Why is this artist's doujins cursed to only get shitty MTLs?

Base +6, Vinatea +19

coz trump crashed the economy and nobody have the money to commission humans anymore. duh.

Base +9

The economy is shit all over the world and seems like things will only be shittier with the expansion of data centers.

Base +6

Speaking as a casual/occasional translator, I'd say the English-speaking online hentai community has done pretty much everything it can to drive away translators over the past couple of decades. If I had ever felt much extrinsic motivation for things I do you might never have seen any of my work on this site. (Actually not true. Many of my previous works were already here when I started posting. I just wouldn't have bothered posting anything myself.) I certainly wouldn't have kept at it given the community's response.

I quit wasting my time editing images a while back. Occasionally someone would edit for me. Most of the time I just took down all indications I had a script after some jackass posted a dramatically inferior product. About half of these were MTL. The others were variations of poor/uninspired work.

This weekend MTL of the next item I was thinking about translating appeared just before I started it. (Good thing I opted to bump something else to the top of the list...) I lost all motivation to translate the MTLed one. I've also seen gallery comments saying translators were refusing commissions for things that already had MTL, and I believe it. I suspect my way is a much more creative process than average, but I still believe any halfway-decent translator (i.e. someone with proper grasp of written English (much less common than you think) and at least a little talent for writing dialogue and such) will lose interest in things they know someone else already did. It's hard to make a worthwhile translation when you can't bring yourself to care.

Base +7, Eden of Shirock +6