I wanna translate novels but I don't know where to start. is there a site or list of novels that is free to translate? I search about this but can't find a clear answer. there is a guy on the forum said that one can be sued for copyright if others translate their works. qidian has a lot of amazing stories but I don't know if I am allowed to translate their novels. soooo, is there a website or list of novels that I can Pick a novel to translate? P.S. whoever answer this, may you have a good day and lucks!
Don't want to be sued? Use a free website like blogspot, wordpress. All DMCA takedown requests, lawsuits, etcera... will be sent to Wordpress/Google, before being sent to you.
wow I didn't know that. Thanks. sooo, I can pick any novels to translate? I'm new to this so I ask a lot. *sad
You can do whatever you want. You can even translate a novel someone is already currently translating. There’s no internet police to stop you.
Why don't you go look in the Novel Pickup Request forum? https://forum.novelupdates.com/forums/novel-pickup-request.1019/ There's lots of potential novels to translate there.
Could you translate wild malicious consort: good for nothing ninth miss it’s been translated up to chapter 159 already and I’m pretty sure the novels complete already
https://syosetu.com/ is the site that most Japanese translators get their novels from. I dunno what sites you can get Chinese and Korean novels from though. As for Qidian in particular, it is generally not recommended to try fantranslating their novels as they might decide to translate them themselves, and since they hold the license for it, they might send a takedown request at you. If you want to translate Qidian novels, I'd recommend applying directly at https://webnovel.com to become an official translator for the series.
This is potentially dangerous advice to give, especially to someone who's new. Just to be clear, using a free hosting provider does not grant you personal indemnity against legal action. The way you've described it is as if hosting providers act as something like a legal proxy/VPN, which isn't the case. There's no difference between using a free service like Blogspot and using a conventional hosting provider, and sending a DMCA notice to the owner of the site before the hosting service is fairly common. In practice, it is likely that the copyright owner would contact the hosting provider. But if they're inexperienced or just extra angry about the infringement, there's nothing to prevent them from pursuing the infringing party personally. @pamtasy do your own research, and don't take legal advice from forums.
A copyright owner may sue you directly, if and only if they know who you are. Very unlikely, when they can just use DMCA to takedown your post instead. Otherwise, they will directly message you a DMCA notice to remove your post. If you ignore that notice, they will ask Google to remove your post. (https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905). Then Google will switch your post to a draft and sends you a message you saying, they received a DMCA notice about your post. 'Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status....'
feel free to translate~ just don't publish it~ there will be no sue whatsoever~ end of story yup yup~ that aside~ since you mention qidian this cat assume its more about cn novel? rather than sue you, if you are small fry aka just solo nobody translator with pitiful view cuz somehow you pick not so popular story just dmca? notice enuf to kapuff your translation~ if you somehow become popular enuf maybe webnovel will contact you to work for them or other team poke you to join them~ on jp side the popular free one is syosetu~ author may ask you to stop translation for whatever reason... later~ on kr side, nah better not touch them at the moment~ where to start? lets start with pick a story then you can ask is this kinda safe or not~
I know two people that translate novels they might be able to answer ur questions: https://forum.novelupdates.com/members/riririn.179577/ https://forum.novelupdates.com/members/taffygirl13.8364/
A ping might work better than linking their profiles when looking for help. @riririn @TaffyGirl13 It's also kinda common convention to just stay away from Qidian novels in general. They are notorious for DMCA-ing a lot, and they are on NU too so they'll probably become aware that you're translating their novels pretty fast. Plus they license their own novels on Webnovel, so that's another reason to not pick their novels. JJWXC is a much safer option for CN novels. There are hardly ever any DMCAs for JJWXC novels (though it could still happen).
The best way to translate without any fear of repercussions is to contact the author directly and ask for permission, but this only works if the author doesn't have a contract with the site they're hosting on (since, in that case, the publishing site owns the novel legally, not the author, unfortunately), so any of the VIP novels that require unlocking on Qidian, JJWXC, etc. are (legally speaking) not free to translate, unless you get a license agreement directly with the publishing site. This is also why JP webnovels are generally considered the least risky to translate, since most of them are on syosetsu, which is a free site for original fiction rather than a paid publishing site, so even if you don't ask the author's permission, most of them don't have the power to take legal action against you even if they do discover you translating. Meanwhile, folks like Qidian have lots and lots of power to take legal action against you -- and they will, especially since they have their own English-translating arm. Jinjiang (JJWXC) is actually the "women-oriented" version of Qidian (which is supposed to be "male-oriented" -- though of course demographics are tricky, and there are definitely some "shounen"-esque stuff posted on Jinjiang and vice versa), and they're actually owned by the same company (Shanda Literature). For some reason, Jinjiang is not nearly as heavily policed translation-wise as Qidian, but with the way things are going, that might change in the future. Most other Chinese online publishers don't have that kind of multi-billion-dollar corporation backing, though, so most of them won't be looking too closely for copyright infringement or whatever they DMCA translations for. Still not legal, but relatively safer. And touching any Korean webnovels in general is just a huge no-no. You will be hit with a DMCA faster than you can blink.