A little idea

[XionsProphecy]

Hi there everyone.

I just had an idea when I saw a topic about translating a handful of VN's.

What about making a donations system to encourage more translations.

I don't have all the details figured out, but I have the basics.

1. Creating Translation Teams/Groups
2. User generated wish list
3. User generated Donations towards the VN they want translated on the wish list
4. Teams/Groups can ask Mods or admins to work on a VN from the wish list
5. Teams/Groups get a small weekly payment from the generated donations for their work
6. Fuwanovel will be the only place to get/read the translated VN.
7. Team/Group Page

So, to start it there should be a way for users to create Teams/Groups specifically for translations. The Team/Group leader would have to submit a request to a moderator, or a admin to have it created. From there the Team/Group leader can add other members to it, as well as adding information about the Team/Group members, information necessary for admins or moderators to gage if that Team/Group is qualified for the task.

The wish list should be suggestions from the forum users that want a specific Visual Novel translated, either by having a monthly poll, or by having a thread where users can submit requests to the wish list. To make sure the requests are legit and not just spamming, they wont count as a submission until a starting donation by the one making the request on a reasonable amount.

When the wish list has a reached it's limit (maybe 5-10 VN's) users who wants a VN translated can make a donation towards it. The donations for said translation will then be handed out to the Team/Group that has been given the OK to work on it on a weekly basis on a agreed upon amount. If the VN donations stops coming in while the Team/Group is working on it, it will be up to them to continue working in hope that there will be more donations later on, or simply put it on hold until the donations comes back. To not let the Team/Group take too long on a translation the admin or moderator giving the OK should give the Team/Group a reasonable deadline to have it finished by. If it's not finished by the deadline the Team/Group will have to give all the work over to Fuwanovel for safekeeping, so that if another Team/Group wants it, they can continue on it.

When a Translation is finished, all the work will be sent to Fuwanovel for review. When the review is done a English patch will be made for the Visual Novel to install on top of the Visual Novel. Another way would be to build a VN emulator into the website to be able to read it, but I assume that would be illegal without the proper licenses.

The Teams/Groups should have a page with information about the members, who they are (usernames from the forum) and what they have translated earlier. Along with that there should be a Reputation widget where the admin or moderator will give the team positive Rep for good work on a translation along with a personal note about what he/she thought about the process, as well as negative Rep for missed deadlines, bad communication, etc.

I also had the same idea for Teams/Groups of artists, hackers, and so on.

 

I think this is a nice basis on something that could pull more attention towards Fuwanovel, and make it a much bigger place for all of us who have grown to love it here.

If it's a good idea, I can start working on the functions for it.

 

Kind regards, Xion.

[littleshogun]

Rejected, and regarding your basic:

1. I think some user already had their own group here, and no they didn't need asking either admin or mod to do that
2. There's so many user here, and managing that would be difficult because there's surely many VN that the users here want to be translated and limiting it to 10 at most would still be very difficult
3. Asking donation would be illegal, and therefore risking the project to suffering C&D (To be honest, I'm just learned this on this thread)
4. The VNs in wishlist may not something that the translator could enjoy. There's many stalled translation project out there even if the VNs were translator's favorite
5. More or less same as point 3 here
6. It may be good idea, but it will be impossible if you want want Fuwanovel was the only place to get translated VN 
7. Just make a thread in translation project thread should be enough or using Fuwanovel blog here

My conclusion here, to be blunt your idea regarding donation would be rejected by most users here and I think this idea already suggested several times here. Although your idea regarding review would be good here though (The fan translator who manage to finish the patch send the patch to usual reviewer here (Like Decay or Kaguya for example), then the reviewer write his/her opinion in Fuwa Review).

PS - I'm vote the second option here 'No, it's a waste of time and effort' if some people curious about my vote.

[Aizen-Sama]

 

[Arcadeotic]

It sounds good on paper, but eventually, it's all gonna come crumbling down and then no one is gonna have a good time,

Firstly, donations for fan-translations are illegal, and making it legal is way too much of a hassle, and pretty much impossible.

No team would want to have all the traffic to go to Fuwanovel and not their own website; such a thing would be ludicrous. It'd also create a lot of backlash by monopolizing the traffic and fanTLs in general.

Paying for a whole team to do it for said donations would require quite a hefty amount of money, which would be borderline impossible with just donations.

What would survey the quality and not just machine-translate the whole thing, and thus basically giving them the money and running away? Nothing, which everyone would do.

 

A bad, bad idea. Do not do this. Fan-translations should be fan-work to the end unless they get localized or work with an official company.

I heavily advise against everything you've said.

[DarkZedge]

16 minutes ago, Aizen-Sama said:

 

Once again spot on Aiz, you're on fire today.

Also as many have already stated while this is a nice idea in theory, it simply can't be done for many reasons:

1. It's illegal to ask for donations for fan translation works
2. Even if you took the time and work to make the legal way work (which is nigh impossible) you'd be looking at a pretty big amount of money to hire entire teams to translate via donations.
3. As Arky also stated no one would want all the traffic to come to Fuwa instead of to their own site.

I also think that this isn't a good idea when translated into practice

[XionsProphecy]

6 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

Rejected, and regarding your basic:

1. I think some user already had their own group here, and no they didn't need asking either admin or mod to do that
2. There's so many user here, and managing that would be difficult because there's surely many VN that the users here want to be translated and limiting it to 10 at most would still be very difficult
3. Asking donation would be illegal, and therefore risking the project to suffering C&D (To be honest, I'm just learned this on this thread)
4. The VNs in wishlist may not something that the translator could enjoy. There's many stalled translation project out there even if the VNs were translator's favorite
5. More or less same as point 3 here
6. It may be good idea, but it will be impossible if you want want Fuwanovel was the only place to get translated VN 
7. Just make a thread in translation project thread should be enough or using Fuwanovel blog here

My conclusion here, to be blunt your idea regarding donation would be rejected by most users here and I think this idea already suggested several times here. Although your idea regarding review would be good here though (The fan translator who manage to finish the patch send the patch to usual reviewer here (Like Decay or Kaguya for example), then the reviewer write his/her opinion in Fuwa Review).

Yes, I do understand that this idea was going to get shutdown right away, just wanted to mention it.

Hmm, I didn't realize that getting donations would be illegal. Learned something new today.

Well, the thought was that the translator groups could choose a VN from the list that they would like to work on, they wouldn't be forced to work on something they wouldn't enjoy.

Maybe, but hosting the English patch on the Fuwanovel site would generate more traffic there instead of to somewhere else.

Aren't they already sending the translations to the reviewers here?

 

9 minutes ago, Arcadeotic said:

It sounds good on paper, but eventually, it's all gonna come crumbling down and then no one is gonna have a good time,

Firstly, donations for fan-translations are illegal, and making it legal is way too much of a hassle, and pretty much impossible.

No team would want to have all the traffic to go to Fuwanovel and not their own website; such a thing would be ludicrous. It'd also create a lot of backlash by monopolizing the traffic and fanTLs in general.

Paying for a whole team to do it for said donations would require quite a hefty amount of money, which would be borderline impossible with just donations.

What would survey the quality and not just machine-translate the whole thing, and thus basically giving them the money and running away? Nothing, which everyone would do.

 

A bad, bad idea. Do not do this. Fan-translations should be fan-work to the end unless they get localized or work with an official company.

I heavily advise against everything you've said.

Well, the thought was that the page where you could get the patch file would have the translators info on it, so that people know who did it. And yeah, I do understand that you'd rather want the traffic coming to your own website, but hosting it would have been part of the agreement of getting paid for the work. Besides, it could have just been a "timed exclusive" hosting or whatever.

Yeah, it would take a lot of donations to pay for the work properly. But my thought was that, why not make a little money on the project instead of working for free.

Well, that part I hadn't thought about really, but there could have been a required weekly check in on the progress to get the weekly donations, and review the work that has been made to see that the people really are working and not just slacking off and playing with their waifu's and husbando's.

 

I knew this was going to get left in the dark because of the donation system, and if I knew that system was illegal to use for this type of work, I wouldn't have made the thread.

 

Anyway, thank you all for teaching me a few new things.

[littleshogun]

For more elaborations here while some VNs that was translated may be translator favorite, it could still there's possibility that it'll be stopped or stalled you know. The reason was because there'll be some real life circumstance that could affect the speed of translation, or the burnout that the translator suffer there even if it's translator favorite one for working too long there.

As for sending the translation to the reviewer, it was called review copy and for now only professional localization did that.

[Fred the Barber]

Just to attempt some constructive criticism: there is a path forward in this direction, which is to found a localization company. Said company would have to negotiate with license-holders in Japan and find a publisher (think Nutaku or Steam, or a partnership with MG or something), and also consider publicity, marketing, and project management, in addition to the translation side of things. That's going to require a ton of money and a ton of work (full-time jobs for several people), and the largest problem for both your idea and this suggestion is that they imagine Fuwanovel as sort of a monolithic source of people and labor. Fuwanovel is kind of just a message board, with a handful of hard-working people with real lives (and real jobs) who barely have time to keep it propped up in its current state, let alone do anything as grand as what you've proposed, which is to say nothing of something as ridiculous as the amount of work required to run a localization company.

I don't think things are likely to get any better than the localization companies we currently have. Someone could try to stand up another one, and it might even work out, but it'd take a few completely dedicated people with good connections and a decent chunk of cash (ballpark, a couple hundred thousand dollars, probably? presumably a loan, because who doesn't love debt?) to get it off the ground, and even with all of that, you likely wouldn't start seeing results for at least a year or so, and even then slowly.