How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry
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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.
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@tsuris1321 said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
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.
Haha, but you see, they never dropped it.
It takes them about 2-3 weeks to translate a newly released Overlord novel. In my opinion, 12 and 13, being a two part story, was somewhat disappointing. The joke of Ainz being clueless and his minions running the show is being run into the ground so hard, it hurts. In comparison, volume 11 was fun and well written.I still buy the official translation as I want to re-read it and all my friends are fans anyway, sometimes I would use physical books as gifts.
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Web novels are often freely available so I'm fine with them being translated but images are often.
Only with the oublished books.Keep the illustrations out.
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Does anyone know what the sentiment is in Japan among those in the industry. I know opinions will vary, but, are authors generally ok with web novels being translated? (Publicity and all that) and ok/not with published works (no royalties)? What about artists/illustrators? Is it the same/different among LN and manga community or is that something different. IIRC derivatives of published works by hobbyists i.e. dojinshi type/self published short works ( physical) are tolerated or even celebrated among fans and the industry. What about derivatives online (fan fiction)?
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Here's a post in Kuro Kurori's group:
Genocide Online ~Playtime Diary of an Evil Young Girl~Good news! Takenoko-sensei has given me the permission to translate the web novel until chapter 24!!
Takenoko-sensei Note:
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” A message huh…? Let’s see….
I would like to know everyone’s impressions while reading the translations when you have the time.
I’m worried if it can be accepted by foreigners, but I’m glad if you could enjoyed it.
I’m very sorry that I cannot give the full permission to post all of the chapters in relation to the publisher, but I am confident that it will be interesting to read in the early stages.
If you want to read the continuation, I would be jumping for joy if everyone could buy the book. But, it will be in Japanese, though. It would be very nice if I could get an English version of the book someday.
Thank you for your continued support.” -
I think I just sum it up with this comment.
Web novel fan translation with author permission : GOOD!!
Light novel fan translation without licensing BUT literally zero localization company in the world wants to bring it to the west : OK, I think.
Light novel fan translation when there's plans to be licensed or is already licensed: BAD!!
However, I can't say the same for Yen Press.............
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I haven't read much fan translations other than Fate/Apocrypha and couple others with way too low quality translations, but as with Anime fansubs back in the day, I think they are beneficial to the industry, at the start. If anime or light novel fan translations had never got popular, I'm not sure if we'd have ever get the services we have today for official translations.
At least for light novels, I'd say fan-translating stops being beneficial at the point a series is actually licensed though. And honestly, official translations are often just simply much more reliable, though painfully slow to release in some cases. Also as someone who's studied a bit of translation studies, I can say there's a large enough difference for it to matter between a professional and amateur translator.
For anime, I'd say it is less of a problem though. Admittedly, this is where a nostalgia bias sets in for myself though, since I miss the days where I could just go see what anime fan sub group had taken an anime to translate and pick the one that mostly suited my preferences. Almost every single anime had been translated and not locked behind annoying regional licensing resctrictions and such. Compared to those days when I could watch anything I wanted to, these days, I'm a lot more limited in what I can watch, especially with older titles that, even if I wanted to buy the DVD, I wouldn't be able to even play them with my PAL media players. I basically can't even watch some of my old favourites like Welcome to the N.H.K anymore, even though I've bought the dvd set for it.
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As with everything, depends on the client/customer.
My Japanese reading skills are atrocious, though my linguistic skills are acceptable for tourist relevant communication. As such, I rely on others to translate written work into English or other language I have a higher level of fluency.Fan translations which are done to a decent quality, with timely updates and who honour the market by taking down their translations once a series becomes licensed I see as only positives. It is free marketing, especially for the Western market. Heck, I only came across J-Novel because of Rokujouma's translation on Baka.
However, there are of course flaws. Machine translations, which charge excessive amounts of monies for poor quality work, poor translations which fail to grasp the true meaning or original concepts of the writers can ruin series. At the same time, a too strong fan base can be a block to licensing, an example being Date A Live. A series which I absolutely adore, but with the series coming to an end, it is unlikely to come to fruition.
Some clients, myself included are a bit of collectors, and like to support the industry. I have always ended up buying a series which was officially licensed. A recent example being "Sukasuka", despite the fan translation completing all 5 books.
Just my two cents.
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@chonkk13 what bout Web Novel Fan Translation, when the Light Novel is Licensed.
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One thing I realized recently is that we might not even have JNC if not for fan translation. Correct me if I'm wrong but this sites entire business model came about when @Sam-Pinansky noticed that multiple fan translators were releasing light novels week to week on their websites and he decided to see if that could work as a business.
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I like to say that fan translation has a net positive micro effect and a major net negative macro effect.
And these effects are non-linear.
It's pretty clear that fan activity helps business as long as it is below a certain threshold, e.g. as long as people who enter the fan community through fan translations are converted to paying customers/consumers fast enough, but there becomes a breaking point if enough of the potential audience is purely consuming through fan translations where they overwhelm official sources (and/or prevent official sources from launching and being profitable).
I think for anime, services like CR launched soon enough where this critical point was not reached (though it came pretty close in the mid 200Xs), but for digital manga I think official sources waited too long to become available and online manga consumption of fan translations has been an active blocker to profitable digital distribution. I frankly do not know if it is really possible to reverse this.
I think for light novels, we came along in time.
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@sam-pinansky said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
I like to say that fan translation has a net positive micro effect and a major net negative macro effect.
And these effects are non-linear.
It's pretty clear that fan activity helps business as long as it is below a certain threshold, e.g. as long as people who enter the fan community through fan translations are converted to paying customers/consumers fast enough, but there becomes a breaking point if enough of the potential audience is purely consuming through fan translations where they overwhelm official sources (and/or prevent official sources from launching and being profitable).
I think for anime, services like CR launched soon enough where this critical point was not reached (though it came pretty close in the mid 200Xs), but for digital manga I think official sources waited too long to become available and online manga consumption of fan translations has been an active blocker to profitable digital distribution. I frankly do not know if it is really possible to reverse this.
I think for light novels, we came along in time.
What sets CR aside is that they are consistent in releasing first. If they were slower to release compared to fan subbing, no matter the quality of their release, they would have tanked long ago.
The same logic applies to manga, first come first serve. If official release is ahead of fan scanlation by at least 5 days, they will succeed. If they are month behind, they become irrelevant. Once again, I believe that CR manga solution works sufficiently well, if not for their garbage reader.
Now when it comes to light novels... I think fan translations are fine because there is just too much stuff. There is no way you can license every niche novel that half of your consumer base likes while the other half is indifferent.
Solution? Expand the consumer base. But to do that, you need to put in some marketing effort.
