Forum - View topicINTEREST: Overlord Author Kugane Maruyama Expresses Frustration at Fan Translations
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6875 Location: Kazune City |
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As others have said, the author wasn't going to see a dime or yen from overseas sales of this story in the first place, so it seems like a curious objection, relative to ones about fan translations of the main series. But really, he should also be blaming the one(s) among the Japanese fandom who bought all the disc volumes, obtained the special side story, and proceeded to post a scanned/retyped version online, so that other Japanese readers who didn't buy all those discs could pirate it. Without that happening, it's unlikely that foreign fan translations would've been created to begin with, because they wouldn't have had the raw text to translate.
The whole "we need fan translations because the official releases are too far behind" thing is a chicken-and-egg problem. The delay in overseas official releases wouldn't matter if the fan translations didn't exist in the first place, because the most recent English releases would then be the "most current" chapters, from the perspective of English-speaking readers. If people are learning Japanese well enough to go into Japanese-speaking online venues to get spoilers before the Western releases are available, that's their own fault. (And they presumably could be buying the Japanese releases instead.)
The numbers don't really bear that out. Popular series can easily get tens or hundreds of thousands of reads online, yet afaik many LNs struggle to get more than a few thousand sales over here. Same with anime and manga piracy -- the most heavily-pirated titles are the same recent and action/shounen works that are readily available. That points to many viewers/readers either being unable to afford legal access, or just wanting free stuff. In other words, piracy in regions with abundant legal options is a pricing problem. |
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jree78
Posts: 123 |
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You know, patience isn't a bad thing, read something else until the next novel comes out. This is his story, he has every right to complain.
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1039 |
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Yen Press hired from the same pool of translators as every other company, and in fact Overlord has the same translator as JNC's release of JK Haru Is a Sex Worker in Another World, which is widely praised as a good translation. Also, if you can't read Japanese, your assessment of translation quality is dubious. You can't tell which one is accurate, or know whether the flaws you perceive are from the translation or the original.
Fan translations persist because there are a bunch of entitled "fans" out there who think they should be able to read the books immediately after release, but they're too lazy to learn Japanese. Then they try to justify their piracy by claiming the official release is inferior, or too slow, or uses the wrong font. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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If that's how much story he has to tell, that's how long to make the series, even if it is selling well.
While I generally agree, translations into secondary markets are a hairier problem than initial release in primary markets. With anime it's possible to do more-or-less simultaneous releases (thus Crunchyroll etc), but manga and especially novels are trickier to do right, or at least well enough.
The Japanese fandom (and therefore industry) is a bit more accepting of the idea of certain things being only for the privileged few who bought the special editions of everything than the Western fandom is. The West is generally okay with the idea of it being posters or pencilboards or keychains or figures, etc, but tend to be of the view that actual story - including bonus side-story stuff - should be available to the whole audience, able to be purchased directly.
It's not unheard of for fan translators to actually buy the materials they translate, but either way I'd be surprised if the original text wasn't doing the rounds in the Japanese fandom's piracy circles.
"Just learn a totally new language to the point of fluency where you can read novels in it" really isn't realistic for most people, and it's (mostly) not down to laziness. |
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el_morris
 Posts: 199 Location: Tijuana, México |
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Recently here in Mexico, Panini started publishing the Overlord novels every three months starting February, I haven't read any fan translation so I'll stick with the books, to support the artist and because I like more reading in paper that in a tiny screen.
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1039 |
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People think learning a foreign language is way more difficult than it is, especially if you're only aiming for comprehension. Studying for less than an hour a day, you can get to the level necessary to read Shounen Jump with a dictionary in about four months. You might need a year or two to get up to the level of reading light novels, but considering it's been three years since the first English volume came out, and four years since the anime aired, that's not a ridiculous amount of time. |
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Leviathonlx1
Posts: 199 |
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Uh it is really difficult especially since Japanese is a very hard language. And not everyone has the time in the day to go and study a language nor is everyone created equal in the ability to learn another language. |
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asie
Posts: 12 |
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When I was speaking to a friend who used to be a moderator of a local forum for a decently popular shounen series, one problem was giving those who know Japanese a venue to discuss spoilers in their local language without exposing them to those who were waiting for an English official (or local language unauthorized) translation. This was for an anime airing, the delay was about 3 and 4 days respectively - I'm not sure if this would be doable on the scope of months without effectively splitting a local fandom in two. To make things more interesting, notice I said the local language translation was unauthorized - there was, at the time, an authorized dub, but that one was entire seasons behind both the Japanese and English airings! |
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aiem
Posts: 44 |
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He's full of himself and most likely making an excuse for his writer's slump. Those who pirate your stuff are most likely never going to buy that anyway. The only time you can make these people pay is if you hold a gun to their head metaphorically speaking. However, you lose more when your overseas publisher is behind many volumes. There's a reason why streaming services like Crunchyroll broke ground. Easily accessible with little to no delay.
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aiem
Posts: 44 |
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https://youtu.be/0Qkyt1wXNlI |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Whatever the reason (I smell a scapegoat) Kugane Maruyama had for that tweet, this is DANGEROUS. Because if japanese fans (even those that are not fans of Overlord) get the perception that the light novel ended sooner "because of those damned gaijins" it will have negative consequences* down the line, specially if other authors go the same route of blaming fans that they do not care about and/or do not impact their finances, for decisions authors do have control over.
*I remember some years ago how WotC saw the sales of their 4th edition of D&D plummet (the competition sales soared in that period) and they decided to pull the plug and stop selling pdf versions of their books, blamming piracy for the low sales of their current books. So do not be surprised when voices start to be heard saying that japanese publishers should stop licensing in english until piracy is stopped (don't laugh, remember same thing happened with the Fractale anime, albeit that was a short tantrum) |
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1039 |
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Learning a language, even one as different from English as Japanese, is simply a matter of continuous effort. It doesn't take a special talent. You don't have to "go" anywhere to do it. All you need is a detailed grammar guide, a flashcard app, and a Japanese-English dictionary, all of which you can get on your cellphone, tablet or desktop for free. If you want to read the latest manga or light novel before they're officially released in English, put the effort in. |
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aiem
Posts: 44 |
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If I had the time, I'd say bring it and call him out. Sadly I don't have the luxury of time to play his game. I do hope someone does though. This is one of the backwards mentality of Japan that needs to go. They think limited edition stuff like this will even help support him when if some die hard fan actually got it, it will be through scalper hands which he does not benefit from. |
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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He said has no motivation to write. This just give him less motivation. He was planning for 18 vola, now he said he will cut to 17 vols. It's his work, he can do whatever he wants. Talk about no motivation. He hasn't release any new vol for over a year anyway. Also, fan translation is better than the yen press version is a myth. You can easy compare or ask an English teacher(no bias opinion) to both version to see which one is better. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13572 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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I frequently rant about copyright restorations, trademarking the publican domain, and retroactive copyright extensions. Of course, such rants are about addressing the American public domain. However, in those rants I admit to frequenting manga scanlation and LN/WN fan translation sites a lot despite knowing the piracy issues. I admit to such hypocrisy, but you are unlikely to see/hear Disney do that. That is, them admitting to trademarking the public domain or lobbying for longer or stronger copyright terms is hypocritical when much of their empire was built using the public domain |
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