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:
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.
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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.
