Hello! Due to recent experiences I wanted to talk about the history of fan translation takedowns. I mainly want to focus on the Japanese fan translation takedowns, but the Chinese and Korean takedowns are still an interesting topic, unfortunately not the focus this time. I want to research the reasoning behind the takedowns, to help understand both sides of the situation. The best way to predict and prevent a repeat, is to learn from the past! I know at one time Baka Tsuki had a lot of projects on it, even I used it to read Mushoku Tensei when it was still on the site, then a lot of projects got DMCA's and such. At the time I did not fully understand DMCA's too well so I do not have a full grasp of the situation of what happened. Other than Baka Tsuki, I want to learn of future takedowns that happened from Baka Tsuki's time and the reasoning behind it as well as discuss about the logic and reasoning they all had. I have met some fan translations that paywall their translations. They do an almost Qidian style with free X amount of chapters then paying to read further, yet they are just a fan translation, not an official translations. The impact that one such as that I could easily see shaking up the fan translations quite a lot. This is what lead me to wanting to learn about past DMCA takedowns and such. I am not so interested in if they are in the right or wrong at this stage, just learn from past experiences to see how the past may have handled something like that. I want to use this opportunity to research the past events of takedowns and discuss about it. I hope I was able to say all the points I wanted to without repeating myself or straying too far from the topic. History is best learned to prevent a repeat and I want to learn the history of the Japanese fan translation takedowns with your help. TL;DR: Let's talk about the history of Japanese Fan Translation takedowns and the reasonings behind it!
When a title is so popular that it gets adaptations and releases in the west they start seeing it as a loss of revenue. Also, these locked content translations are usually 'to read ahead' and not to 'read' it, so there's a loophole so it's not selling the work but asking for support in translating.
Well, yeah, I just named a popular series for an example. There is more to learn than just that. There has been series that the translators took down themselves because an official source was made. There is always a more intricate reasoning behind each one and that is what I want to learn about. Yeah, a lot could be just because of a loss of revenue from popular series, but not all of them are like that. With the paywall translation that I talk about, it is not to read ahead, but to read. They stopped any publicly available chapters and stated that to read any more would require their patreon or Ko-Fi.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/5r03hg/the_history_of_bakatsuki_a_brief_overview/ Should be a good enough tl;dr The newest (and like the nail in the coffin strikes) were sent in two strikes, a trial one that took down only Campione! and a full-on fuck you that took down like 10-20 series. It is not like Baka-tsuki is totally dead though ( lke it is kinda inactive dead and not server perma-down dead), there are still quite a few translations hosted on it (Index NT/GT, Baka to Test, Hyouka, Horizon etc) and many are regularly updated (for example, JS06 regularly releases tl for every new Index GT vol in like 15 days since jp release) https://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=22068 Even better tl;dr from hellping himself
Some people love Benevolent pirates in the WN wild west era even today, too bad Companies has raise their sail and keep shooting unlincensed ship. I ike fan translation too
This! This is something I was looking for! Baka Tsuki is the gateway that got me into stories from different countries. It felt like a breath of fresh air compared to our stories. Based on this, it felt like a gateway to webnovels and light novels as a whole. It also shows how it was shifted focus from Light Novels to Web Novels, to never repeat what happened to Baka Tsuki. This was very informative, thanks for sharing it with me. It finally gave me context to what exactly happened to the once bigshot, Baka Tsuki.
Damn, I just read this and I didn't know they used to be this big. I feel a bit sad for them, all their hard work down the drain...
In a way, I agree. At the same time I appreciate the road they paved towards our current fan translation community, which coule not have happened otherwise. I opened this thread in hopes of learning about stuff like this, Baka Tsuki is the biggest example. I am also hoping to learn about other instances that something like this happened. It may not be as big of an event like Baka Tsuki was, but it would be very informative to learn about it.
Woopread and some Indian translation website are selling chapters. https://www.novelhunters.com/novel/house-management/volume-1/chapter-1/ Active Translations does the same I think They have virtual currency and are called "fan translations". I don't think they are fan translations when they sell chapters It's more like Kakao system since it becomes free later but some sites said there will stop using free chapters. Such websites are like munpia.com Someone can come up with a new name but they are not fan translations There is no gray area excuse anymore
Another site I know paywalls their translation. The first 33 chapters were released free, then stopped. When people asked in the comments about it, the translator said they have already translated further ahead, but no more free translations. Hold on, think I got a screenshot I can share. Just gotta edit some stuff out as I do not want to accidentally share something about myself, like the time as that puts me in a general area on earth, and the address to the site so I am not inadvertently advertising them. Though you could probably find them easily by searching their comment name, but whatever. Just cropping out the top bar as they are mobile screenshots. https://imgur.com/gallery/8HTnvX5 https://imgur.com/gallery/bUaawTF The photos were not showing up, so I just decided to link it to imgur instead. Hope that works...
If i am not wrong, there are a few translator who drop their translation even before DMCA request, because they foresaw that it will happen eventualy for various reason (the titles get animated, official translation, etc). Not sure which novels though, it has been a few years since then. The best way to avoid DMCA is to ask for permission to translate it, or even better, try to negotiate a license deal for the novels. Baka tsuki has been hit with multiple DMCA in the past, some are for a single titles, and the others are for multiple titles (often by the same publisher). Baka tsuki is one of the pioneer of novel translation, as at the time baka tsuki is the only translation group that is widely known. As you can guess, when the DMCA happened, all hell breaks loose. If i am not wrong, there are some fan translations group formed to avoid the baka tsuki DMCA by moving their translation into their own website. These DMCA request also create alot of "underground" translation community with invite only member, similar with those invite only torrent seed boxes chat room. As for mushoku tensei, i believe there are some drama about translator with machine translation tried to snipe it.