How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry
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@Jon-Mitchell said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
I'm not a expert in international law, but in the USA, derivative works are covered by the copyright of the original. Posting a translation is a violation of the copyright in this context (A translation is a derivative work)
In Japan, translations of a work are owned/controlled by the copyright holder. When a web novel series is picked up for serialization as a light novel, the publisher usually also gains the copyright for the web novel too.
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As has been often mentioned in this thread, the challenge companies face is that they start way behind the fan translation. What I don't understand, however, is why these companies stay way behind - releasing new volume every 6-8 months or so is ridiculously slow, especially for digital releases.
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@Anssi What company are you referring to? The only one I can think of that takes that long is Sol Press, which is hardly a representation of the industry as a whole. Yen Press, despite their unfortunate delays, are actually pretty consistent at 4 months each volume for a large majority of their titles. J-Novel Club and Seven Seas are usually a volume every 2-3 months, though sometimes 4.
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@Zing said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The way people consume a certain media changes all the time and companies involved in that media needs to stay ahead of the curve. I wonder what will happen in 5 to 10 years when machine translation tools improve to the point where you can comfortably read free novels on ncode.syosetu.com.
This to me is an interesting point to bring up in this conversation, especially in the context of web novels. Currently an entire industry is built around automated translation tools being too poor to come up with accurate and grammatically correct translations. I sincerely don't want to degrade the work, because I know translation is a real skill to do well, but also it's pretty much the definition of adding a "middle man" to the consumption of the product. But as you note, AI is likely to radically advance in coming years, and translation tools are going to get significantly better if they end up being enhanced by it. If international revenue is such a big deal, would writers/publishers react by asking Syosetu to region lock to only Japanese IPs? Will the previously translating companies appeal to publishers to prohibit exports of Japanese books/ebooks from Amazon Japan? After all, there are already camera apps that detect text and AR translate on the fly, and e-Readers like Kindle could pull in a translation engine and run it against what you're reading instantly.
If history is any indication based on previous business models being changed by technology, I could see it either result in a subscription service like J-NC from all the publishers, "cheap" ala carte purchases to make getting it legally the easiest and quickest way like happened with music, or... things will get stupid like the blocking measure I mentioned, or ridiculous DRM to desperately attempt to control the situation. I certainly hope it's not the latter, because that just results in the whole of the internet rallying to get around it, and piracy becomes the more appealing option, but considering Bookwalker is already doing heavy DRM I could see them doubling down on that method to try and region control sales. Don't have the right region code on your eBook? Your reader just can't enable the translation function for that book. /sigh
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In this case Seven Seas with couple of manga series I used to follow. Additionally, if you check their "recent news" section, they have some licencing announcements made in April that announce the release of vol 1's to late January.
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@Kevin-S said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
So, to take the above from the opposite perspective, a company licensing this series could have a six-year run where the potential audience is not, in fact, that interested in the product.
Now, something could always happen to shift that balance – maybe the series gets a popular anime, for example, that helps create a wider fan base – but purely as a light novel proposition, a strong, long-standing fan translation could militate against acquiring a series.There is actuallly a thing I always hated about companies who only license books after they got an anime. It always felt to me that those companies are just tagging along trying to profit on successful things while not caring about them in the slightest. I always thought "ffs just scout good stories earlier when there are only 2-3 volumes out not when there is 7+ and anime on the way". Glad that started to change as of late. And I bet it's partially because there isn't that much safe AAA titles to license anymore.
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@AlexUsman
In that regard both American and Japanese companies use the anime in order to drive people to the light novels and manga. That's just the way it is apparently. That is why very few get a complete anime adaptation and only receive 1 to 2 seasons in anime format. "If you want more, go buy the light novel" is basically the way it goes especially since most light novels are generally volumes ahead of the manga. -
@HawkEyeTS said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
business models being changed by technology
unless/until there's some sort of structure for collecting taxes (and adhering to regulations) on international internet sales of digital media, region locking/something like DRM will continue (and In my opinion get more burdensome) Publishers/distributors don't just region lock because they want to or because of corporate greed. They have contracts and regulations they are required to honor (or face fines/penalties from governments or lawsuits from various stakeholders) Why can't some volumes of Lazy DM be sold on amazon.de (Germany)?
The point you raise about music is an interesting parallel. Napster and the torrent sites that followed it pretty much killed the music CD industry, to the point (that in the USA at least) bands don't count of recordings/streaming/'record sales' as their primary revenue stream- Concerts and merch, that's where the money is. Before Napster, concerts (and radio broadcast) were vehicles to promote record sales, and to attend one cost the equivalent of $75-80 in today's US dollars)- Concerts enforced DRM (no bootleg tape recorders allowed- unless it's the Grateful Dead) , now big ticket artists rely on concerts for the revenue, and 'cheap' tickets might cost $300 (once you pay ticketmaster fees etc) ---now that COVID is a thing, it's going to be interesting to see where the music industry goes.
"free" webnovels will stop being a thing if artists don't eventually have a path to get paid for their work- they'll adapt to getting their art to their audience in a way that is sustainable
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@AlexUsman said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
There is actuallly a thing I always hated about companies who only license books after they got an anime. It always felt to me that those companies are just tagging along trying to profit on successful things while not caring about them in the slightest.
My impression (I don't have insider knowledge on this) is that a lot of these companies, despite producing scads of material, actually operate on pretty marginal budgets. So if they have a chance to license something that's been proven successful, perhaps over against putting that money into something that might very well bomb, or end after just a couple of volumes, or who knows what, I could see why they would. If that successful property also has an anime to drive interest, so much the better. I don't think any of this implies that they "don't care in the slightest" about these properties except as cash cows. They simply want the best chance of a good return on their investment – like any company, and especially like any company without enough resources to absorb repeated major flops.
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@Anssi said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
In this case Seven Seas with couple of manga series I used to follow. Additionally, if you check their "recent news" section, they have some licencing announcements made in April that announce the release of vol 1's to late January.
The delay of the first volume from the announcement of the license is not what we are talking about. That is an unfortunate but unavoidable circumstance of the American bookstore system requiring 8+ months ahead of time for preorders. Seven Seas does offer digital first releases for their light novels, which can help mitigate that gap a bit.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The point you raise about music is an interesting parallel. Napster and the torrent sites that followed it pretty much killed the music CD industry, to the point (that in the USA at least) bands don't count of recordings/streaming/'record sales' as their primary revenue stream- Concerts and merch, that's where the money is. Before Napster, concerts (and radio broadcast) were vehicles to promote record sales, and to attend one cost the equivalent of $75-80 in today's US dollars)- Concerts enforced DRM (no bootleg tape recorders allowed- unless it's the Grateful Dead) , now big ticket artists rely on concerts for the revenue, and 'cheap' tickets might cost $300 (once you pay ticketmaster fees etc) ---now that COVID is a thing, it's going to be interesting to see where the music industry goes.
There’s an interesting Freakonomics episode about event tickets and how they’re horrendously underpriced from an economic perspective, and thus implicitly support scalpers. This would probably be an off-topic aside, but it occurred to me that this is a real-life example of hurting the industry it intends to support (giving the benefit of the doubt to most translators and ignoring the reports of Ticketmaster working with scalpers deliberately) when making things available too cheaply. Scalped tickets don’t give an extra cut to artists in the same way that free online translations don’t provide anything more to authors. It’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s a curious parallel for the conversation.
Edit: Added link to the episode.
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@HawkEyeTS When machine translation of Japanese web novels gets good enough to be enjoyable to read without any manual localization effort, I actually don't think it will have TOO much of an affect on our business. If anything it might even serve as good advertising.
Even in Japan, popular web novels are published as LNs, and ebooks, even though the original web novels are still available for free. The LNs have extra content or a reedited story, illustrations, and are generally a more polished product and the consumers gladly pay for that (even when they often still read the web novel too). I think the western audience would mirror that. Plus there would be the added benefit that even if machine translation is "good enough to be enjoyable" it will be a much much longer time until it's nearly as good as a proper human translation, so people will pay for the ebooks or LNs that are properly translated and see them as good value, sort of like how people appreciate our translations over poor fan translations today.
No, rather than hurt our business, competent machine translation will kill off the remaining fan translation scene completely instead. Although that might have a long term negative affect of making experienced Japanese to English translators harder to find eventually.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Are there 'shades of grey' between the two extremes I spoke of? Sure I can think of several, but a tweet is a straw man argument
You'd be surprised. ^_^; I don't know of a Japanese-language example, but here's an english one:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/31/16536952/twitter-ghost-story-thread-dear-davidI also want to apologize for the whole tone of my post the other day -- I was in a bad mood when I wrote it, and it wasn't your fault. I winced when I re-read my post, and it's very nice of you to be so polite when responding.
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@Sam-Pinansky said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
@HawkEyeTS When machine translation of Japanese web novels gets good enough to be enjoyable to read without any manual localization effort, I actually don't think it will have TOO much of an affect on our business. If anything it might even serve as good advertising.
Even in Japan, popular web novels are published as LNs, and ebooks, even though the original web novels are still available for free. The LNs have extra content or a reedited story, illustrations, and are generally a more polished product and the consumers gladly pay for that (even when they often still read the web novel too). I think the western audience would mirror that. Plus there would be the added benefit that even if machine translation is "good enough to be enjoyable" it will be a much much longer time until it's nearly as good as a proper human translation, so people will pay for the ebooks or LNs that are properly translated and see them as good value, sort of like how people appreciate our translations over poor fan translations today.
No, rather than hurt our business, competent machine translation will kill off the remaining fan translation scene completely instead. Although that might have a long term negative affect of making experienced Japanese to English translators harder to find eventually.
So why are the companies currently so against licensing novels which has been translated?
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@Zing He's talking about machine translation, not fan translations in general.
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@Ran said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
tone of my post the other day
no worries - stuff happens
-from what I posted (and you replied to) you can see that I don't believe this is a clear cut issue. Since the topic first came up I've seen more alternative translation/ publication sites (that appear to be ethical like Honeyfeed, or other places that allow authors to self publish), and, sadly I've seen/heard of more instances of authors' work stolen:
- JNC publications on bit-torrent sites
- fan translations of current works behind paywalls
- malware/viruses embedded in fan translations
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Im here because of fan translations, Spent a bunch of money recently getting kindle books as well.
I wish I started reading here sooner because the original fan sub stops when US releases start and is usually picked up by lower quality subbers who shorten everything.Just like video game piracy it usually drives more sales then would other wise happen. Piracy of your video game actually increases sales. DRM is mainly used to lock down games to prevent modding which would hurt cashshop/DLC revenues.
In the case of anime the biggest driver of merch which directly supports the original creators comes from Fan subs not the US license holders; Who pay a small fixed amount rights to sub and air in the US. So Fan subs help out the creators make money far more then going though "legal" license holders.
Im paying for quality here which in the case of Anime subs I find fan subs to be of higher quality, larger selection, and usually quicker then license holders.
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I’m probably an odd one out but the gap between the fan LN translations and professional ones is huge to me. There’s simple grammar things, like dialogue tags belonging to the speaker instead of being after the conversation occurred, and the ease of reading from individuals who understand they are adapting for English readers and not trying to make it a straight Japanese-> English 1:1 that leads to clunky and awkward reads because the two languages are so different. when it comes to LN it’s go pro or go home. Manga is different because it’s not straight prose, but I do support official releases when available.
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@N0tl0c Oddly enough, Valve found that the opposite is true: piracy doesn’t drive sales so much as it defers them. They solved a good portion of their piracy losses in Russia some years back by just doing global release dates instead of releasing in one market at a time across the globe. People wanted the games that were totally out but not available legally in their area, so they turned to illegal means. Valve made games available in all markets, and the people who wanted the games just bought them. This does support the idea that fan translations may not be as harmful as some fear, given that (as far as I recall) Valve never credited the policy with increasing sales as opposed to just decreasing piracy. So most of their “underserved customers” who turned to piracy were apparently getting the official release eventually. At the same time, though, if license holders and localization companies don’t embrace that idea in their marketing decisions, the end result is the same as if it directly hurts marketability.
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@petitmelon I read the first eight or nine Haruhi Suzumiya novels in fan translation, because they weren't available in English at the time. There were multiple volumes that... well... weren't exactly well-translated; it's the main reason why I didn't get around to reading Volume 10 when the fan translation came out (not that I didn't try; I just didn't succeed). I've begun purchasing the actual volumes out of a desire to read the series again and remembrance of some of the holes in my reading due to poor translation, and it's so much easier to read them.
Heck, the varying quality of fan translations is one of the biggest reasons I don't look for fan translations of the original light novels of anime I enjoy — and so if I can't find an official, I just don't read the original. It's made my watchings of 8th Son and Bofuri feel "all right", but I enjoy both foreknowledge (it's why I picked up Bookworm around the time episode 8 came out) and I enjoy seeing the differences in the various adaptions (which is why if there's a manga of a series I really like I'll pick that up too, and hence why I've got the next volumes of Bookworm and Bakarina preordered in both LN and manga), so they're a lot less satisfying than they potentially could have been (or maybe infuriating? I don't know, not knowing what they may have cut makes it harder for me to enjoy it).
