14 replies to this topic

[Kfnmpah]

found a tumblr page that has up to chapter 370

https://mousouspeed.tumblr.com/

[Newspage]

All of his translations are stolen from the r/manga discord. A guy there does a very basic translation only so that people know whats going on. Multiple bubbles are fused to 1 sentences, skipped lines ect. 

That guy just straight up takes these sentences and spreads them over the different bubbles. If you read this you are reading a wrong version that just gives you a basic idea of what's going on. Just so you know.

When we found out we stopped posting the spoilers to the discord to which he wrote:

"LOL losers I still got like 40 chapters on my page thanks to your translations, cya noobs!"


So yeah. just wanted to let you know how this guy is and who you are supporting by reading it.

[kendama]

@Newspage: that's all very well, and as another scanlator (and someone who can translate), I can see where you're coming from.

 

However, a piece of (admittedly unrequested) advice: don't barge into this stuff. Just ignore it and do your authoritative scanlation as you've been doing.

 

Scanlation, in the end, is just piracy. You're pirating Nobel. So is the person in Reddit. This person is just pirating the pirate. If the person in Reddit has something against this, they only have to stop posting their translations.

 

I have posted scripts in the Internet of stuff I didn't want to bother scanlating in full in the past. I couldn't care less whether someone else picked the scripts and generated scans. I wasn't interested in credit, and didn't take responsibility.

 

I am a slow translator, so I prefer reading series I don't scanlate myself in English. So I've followed the speedscans precisely to have the basic idea of what was going on, knowing your version would follow eventually. When I stumbled upon something I wanted to check, I just went to the raws.

 

As for his attitude… there are many, many obnoxious people in the web. If you think someone who reads the speedscans is going to stop doing it just because he is an arsehole… they won't.

 

Speedscans are a fact of life. Nobody is being harmed. So just live and let live.

Edited by kendama, 15 July 2017 - 05:03 PM.

[Newspage]

I just though I'd tell people the story behind that. Nothing more intended. 

He can work on whatever he want and people can read whatever they want. But I can also write a comment telling people how this came to be.

We'll just continue our scanlation and that's that.

[kendama]

You're right. Good luck with your scanlation!

 

(Still, your last sentence implies you wanted to somehow cause people to reflect on whom they were "supporting", doesn't it?)

Edited by kendama, 15 July 2017 - 05:25 PM.

[Newspage]

Thanks!

I thought I was pretty clear on that with the the "Just so you know." but it might have come out wrong since I'm personally involved in the project. Ah well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[-Nosebleed-]

Hey, guy who had his translations stolen here.

 

I appreciate Newspage defending me, but the damage has been done so at this point there's nothing much I can do, nor am I going to bother going on a crusade against this person.

 

As Newspage mentioned, these translations were taken without my knowledge and typesetted, even though I explicitly said I did not want anyone typesetting them. The translations are often inaccurate (I do them early in the morning and often go back to re-edit them) and they certainly were not edited to be typesetted (I wrote them as long strings of sentences, in hopes of stopping someone from typesetting them, but  guess that didn't work huh), which is why when you read some of these pages they read like trash.

 

But regardless of my opinion on speed scans, the main reason I am upset is because these translations are my work and, not only were they stolen, the guy who typeset them took full credit for the scans, which is just a blatant lie. And also, the reason I never typeset the pages was because I don't want to be competition for Helvetica, since they do such a wonderful job with this series and I wanted people to read the chapters in the highest quality possible, not with my crappy 5am translation.

 

But alas, now that I have stopped posting these translations publicly and only share them with people I trust (this is why we can't have nice things), I am no longer involved in this business. Anything you read past chapter 422 is done by someone else who's not me, and hopefully it'll stay that way.

Edited by -Nosebleed-, 15 July 2017 - 05:49 PM.

[kendama]

… I'll probably regret writing this, but… I felt I had to be going insane, so I tested my train of thought with a friend who's also a scanlator and here's the conversation, names omitted:

 

A: Do you have a sec, B? I want to present a situation to you and get your opinion on it.

 

B: sure, what's up?

 

A: Here's the situation. A person is translating a 4-koma on Reddit, asking for people not to use the scripts for typesetting. Then they complain that someone went and typeset it nonetheless. Am I crazy, or isn't this, in essence, hypocritical? I mean, why should someone pirating a mangaka's work feel they are entitled to be asked for permission from another pirate?

 

B: some would argue about honor amongst thieves

 

A: Honour amongst thieves is a fairy tale, right?

B: isn't it the (ridiculously) wrong idea that thieves don't fuck each other over?

 

A: Precisely. I mean, I don't think for one second that the three-month rule, for example, is mostly respected by scanlators out of honour. It's a matter of self-preservation and keeping redundant work at a minimum.

B: still, that one dude's script being typeset is to be expected. Kinda comes with the turf

 

A: Right!? I wonder whether I should tell them that.

 

B: but the second guy's a bit of an ass

A: Yes, but if being an arsehole disqualified one from being a scanlator…

 

B: yes, none of us would be here

A: To be honest, the first person is pirating something someone is doing for their living. So depending on how you look at it, the first person is far worse.

 

B: I didn't say the second was worse, just that he's a dick

 

A: XD

Edited by kendama, 15 July 2017 - 06:19 PM.

[-Nosebleed-]

 

A: Here's the situation. A person is translating a 4-koma on Reddit, asking for people not to use the scripts for typesetting. Then they complain that someone went and typeset it nonetheless. Am I crazy, or isn't this, in essence, hypocritical? I mean, why should someone pirating a mangaka's work feel they are entitled to be asked for permission from another pirate?

When you put in this much effort in twisting the story so you can present me as a hypocritical asshole from the get go, I'm not sure what answer you expected out of your friend

 

But I guess I should have expected this kind of reaction.

 

You all have a great day though, I just wanted to leave my thoughts.

Edited by -Nosebleed-, 15 July 2017 - 07:00 PM.

[kendama]

When you put in this much effort in twisting the story so you can present me as a hypocritical asshole from the get go, I guess there wasn't much to discuss here to begin with.

 

I guess I should have expected this kind of reaction.

 

You all have a great day though.

 

I'm not twisting anything… I'm just saying that you don't have any control of what you release unto the web. And you shouldn't expect to have any. I mean, did you ask Nobel for permission to translate her stuff?

 

No scanlator does that. We already know the answer.

 

Look, I follow Yona of the Dawn. Impatient Scans are doing it. However, there are three or four people making their own translations available in the web, and two releasing raws publicly. Do you know what they do to prevent others from using their work? Instead of releasing full translations, they only release summaries. Instead of releasing raws in their entirety they only release about half of the pages.

 

In the web, you don't tell people "don't use my stuff". You take practical measures to stop them from doing it. And that's what you did by withholding your scripts, isn't it? So you know I'm right.

 

You're no more an arsehole than any other scanlator. I am scum by any measure of this world where intellectual property is concerned.

 

But you and I are "nice" arseholes in that we bring something to people who wouldn't have access to it otherwise. So are the Helvetica people.

 

But that is also probably what the speedscanner is thinking about themselves, isn't it? Can you say they're wrong?

 

Forgive me if I used too strong a word. Hypocrisy, on second thought, requires awareness. It's not very nice of me to assume you had thought deeply about the stance you were adopting. I hope you accept my apology, it's sincere. But I have to insist on this… you were naïve.

[-Nosebleed-]

I have no excuse for being naive, you are right, that is why my post isn't some tirade against the guy who stole my translations, it is merely me feeling sorry that this had to happen, and I do believe I have the right to be upset over it do I not? That's all I'm saying, I'm not really sure what you want to accomplish with this discussion when I was never hostile or entitled from the beginning.

 

Also, when I say you're twisting the story, I mean you presented me as someone who's scanlating Moutele, which is flat out wrong, since all I did was post plain text translations of each chapter in a discord server. Yes, I don't own the right to translate her work, but I believe just telling a couple people I know what the characters said in a page is a tiny bit different from entirely editing said page and posting it on reddit or something (which I never did, even though you said I did) .

 

But this discussion has become pretty moot since I already said what I wanted to say. I have taken the appropriate measures to make sure my stuff doesn't leak as you said, so there's nothing more for me to do.

 

I fully acknowledge it was my misstep on that part for thinking people wouldn't steal my stuff, so I make no excuses for that, I was just hoping maybe someone here would listen to what I had to say and perhaps value my opinion, but if they don't that's okay too.

Edited by -Nosebleed-, 15 July 2017 - 07:22 PM.

[kendama]

Very well.

But please re-read what I told my friend. I said clearly you were translating Delusion telepathy. I never said you were scanlating it. Otherwise the following sentence wouldn't have made sense, because why would anyone bother to typeset your scripts if you had been scanlating it?

It was never my intention to misrepresent what you said you had done, and I don't think I did.

About having the right to be upset… well, I guess I'm projecting my own attitude towards my scripts onto you. Because I would only have myself to blame if someone used something I posted publicly but didn't want used, I would never be upset about it. So I thought it made no sense that you did. But people have different mindsets, I guess.

I should also add that you're being naïve again when you seem to imply that doing a translation is no big deal. It is. If you have already worked with a scanlation group, you'll know that translators are by far the hardest people to find. A translator makes or breaks a project. Once a translation is done, it's just one tiny leap of edition, comparatively speaking, to a full-fledged scanlation. Especially for a 4-koma like this, which is rather easy to edit to a decent quality level (not the outstanding quality of Helvetica's work, though). Translation is the steepest learning curve in scanlation. I've had people learn redrawing in a matter of weeks to join our group, but translation takes at least a good few months and more often a couple of years.

(The final paragraph is intended as a compliment, too. Don't underestimate your work. You're the kind of person I scramble around like crazy to find.)

Edited by kendama, 17 July 2017 - 09:45 PM.

[rhino36]

Just do what I did with Tomo-chan for a bit, make fake pages (or TL in your case). They don't even have to be subtle, reddit eats that shit up. They can't make the difference between what's a real TL or a fake TL because they're not interested in looking further than their own nose. It lasted 2 days before the guy ripping my stuff stopped posting.

[Drates]

The last translation says this: Shoutout to Purple_the_Cat on Reddit for the translation!

[Kfnmpah]

seems like he's still uploading, i wonder if the guy from reddit is still translating