Question Why are there so many kr novel tl sites that got shut down?

Was there a korean novel tl purge or something?

Because I saw quite a lot of sites that looked like they were taken down or maybe they deleted it themselves. Maybe I'm overthinking this because I didn't think that novel authors were as tight as manhwa autors and all.

I just wanted to know if you heard anything about kr novel authors hunting for translators.

 

Yeah, there was a hunt some time recently and a bunch of sites had to shut down or go private I believe. If I remember correctly, I think it had something to do with someone snitching on the tls on Twitter, but I don’t remember exactly because I was kicked out of the discord server (for being inactive hehe) which had screenshots. It’s not as bad rn tho, or at least I hope so.

 

it kinda happens regularly and i got tired myself and resorted to buy the chapters and do my own MTL
novel author is actually as strict as the webtoon artist, especially when their novel gets adaptation. I got blocked by several authors already in twitter, although I never posted any illegal reference.... "just because the author suspected that I am related to illegal TL" lol.
it never happens after i screenshots all of my ticket purchase in all official platforms and flaunt them in my tweets . so i think they just want people to read their novels in rightful way.
tbh, their suspicions is too much ~_~...

and yep, if there is a snitch... it will be a really fast move to close the translation website and everything related. the worst still in Manhwa TL hunting tho. now that kakaopage finally do something about the circulating screenshots and translations in sns , can't blame them either.

 

@Westeller has the long answer.

Here's the short one.

From what I heard, South Korea has a very high and active role in pursuing infraction against Intellectual property and copyright.

Your freelancing Korean translator of webtoons is not licensed by the copyright holders to translate their work. AKA scanalation outside of official publication is illegal.
No matter what reason cited for scanalating outside of the publisher's s control, it is still illegal, yet commonly practiced.

Reasons why your freelancxing translator gets in trouble
- purposely violating the copyright protection afforded to the copyright owners aka publisher, author, the works
- purposely violating intellectual property rights of the right shoulder
-purposely violating publisher rights especially in distribution.

Webtoons, first and foremost, are products. So, you can see why some authors and publishers are never gonna be happy with people distributing material that they don't have rights to.

 

This issue can probably be blamed on those that steal translations from the original websites and repost them, thus incurring the wrath of copyright on both them and the original translator...

 

Wait, is there a crackdown again? I thought that it's over already?

 

I see, that makes sense! I guess they all just have their own share of reasons then.

 

lmao probably just a bunch of kids tho, well thay sorta thing happens all the time especially when it gets liscensed all you can do is buy it or wait for the release of the translated versions

 

How is Korea's english literacy rate? They may be stamping foreign sites out just to make sure their fellow can't get it on the cheap.

 

Are there even an official translations for KR novel? For what I've seen official english translations are scarce enough. There isn't even a website that solely shows english translated kr works. pretty much most of them are fan translated. How can fan translation stop when they don't even give an official english translation for people to buy.

 

There are some here and there, though the webtoon translation scene is a lot more active than the webnovel one. Both official and fantranslation.

And well, publishers can think that they might license an English translation of a webnovel in the future, and that the existence of a fantranslation of said webnovel would reduce their profits when publishing it... Which is probably an unfounded fear when considering that the popular stuff from Baka-Tsuki that got taken down due to publisher requests all got wonderful sales on the physical releases, but uhn... Well, the publishers don't need to care about this kind of thing when they can send a takedown request anyways~

Also, if someone reports to the publisher that their copyright was broken, they're probably contractually obligated to the author to take actions against it. They're probably aware of all fantranslations on NU, but they don't really need to care for the most part... But they probably can't really ignore reports from people that wanna "protect" the well-being of the author's income or something.

 

Kakaopage bought Radish and published several titles already
but yeah looking for KR novel is kinda hellish there lmao. you need to know what are you looking for because there is no separate tag for KR novels. I read the villainess is a marionette and what it means to be you there. Ebony, A Business proposal, i am ready to divorce or something ( i am bad with title lol) is also there.

Spoiler: My Screenshot

naver bought wattpad, but somehow i see no significant change there lol

wordexcerpt also starting to license KR novels.

 

Omg omg omg, ik this reply may be after 2yrs,idk if this is considered necro threading but i don't really know, I'm a new member and i just really really wanna express my thanks for reminding me of the site i forgotten. I was suppose to ask if anyone could remember that one site that got some of their novels taken down and they started licensing mostly kr novels but i don't know how to start a thread and I can't start one cause my account is newly created. Anyways thank you so much!