How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry

Paul Nebeling

@myskaros Most of the fan translations I've seen for SAO were for small stories that are not widely published, if published at all. On the other hand, there's a fairly active fan translation of The Devil is a Part Timer that, personally, I think does hurt sales of the licensed material. And then there was the fan translation of Eromanga Sensei that got taken down, though I doubt any English translation has been licensed. You can't hurt sales of something that doesn't exist, right?

Eternal Wanderer

@paul-nebeling There was actually a fairy extensive fan translation of SAO before the anime even came out, I was actually able to read all the way up to the start of Alizication before the first episode of the anime even aired.

myskaros

@paul-nebeling said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:

You can't hurt sales of something that doesn't exist, right?

You can; Sam has stated before that he's not considering Hyouka because it has a good, complete fan translation already.

Wellwisher

@myskaros Now that you mentioned it, SAO boom definitely greatly affected all anime-related things out there and simply was too large. As for other series - they definitely got influenced by already existing fanTL base, take fans stinking about S&W covers for example.

tgquan67

@paul-nebeling said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:

You can't hurt sales of something that doesn't exist, right?

I agree. Though the range of choice for official English novel (and manga, anime) has been greatly expanded in recent years, I doubt that it can cover everything people want (look at the amount of topics in license request section), so I see fan translations as something inevitable. Though I prefer that they follow a common code such as dropping the translation as soon as the series got licensed. IMO an official translation, in the long run, can always outshine fan translation with enough resource (and DMCA), so it's just a question of how much effort they want to pour into it. It may be a harder fight when we talk about some older franchises, but well, DMCA is the way. I don't know if DAL translation is still alive, but since Mahouka fan translation retreated from BT and then from mahouka wiki to discord, I stopped follow the fan translation because it's too troublesome, so I think that new fans of the franchise will naturally go to YP if they want to read the novel. I think that's the advantage of official translations, they are easy to find for new fans, so there is no point at brooding over some old fans. But well, if the point of licensing a series is to appeal to an existing hard-headed community with a brazen active fan translation, then I have no comment.

SomeOldGuy

@paul-nebeling Another way a fan translation can hurt - the first 18 books of Irregular at Magic High have a good fan translation, and (so far) a OK (and slow to appear) official translation. I've been buying the official translations, but sometimes reading the books makes me cringe at some of the changes that were made.

Of course, after book 18, the fan translation has fallen apart, being a "machine translation of Japanese to Russian, then to English" that loses a LOT of the personal relations "feel" along the way.

Shiny

Some relevant JNC comments (old and new) posted via CuriousCat and Twitter:

Paul Nebeling

@myskaros I stand corrected.

Shiny

@myskaros said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:

@paul-nebeling said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:

You can't hurt sales of something that doesn't exist, right?

You can; Sam has stated before that he's not considering Hyouka because it has a good, complete fan translation already.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Not sure if it's the one you meant, but I've found a July 2018 statement from Sam to this effect:

Anon: "Why did you choose kokoro connect over other series like hyouka? Not complaining i love kokoro connect, im just curious. Was it just easier to get? Or more requested?"

Sam/JNC: "Hyouka's fan translation is too complete."

Source: https://curiouscat.me/jnovelclub/post/584251560

Aruseus493

I think what hurts more are fan-translators that don't drop series when they get licensed. I spend a lot of time trying to convince people to read the Arifureta LN instead of the poorly translated web novel. There are also a bunch of groups out there that are blatantly trying to profiteer off licensed series too. I think like half of J-NC's manga catalog is being fan-scanlated which is a real shame.

Yoshken

@zing yo I did the exact same thing but my life started with “Didn’t I say make my Abilities Average in the next life” and DD has been a huge help with how I buy new titles. But I have to give the Fan Translation some credit because I look at fan translations to see what series I would like to get licensed and I’ll buy them when the finally get an official English version

Zing

Why would fan translations hurt the industry when majority of popular light novels started out as web novels? Web novels are free to read, they do not require a translation for Japanese speaking people to enjoy them. If the web novels are not hurting the Asian industry, why would fan translations hurt western industry?

What is j-novel actually selling? I believe that j-novel is selling Japanese culture in form of literature. Who are they selling it too? Well, certainly not your casual readers that buys game of throne's in the bookstore.

They are selling it to the people who are already familiar with Japanese culture to an extend. They might have been introduced to it via anime, manga or both and over time evolved to consume all 3 types of Japanese culture.

So you have this market with a lot of people in it, but not all of them can become costumers. Why? Because not everyone who liked Arifureta will like Faraway Paladin. Likewise, not everyone who liked Youjo Senki, will opt to read Overlord and vice versa.

When you think about things this way, you start to realise that fan translations might actually be hurting the industry.
Why?
Because they give people a choice. I like Arifureta, because I like Arifureta, I want to read more books like Arifureta. But hold on Zing, Record of Wortenia War is isekai just like Arifureta, you say. True, both of them are isekai's, but protagonist in Wortenia War is kinda lame compared to Hajime. Also I've basically grown out of Shounen a long time ago.

Thus, instead of buying and reading Faraway Paladin or Record of Wortenia War, I choose to read fan translation of Death Mage, Harem in the Fantasy World Dungeon, Kaifuku Jutsushi and Kujibiki Tokushou. Because those series appeal to me more than what the licencors have to offer.

On the other hand, if I did not have the choice to read fan translations, I might have opted to read Faraway Paladin and Record of Wortenia War in order to scratch that itch.

In conclusion, Asian literature market is an ocean inside an even bigger ocean and fan translations exist because there is a demand that is not being fulfilled by the industry. When the demand is fulfilled by the industry, the fan translations will naturally go away.

myskaros

@zing said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:

If the web novels are not hurting the Japanese industry, why would fan translations hurt English industry?

Japanese is spoken by more than 120 million people around the world.

Out of the world's approximately 7.5 billion inhabitants, 1.5 billion speak English

Go on...

tgquan67

For most of those famous professional-level fan translation, I don't think it's fair to judge them with the context of the current era, where we have much more options to choose from compare to 10 or even 5 years ago.
For fans, if those are available, read them. If there are only poor translations and someone decides to license? That's also good. In the end, fans always have something to read.
And for companies, sure, they are losing those quick bucks, but I doubt that such completed series can generate much money. If I remember correctly, toradora was one of those completely translated series, and it was licensed by SSE anyway, so we will see if people can overcome that. And for ongoing series, there is always space for more effort to be poured into. Excluding them, then we will have a market where licensors also have to scramble to find good series that have potential, not unlike publishers. And I think that's the way to go forward, in the long run we can forget about those ancient famed series, and leave them to someone with enough confidence (and money) to try to appeal to their fandoms.

Raitoiro

I think Fantranslation can help some title get a fanbase which then help the sell, it did help Mushoku Tensei for exemple.
And it's a good way to discover or read titles we're very unlikely to get: like Typemoon's titles or for some series bonus volumes.

On the other hand for big mainstream series which will likely attract a lot of readers from outside the LN community, like Overlord, it can definitly hurt the sell.

Aside from that I think fan translations are important for the customers because they give us more "power", by that I mean that it force english publishers to maintain a quality level hight enough for people to choose them over the fan translations.
Plus if someone doesn’t like a company, they can potentially still enjoy the serie while support ing the author by buying the jap version, without supporting a company they dislike.

Lixaxy

@jon-mitchell Fan translations can also help future translators get used to the process of translation and could actually work as a kind of middle step before becoming a full-fledged translator.

When it comes to the readers, I do find it very annoying when people show absolutely no interest in supporting the industry financially, even though the person is actually able to do so.

Jon Mitchell

@lixaxy
Agreed, also there is a difference between a “true” fan translation/ community site and a piracy site. Places like Baka Tsuki seem to exist to promote the genre, benefit fandom and nurture translators whereas many places ‘on the high seas’ are chasing $$. Where you (not @Lixaxy specifically but all of us) choose to read our translations matters. Do they have a policy/ history of taking down content if requested by copyright holders? Do they post a ton of ads? Do they repost content without attribution? Etc. Readers can decide to support the artists/industry or to support those that exploit it.

Piracy sites and the bad reputation that fan translations can have in the industry are driven by those who don’t care, or choose not to support legal routes (and the reason why some favorite/often requested titles will not see licensing in the foreseeable future)

Ok done with my soap box

Zing

@jon-mitchell said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:

Piracy sites and the bad reputation that fan translations can have in the industry are driven by those who don’t care, or choose not to support legal routes (and the reason why some favorite/often requested titles will not see licensing in the foreseeable future)

What piracy are we talking about specifically? I just want to get the definition. If Yen Press releases a light novel and somebody uploads it for free to the internet, that is piracy.

If a person is translating a web novel and takes donations for it, that is not piracy as the web novel is freely available on syosetu anyway. And we all know that you technically can't sue google translate.

If a person is buying Japanese light novel and translating it while that light novel is licensed for English release, well, that is a different story. It does not happen that frequently, but some group are notorious for translating licensed light novels. I would not call it piracy in the true sense. But it does step into the licencors territory and a company can take legal action against them for distributing material they have rights to.

the green death

Personally I have enough LNs that I love that are being translated professionally to not really use fan translations at all (I want to support authors, publishers and also like to read quality translations - machine translations kill a little bit of my brain to read).

I think the greatest negative effect to the industry is the likelihood of getting certain completed great series brought over that could do well for a company. Date A Live for example probably would be coming out without fan tls.

That said I think for being able to suss out the viability of new series, fan translations do free market research for companies and so allows them to try out certain things they might not otherwise. So that’s a gain.

Overall, I’d guess there’d be more money in publishing if the internet didn’t exist, but since it does I’d say fan translations probably do the industry more good than ill.

Jon Mitchell

@zing
Complicated question, often not easy to answer.
Webnovels are a different animal as often the intention of the author is for it to be freely available in order to get feedback or to promote themselves or a series (or whatever other reason they have)

Reposting licensed/published works (in whatever language) often is piracy (which may be sometimes tolerated by a copyright holder and most often not)

As consumers it is our responsibility to make the effort to adopt a personal policy that supports the artists and not support exploitation by pirates.

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch