSR would be around 7-9. I had a problem with understanding some chapters, but it should be similar to Index.

KnS to be around 4 or 5? Its not that hard, maybe even a 3

Shounen Onmyoji, if you know Japanese history, its probably a 4~6, if not, add that number by 2?

You can also add some Europe geography difficulties for ZnT, though it's not vey importent since the author kinda messed it up. Some history or novel references for Hidan no Aria, and...oh yeah, BS has been licenced...

Current list so far:

Baka Test: 2/10
IS: 4/10
ZnT: 4-5/10
KnS: 4-5/10
Shounen Onmyoji: 4-6/10
HnA: 5/10
TAMnI: 6/10
CSR: 7-9/10
SnS: 8/10

Please do note that anyone can give a different rating from the ones that are here, and I'll average it out.

The most you can give for research rating will be 1 point.

Again for emphasis, all Nsshio Issin's novels are rated 10/10 in difficulty. (Word puns, language and all that stuff, I personally recommend the translator to have a really strong grasp of Japanese.

Maybe we should start including comments to justify the rating? Well, here we go:

Baka Test: The main difficulty over here is to research on the questions at times, and occasional references to other people. Language is extremely simple, even for a light novel, but that's because Akihisa's an idiot.

IS: Other than the technical jargon used to describe things, there isn't too much difficulty. This is a pretty dialog heavy novel, which would make it slightly easier.

TAMnI: Not much background information is really required except for occasional research on the magic/religion side. Not a straightforward piece of work, but still workable.

SnS: Terminologies and language are the killers here. The language here is rather heavy as compared to those of the hard difficulty, and terminologies like 'Sonzai no Chikara' (Power of existence) are prevalent here since they form the crux of the story. PS: Can someone please check and edit volume 7 heavily?

this is kind of subjective.

DYD has quite a bit of dialogue, so I'll give it 4. Sentence fragmentation might initially make it seem harder to render them into English, but you get used to it after a few chapters.

Oreimo: 5 (if source language is Japanese, +1 for slangs and uncommon contractions, +1 for otaku references) = 5-7


this is another recommendation purely based on my own opinion: for non-native Japanese readers translating from Jpn->English, I seriously do not recommend anyone with less than 300 hours of study (either independent or academic) make an attempt, unless there is a more competent translator for that same series who's able (and willing) to proof-read for you. well actually, I personally think that 450 hrs is preferable, but gauging from school standards, 300 hrs provide you with basic mastery of grammar (less expressions) and a marginally sufficient amount of vocab. and even with that, you should start with level 4 and below. by study, I don't mean watching anime and stuff like that, but really studying, memorizing and practicing :p

Eh, Larethian, isn't the last part supposed to be in the SnS thread?

well, not exactly, but like I said, it's my personal opinion. for SnS, over 600 hours would be minimal, I guess (around the level of a person who can wangle through JLPT2)

EDIT: well of course, if you already know Chinese and know how to use Japanese dictionary and multiple-radical searches, you can cheat at kanji though there will still probably be some degree of mistranslations here and there (I'll put it at 10-20% for a novel of level 4 and below and with less than 300 hours clocked) (errors caused by weakness in grammar, especially when there's a confusion in actors) based on what I see in novels and my understanding of Japanese lesson structures.

I'll add that for Poke's reference in the thread for you then.

Lower Daiden to level 3. Kagami's works are pretty easy to translate, putting its style aside. I just started a teaser of another story by him in half an hour (it's about 3~4KB).

Only for series we've translated? Or also for something in the teaser project that we have read too(although for this one it might be a little inaccurate since sometimes understanding is easier than finding the correct english word for it when translating)?

Anyway, for IS shouldn't the difficulty be lowered to around baka to test level(around 2 or 3)? Frankly, that one is very dialogue heavy and is quite easy to translate. Although the technical jargon is quite a problem, there's less than 10-20% of that in each volume.

For any series, whether you translated it or whether it's first impression.

Then adding the list,

MM!(Emu Emu) 2/10
Kami-sama no Memochou(God's notebook) 7/10
Kampfer 2/10
Ben-to 6/10


Comment :

MM! : Not much difficulty here. Should be easily done with common knowledge of Japanese since almost all the vocab is everyday conversation vocab. The only hard part will be differentiating every person way of talk IMO since everyone have different style of talking(from the usage of the pronoun to suffix)

Kamimemo : This will be hard to do, not because of the difficulty of translating the words, but from diction choice to preserve the original feeling in each sentence(the feeling is very important here because that's the charming point of this series, because I can just feel how the main character feel from reading all the monologue and description here and it will be very hard translating this while preserve it). That, and some sentence of the description part in this series is ridiculously long, usually either the main character monologue or Alice's word

Kampfer : Again, shouldn't have much problem here aside from some part where it will get a little difficult to translate

Ben-to : Beside the occasional long and windy explanation, the vocab is actually not that hard, except when you reach the part where they describe the taste of the bento itself or any other food. From then on it become a nightmare since some word is very rarely use, and translating it while preserving the meaning can be very difficult.

Was gonna comment on Spice and Wolf, but since it's been licensed, there's no point in commenting there.

Just a note, this is the difficulty level based on when I was reading it. The difficulty might rise when trying to translate it due to the difficulty of choosing the right word and translating some proverb.

Just tried translating Campione! i'd say that the names and the other cultures, as well as the gods' name are difficult, but otherwise it would be pretty easy. 5.5/10, since the terms are harder than HnA.

Seitokai no Ichizon: 2-3/10 Its not hard, most of the kanji is standard and the plot line is fairly standard.

A beginner could potentially do a few pages a week if he/she had all the time to themselves in that week.