Hi everyone, I’m Aden Ng, author of the not so popular Chronicles of Tearha. However, you’ll more likely know me as ‘benderboyboy’, which is both my gamertag, and the nickname I use while doing scanlations.
What are scanlations? They are digital translations of mangas from their main language to another by people not licensed by the authors or publishers.
And the role of scanlations in the manga community is a fraudulent topic. It’s illegal but falls under certain moral grey areas. I’m here to talk about why scanlations exist, why publishers are largely to blame, and how we can move forward to fix things.
Why do I have to pay you for a manga in a language that I CANNOT READ that you refuse to translate because NOT ENOUGH ENGLISH SPEAKERS READ IT!
Me, later in the article
Buckle up, this is going to be long.
Scans are Illegal
First off, I want to make it clear that I know what I do is illegal. But illegal and right doesn’t always fall under the same category. I do what I do out of genuine love for the mangas I work on, most of which will never see the light of day outside of Japan.
There are also different levels of scanlators, readers, and aggregators (websites that hosts mangas), each with their own level of morality. Creators and publishers like to lump all of scanlation as one big group, but it’s like saying someone who jaywalks is as morally bankrupt as a murderer.
Aggregate sites like Manga Rock, Manga Fox, and Mangakalot etc, run advertisements on their sites. They steal not only the mangas from the original creator but also the translation done by the scanlation teams, then proceed to make a revenue off of it.
In contrast, MangaDex doesn’t run ads and have their servers supported by fans. They take down mangas from scanlators who requests it, links to original and official sites, and even have official publishers uploading to their site (allegedly).
Even among scanlators there are differences. Those like me who can spend up to 20 hours working on a single chapter to lovingly replicate the art and literature, and those who give sup-par translations with Microsoft Paint in order to gain notoriety and some Patreon money.
And don’t think readers get off lightly either. They range from those who buy the raws after reading, to those who constantly complain about the free stuff they are getting. It’s a very varied community, and often, those who do stuff out of love for the art, hates the other side with a passion.
We do it because no one else will
Most scanlators who get into this hobby out of love does it because no one else will. Not the publishers, not the authors, no one. We see mangas and stories we love in obscurity in Japan and want to bring it out to the world in a quality we try our best to deliver that we think it deserves. Not everyone can achieve that, but we try.
Can anyone imagine any other form of major media that does this with internationally common language? Can you imagine if Final Fantasy VII Remake only released in Japanese and the English speaking world have to wait a year before playing it? Or if Avengers: Endgame released without subtitles? People would fucking riot.
Me again, later
Publishers have mostly worked with translation companies that have translators who have no love for what they work on. They often fail to capture nuances of a story that a fan or the author might be concerned of.
Some famously don’t even care about the nuance between the colours of Blue and Green. Because, and here’s the important part…
Good Scanlation is an actual art
Native authors and publishers have often bashed scanlators for ruining the translation, to which I want to ask them, “Can you speak literary English”? Take the following conversation with a translator I worked with for example.
In it, we are talking about what to name a freaking iguana like it’s Hamlet! The manga is in black and white and we are debating if an Iguana is GREEN or BRIGHT GREEN! We could have called it a pink iguana and no one would even notice!
Can you imagine if J.K Rowling walked up to a Mandarin translator and accused them of translating Harry Potter wrongly? How would she even know? She doesn’t speak the language, let alone understand the literary meaning behind the translated words.
It’s an impossible situation. Unlike video games and movies, translations cannot just be ‘added on’ to a comic, manga, or novel. If you take the translation out of the images, you take away the nuance. We can’t just ake the translation out into a text file and put it aside.
An example here, just one more image to convince you of the art of scans.
That’s 2 hours of my life spent on the word “Fwoosh”.
The Real Probem
Publishers are stupid.
The end.
What? You want more? Fine. Mangas cost anywhere between 2 to 4 times more after translation. And my question is, why? The reasons the cost was so high was because publishers like to repackage mangas to westerners. But what’s the point? People read mangas of a country because they like the culture.
I want kuns and chans added as suffixes. I don’t need my Anjous to be Angies and Sawadas to be Samanthas. And I sure as hell don’t need my Blues to be Greens! If you treat your consumers as idiots who will buckle weak-kneed under any perceived outside culture, then what’s the point of being globally inclusive?
And why are publishers all trying to make buying your shit so difficult? Why do I need an address in Japan to buy a digital manga on Amazon? Why do I have to pay publishers for a manga in a language that I CANNOT READ that they refuse to translate because NOT ENOUGH ENGLISH SPEAKERS READ IT!
Most importantly, why do we have to wait anywhere between months to never to read a translation? If us hobbyist can do it with our free time in less than a week, surely large publishers can too, right?
Scanlators aren’t stealing ‘your’ audience. Your audience can read Japanese. The people who are going to read your stuff in Japanese already bought your stuff in Japanese. And if you don’t translate your stuff, those who read scans in other languages aren’t your “audience” because WE CAN’T READ JAPANESE!
Can anyone imagine any other form of major media that does this with internationally common language? Can you imagine if Final Fantasy VII Remake only released in Japanese and the English speaking world have to wait a year before playing it? Or if Avengers: Endgame released without subtitles? People would fucking riot.
For a fact, I know that a scanlation team (mine at least) is more than willing to work for $100-$300 per chapter, not that we are getting paid, because we’re not. And even the most hated mangas can easily get that amount of readers.
Just go on Mangadex, find your mangas, see if the scanlation team is good, and if so, FUCKING HIRE THEM! Why are publishers so stuck in their old ways?
DEAR Scanlators
While publishers have the largest burden to bear for not having handled the transition to a global audience properly (or at all, for that matter), we need to step away from our pride as well.
If a publisher makes their work easy to access, affordable, and timely, such as what VIZ has done with Shonen Jump, we need to step aside and let them officially translate.
We’re not better translators and editors than them, just different. In the end, neither we nor the official translators know how the authors truly intend for a manga chapter to mean. We can only do our best and hope it respects the original art as well as it can.
The Solution
Steam. We need a Steam store for mangas.
On Steam, publishers (publishers) and developers (authors) can set their game to allow the community (scanlators) to make mods (translation). So long as you buy the original game (manga), you gain access to all the community inputs.
Is it really that hard? Publishers get their international market. Readers get their mangas. Scanlators get to come out of the dark. Indie authors get a place to release their work. And the community gets translations for free.
And the infrastructure is already out there! Those at Mangadex have long wished for a way for scanlations and official publishers to work together. They have the architecture on a robust website and is basically just waiting for the offer!
@Holo has stated publicly that the only way he would consider going legit is if he were able to afford to purchase the licenses or sub-license options for most, if not all of the content currently in our library. He would also hire current scanlator teams in order to produce future content and continue working on the series that they love.
In order to do that, we would need to raise *hundreds of millions of dollars* and in addition, get every single Japanese/Korean/Chinese publisher to agree to let their content be hosted alongside that of their competitors. The idea of us going legit and remaining what we are is laughable. We have no interest in going legit in any other form than this silly pipe dream of ours. It’s a recurring meme on our Discord and we’re not shy about talking about it if it’s brought up. I myself like to refer to all the yachts I’m going to buy when we go legit.
Zephyrus, Mangadex Forum Moderator
Can you imagine? You pay an affordable $1 for a chapter of a manga, or $4 for a volume. Maybe even a yearly subscription option. You get to keep what you have forever, and you get to enter an official, large, and thriving community.
Here’s a concept mock-up for us to keep dreaming and to show you just how little change is needed for this.
P.S: Dear Creators
I have no beef with you. If you haven’t realized this yet, I’m a creator myself. I write books and draw shitty comics. I am incredibly protective of my intellectual properties too, but I understand how the world works, and that the future of global connectivity is here. I also know how hard it is to get my name out there. Heck, I’m still doing it now.
All my books are licensed under Creative Commons’ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike because I know that I can’t protect my work from this big growing world.
I can only make sure that bad-faith actors can’t profit. If people want to make translations of my works for free – translations that, mind you, I cannot do or afford – go ahead. Just don’t profit.
The publishing world is stuck in its old ways, where they can make money from isolated communities they sell to. Well, that world is gone now, and it’s not coming back. Everyone is connected, and we have access to everything. Direct-to-consumer market is growing, and we have to change.
We either get serious about actually loving the communities that loves us, or we get screwed, alone.
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