For the longest time, fan translation of a series whether they are novel or manga or anime are just that. A translation made by the fans. I don't really know when it started, but slowly the "fan" part of a fan translation is starting to fade.
What do I mean by that? Well, the simplest one is PAYWALLED CONTENTS.
Once again, for the longest time. The main reason some people bother translating stuff when there's no official publication is simply because they wanted to read the material themselves. They liked the series, they wanted to know what happened in it, and while doing it you might as well share it to the world to spread the joy.
Nowadays I find more and more translators paywalled their works. While supporting someone's works via monetary donation has been a thing since the inception of the culture. Pretty much agree it was option stuff, you give money only if you want to not be forced too.
After all, what we are doing is plain and simple piracy. We may justify it as something harmless as most of the series doesn't have an actual market outside Japan anyway. But it has been understood that profiting from pirating someone else's works is morally not good.
Hence many just did it for free, or if they begged for money. It would be just for obtaining the materials. It was not an actual job you do because you chase the money.
If you are in this field at least as long as I am. I'm sure you have some scanlation where you would get a watermark of a guy asking for a donation because he needs to take care of his sick mother. I'm not sure if his situation is real or not, but even he still doesn't lock their work behind a paywall.
Of course there's a lot of boys and girls doing charity in a place like the "STEAM" of fan translation. A.K.A, MDX. But once again, I have seen more and more people building their own silos, disconnecting themselves from the community, and locking their translation behind a paywall.
For now, I only found them in the Novel and Manga translation. But with how things are, I can't rule out that anime would be the next to fall into the underground commercialization of piracy.
Of course I know where they come from. When you work on something, of course you deserve to get paid. While the words of appreciation are encouraging, a simple cold hard cash is even better at making you feel motivated. But aside from the moral dilemma of paying pirated stuff and the things profiting of someone else works while giving nothing to the original creator. There's also another problem that would ruin us all in the long term.
Which I'm already seeing a lot lately.
First, Duplication.
Because so many people are doing their own thing inside their own silo. They are liable to do duplicated works. I remember the time when it was considered rude to snipe a translation that's being worked on someone. Yet today, I have seen so many duplicated works across groups.
Avoiding duplication is very easy, just check mangaupdates forum and see if anyone has worked on it or not. Yet so many simply did it anyway either because they don't know a series has been taken or most likely. They simply don't care.
Which is not just me simply bashing them. I have joined one of their discord groups asking why they bother to work on a project that has been finished by others. And their answer basically can be boiled down to "To each their own." In other words… you guessed it. They are not really part of the community as a whole and don't care about others.
A duplicated work not only wasted the translator's time, but also their energy and in this case. It would even waste the money of their readers too, if they are not aware of the fact that what they are reading is actually, not only free but already far ahead or even finished in some other place.
There are soooooo many examples, but I will just give one or two here.
This series, Henkyo Mob Kizoku something-something-something-something-something is already being worked on until the end of the 2nd volume.
Yet here on artlapsa, you are supposed to pay for the four latest chapters.
Here is another example. This series, Gyakutaisarete Ita Shouka no Reijou something-something-something-something-something is already have 15 chapters available to read. FOR FREE.
Yet once again, the very same group (artlapsa). Asked their reader to shill up some coins to read some old chapters that have been translated for months.
This kind of duplicated work is not good for anyone. Not for the translator, nor for the reader. Fragmentation is going to be a big issue moving forward. Which honestly, I feel is going to get worse the more our economy contracts. The pre-2019 world is slowly fading away.
Second, SLOPS
With commercialization also comes monetary motive. Which in this field, is completely wrong motives that are going to destroy quality. After all, if you are doing fan translation without an actual love for the series you are working on. The chance of you doing a sloppy job is going up exponentially. You don't care about it after all. You only wanted the money, not the joy of reading the art you were working on.
I have mountains of example for the kind of slops those passionless people produced. But here are some are the most common form of the slops.
Uploading raw pages
The next one is just pasting machine translation into pages
There's also a lot of other kind of sloppines like these.
The most common mistakes are using "HE" when they should use "SHE". Another common mistake is that a translation doesn't match the situation. In other words, the translation doesn't have the proper contexts. Which is a telltale of unedited machine produced translation either traditional one or from your run of the mill LLM.
So many of them are just basic mistakes that can be fixed simply by LOOKING AT THEM. Yet here we are, looking at these slops. If you are demanding money, at least DO YOUR JOB PROPERLY! Don't just sell low quality low effort slops.
Btw all these mistakes are usually left alone even when people who paid for them are complaining about it.
Looking at all these things, my appreciation towards people who still do it the traditional way and demand no money from us is soaring.
Maybe this is a reminder for all of us to not treat all those free translations we can enjoy as given. They don't spring out of nowhere, someone spends their time, energy and even money to spread the joy of their loved series. Behind every fan translation, there's some passionate person working hard to provide us with the best pirated products.
If you read novels or manga on leecher sites. Stop a bit and try visiting those URL's usually pasted as watermarks on the pages or notes of the series. Even if you can't help them financially, just say hi. Show your appreciation toward their dedication. Good words worth more than you think they are.
By the way, if you can. Use MDX to read manga, it has a robust forum where you can find so many things. Just like how Steam isn't just a store. MDX is also not just a place to read manga, it is a whole platform. It is full of useful stuff, from the place where you can get directions to the original raw, how to get legit copies, check their original source (like novel), and recommendations that are very accurate.
And the most important thing, it was a place for many fan translator hangs around. You can easily say hi to them in this place. I will be waiting there.
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