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INTEREST: Manga Creator Kohske Asks Scanslators to Stop Sharing Gangsta.

Animegunclub wrote:

Honestly, this is terribly sad. It's not the artist's responsibility to prevent their work from being pirated, it's up to the distributors and publishers to crack down on it. If they're implying to her the reason they don't pay her much for her work is because of piracy, that's ridiculously scummy. edits for pronoun correction~

A good chunk of her income is from royalties on volumes sold so piracy affects how much she is compensated regardless as to how well they crack down on it.

Eh. Sometimes it's 4 to 6 month waits between volumes and then they stop translating it entirely leaving you sitting with 5+ volumes of a title they'll never finish. Then for some series they don't bother reprinting it and you're looking at paying $50+ for a single volume. Or in some cases they'll just refuse to pick up a title because it's too short/long, old and/or niche.

It's also not really helpful to say that scanslations are "low quality", part of the problem is that many of them aren't.

That's a terrible thing to tell your customers. But it leaves me wondering--is scanlation an issue with manga only? Do other publishers in other countries have problems with people importing their stuff and localizing them for piracy use? I've only heard little bit of it here and there, usually revolving around things like Harry Potter novels and the like.

teferi wrote:

Eh. Sometimes it's 4 to 6 month waits between volumes and then they stop translating it entirely leaving you sitting with 5+ volumes of a title they'll never finish. Then for some series they don't bother reprinting it and you're looking at paying $50+ for a single volume. Or in some cases they'll just refuse to pick up a title because it's too short/long, old and/or niche. It's also not really helpful to say that scanslations are "low quality", part of the problem is that many of them aren't.

I'm not interested in being helpful to scanslations. Regardless of their quality, they're stolen intellectual property.

I don't think they're saying it's not helpful to scanlators, but that calling scanlations low quality isn't really an argument against it and in favor of official releases, because they usually aren't really low quality.

Their point is, I think, that people don't want to wait for so many months for the oficial product because they can't see why does it need to take so long, seeing as the pirate releases are fast and just as good.
If they really were low quality, your argument would make more sense, but they're often on par with or even better than official translations.

Whether that justifies anything is a different matter. But we're also talking about motivation and what makes people decide to turn to piracy.

Their point is, I think, that people don't want to wait for so many months for the oficial product because they can't see why does it need to take so long, seeing as the pirate releases are fast and just as good.
If they really were low quality, your argument would make more sense, but they're often on par with or even better than official translations.

Whether that justifies anything is a different matter. But we're also talking about motivation and what makes people decide to turn to piracy.

Having seen samples of MANY scanslations, I can tell you they're not. Usually grainy scans and questionable/rushed translations. This argument may have held water in the TokyoPop era but official translations are leagues better than pirated content nowadays.

So, once again, they take longer because they're:

1. Legal and go through the proper checks.
2. Better as a result of that.

But really justification need not play into it. One is legal and supports the artist. One doesn't. The debate honestly stops there.

But really justification need not play into it. One is legal and supports the artist. One doesn't. The debate honestly stops there.

It's a decades old argument, but not all official releases are inherently better. Depending on the company, translators are freelance so different volumes change hands and you often times lose the voice a character once had at the beginning of a series versus the middle. Plus, if you have a translator that is completely unfamiliar with a particular series they're working on, picking up on subtle nuances can be difficult. Gundam has always suffered from this problem stateside (and continues to with Viz and Vertical).

I honestly don't believe this mangaka is getting hit that hard by pirated material. If that was truly the case then there'd be a much more series discussion with publishers over the material (there'd be a lot more shutdowns on sites versus a Twitter rant).

Given the huge amount of scanlations that still exist to this day, apparently it doesn't stop there.

I don't read Gangsta or know anything about the official translation, but I can assure you there are plenty of God-awful official translations out there that make any kind of statement of "official = better" to be laughable. One of the key benefits of fan translations is you usually have multiple to choose from, some good, some bad.

You forget "proper checks" is why some translations like Detective Conan, Gyakuten Saiban, JoJo's Bizzare Adventure, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh get stuck with awful American names instead of the actual names. Unofficial translations can use the original names without being obligated to. That alone is reason enough for me to resort to fan translations of those products. I refuse to be talked down to by big companies.

I mean you can say all that but have you worked in manga? Lets say you somehow translate and typeset everything all in one day and have an agreement with the Japanese publisher to send it in for approvals before releasing it digitally or sending it to print then they take a week to get it back to you?

I can definitely understand that people want it now and are willing to steal a low quality version of it rather than wait but that's they're decision to hurt the author and I don't think it's useful to conflate that subject with the official translations being accelerated. Professional manga translators are some of the hardest working people I know.

I don't think a majority of people turn to piracy because a good quality scan popped up before it was available in the US, they turn to it because it's a free way to consume media. Even though it's an example for anime, there are subgroups that blatantly rip the content from sites like Crunchyroll and HIDIVE, and they're typically among the most popularly downloaded subs of the show.

There are simply too many variables to address to try to streamline the process, and that's actually a good thing. Saying "If pirates can do it this fast, why can't publishers?" severely undermines the importance of making sure a high quality product is available for us to buy AS WELL AS ensuring the artist gets their cut. Because pirates don't concern themselves with any of that.

They're more concerned about you turning off Adblock+ so they can generate revenue with every click.

teferi wrote:

Eh. Sometimes it's 4 to 6 month waits between volumes and then they stop translating it entirely leaving you sitting with 5+ volumes of a title they'll never finish. Then for some series they don't bother reprinting it and you're looking at paying $50+ for a single volume. Or in some cases they'll just refuse to pick up a title because it's too short/long, old and/or niche. It's also not really helpful to say that scanslations are "low quality", part of the problem is that many of them aren't.

I'm not interested in being helpful to scanslations. Regardless of their quality, they're stolen intellectual property.

It really does, because that's the only thing that actually matters. The author getting paid. You don't like the official translation? Learn Japanese and buy the original tankobon.

Demanding people learn Japanese or **** off doesn't really change anything. The only way to combat piracy is to make buying official releases as convenient as piracy. That's what Crunchyroll/Funi/Sentai/Amazon/Netflix have done for anime and it works.