How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry
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@hosikuzu said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
@shiny said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
My understanding is that in many jurisdictions you could sue someone for posting a Google translation of a web novel or other piece of creative content even the original work is made available for free online. This is because material can be published for free without granting permission to copy or publish derivative works.
Doesn't this essentially make Google's "translate a webpage" feature illegal as well? (Note that I'm not arguing or saying you're wrong or anything, I just think it's a really important question about what circumstances make translation of something which is freely available illegal.)
As @the-green-death noted Google Translate is a tool and does not publish anything, so it would be the one who used that tool (and took the 'volitional act') that would be liable for any copyright infringement if they published the translated material for which they had no right to copy (copyright).
Just because someone is making something freely available does not mean they are granting others permission to make copies of that work. If anyone could copy web novels then we could expect to see loads of companies printing copies of these web novels without permission from the author, but that isn't happening. Unless authorised by the copyright holder simply copying and pasting a web novel onto a different website could be copyright infringement. If someone is not authorised to make copies of something, it stands to reason that they do not become authorised simply because they (or a machine) translated it into another language
You ask about "the circumstances make translation of something which is freely available illegal". It is important to distinguish between 'free' as in beer (gratis) and 'free' as in liberty (libre). A typical web novel is being given away without charge (gratis), but there are conditions on distribution and so it is not free in the libre sense. Specifically, users are not automatically granted the right to make copies, translations or derivative works of the web novel simply because they were allowed to view it on a website without paying a viewing fee. Similarly, just because J-Novel Club posts previews of many of their novels (and have periods where entire novels are temporarily made available for free) does not give people the right to post those previews on their website or to translate them into different languages.
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@zing said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
or do i donate my money to a fan translation group that is translating a web novel I am currently reading.
Donate to the author directly because he or she actually wrote the original material. Or buy one of their published books in Japanese. Then you're actually supporting the industry. Donating to a fan group does nothing except reward someone for breaking the law.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros Just to add - "buy one of their published books in Japanese" really only supports the author/publisher if you buy NEW books.
Used books are a big thing in Japan, but they don't support the author or publisher.
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@someoldguy I assumed everyone already knew that used anything doesn't support anyone but the secondhand industry, but yes, new only, or ebooks.
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@artistofmanga said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
But I guess the fact that people are translating them for free does hurt the industry in some way
I don't think that hobbyists are hurting the industry so much as (for profit) aggregate sites that post other peoples' work (without attribution oftentimes)
DRM wouldn't be as much of a thing if torrent sites weren't such a thing
I subscribe to a anime provider (2 actually) because I like anime (and it's the right thing to do, the way I get my money to the artists - so that they still make anime)
I subscribe to JNC, and buy other ebooks at retail for the same reason. I have read Fan translations at Baka Tsuki and a couple of other places - but find that there isn't that much that I have time for that isn't available via 'regular' channels (I may read a translation but later make sure to buy the ebook when it becomes available. Fan Translations don't get any of my $$$)
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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.
