I'm new to the (foreign) novel world as I've been reading for only a little over 6 months and I'm just now taking an active interest in the communicating aspect of the Novel community. I have a few questions I and other noobs who want to start translating might want to know. How do you find out which novels are licensed? If the novels are not licensed and you want to use the material for translations do you have to inform the author? If you do inform the author or they find out about your translating their novel do you have to give them a portion of the donations you receive? If so how much? What are good sites to find books from? Since this would be classified as freelance translating do you pay taxes on the monies received from the sites? How expensive is translating? Cost of site/server, Machine translating software, etc... Any other information would be great as these are things I've been curious about and want to know if I want to start translating.
I can't answer everything because I don't know it all but I can try with a few. Don't think so. I doubt it. They're called 'donations' to circumvent legal issues. Technically, you're not being paid to translate their material, legal issues. You are doing it for free, but people donate to help you do whatever else. Would depend on the language you are looking to translate. You haven't specified yet but looking at your username i'll guess JP. Probably completely dependent on both where you live and if you actually make anything reasonable from translating. Depends on the traffic you get to the site. If it's popular, it will cost more. Also depends on what kind of domain you want. You can always try wordpress. I'll keep a few of these in mind for the FAQ actually.
Dunno. I don't think so. I don't think that's legit either. You should normally inform the author if his/her novel is licensed and ask for permission but I think they would normally either approve or disapprove of you translating their work but they shouldn't have anything to do with the donations you receive. If you make a deal or some special kind of contract with the author that might be some different thing, I dunno. For all I know, you can find a great deal of Chinese web novels on 17k. I think you mean, 'money received from donations'. I don't think so but I'm not sure either. Translating in itself should be free, now it depends on what you mean by 'translating' because it can also be taken as a job. The website, server, domain etc. shouldn't be too expensive, at least at the beginning you can buy some smaller and cheaper server, and later, by the time you have a big community and earn ad revenue and donations you should afford something better or if you're still at the beginning there's absolutely no harm in trying some free service. As for "Machine translating software", there are quite a few free ones(google, bing, systranet), I have no idea if there are any that you have to pay for, but I personally don't consider MTL as a 'translation' to begin with.
Thank you for the reply I'm a little ignorant about the process and all knowledge is appreciated. Yes I'm looking to translate JP I only have basic knowledge of the language like hiragana, katakana, and how to form basic sentence so translating might help me improve a lot.
posting this on the behalf of haikai de japtem How do you find out which novels are licensed? Typically, you find out novels that are licensed from english companies such as Yen Press or follow sites such as http://englishlightnovels.com/ If the novels are not licensed and you want to use the material for translations do you have to inform the author? Technically, it is the most respectable thing to do is to inform the author. However, due to the chances of author wanting to prevent translations or other legal matters, most people tend to not inform the author and will continue to translate until informed otherwise such as a DMCA. If you do inform the author or they find out about your translating their novel do you have to give them a portion of the donations you receive? If so how much? In general, no one ever does this. Donations nowadays refer to two things: you being gifted for your hard work, or being commissioned to translate. It is very very unlikely for giving a portion of the "donations" to the author due to legal issues. What are good sites to find books from? Depends on the language, and what kind of genre you are looking for. Since this would be classified as freelance translating do you pay taxes on the monies received from the sites? In general for many translators, they do not make even a lot of money from donations to even classify as paying taxes. However, the big popular TLers such as Ren and other people, I'm sure would have to pay taxes for the money received as it is in the thousands. How expensive is translating? Cost of site/server, Machine translating software, etc... Starting out to translate, $0. You do not need a site/server that cost money unless you get enough traffic where free server can't handle it and would require you to upgrade. Machine translating software can be found for free online. The only real cost would be time spent on translating or material for learning the language in the beginning.
There is now one other question I'm wondering about. I sort of remember this happening one or maybe twice but there were a few times I searched for a novel that had been translated to completion or close to it, like Tate no Yuusha but later on I find out that the first few or in this case few volumes have been wiped from the sites. I found out it was because the novel was being licensed and translated to English. Is it normal for sites to shut down their fan translations or delete already translated chapters because of this? I'm pretty shure TNY wasn't a donation based TL though...
Yes. If the series gets licensed, translations often cease and get deleted. I'm assuming it's because the people who license the novel issue some form of desist letter, because they have the legal right to stop people who are technically infringing on their business. Some people do keep it going after the series has been licensed, Mahouka is a good example, but you can't continue to publish it somewhere 'proper'. You won't be able to collect donations either.
I think it sounds quite logical to do that. That's quite similar to what happened to lms, though last time I checked the chapters were still there but they stopped translating it because the author didn't give them permission to continue and there was some talk on it being officially translated in 2016 and iirc they said at that time they would delete their chapters.
I thank everyone for there help I think all of my questions have been resolved if I need anything else I'll go to the linkz provided by some users in their replies. I thank everyone again for their assistance!
By the way LMS is still being translated even though it was suppose to stop at 21 it's now on its' 29 vol and still going. I currently just finished a marathon all the way till vol 28 with a few stops in-between and waiting for volume 29 to be finished before I continue.
If your talkin school of irregular magic, then that's another one I saw but forgot till you mentioned it... GOD how I wish the anime would continue that and Log Horizon (TT-TT)
Yeah, it's one of my favourite LN's. The anime did a fairly decent job I think, the OST was quite good too which I think isn't particularly prevalent in adaptations. I would like a 2nd season but I think the anime has already essentially done the advertising job it set out to do. I'm not expecting anything, as much as I'd love it. First season was great but the second season completely lost me. Don't care about the kids whatsoever either.
I know it's still being translated but without the author's permission. The people from RR had the authors permission to translate till volume 20 I think and they stopped for this exact reason. Afterwards, a few amateurs took over and did some sh*tty MTL and so on. I ended up dropping it a long time ago.
The translation really did suck for a good bit but it was readable for the next few then went back to average, currently its just below RR in its quality.
I have to admit the kids really did start to get annoying and they really made the storyline corny so much so that it was embarrassing to watch at one point. Its to bad I still have this lingering stubbornness from when I only watched anime or I'd read the manga. But as long as I remember the show in detail I won't read the manga or read the novels (especially the novels LN and WN are to different) Another show that needed a second season was Ao no Exorsist or maybe Trinity 7, I have a feeling 7 sins are going to get another