I never said anything about those 2 points at all, nor assumed anything on them. I'm not doubting the rights of the japanese publishers, I'm doubting how far a license agreement. Are you saying the japanese publishers are strict to authors but hand everything over all their rights on a golden platter to licensees? And yes, j-novel can make a request to the japanese publisher to take a move, which I pointed out already. But that isn't the same as them having legal right to take a move on a web novel if their license doesn't cover it. PS We are talking about theoretics unless you specifically inquired about this specific novel. Because every license contract with each publisher is different.
Like I have been saying from the beginning, I am talking about first hand experience so yes I have inquired.
Thank you for your words and the light you shed regarding this issue, I had not know it'd be a matter of such proportion and magnitude. I also had not intended to start this train of unpleasant arguments either, apologies.
I don't know about point 1, but regarding point 2, when the author announced the publishing of LN for the first time, she noted that she chose the publisher who respected the following two terms which were frequently requested by her Syosetsu readers: They do not require taking down nor digests the WN (obviously, some publisher do) They do publish ebook So it seems to be the case that she had some control over her contract.
There is something called precedent. It is common practice for authors to leave their works on Syosetu when they have a light novel contract. It is not some dictated term. Japanese publishers do not want to alienate readers who will purchase the light novel Licensing to an English publisher is a whole different story. You are making Apples to Oranges comparison. The culture in Japan and the west is very different. There is a reason doujinshi is a big deal in Japan but not in the U.S Everyone publishes an ebook so I don't see your book My advice, speak to an actual publisher instead of making conjectures. That is what I did. I am essentially paraphrasing J-novel club Many readers do not know the difference between light novels and web novels I have had to explain the difference so many times on my website It makes sense for an English publisher to want to web novel translation taken down
I'm not talking about English licensing at all. I'm just talking about what author mentioned back in 2014 when Japanese LN was first published. I thought you are talking about Japanese publisher, because "LN contract" sounds to me like making LN out of WN, and not translation contract of LN. When you refer to WN, are you also referring to English fan translated from Japanese WN? To me, WN is original work owned by the author. Fan translation, translated from WN is not WN in my mind since it is not owned by the author. I really don't know if the author is directly licensing to J-novel, or it is licensing deal between TO Books and J-novel. I get the impression that it is the latter. Anyway, whatever contract inked with J-novel by the author or TO Books is translation right contract, and that is totally different contract between the author and TO Books, so there is nothing to compare as you say. I'll be surprised if the author or TO Books has any opinion on how J-Novel handle the fan translation, and it may be purely up to J-novel to decide what to do with them without any involvement from Japan. They have obtained the license. Fan translation doesn't so they have every right to ask them taken down.
At the moment a WN author signs a contract in Japan for their work to be published as LN, they usually give up ALL rights to the story. Some of the authors negotiate with their publishers to be allowed to continue translating the WN under the premise that it's a way for them to publish their draft as test case, but that still doesn't exclude them of their story being owned by the publisher, meaning, they can't allow any person to TL their work by their own authority. JNC works with the Japanese publisher of the LN (in other words the rights holder of the LN and WN), so it's easy for them to request the publisher to send a DMCA if they feel like their rights are infringed by a fan translator translating the work which they intend to use for making money. That's why fan translators have not much choice but to take down a novel that has been licensed by an English publisher (not limited to JNC). There are a few cases, where the author granted permission to specific translators to translate their work e.g. Tensei Slime, but those cases are very few. Most authors will ask a translator to stop TLing their novel, even more so if the novel has a LN adaptation. Except for those few cases, all translators in this scene are pirates. We do not owe the rights to the works we translate nor do we have any legal standing to translate these works (Copyright is clear on this matter so don't try to split hairs here). We only rely on the fact that Japanese publishers and authors don't really care about international circulation of their work. That of course changes as soon as an English publisher enters the fray. I stopped translating Bookworm because I experienced same with Nidome no Jinsei wo Isekai de in the past. There's no point in fighting an official English publisher. And I don't intend to fight losing battles. Moreover, it makes no sense for readers to ask the translator to do so, since you should support the author by buying the English books, if you truly like the story.
That is an extreme claim. That sounds like author even doesn't have rights to influence how the WN gets edited into LN, nor how it gets made into comics, anime. In case of Bookworm, author seems to be fully engaged in every permutation of her work, even bothering to attending anime recording session to give feedback to the voice actors. I'm confused here. Did you mean to say "to be allowed to continue publishing the WN". You are talking about original author, not translator, right? Are you sure it is Japanese publisher who send DMCA? Maybe some handful of large Japanese publisher who has office in US (i.e. Kodansha, Kadokawa) can handle such legal matter, but I highly doubt that smaller LN publisher (Aren't they mostly pretty small? TO Books has only 80+ employer) has any man power nor knowledge to do such work. Yeah, I've seen some syosetu.com authors writing about experience of getting direct request from fan translator for permission to translate. And to support the "official" translator and English publisher.
Ah sorry, maybe I worded it a bit wrongly? I meant the rights to sell, market or give the specific story away to someone else. Of course the author would be involved with the process of making it a LN, manga or anime as they get paid for it. In the cases of LNs, authors often get contracted before a story has "finished," so it makes sense for them to continue writing while being supported by the publisher. Well, at least that's how far I understand it. I suppose there are also differences in the contracts between authors and publishers. Yea, sorry my bad. I'm not a specialist in international copyright law, but I think a DMCA can only be sent by the content's owner, not a subcontractor (Not sure on it). Also I doubt that any decent publisher would go without a lawyer caring about legal procedures for them. Certainly many won't have an own department for law stuff though. I left that away because it was a debate about fan translators not TLing a WN upon licensing by an English publisher. In the first place the official translator gets paid for their work by the publisher, and the English publisher makes money off the work. Not sure what you'd need to support them for? You support them by paying them cash.
Well, I just wanted to stress that paying money for English publication would support the English publisher and the translator in addition to the original author, and I very much care for their success, although I have no idea how the contract is for translation work is written.
First book is now available - https://j-novel.club/v/ascendance-of-a-bookworm Do people talk about licensed translation on this site? It seems that whole novelupdates.com is structured for fan translation and not for official translations.
Though I up for any new chapters being translated, the translation for CH104 seems to tank a bit in quality than previous translations from other translators. It feels shorter that a usual bookworm chapter. the cover image is not related to the book at all, just like if it was a chinese novel where they slap on any image they find online as the cover image. the translator does not seem japanese, though they say they are. Some pronouns are used wrongly in the translation.
I found that it got better in the middle, but with the translation quality, and editing, it made me think that there was more at the end, like they stopped in the middle of a thought...the mobile website had me dragging up for ten minutes....
The chapter isn't finished yet, at the moment it's about half way through. You could see a (1) beside the title. ( Though I actually had translated that chapter some weeks back, if you're interested. https: //docs.google. com/document/d/1Fin4ePv8BNLgNndkQa2vIc5Y8uLwbJfD7tZY9kd2MZI/edit?usp=sharing )
Thanks~ It's a spur of the moment thing. Took me ages to do, but I don't regret the time spent on it. In his defense, that image is actually drawn by a pixiv artist I think, in the early stages of the webnovel, before the MC's official settings and appearances are determined. Although you are definitely right in saying that it doesn't look like the MC at all.
well, it might be how urano looks like (in the artist's imagination). i see nothing wrong with a little fan arts. just it would be better to give credit where the credit's due for example a cute one in this japanese blog https://nayuta7.blog.so-net.ne.jp/2018-10-06
That's much better than the other one, I noticed a few dropped paragraphs in the one yesterday, after reading yours, and it changed a lot of the early part. I'm wondering though, is it supposed to be 'Witch' for the female temple priests, and was Templar the title for Meine's boss before?
Thanks~ Yes, witches for female, and templars for male, and Head Templar for Meine's superior. After twenty odd chapters in, it already felt too natural on the keyboard to change now. Though with the "dropped paragraph" part, I think it might actually be my part that I've changed some of the little minor things. There's a lot of things and ideas that simply won't get translated over between two languages if it's translated directly word for word, so in places I might've had changed the order of the phrases around or made some minor alterations in attempts to localize it making it more readable in English. Or at least, that's how I convinced myself. =P
Legally it's an open question whether the inherent ability/responsibility to proteect our exclusive license for the English translation rights of the light novel extends to the web novel, as it could be considered essentially a "first draft" of the work, and there is case precedent for that. It would come down to a judge determining whether it was a sufficiently different work if it went to trial, I'm sure, but it would be an open question as to what standard would be applied to determine that. Practically, what would happen would be I would make a request to TO Books, they would suggest to the author in their very Japanese way that the author sign on to a DMCA letter directly, or more likely sign a letter making us their legal agent for enforcement of their copyright for the web novel. Note that this could easily be done _after_ the DMCA is sent, if one was foolish enough to file a counterclaim that we didn't have the rights to file the DMCA. So while you are right on the merits, basically unless the author has given you explicit permission to translate the web novel, we would easily have the legal ability to DMCA translations of web novels, even if we don't have rights to the web novel in particular.