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Paying for translations? Illegal? Been done before?


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So, there's always that somewhat obscure VN that you've had your eye on for as long as you've known about it, but no one else knows it exists, and there is no interest in translating it anywhere.  You don't speak Japanese, and though you're studying it, you're not getting very far, so you can't read it or translate it yourself either. 

 

One solution could be finding a professional translation service that will translate the scripts for you for a price.  It's cheating I know, but has anyone ever heard of any "translation" groups or individuals doing this, or does anyone know if it's even legal?  You certainly don't own the rights to the scripts and text, but you won't be causing any financial harm to the company that made the game either if you don't ship the patch with an illegal copy of the game.

 

Thoughts?

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It could be potential profit in the future for them.

But even if it isn't, most companies just don't like it, and I understand why not.

How would you like if someone was making a profit out of your hard work? Not very nice is it?

 

Maybe it's because I can't understand why not xD. I would be delighted if people started translating my works so long as they bought my works separately from it.

 

I mean the people who are paying for the translation are doing exactly that.

 

Paying for the effort and skill to translate.

 

Not the works of the VN itself. Basically I would have to buy the VN itself thus paying for the author's work and then pay again for the translation which are 2 separate things. Thus I don't see why they wouldn't want it.

 

And like you said, its potential profit since they are tapping into an untapped market.

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Maybe it's because I can't understand why not xD. I would be delighted if people started translating my works so long as they bought my works separately from it.

 

I mean the people who are paying for the translation are doing exactly that.

 

Paying for the effort and skill to translate.

 

Not the works of the VN itself. Basically I would have to buy the VN itself thus paying for the author's work and then pay again for the translation which are 2 separate things. Thus I don't see why they wouldn't want it.

 

And like you said, its potential profit since they are tapping into an untapped market.

There are some companies that ARE thrilled about their titles getting translated but NOT for profit, 07Expansion is totally okay with people translating his works, but you cant profit off them.

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If Japanese companies wanted their games translated, they'd work with JAST, Mangagamer, or Sekai Project to get it done.  The rest probably don't want their games translated at present, and there's many potential reasons for this.  Someone coming along and selling an unlicensed translation of their work to them is like theft.  The ideas in those games are their's, and an unauthorized 3rd party charging money to distribute those ideas (in another language) is intellectual theft, in the same vein as plagiarism.  It doesn't matter if it might increase the Japanese companies' sales slightly.  It's still theft.

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Maybe it's because I can't understand why not xD. I would be delighted if people started translating my works so long as they bought my works separately from it.

You paid a legitimate 3rd party company to translate it so you could distribute it, this means that the owner of the game made 0 profit from your translation whilte the translators got X thousands for it.

That is basically theft on top of copyright law violations.

 

What should happen is the translating company pays a certain amount of fees to the original company so everyone can profit a percentage from the product when they distribute it.

 

I don't think you'd be delighted when you know other people are making money from your work and you're getting nothing from it.

 

Say what you want but "recognition in the west" right now is worth almost nothing in the Japanese visual novel market.

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You paid a legitimate 3rd party company to translate it so you could distribute it, this means that the owner of the game made 0 profit from your translation whilte the translators got X thousands for it.

That is basically theft on top of copyright law violations.

 

What should happen is the translating company pays a certain amount of fees to the original company so everyone can profit a percentage from the product when they distribute it.

 

I don't think you'd be delighted when you know other people are making money from your work and you're getting nothing from it.

 

Say what you want but "recognition in the west" right now is worth almost nothing in the Japanese visual novel market.

This is true for most VN companies, they see us as a non existent market

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There is no theft involved in translating a copyrighted work for pay.

It is simply a form of copyright infringement.

Let's suppose I offer to pay someone to provide me with a personal translation of something I want to read that isn't officially translated into English.  And they do so.  And I read it myself.

After some time passes, I have a change of heart and decide I will let everyone benefit by uploading it somewhere.

 

Nothing has actually been stolen at that point.

 

The theft doesn't enter into unless I had another change of heart and decide to start making money off selling the English translation instead of just uploading it for free.

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Assume the following premises:

1. Intellectual property is like real property.  The owner owns this property, and retains sole right to monetize this property unless this right is legally transferred.

2. A game script is intellectual property.

3. Translation of the game script is a modification to the original script, and the ideas in the script still belong to the original owner.

4. The monetization of others' intellectual property without their consent is intellectual theft.

 

It follows that the act of the translator handing the translated script to others for a fee is intellectual theft, whether "others" is 1 person or many people.  That script is property that is not his (alone).

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Assume the following premises:

1. Intellectual property is like real property.  The owner owns this property, and retains sole right to monetize this property unless this right is legally transferred.

2. A game script is intellectual property.

3. Translation of the game script is a modification to the original script, and the ideas in the script still belong to the original owner.

4. The monetization of others' intellectual property without their consent is intellectual theft.

 

It follows that the act of the translator handing the translated script to others for a fee is intellectual theft, whether "others" is 1 person or many people.  That script is property that is not his (alone).

 

Well, if you want to support the current laws surrounding "intellectual property", remember this:

They want to reserve ALL rights, not just monetization rights.

The use of others' intellectual property without their consent is not permitted.

So if I am a translator and I want to abide by the laws of IP, I have to refrain from even the act of translating anything copyrighted.  Whether I sell it or not does not even matter.

 

It just isn't possible to be a supporter of the current IP laws and support fan translations at the same time.  I agree with you that it somehow seems "worse" to be receiving payment for translating copyrighted materials.  But I think it falls in a middle ground somewhere in between ordinary volunteer translations and actually selling translated bootlegs...

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If Japanese companies wanted their games translated, they'd work with JAST, Mangagamer, or Sekai Project to get it done.  The rest probably don't want their games translated at present, and there's many potential reasons for this.  Someone coming along and selling an unlicensed translation of their work to them is like theft.  The ideas in those games are their's, and an unauthorized 3rd party charging money to distribute those ideas (in another language) is intellectual theft, in the same vein as plagiarism.  It doesn't matter if it might increase the Japanese companies' sales slightly.  It's still theft.

 

It's not really that they don't want them translated. Having their games translated is basically as win-win as it gets. They essentially don't do much besides provide the localization company with scripts and maybe help with hacking and changing game engine stuff. That and they get payed to let them translate and sell it. For them it's essentially free money. The only problem is, most localization companies don't have the money to acquire rights to a lot of the big-name games out there. 

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It's not really that they don't want them translated. Having their games translated is basically as win-win as it gets. 

That's not necessarily the case.  There's many potential reasons for this:

1. The company simply doesn't want to attract Western attention (i.e., bad press overseas is bad for domestic business)

2. Potential sales overseas aren't worth the effort of coordinating with Western companies for an overseas release (i.e., negotiations, engine hacking, modifying art, looking into potential international legal issues, quality assurance)

3. The company has a moral stance against removing mosaics.

4. The company is resistant to dropping prices for an overseas release lower than Japanese retail value (typically $80).

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You paid a legitimate 3rd party company to translate it so you could distribute it, this means that the owner of the game made 0 profit from your translation while the translators got X thousands for it.

That is basically theft on top of copyright law violations.

 

What should happen is the translating company pays a certain amount of fees to the original company so everyone can profit a percentage from the product when they distribute it.

 

I don't think you'd be delighted when you know other people are making money from your work and you're getting nothing from it.

 

Say what you want but "recognition in the west" right now is worth almost nothing in the Japanese visual novel market.

 

I think you misunderstood me :/

 

I said pay for the translation works, not the VN itself. I can't exactly play a VN with only it's patch and not have the VN itself thus would need to buy the VN so the author DOES get money.

 

It's kinda like buying a DLC to a game. The DLC itself is useless unless you bought the game.

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It's ethically sketchy, since someone else is profiting off of someone else's product without actually working with them or getting their permission to do so.  The only time I can think of that not being ethically sketchy is the first-sale doctrine, which a lot of companies try to bypass by using digital copies, renting and account linking anyway.

 

The closest comparison I can think of would be taking game files from a game you bought and paying another group to make a mod for you.  You don't own the files, you own the right to use the files.  The files belong to the company that made them.  It's quite clear if you read any EULA that comes with any kind of software.  Technically, it's not illegal to do that, but it's easy to see why the original creators might get kinda ticked off.  Same goes with the script of a VN, to the furthest extend of my knowledge, since it's part of the software. 

 

Feel free to dispute or disagree with what I said, I'm most definitely not the master on legal stuff.

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That's not necessarily the case.  There's many potential reasons for this:

1. The company simply doesn't want to attract Western attention (i.e., bad press overseas is bad for domestic business)

2. Potential sales overseas aren't worth the effort of coordinating with Western companies for an overseas release (i.e., negotiations, engine hacking, modifying art, looking into potential international legal issues, quality assurance)

3. The company has a moral stance against removing mosaics.

4. The company is resistant to dropping prices for an overseas release lower than Japanese retail value (typically $80).

 

1. Depends on what you mean by bad press. If the company sells well enough in Japan then I don't think whatever people think of it over here will have any effect on that. 

2. But most of that is relatively simple stuff that most VN companies could most likely do even without any help from the developer. 

3. There's nothing that says a western release is required to remove mosaics. Plenty don't.

4. Well it depends. When they sell their games at $80 in Japan they're looking to pay for the cost that went into making the game in the first place. The cost of localizing a game probably requires nowhere near that much money for them, and they would most definitely not lose money in the process. 

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It's not really that they don't want them translated. Having their games translated is basically as win-win as it gets. They essentially don't do much besides provide the localization company with scripts and maybe help with hacking and changing game engine stuff. That and they get payed to let them translate and sell it. For them it's essentially free money. The only problem is, most localization companies don't have the money to acquire rights to a lot of the big-name games out there. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

This isn't really true at all, as most Japanese companies just don't want to deal with the west, Alicesoft is like this, as are a lot of VN studios While certainly us westerners could bring them lots of money, alot share the mentality that they don't want filthy gaijan's getting their hands on this stuff.

They don't want to deal with the west because of the stigma associated with VNs here, Japan still remembers the Rapelay scandal quite vividly. Why do you think every visual novel has "For sale in Japan only" on the cover? Because having it in another country would just bring unwanted attention.

It's not just some pseudo xenophobia, we did this to ourselves and we'll likely keep doing it in the future, although the Western market for VNs is slowly opening up, but don't expect a great variation of content from Japan for a long time, we're the ones that need to do the work here (for the most part), not them.

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@nosebleed, that rape simulator was quite something, no wonder they´re viewed as *ahem, lets say morally flexible? & the other scandal, the one with dem prostitutes & av actresses beeing raped 4 days wasnt helpfull either.

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  • 1 month later...

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