Just like we have BBB, how about having something similar for fan translators? More along the lines of a union to protect translators from suits and other forms of litigation or just protecting their rights. Sadly, I expect this thread to get derailed but at least I would have tried
FTC is already taken by the Trade Commission. We should consult the Acronym Synthesizing Symposium. Is there a uniform, maybe a hat or something? We can put "Make Translation Great Again!" on it. Just don't let the fake news know about it, they might say mean things about us and cause us to be pouty on twitter. Real talk now. Besides needing a whole team of lawyers, there would probably be a need to get involved with politics. Operations costs and other things would almost require dues. Congratulations, it's a union now.
99% of fan translations don't have permission from the author/publisher/rights holder, and are therefore explicitly illegal in almost every country in the world. There are no rights to protect, and creating some sort of union or coalition to defend against rightful lawsuits, or doing anything that involves funding (and a useful organisation of any kind will almost certainly require funding) would only cause more problems, which should be obvious when you consider that it would literally be organised crime at that point. Fan translations are tolerated for a lot of reasons, but turning it from a bunch of scattered individual hobbyists into an actual industry would change that pretty quickly.
Well I'll be the first to derail it by saying the BBB is not what people think it is. BBB is mostly an organization that extorts money from businesses by providing a high rating when you pay them. Interestingly enough, the BBB doesn't even look into wrong doing, it only looks at prompt responses. As long as you respond quickly enough, your rating isn't really hurt. Of course most consumers and businesses don't know that so "I'll report you to the BBB" is taken as a serious threat when in reality it's more of a joke. - Someone who has an A ranking from the BBB (You need to pay to get A+)
Don't please. We don't need the attention. They tolerated us before because we're not making money illegally and there's no real unified front. That has changed with illegal for-profit translation but they're still turning a blind eye because the amount of profit made is miniscule at this moment, not significant enough to justify spending a lot of money on lawsuits. Doing this will be like smacking them in the face with a baseball bat. You have to think about the long term implications of your actions. If you really want to do this, then go legal. Get actual license from the copyright holders like those J novel guys. Nobody will complain if you're legal. Problem is, you're not legal, and the majority of 'fan translators' can't be considered legal even if you loosely interpret the laws. Not everything in this world can be solved with false bravado, you know. Often silence is golden and humbleness is key.
I am pretty sure that what I have in mind is not what you are thinking so I will be fine. It would be stop stupid to give someone the chance to steal my idea. SoI a bit of misdirection and vagueness is required. Kindness is not a crime Thanks for the warning anyway.
The nail that sticks up gets beaten down, or any equivalent idiom. There's quite a few, as it seems to be one of those things that's true cross-culturally. I have contacted the author, and his reply was basically, "I don't want to deal with troublesome things so it's best if I just ignore your existence." I get the feeling it's a fairly common sentiment among authors, but as stated by others, more organisation makes us harder to ignore. If there's no details, it makes it hard to evaluate whether people are interested or not, in which case there's really not much point in bringing it up.... If it were purely a union, anyway, would there be much of a point in someone stealing it, unless it was being turned into some kind of profitable venture? I'd very much like to avoid something dealing with "money" and/or "hierarchy".