How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry
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@myskaros said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Donating to a fan group does nothing except reward someone for breaking the law.
If you're reading fan translations then you're breaking the law too. It's wildly hypocritical to think that you're somehow above rewarding them for the work they did.
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@hosikuzu Copyright law does not state anywhere that you cannot read material that breaks copyright law, but that you cannot distribute translations without permission. Even still, there are degrees of law breaking/delinquent behavior, the "in for a penny, in for a pound" argument is very fallible. Even more still, let's say reading it did break a law, that in and of itself doesn't reward the illegal translators directly, giving them money does.
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I would say in a certain way could fan translation hurt the profit. But not as much as many think. Sure there are always people that try to get something without paying for them. And a fan translation would be one way to get this.
But...
And now I am getting to this point from my standpoint. For me it even upped the amount of books I buy. I certainly bought books where I read the fan translation which I would have else left on the shelves. Be it because the premises are not to my liking or simply not knowing about it. I make a point to buy the series I like. Sure I am also reading fan translations but those are only for things which are not available in english, german, spanish or dutch. Even if the fan translation is superb (yeah I look at Overlord and go) I still buy the physical releases of them although I have the digital fan translation. As said this is my standpoint.
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If they are translating as a hobby or as a way to increase their proficiency with the language I don't think it's all that bad. But fan translators hurt the industry because:
- Translators don't drop a series once it's licensed. Rather, there are some that start translating certain series AFTER they are licensed. (It makes no sense?)
- People pay for crappy MTL translations, often without even knowing about it. Such a thing is really stupid. Not to mention that Patreon has highly facilitated getting money/creating paywalls. Every fan TL with a Patreon account should be banned from it right away imo. You want to keep a donation button on your site? That's fine, but not locking stolen/copyrighted content behind a paywall and forcing people to pay, even more so if you're using MTL. (I won't say any names here but new ones keep popping up faster and faster.) I have even seen Patreon tiers above $100+/month. Seriously? In that case at least pay JNC $5/month and get some quality translations instead.
These above are the main 2 points I really hate about the whole fan tl scene. The whole thing has spiraled down to an easy way to get money by posting crappy MTLs, and it's not stopping anytime soon since people do give them money.
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I was following fan translation of "Ascendance of Bookworm", and has been following the thread on novelupdates.com forum before the licenced translation started.
I was rather disappointed that the release of official translation seems to be completely ignored there, and so far, I haven't seen anybody indicating that they bought the book and write about it in that forum. I was expecting people would be excited about it.
Is this an exception? Or in general, people hang out at novelupdates.com do not care for licensed translation? If that is the case, fan translation seem to be hurting the industry.
BTW, I was amused to see a user who claim to have read the whole 677 chapters using google translate. Can't imagine what kind of experience would that be.
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I don't think that fan translations really hurt the industry. If anything, I believe that it does more to help the industry if anything. Yeah, maybe some really bad fan translations might hurt a particular series, but as a whole I think that fan translations get the stories out there for people to read. It gets the unlicensed stories exposure which leads to requests for licensing and so forth. I look at it in the light of if it weren't for fan translations the light novel industry, and the manga industry as well, here may not be as big as it is. There are some stories that I'm still reading the fan translations on because they have yet to be licensed so until they get licensed or if they get licensed I can still enjoy the story. So yeah, I'd say that fan translations help more than hurt anything in this case.
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@hiroto I read the untranslated WN for Walking my Second Path in Life using Google Translate. I was about ready to gouge my eyes out. People actually pay for that crap?
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@paul-nebeling said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
@hiroto I read the untranslated WN for Walking my Second Path in Life using Google Translate. I was about ready to gouge my eyes out. People actually pay for that crap?
Yeah, sadly they do pay for that crap. And, as I said above, one of the groups putting out this crap has a Patreon tier with
$100+with several(?) subscribers to it.Fan TLs in the past may have helped the industry, but the current situation does anything but that.
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@paul-nebeling When I found v19-21 of Irregular at Magic High, I found myself mentally trying to PUT BACK IN the honorifics that were stripped out, just to make sense of it. If it hadn't been for the earlier translations, none of the relationships would have made sense.
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@paul-nebeling said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
People actually pay for that crap?
The problem is when people who don't have a good grasp on English (such as from other SEA countries who also enjoy light novels) go looking for translations. Because there isn't a huge demand for translations into their native languages, they don't really know better and just see "a series I want to read, in English."
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@hiroto for the most part I hang out at novelupdates.com for stuff that has no active official translation, or for stuff that is super far behind the fan translation(for the most part I still buy all the books anyways on JNC or Kobo).
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@galactuskahn24 said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
@hiroto for the most part I hang out at novelupdates.com for stuff that has no active official translation, or for stuff that is super far behind the fan translation(for the most part I still buy all the books anyways on JNC or Kobo).
So, sounds like novelupdates is not where reader of official translation hang out? Maybe getting official translation is considered as curse (with DMCA and all that) in that community rather than something to be celebrated? If that is the case, that is very unfortunate.
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@hiroto said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
So, sounds like novelupdates is not where reader of official translation hang out? Maybe getting official translation is considered as curse (with DMCA and all that) in that community rather than something to be celebrated? If that is the case, that is very unfortunate.
There is a stigma attached to official translations that will take time to wear off.
- The novels that were dropped by the licencor.
- Shitty or low quality translations.
- Taking too long to translate a single volume.
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So true, Official translations that are worse than fan translations hurt the industry more than a responsible fan translation group.
It took Yen Press four YEARS to catch up to the point where the fan translation of Overlord dropped it when YP licensed it. I resorted to buying a set of the japanese books new and just re-reading the fan translations because they were so slow. 4 years is a long time to put a series on hold and still want to pick it back up.
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Thanks for the history lesson. Seems to be J-novel is doing much better job regarding quality and speed. Can't wait for Bookworm to catch up to fan translation (should be early next year) and provide people with clearly better alternative.
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@tsuris1321 said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
It took Yen Press four YEARS to catch up to the point where the fan translation of Overlord dropped it when YP licensed it. I resorted to buying a set of the japanese books new and just re-reading the fan translations because they were so slow. 4 years is a long time to put a series on hold and still want to pick it back up.
Haha, but you see, they never dropped it.
It takes them about 2-3 weeks to translate a newly released Overlord novel. In my opinion, 12 and 13, being a two part story, was somewhat disappointing. The joke of Ainz being clueless and his minions running the show is being run into the ground so hard, it hurts. In comparison, volume 11 was fun and well written.I still buy the official translation as I want to re-read it and all my friends are fans anyway, sometimes I would use physical books as gifts.
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Web novels are often freely available so I'm fine with them being translated but images are often.
Only with the oublished books.Keep the illustrations out.
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Does anyone know what the sentiment is in Japan among those in the industry. I know opinions will vary, but, are authors generally ok with web novels being translated? (Publicity and all that) and ok/not with published works (no royalties)? What about artists/illustrators? Is it the same/different among LN and manga community or is that something different. IIRC derivatives of published works by hobbyists i.e. dojinshi type/self published short works ( physical) are tolerated or even celebrated among fans and the industry. What about derivatives online (fan fiction)?
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Here's a post in Kuro Kurori's group:
Genocide Online ~Playtime Diary of an Evil Young Girl~Good news! Takenoko-sensei has given me the permission to translate the web novel until chapter 24!!
Takenoko-sensei Note:
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” A message huh…? Let’s see….
I would like to know everyone’s impressions while reading the translations when you have the time.
I’m worried if it can be accepted by foreigners, but I’m glad if you could enjoyed it.
I’m very sorry that I cannot give the full permission to post all of the chapters in relation to the publisher, but I am confident that it will be interesting to read in the early stages.
If you want to read the continuation, I would be jumping for joy if everyone could buy the book. But, it will be in Japanese, though. It would be very nice if I could get an English version of the book someday.
Thank you for your continued support.” -
I think I just sum it up with this comment.
Web novel fan translation with author permission : GOOD!!
Light novel fan translation without licensing BUT literally zero localization company in the world wants to bring it to the west : OK, I think.
Light novel fan translation when there's plans to be licensed or is already licensed: BAD!!
However, I can't say the same for Yen Press.............
