How come you don’t accept any writing in Japanese? A few months ago when I checked the system it seemed as if you did… or at least I was able to write on the write page… are you all out of Japanese tutors?
The problem with Japanese writing is that we are unable to split Japanese text up by word in order to calculate the correct writing charge. Because we charge for correction per word and pay our correctors per word, we are unable to accept Japanese writing at the moment.
We will eventually figure out a way to split Asian language text at which time we will also start to correct writing. This is the same reason why the Saved LingQs list doesn’t work properly in Japanese.
I was just thinking that we could maybe charge by line or in some other way until we solve this problem. In any case it is not something we can do right now.
I read jyoshikousei16’s post in Japanese. It may be that some people will correct Japanese writing submitted on the forum, but realistically for this service to continue it only makes sense to pay the corrector for his or her effort.
Steve, thanks for the reply. As an instructor and former professional copy editor myself I know how time consuming it is to have to correct. My friends will do it up to a certain point … and i have had teachers who have ‘corrected’ my work only to find out later that it was only done half way and there were still a lot of confusing unnatural passages in my writing. I understand that it is best for correctors get paid for their work… because it does get …well for lack of a better word 面倒臭い
The Japanese writing system is confusing with 3-4 writing systems used at the same time and no spaces… It can be more condensed and polished than in English (even though Japanese tend to be a lot more wordy in their writing)
I think probably the best way to go about doing this is to charge by character rather than word. it is a very lengthy process to determine out the words so charging per character might be easier from your side of things.
of course the disadvantage of this is that beginners tend to write in all romanji or hiragana making it longer
for example
watashi no inu no namae wa taro desu
わたしのいぬのなまえはたろです
私の犬の名前はタロです
although they all say the same thing but the absolute beginner doesn’t know the second nor third. So you might have to make a little exception for passages in all hiragana if you go by a pay-per-character system… but I think that might be your best bet.
But then again, it might force the beginners to hurry up and learn some basic kanji a bit faster
That is my suggestion, and i really hope you can get something going soon…
Charging by character is an option we’re looking at. Thanks for the suggestions. I think that since someone writing in romaji or hiragana is likely at a lower level, their sample will probably have more mistakes so that the fact that they are paying slightly more for the same number of words may in fact better reflect the amount of time a tutor will have to spend on their corrections.
Or you can charge by bytes.
watashi = 7 bytes
watasi = 6 bytes
わたし = 6 bytes
私 = 2 bytes
So, the better you get at Japanese, the more cost effective you are!
What a wonderful motivator!
But seriously, if I was running this place I wouldn’t even accept Japanese submissions written in all romaji. If the learner isn’t at a level where he/she can write/read hiragana then that learner is not ready to be composing and constructing sentences in Japanese.
You may be right. More grist for the mill…