I remember a while ago Korean publishers were crazy mad about their works being translated. So much so, that many translators and scanslators had to move to closed discord servers and spread their work by hearsay and even Wuxia World had to give up TCF. Are the Korean publishers still mad at translators or has the situation calmed down?
It's not so much about being mad as much as it is enforcing their own copyright to prevent people from making money off of what they considered be their content. Even though they arguably not losing their core demographic because they're not even targeting the English market with those novels, they don't want other people profiting from it. Some people also mentioned how Korean readers may switch to the English translation so they don't have to pay for it I don't know. It's kind of created this weird scenario where some translators have now formed a megacult around themselves surrounded by self-righteous circle jerkers. It's all very annoying.
They prolly are, even as we speak, and they prolly will, until illegal KR TLs are hunted to extinction. It is the wae of humans— has been, and will always be.
The issue is that they inflate the appeal of their content. Billions of English people aren't reading translated Korean content but publishers seem to think that. The same happened with Japanese publishers. This content is very niche. ADV Bankruptcy is a good lesson https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ne...ments-reveal-amounts-paid-for-29-anime-titles
Someone posting paid content online for free does affect their bottom line as their target audience includes people who either can read English (it is taught in schools over there) or are willing to use MTL software to get the story for cheaper. Plus it can draw away the add revenue they would otherwise get.
For the translators, it’s one thing to fan translate due to no official translation or wtv reason and it’s a completely another thing to profit off of someone else’s work.
Ya, in most cases translations exist in a Grey area, but how grey depends a lot on the translator, and to many are looking to make money off it with no compensation to the actually rights owners, which quickly takes them to the darker side if not leaving the grey entirely.
I heard there's one private site that got reported this week. So probably yes. Plus this article : https://www.interpol.int/News-and-E...TERPOL-projects-combating-cyber-enabled-crime
I wonder how they even find them. Do they just do a google search of the novels with the word, “translation”??
Search the name, in both Korean and non-korean characters (so converted to Roman characters), look for results outside Korea.
By reposters, retranslators. Twitter & social media. If it gets popular enough, it will be found. I worked in a group that's official, and publishers gave exclusive permission to tl whilst we were in negotiations, but a whole bunch of our tls fell through (one reason bc of Wattpad reposters) and we had to pull. Sometimes, it is the authors that find out first, usually from Twitter and get upset about it. Alth, all authors I have asked have been lovely and it's mainly the pubs who then find out from the authors, or are asked by the authors that are the barrier. *** Some thought: k-publishers care a lot about reputation & exclusivity (as Parth mentioned, I would emphasise on 'their content') than just merely money. Otherwise obtaining licenses would be as easy as CN ones. They would rather assc. with larger established companies to attain their copyrighted content, or keep it close to themselves, let alone allow a little fansite who could 'damage' their prestige.