hime whines about game-related stuff! (mostly japan related)

[TranceHime]

.. anti.crusaders ..

So, the other day (and by the other day I mean like yesterday since I started writing this) I read an IRC log between some of the folks over at Fuwanovel which, depending on who reads it, can either be incredibly infuriating or incredibly hilarious due to the questionably politickal nature of it. Soon thereafter I read this blog entry written by the same female instigator as most of the political material of the pastebin (I sadly do not have the link handy on me right now link). Well, needless to say, as a formerly amateur translator of visual novels and mangos and an occasional translator of video games (I have worked on the translation of Touhou Souzin'engi "Genius of Sappheiros," to cite a recent game) I am absolutely appalled and really, my opinion of them has pretty much become something like HY's reaction to mentioning them in IRC:

18:05:33 (HY) >fuwanovel
18:05:38 (HY) HahahahahahHAHAHA

Now, I never had much problem with Fuwanovel in the past, and other visual novel communities that cater to the non-Japanese-fluent demographic (Hello, tlwiki, etc.) but there are just some things that have come to light amidst recent events, especially with the proliferation of English visual novels by JAST USA. One of the main issues that come to light are directly in tandem with the anti-piracy sentiment and crusade that has suddenly come out of nowhere, which I'll get to in a short while because Aaeru's a terrible nutter about it and a clear example as to why people like her make me as a translator want to vomit in my mouth. But again, that comes later. What comes now is the definition of the term "fan translator," amongst the observations I have made which make me want to repeatedly slam my head into a nail.

fan translations

I will open this with a very striking comment from the blog entry I linked to earlier, something that should serve as some nice food for thought (and ragefuel for me as a translator).

I disagree. Fan Translations are merely translating the work. They do not give them links to free copy of the work. I think translations should be encouraged unless the authors/creators say otherwise.

This comment was a response to someone who said fan translations were illegal because you are directly editing the work of somebody else without their express consent. As far as I'm concerned, the original comment that the quoted response was to is actually very much true (thanks Berne Convention!) but that's not the point here. The point here is that I still really can't believe that there are still people out there who take the notion of translation period for granted. This isn't even specifically limited to fan translation. Translation of all games is difficult in nature and just doesn't happen just like that. Even badly translated games have probably had some effort of degree put into them. The only thing I think shouldn't get the pass are badly localized games, but that's delving into different territory. As far as I'm concerned, though, fan translators do what they do for their own reasons, and the onus is on them to decide what they will do with what they ultimately and inevitably end up with. Translators have lives too, and they spend painstaking amounts of effort in making sure the translations are fluid, accurate, and in the long run, correct.

So what the hell is the term fan translator that I have been throwing around? Well, a lot of people are wont to jump to the blanket definition of "someone who really likes x material and is willing to translate x material from y language to z language." I, however, think that there's a deeper layer underneath. This is linked somewhat to my understanding of the recent links between folks at places like JAST USA and the translators who the companies yoink their material from. Recently, to cite an example, JAST USA have appeared to be licensing translated visual novels which have been done on a voluntary basis and paying the necessary royalties and fees to the translators. At that point, I draw the line between "fan" and "amateur/professional." If you're a "fan translator," I like to make the distinction that you're doing it solely of your own volition and that you're not looking to make any money as a direct motivation (though it may happen that people offer you money for it). It's here that we begin our descent into madness, though, and most of the cannon fodder comes from the blog post.

The blog post runs on the basic premise (support on it can be found in Aaeru's query with Shingo) that distributing fully-patched visual novels to promote fan translation will somehow magically bring about more official translations. Well, I've got one response to that: Bullshit. A lot of people have already stated some reasons as to exactly why it's bullshit. One of the biggest counterpoints that pretty much instantly take it down is the fact that there's absolutely no incentive for companies to release games that not only have been fully translated already, but are available for free. Aaeru is effectively displaying her complete lack of business acumen, making such outlandish proclamations as "we fan translators are sharing your work for free and making them popular, therefore WE ARE BREATHING LIFE INTO THE INDUSTRY." Again with the throwing out of the fan translator, as if it were some crusader, some soldier-side entity in the name of visual novel promotion.

I am appalled by that notion that simply because the inherent act of translating games in a foreign language to one easily understood by most people that it entitles people to start acting high-and-mighty and throwing out all semblance of respect for the original creators and developers of the games. SALES AND FIGURES are the lifeblood of the industry, not JUST popularity. To increase the popularity factor by draining the life out of the industry by siphoning sales and figures IS NOT THE SOLUTION. It is very infuriating to me that fan translators of this nature have control over this. Fan translators do what they do because they love to do it, right? They want to share the games that they think are beautiful to the rest of the world. No doubt, they want more of these games to be produced so they can be enjoyed more, right? Perhaps I am making some presumptuous claims here. But the bottom line is this - if they want to propagate the "irrefutably good spirit of fan translation," in Aaeru's words, the way to do it is NOT to basically provide pirated copies of existing games.

Whatever happened to alternatives such as individual, non-full game patches (to provide an incentive for people to import the game) or as a script dump (to provide the translated text for people to read along or refer to while perusing an imported copy)? People such as Aaeru are looking at this from an incredibly self-centered viewpoint, and it is people like her that make me question why I was at once considered a "fan translator" (and by extension an amateur one). And you know what, we can't even properly focus on the alternatives to these methods of fan translation. Case in point: console games. Especially PSX-era and other similar console games.

Now, you might be thinking that this is fairly irrelevant due to how old they are, but due to the nature of console games, it is very easy to make the inference that non-game patches of translation will be applied on pirated copies (since how else would you do it, amirite?!). It is very difficult as a fan translator to do this sort of thing legitimately. It might as well be said that fan translations are much better off simply to be shared to people you know, who may in turn spread it to other people they know, and so forth. But no, there are ACTUALLY PEOPLE who think that being a fan translator IN THE NAME OF ~*~spreading visual novel-ism~*~ entitles them to overtly doing quite illegal acts. I could go on and on about this, but really, this just boils down to...

tl;dr

Translation = good
Finding ways to legitimately get translated works released (through correspondence or licensing) = good
Going on a batshit insane crusade and say "spread fan translation through piracy" = what the hell

speaking of piracy

I use the basis of fan translation earlier to finally get to the crux of this huge rant and say this: who the fuck thinks it's a good idea to go on an entire piracy crusade using a visual novel site as a front? Dude, Aaeru directly freaking SAYS the following in the log:

[08:03] <@Aaeru_> well do they know the history of copyright? do they know that theyve been sold a lie all their lives?
[08:03] <&Ignis-> because what they have been believing so far is that there's nothing wrong in doing that
[08:04] <&Checkmate> why do they have to know?
[08:04] <@Aaeru_> because by learning about the schemes they employ, we can win back our liberties
[08:04] <@Aaeru_> and our freedom of speech
[08:04] <@Aaeru_> abolish copyright
[08:04] <@Aaeru_> free culture
[08:05] <@Aaeru_> those are good things to be working for

No, seriously, that is some mindfuck shit going down here. The zeal and entitlement that goes on for most of the log that came from is just unreal; and it does pain me to think that there just could be more people like Aaeru out there. When the heck was piracy ever the right way to go about promoting something that you like, in the hopes that legitimate, licensed material of the thing you want, will surface in YOUR community? There is a pretty big damn reason why piracy is usually cracked down on in most communities, no matter where you go. And to see something shitting all over that integrity like this under the guise of god-fucking-damn VISUAL NOVEL translation is just rank. Most of the points I'd already exhausted in a wild stream of consciousness earlier, but seriously just read the log and I am sure that will feed your minds like crazy.

Hoping to start some flames up in here.

[Ranmilia]

Log is crazy, Aaeru is crazy, much ironic entertainment derived.

That said, I don't know that I agree with trancerant either.  "Finding ways to legitimately get translated works released (through correspondence or licensing) = good"?  Mmmm.  It is (debatably) all very well and good and sensical if, indeed, sales figures and trying to get licensed releases is your goal.  But... one point on which Aaeru is correct is that quite a few translation groups/people/projects do not share these goals, instead simply aiming for something like "increase the number of people that can read/play/enjoy X work/category of works." 

Not necessarily for crazy or "disrespectful" reasons, either.  Touhou games, for example, will absolutely positively never see official releases outside of Japan, or (barring a massive policy switch on Zun's part) even inside Japan except for the very limited doujin market.  This is because one of Zun's explicitly stated goals in continuing to make games is to support Japanese doujin culture as something that exists as a subculture independent of large-scale commercial markets.  He doesn't object to similarly limited fan translations, but can't explicitly approve them either.  So we're left with the current situation, whereupon respecting the creator's wishes seems to be best served by translating the games for the limited fandom, but NOT pushing for any sort of increased sales or licensing.  (And then of course there's the question of translating works that aren't sold for profit at all, or that were sold at one time but have long since fallen into abandonware limbo)

On the subject of VNs, one could also go further and argue, for instance, that niche VNs exist as a profitable industry at all is a unique product of Japanese culture, and that it is impossible to make them profitable to overseas audiences, and perhaps even harmful to their existing industry to try.  This viewpoint is certainly not without evidence - a decently long list of companies have tried to license and translate VNs in the past, and all of them met with catastrophic failure and quick dissolution (excepting the few that stuck firmly to hardcore porn and absolutely nothing else). 

The usual rallying cry in the scene goes something like "but they were all poorly managed, THIS time will be different, we can get The Deal if everyone keeps sacrificing and holding out for The Grand Vision, just keep waiting and throwing money at us!"  .... yeah, at some point, this starts to ring more like wishful thinking at best and very ripe scam potential at worst. 

(disclaimer: devil's advocacy, I don't necessarily agree with this myself.)

[TranceHime]

That said, I don't know that I agree with trancerant either.  "Finding ways to legitimately get translated works released (through correspondence or licensing) = good"?  Mmmm.  It is (debatably) all very well and good and sensical if, indeed, sales figures and trying to get licensed releases is your goal.  But... one point on which Aaeru is correct is that quite a few translation groups/people/projects do not share these goals, instead simply aiming for something like "increase the number of people that can read/play/enjoy X work/category of works."

It is indeed of questionable worth in the grand scheme of things and I really cannot say for myself that it is as blatantly good as I make it sound like, but I was really trying to discuss it within the scope of the material I was admittedly shitting on. And while it is definitely true that there are groups out there that simply wish to increase the viewer/playerbase through whatever means necessary, that doesn't mean they have to do it by means of blatant piracy, and the entitlement of said act is really what gets me riled up. That said, there's really not a whole lot I can say to refute this at the moment because I wasn't of a state of mind to actually dig around and look for actual material to support the crap I'm spewing at the moment (tired and long day at uni qq)

Not necessarily for crazy or "disrespectful" reasons, either.  Touhou games, for example, will absolutely positively never see official releases outside of Japan, or (barring a massive policy switch on Zun's part) even inside Japan except for the very limited doujin market.  This is because one of Zun's explicitly stated goals in continuing to make games is to support Japanese doujin culture as something that exists as a subculture independent of large-scale commercial markets.  He doesn't object to similarly limited fan translations, but can't explicitly approve them either.  So we're left with the current situation, whereupon respecting the creator's wishes seems to be best served by translating the games for the limited fandom, but NOT pushing for any sort of increased sales or licensing.  (And then of course there's the question of translating works that aren't sold for profit at all, or that were sold at one time but have long since fallen into abandonware limbo)

This is probably one pretty big exception for me and I guess it does pretty well in picking out some of the things I've said (I was one of the translators for the SoEW eng patch motk brought out, don't ask...). I call this a big exception because this is indeed something ZUN has explicitly stated, and has even set out guidelines and conditions into using his work (see the White Canvas case, for instance). There's really not much that can be done if you ride on my train of thought because the creator's wishes are stated right there and are very clear. And anyway, it seems like the whole "translate the games for a limited selection of people who are interested" deal is doing pretty well right now, at least in the case of Touhou. Again, my main beef is with the larger scale of things with people distributing fully patched, full-blown versions of translated games.

On the subject of VNs, one could also go further and argue, for instance, that niche VNs exist as a profitable industry at all is a unique product of Japanese culture, and that it is impossible to make them profitable to overseas audiences, and perhaps even harmful to their existing industry to try.  This viewpoint is certainly not without evidence - a decently long list of companies have tried to license and translate VNs in the past, and all of them met with catastrophic failure and quick dissolution (excepting the few that stuck firmly to hardcore porn and absolutely nothing else).

The usual rallying cry in the scene goes something like "but they were all poorly managed, THIS time will be different, we can get The Deal if everyone keeps sacrificing and holding out for The Grand Vision, just keep waiting and throwing money at us!"  .... yeah, at some point, this starts to ring more like wishful thinking at best and very ripe scam potential at worst. 

Really, VNs are quite the niche market and it is really fair to say, or at least make the assumption that it is "impossible to make them profitable to overseas audiences." And I also am aware of the evidences laid out in support of this premise (I've been playing the goddrat piece of crap since I was 10), and the "usual rallying cry" as you lay out here is actually a pretty interesting angle on it. Really, the main reason I foresee a lot of my fellow VN enthusiasts saying is "their choice of VN is too crass for overseas audiences, which led to their financial demise." At present, JAST USA are getting out a bunch of interesting visual novels out there for overseas players. Now I am not going to say that they are doing awesomely well but apparently their business model has been delivering, so... To be honest, I'm just going to say that the visual novel "market" (could you even call it that? I really don't think so, but a more suitable term fails to come to mind right now) just has some potential overseas. In Japan itself it does fine enough though.

So ultimately, the crux of the muddle that is my stance is that the current approach towards harnessing that potential as constantly brought up by Aaeru is just a convoluted mess that doesn't appear to be well-thought-out.