How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry
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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. -
Well I don’t know for me it’s hard to say.
All I know is if it wasn’t for me trying to see how A story went after the Anime and finding a fan translation I never would have discovered that LN were even a thing.
So since finding official translation in late 2017 I’ve purchased more than 200 LNs between both digital and physical release.
Without fan translations I’m not sure that ever would have happened.
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I've always thought manga was the most screwed of the three mediums - we never really got a good "Netflix for manga" as Crunchyroll only went half hearted into it & ended up slower than many scanlators for heaps of series (ReLife was a good example - the scanlation was finished when the second short OVA season came out, while Crunchy was ~50 chapters behind when they dropped it between the two chops at the anime IIRC?)
The Shonen Jump app is pretty good now, but it needed to be like that 5-8 years ago or whenever Crunchyroll went legit. Hell, they still have heaps of series with the first three chapters available, then a fifty to a hundred or so chapter gap, then the most recent stuff unlocked. All the new customers then get forced to either pirate or pony up heaps of cash to catch up. Kinda similar to here with the prepubs, but LNs are more niche compared to manga & the English market is comparatively years behind anime & manga, or at least that's how it seems to me.
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@smashman42 said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The Shonen Jump app is pretty good now, but it needed to be like that 5-8 years ago or whenever Crunchyroll went legit. Hell, they still have heaps of series with the first three chapters available, then a fifty to a hundred or so chapter gap, then the most recent stuff unlocked.
"Heaps of series"? Just four, according to their site. (I'm not going to click through all 96 series to confirm that count.)
(And actually, thanks for making me look. I hadn't realized how cheap it is. I like what they're doing, I'll pay $2/month to support it. And to sprint ahead on We Never Learn. 🙂)
All the new customers then get forced to either pirate or pony up heaps of cash to catch up.
Paying cash isn't actually an option - the missing chapters don't have official translations in any form yet. As they get finished for print releases, Viz is adding them to the back catalog.
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@hamsterexastris They must have backfilled heaps of stuff since I last looked at it closely then, which is awesome!
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@smashman42 said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The Shonen Jump app is pretty good now, but it needed to be like that 5-8 years ago or whenever Crunchyroll went legit. Hell, they still have heaps of series with the first three chapters available, then a fifty to a hundred or so chapter gap, then the most recent stuff unlocked. All the new customers then get forced to either pirate or pony up heaps of cash to catch up. Kinda similar to here with the prepubs, but LNs are more niche compared to manga & the English market is comparatively years behind anime & manga, or at least that's how it seems to me.
@hamsterexastris said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
"Heaps of series"? Just four, according to their site. (I'm not going to click through all 96 series to confirm that count.)
Me gets exited and clicks on the link!
Scroll scroll scroll...CONTENT NOT AVAILABLE
Thank you for your interest in Shonen Jump! Unfortunately this content is not available in your location.
The offer is available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Philippines, Singapore, and India!Me gets depressed and flips a table. Back to reading fan translation of Yobidasareta Satsuriku-sha, because its kinda fun.
P.S. CR did something similar with Domestic Girlfriend. They started to simulpublish it and later on filled the gap from chapter 1 and upward. I was actually half expecting j-novel to do the same with their licensed manga, imagine how disappointed I was when they started at chapter 1.
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@zing Bummer about being region screwed :(
I still expect to be region screwed all the time cause of how it used to be, but realistically Australia has been pretty good for several years now
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Hum, my experience so far : i have almost 300 ebook on my kindle. bought them on amazon. a good 100+ are LN. Probably more than 150 actually. a great deal of them are actually J-novel LN.
I love webnovel fan translation. I tried LN fan translation, mostly out of frustration because i didn't want to wait months for the officiel translation to be available on amazon. Well... NOPE ! i don't know if i was out of luck or anything but pro translator are, well, pro.
There is a real added value here. It's not like there was a choice between buying the book or getting the exact same content for free. it's a choice between pro translation and fan translation. i gladly pay for the pro translation.
That's my first argument.
The second argument being extremly simple : kindle.
I don't want to read book on my computer. When i do it, i read webnovel. Otherwise it's LN on my kindle. And amazon being amazon, i have to pay for it. so i pay ;) -
@ker2x said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The second argument being extremly simple : kindle.
I don't want to read book on my computer. When i do it, i read webnovel. Otherwise it's LN on my kindle. And amazon being amazon, i have to pay for it. so i pay ;)I always had trouble finding the book I want to read on amazon kindle, especially the ones from yen press. But bookwalker is pretty awesome in that regard.
https://global.bookwalker.jp/ -
@smashman42 said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The Shonen Jump app is pretty good now, but it needed to be like that 5-8 years ago or whenever Crunchyroll went legit. Hell, they still have heaps of series with the first three chapters available, then a fifty to a hundred or so chapter gap, then the most recent stuff unlocked. All the new customers then get forced to either pirate or pony up heaps of cash to catch up. Kinda similar to here with the prepubs, but LNs are more niche compared to manga & the English market is comparatively years behind anime & manga, or at least that's how it seems to me.
Here we have the escape hatch of catch-up months for LNs though. I know that if I wait long enough I'll probably get a catch-up month for Grimgar so I can see whether or not I like it enough to buy the LNs.
I just checked and I've bought 9 series based on catch-up months and another 6 from reading prepubs.
Catch up months work great for getting me hooked on another series :)
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@harmlessdave said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
I just checked and I've bought 9 series based on catch-up months and another 6 from reading prepubs.
I thought it prompted me to buy more, but double checking it is only Arifureta (and Zero) and Clockwork Planet for me so far, though I bought the thus far unlocked so 'always on catch up' Rokujouma as well. (I can't remember if Dendro was a catch up inspired one as well or if I took the chance on V1 and then bought the rest)
I wonder if Sam does notice any movement either way of purchases of stuff put on catch up?
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@zing said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
@ker2x said in How much do you think fan translations hurt the industry:
The second argument being extremly simple : kindle.
I don't want to read book on my computer. When i do it, i read webnovel. Otherwise it's LN on my kindle. And amazon being amazon, i have to pay for it. so i pay ;)I always had trouble finding the book I want to read on amazon kindle, especially the ones from yen press. But bookwalker is pretty awesome in that regard.
https://global.bookwalker.jp/i didn't know about this website. thx :)
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I was surprised when a well-known scanlation site decided to turn everything off and go “legit” at the drop of a hat. Their reasoning was that scanlations and fan translations hurt the Japanese authors and the industry and that they would no longer be a part of it. They even went so far as to rebrand themselves with a new site that is to say the least a huge disappointment from what they used to be. So, is it really wrong for people to scanlate or fan-translate a series?
For me personally I think that they help get the authors works to readers that would never have known about them and maybe even get an official license where there may not have been one generating more revenue for the industry and the authors as well. Let’s face it, a large percentage of the work made in Japan is never licensed outside of Japan. So’ if it’s not licensed where is the loss?
What do you think? Is it a good or bad thing? Write or wrong? It’s a conundrum, that much I’m certain of.
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My stance is that the relationship is complicated.
- Does it hurt the industry monetarily?
- Yes
- Does it provide something that the industry cannot?
- Yes. The shear volume of works could not possibly be handled legitimately.
- WN's don't ususaly get official translations.
- Should it be restricted, or completely shut down?
- Standard restrictions should apply, such as DMCA laws.
- Shutting it down entirely would probably be detrimental to the official industry.
Basically, I believe that for WN's, it should be allowed as long as the translator does not attempt to monetize it. If they do monetize, that is a whole different issue.
Also, they absolutely need to promote the original author, since that is really the only gain the author is getting.For LN's, where an unofficial translation will in fact hurt the industry if it get picked up, I believe that any fan translator should be required to stop updating once an official translation is licensed (yes, even if it is SOL Press), and to take it down if a DMCA is issued.
Green's Theorem
- Does it hurt the industry monetarily?
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@lighthawk96 I don't know what you're trying to say with that example? It's like saying "this person I know used to do graffiti, but then they decided to stop, what's up with that?" Vandalizing is against the law. Fan translations are also against the law. If they want to stop, well, good for them.
As far as "they get exposure!!!", that's the big scam of the creative world. Exposure doesn't pay bills, exposure doesn't put food on the table. English-speaking people liking someone's unofficially translated Japanese novel is not going to help that person get paid more in Japan, especially when it's being posted for free and people reading it don't have to buy their books anymore.
Fan translations might have been good in the past, since they highlighted a business opportunity that was being overlooked; there was a demand for a type of product and little to no supply. However, these days we have plenty of companies looking into translating light novels and Japanese media in general. There's no more need for fan translations to "expose" something anymore.
So’ if it’s not licensed where is the loss?
Here's an example of something that was not licensed and a fan translation created a barrier to it getting licensed: https://curiouscat.me/jnovelclub/post/584251560
EDIT: I should note that JNC has plenty of examples of a series that was in fact fan translated, but it was still licensed and sells fine. However, those don't apply to all cases, so it's not like you can guarantee that you'll do zero harm to a series by fan translating it.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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If an amateur translator only put up the first chapter of a series, along with links to the original works and a blurb about why it should be licensed and the market, the exposure argument might hold water. That would basically be free advertising. More than that and they might risk filling the market with a low-cost alternative that a professional company couldn’t really compete with in terms of overhead.
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I was really excited about J-Novel picking up Duke's Daughter and A Wild Last Boss Appeared because I was familiar with the fan translations of the Web Novels -- I know that's only a personal anecdote, but I think the logic checks out in general. (Though Web Novels should also be considered a completely different kettle to begin with.)
I never would have gotten into Anime or Japanese media without the fan translations, though, so that feels a bit hypocritical to say too.
