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NEWS: Manga Piracy Site Manga Rock Shuts Down

No, the official translations don't take months (beside One Punch-Man). They come out the same time as the Japanese release. Heck, VIZ can beat the scanlations to the punch. They get the chapters two weeks ahead of everyone, but they aren't allowed to and have to release them on street date.

I don't like your idea, I don't want people to not get paid for there work or get paid less. I already don't like the current system VIZ and the other companies using and this idea is the worst version of it

Again, lessons from Anime market, Crunchyroll, and music suggest a way forward. It should be noted that Manga Rock and its ilk did a tremendous job of popularizing and exposing manga to a wider audience. This is an opportunity for the industry, not merely a time to suppress “piracy.”

If the official translators get the raw material "two weeks early" then the comparison is not a fair one. I have seen countless manga chapters, as well as anime episodes translated by fans come out within 24 hours of the raws being available. I don't think too many professional translators, if any, are that fast. 24 hours is a lot faster than 2 weeks.
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He's saying they get the chapters 2 weeks before publishing, which is to say they get the chapters the same time that the publishers get them to be sent to the printing.

And the reason they get them early is specifically so they can produce consistent translations that have time for quality control and - this is key here - can be checked and approved by the rights holders in Japan. Which would all have to happen under your hypothetical manga service.

Yes, I understand that. I'm not sure how it is relevant here. We are discussing manga being distributed electronically, over a computer or a device like a tablet or a smartphone, not a physical print volume.

Of course the translation would need to be approved, which is something I clearly stated when I first described the idea. That is very easily done via software. Once someone has submitted a proposed translation then the rights holder gets an immediate notification; the rights holder reviews it and either accepts it (which means it goes live and starts earning them money right away) or they can reject the translation, in which case it does not become available for viewing. Ideally the translator would be informed why the translation was not approved so that they could not make the same mistake next time.

The beauty of this system is that it harnesses the power of not only crowdsourcing, but also the willingness of fans to bust their rears to work quickly, as well as people's competitive nature. The first translation which is good enough to get approved is the one that gets paid. This creates incentive to both work quickly and correctly. If a particular translator is slow then someone else will get the payment and the credit for the work. If a translator is inaccurate or sloppy then their work will not be approved.

Replica_Rabbit wrote:

No, the official translations don't take months (beside One Punch-Man). They come out the same time as the Japanese release. Heck, VIZ can beat the scanlations to the punch. They get the chapters two weeks ahead of everyone, but they aren't allowed to and have to release them on street date.

If the official translators get the raw material "two weeks early" then the comparison is not a fair one. I have seen countless manga chapters, as well as anime episodes translated by fans come out within 24 hours of the raws being available. I don't think too many professional translators, if any, are that fast. 24 hours is a lot faster than 2 weeks.

I don't want people to get paid less either. My suggestion pays both the translators and the original creators of the work. Everyone gets paid. In fact, the original creators would be paid more because their work would be available to a larger number of readers, and therefore would earn them more royalties. Please explain why you think my suggestion would pay anyone less, because that's NOT what I am suggesting at all, and I'm puzzled as to how you got that mistaken impression. The whole point of my suggestion is to put the money in the pockets of the creators (read: manga artists) instead of some scummy company engaged in piracy without a dime going back to the creators.

AkumaChef wrote:

The beauty of this system is that it harnesses the power of not only crowdsourcing, but also the willingness of fans to bust their rears to work quickly, as well as people's competitive nature. The first translation which is good enough to get approved is the one that gets paid. This creates incentive to both work quickly and correctly. If a particular translator is slow then someone else will get the payment and the credit for the work. If a translator is inaccurate or sloppy then their work will not be approved.

Also this is just straight up moronic. You're essentially saying translators should do free work for the chance that maybe they'll get paid. I know people like to break out the cannard that fan translators/scanlators are more "passionate" but passion is a poor excuse to do professional work for free.

Frankly your entire idea rings of somebody who doesn't understand the logistics of translation, publishing, or hiring. Everything you suggest here is massively less efficient than a publisher interviewing and hiring a dedicated translator for a simulpub. It's also actively ignorant of the work pipeline involved in the process as well as how people actually make money from publishing...well anything, but especially manga.

2. I am a bit ambivalent that fan translations violate copy right
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6. Since the manga translation, at least into English, is very slow [in general] some accommodation to faster albeit not authorized or approved fan based translation makes sense. It might provide data for authors and publishers to make business investment in translation.

Do you...not know how manga publishers make their money? Because they make it by selling the print magazine.

What you're proposing is that a publishing company release the digital version of a chapter 2 weeks before their print one

let me emphasize, would still be subject to the lengthy quality check and approval process by the publisher because no publisher is going to put out a translation they haven't checked and approved in this day and age

So you're proposing that the publishers essentially keep a full editorial department active 24 hours a day to immediately respond to presumably multiple submissions from effectively anonymous translator(s) in order to immediately review, edit, and select a preferred translation. And also provide feedback to those that aren't accepted. For dozens if not hundreds of series coming out every week.

You're essentially saying translators should do free work for the chance that maybe they'll get paid. I know people like to break out the cannard that fan translators/scanlators are more "passionate" but passion is a poor excuse to do professional work for free.

Frankly your entire idea rings of somebody who doesn't understand the logistics of translation, publishing, or hiring.

The ranking part is the problem, the way you said it come off as paying the fan translators in an exposure instead of money. You don't need a ranking system if you paying the people correctly. If they not doing a good job, someone else better will take over.

No. I'm not proposing any changes with respect to the timing releasing a digital version with respect to the print one. I'm suggesting that when they DO release a digital version (at whatever time they choose, just like the do now) they do so via crowdsourcing instead of the traditional methods. No changes to timing, other than the fact that crowdsourced translations happen faster tha pro ones.

Nevermind how long this process would last even if you made this literally-backwards system where the digital release crowdfunded the print release,

AkumaChef forgets that Japanese publishers and studios are extremely protective of their IP and how it's represented. Remember: Japanese studios will send reps over to licensors in the US and demand changes to scripts (even if they make no sense) just because they can.

You're asking that they exchange this functional system where licensors and translators that they have a working rapport with, built up over several years, for a system where countless wholly-anonymous individuals with no discernable body of work submit countless translation scripts, without any of them conforming to any possible style guide or standard that the publisher would establish.

Why open the door to any number of people making failed attempts at translating your script and messing up your exacting requirements when the people at Viz/Seven Seas/etc are doing it just fine and the money's rolling in like clockwork? Competitiveness is not a replacement for quality.

Also, I'd like to know what your standard for "slow" is, seeing as Shonen Jump+ has translations for their releases the same week as its Japanese release.

In order to do the translation, your crowd of fan translators would need the digital copy in advance of the official digital release.

Just how do you proposed to make that available without releasing the Japanese version to the world?

Here's a hypothetical example.
Under the current system, a given Japanese digital chapter is ready on January 1. However, because they're waiting for a pro translation, they hold onto it for 2 weeks to wait for the pros to do their thing. Then, on January 14 they release both the Japanese and the English versions.
Everybody has to wait two weeks.

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Nope.
3) Simultaneously, the editorial team upload the chapter to a website
4) The next 24-72 hours is spent with the editorial team working in shifts to stay open for any number of anonymous translations to be sent in before sifting through each one to find one that's acceptable
5) They decide which one they like enough to pay them, while the others are just kinda SOL for their work, I guess.

6) 7-10 days later the print magazine is released because that's still how long the printing and distribution process takes, at which point the digital release has been out, in Japanese, for 2 weeks, and magazine sales tank even harder.