How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry
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@Kalessin said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Well, Sam or one of the JNC translators would certainly be able to give a much better idea of what the normal going rate for translation is, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that were actually lower than what translators typically get paid for that amount of work.
You know, I did a quick google search for going rates for paid translation work, and found all kinds of figures, but apparently, in 2016, the absolute cheapest of all the bids for translation work for the U.S. government was $0.08 per word for the English-Spanish language pair (source). That's still over twice as much as the $200 for 6,500 words (making for a meagre $0.03 per word) this fan translator does. Colour me surprised. If they'd charged what that source considers the "magic number", a 6,500 word chapter would've cost $1,365. Granted, that number is based on non-literary translation, where there are generally higher standards for accuracy, but still.
Moral and legal issues aside, I guess that's enough to change my mind about that fan translator overcharging.
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@WaterDweller said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Moral and legal issues aside, I guess that's enough to change my mind about that fan translator overcharging.
Does that person pay taxes on that income? Did they pay licensing or sublicensing fees, or distribution fees? Do they even have permission from the copyright holder?
Do you get paid for reading a book in your free time, or playing a video game, or strumming on your guitar? No? Then why is it acceptable for this guy to get paid anything for translating during his free time, then illegally distributing?
To me, the only time fan translation is a gray area is when they literally accept no money and purely do it for the love of the work and hope that it'll get picked up in the future. It should probably be taken down if it does get licensed, but the Internet being what it is and nothing ever getting lost, I can deal with them not taking it down. But to take any amount of money, especially when the author is already putting it up for free (in the case of WNs), is just low.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros
I would agree that taking money to translate a web novel is definitely crossing the line. -
@myskaros said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Do you get paid for reading a book in your free time, or playing a video game, or strumming on your guitar?
If I’m being perfectly honest, you just described my dream job. ;P
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@Kalessin said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
@Zing said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Maybe I am talking out of my ass, but 150-200$ for a chapter of around 6500 to 7500 words is lunacy.
Well, Sam or one of the JNC translators would certainly be able to give a much better idea of what the normal going rate for translation is, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that were actually lower than what translators typically get paid for that amount of work.
Take my word with a grain of salt, because I'm still a newbie to professional translation.
Most of what I've done so far has had the rate per original Japanese character, not end English word count. Let's say we have a WN chapter that's 3500 characters long, and it's done at a rate of $0.03/character (which I have heard of before as a professional rate). That'd come out to $105 for the chapter.
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I don't think any fan translator should be charging money for translating someone else's work publicly. Like if someone does a private commission for completely personal, private use? That's fine. Translating someone else's things, posting them publicly, and having a Ko-fi for website costs? We're in the gray, but it's kind of okay, I guess? Covering said website with banner ads? Ehhhh. Having a Patreon where you lock someone else's content under tiers going up to like $60/month? Absolutely not. -
@gmkz said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
I don't think any fan translator should be charging money for translating someone else's work publicly. Like if someone does a private commission for completely personal, private use? That's fine. Translating someone else's things, posting them publicly, and having a Ko-fi for website costs? We're in the gray, but it's kind of okay, I guess? Covering said website with banner ads? Ehhhh. Having a Patreon where you lock someone else's content under tiers going up to like $60/month? Absolutely not.
From a legal standpoint, translating a copyrighted work and distributing it to anyone else without the permission of the copyright holder is clearly illegal whether money is involved or not. Given that there is no legal way to get some of this stuff in English, it can certainly be debated how moral it is or isn't to provide translations for it, and of course, it can be debated how moral it is or isn't to get donations or charge for the effort to create such translations, but there's no question that it's illegal, and at best such translations are in a moral grey area.
Personally, I was just trying to point out that from the standpoint of someone getting paid to translate something, the amount that that translator was asking for wasn't necessarily unreasonable. Either way, it has no bearing on how legal it is. Regardless of whether their rates are reasonable for the amount that they're translating, they're profiting off of translating material that they have no right to.
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@Kalessin Sorry, I should have specified that my second paragraph was more for the topic as a whole than directly at you.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
If an author actually wants the “exposure” they can put a link to fan translation on the site where they post the web novel. Somehow I don’t think that ever happens
It actually does (I dunno about novels, but for manga anyway). I've seen a number of Twitter mangas lately (where the author posts 4 pages per day or per week or something on their Twitter) where an English translator got permission from the author to translate it, and the authors usually link back to the English version in a reply to the Japanese one once it comes out.
I do think it was a way cool concept for a scanlator to actually ask permission first, and I've seen a surprising number of them actually doing that now, and authors agreeing to it.
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@pcj
Then that’s a case of the author giving permission, and seems to be the exception. Because it’s exceptional, that supports the other points raised. Almost always fan translations are done without the author’s consent -
Genius Prince So this Ln has been licensed with 2 light novel been release officially yet for some reason someone is still doing a fan translating it and uploading the chapter to novel update - any idea how to get them to stop ( they start posting before the first volume was released but Volume 2 was released officially while they where still in the middle of that volume they are currently ahead but that not really the point ) not sure if it will hurt the english ln sales
Just below is a copy and paste from there website
i mean novel update even has it tagged as a Licensed light novel.
The person who is translating is even has a patreon/ asking for people to donate to them
Some Stats About the light novel
Release Frequency
Every 1.6 Day(s)
Activity Stats [Graph]
Weekly Rank: #796
Monthly Rank: #303
All Time Rank: #1084
Reading List [Graph]
On 3931 Reading Lists
Monthly Rank: #134
All Time Rank: #870Also does J novel club check site like novel update to get fan translates to stop
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Your best best is to forward that information to the company who holds the distribution license and let them handle it.
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@WaterDweller said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
It's also worth mentioning that if the novel gets licenced, there's a good chance Yoshi will have to give up his fan translation gig, which would mean no more new well-translated Death March for western fans for the next 6+ years. A lot of people would probably start praying for google translate to improve miraculously at that point.
It might be worth highlighting that the spells out one of the reasons a company might want to avoid licensing a series, even a popular one, with a well-advanced fan translation. Yes, the fan translation may have revealed a potential audience for the series, but how many of them are going to turn up to buy, say, volume 1 of the official release when it comes out? Some probably will, but it certainly won't be all of them. 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.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
“But I wanna read it, and MTL is bad, and if I go to this other place on the web I can read a better translation for free, yes there are some annoying ads, and they ask for donations but....” Is justification of something illegal, pretty weak justification of doing something wrong. It potentially hurts the author and the industry.
Is it? (Weak justification, and is it wrong?) Do you feel the same way about people translating Tweets or press releases? Blog posts? If not, why not -- and if the author used a blogging platform to post instead of a dedicated site like ncode.syosetu.com, is it okay now?
And if so... it's trying to drive down interest actually a huge negative for the (translated novels) industry, pushing fans toward content originally written in languages they comprehend? Of course, if you don't see that as a negative, I can't really contest the point; it may be harmful for the translated novel industry, but it probably isn't for ebook industry as a whole.
Like, should I apologize for being excited about J-Novel licensing Wild Last Boss and Duke's Daughter...? How is this harmful?
If an author actually wants the “exposure” they can put a link to fan translation on the site where they post the web novel. Somehow I don’t think that ever happens .
Why does it surprise you that this happens, given how often Japanese authors keep Web Novels online even after they publish a Light Novel?
That part is quite different to the English-language scene in my admittedly limited experience; Amazon, at least, wants authors they publish to only keep a certain amount of content online. One of my favorite authors takes down all but a few chapters whenever he switches from Royal Road to published, though he still use it for the next draft. I know another who keeps one of his novels on Royal Road and keeps updating it but writes the rest directly.
It’s 2020, there’s a ton of material available that’s legit, more published than I’m capable of reading. There isn’t a valid argument for lack of supply justification for piracy. Support legit outlets and more will come. Heck there’s a whole thread about a new publisher on this very forum.
Amazon still recommends light novels to me, which is great. :) But they've been pushing their own content and Kindle Unlimited a lot lately... which would definitely fall under 'more content than I could ever read.' I feel like that's more of a long-term risk for the industry than "what if fans", but it also could just be a reflection of my own personal purchase habits.
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@Ran said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Like, should I apologize for being excited about J-Novel licensing Wild Last Boss and Duke's Daughter...? How is this harmful?
I think you're conflating two different things. Being excited about new licenses is fine. Bankrolling people who steal content and shamelessly ask for money or donations is not.
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@Ran said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
Do you feel the same way about people translating Tweets or press releases? Blog posts? If not, why not -- and if the author used a blogging platform to post instead of a dedicated site like ncode.syosetu.com, is it okay now?
tweets, press releases and the like are not typically content that has to potential to be sold, and the platform (Twitter for example) is designed to allow for re-tweets (who owns my tweets? -I'm pretty sure that once I post them...twitter does)
I intentionally posted 2 extremes - If I use a google setting to view content originally publicly posted in Japanese (MTL) I'm not altering the material, I'm not reselling the material. I could argue that I'm doing what the content creator intended- I'm reading what he/she wrote- where they intended it to be read. The other extreme, monetizing the content is stealing. Even worse are those that post translations of works that are under a license (LNs, scanilations of manga in print etc) 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)
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
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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.
