Scanlation and Donations, and why it's not as simple as people think.

[friedtofu]

2. Type 2 is pretty simple: They ask for money and put it back into scanlation. More specifically towards paying staff. Good examples are Mangacow or Meraki who were paying every translators that wanted to be paid 5-15$ per chapter. If you remember meraki at their peak they were getting over 1000USD per month on patreon, but that wasn't even enough to pay all translators since imagine there's 8 translators, putting out 20 chapters per month, each costs 10 bucks average, that ammounts to 1600USD. So the quality/speed of that type of group comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is the money invested into the staff. These usually work on popular series to try to get as many donations to cover costs.

3. There's also groups that don't take donations simply because they take scanlations more casually and have fewer staff that do it for fun, these groups usually work on niche series that otherwise nobody would work on. These are almost always passion projects and they do it out of love for the series and these people are commonly older scanlators with financial stability, at least based on the ones I've met, so they just don't try to monetize their time. A good example is LoktarOgar who works on "Out!" and "Bad Boys"

This is a biased post if I've ever read one, objectively false and pandering to groups that 'need' donations. I've posted before that I used to be a part of a scanlation group; you would categorize us into group 3 'not needing funds and not asking for them'. I don't like to name drop the groups I used to be in, but I know my old team would agree with me. I worked with Cyan Steam/Croxx-Over for ~8 months before real life work got hectic and I had to withdraw from my position as their main proofreader. We didn't work on niche titles, at the time I was proofreading Lies of Sheriff Evans, Rokudou No Onna Tachi and Saotome Senshu, Hitakakusu to name a few. These are 'big' titles that are in the ~top 25 as far as followers and readers.

During that time, we never asked for donations; why? Because the members of our group are in our mid to late 20s, worked respectable full time jobs and we scanlated because we had a passion to bring translated manga to the English-speaking audience. Groups that don't do it for the community or as a hobby fit into categories 1 + 2 IMO. They want to monetize their works and milk it before their series gets picked up by a legal entity. There are plenty of scanlation groups that just attempt to churn out chapters as fast as possible, with terrible translations, proofreading, cleaning, etc and it's easy to see that they're just after the $$. If you're in a group and expect compensation, you aren't doing it right.

Another thing that really pushes my buttons are when people try to justify it as, 'oh we need to pay for our raws'! To put it bluntly, any scanlation group worth their salt will pick up raws online because they're easily accessible, free, and almost always great quality. You've just taken out a shit-ton of work by the groups having to purchase, scan, and clean up any remnants of the book that was purchased. How else are scanlations pushed out so fast? I highly doubt more than a dozen groups actually put in the time and effort to buy these volumes and do all the work it takes to scan/clean the actual publications. Scanlation groups to put it bluntly are thieves taking from thieves, though they have(mostly) good intentions to scanlate these works for the community.

 

[Kanami-chan]

The current state of scanlation scene is soulless and disgusting.
for-profit scanlation groups need to disappear.
I think Jaimini's organized exit is a great start since most of their medium-sized goons will just lose most of their readers and die eventually.

 

[Ampharoaster]

I'd like to preface my comment with the fact that I'm a full-time gamedev illustrator, which definitely results in a very specific point of view.

I think we can all agree that the people who operate in Group 1 are trash. I understand the legal issues surrounding Group 2, but at the end of the day, I think the paltry amounts of money that scanlation contributors get paid is hardly more than a pat on the back, and a genuine show of support towards growing the scanlation community. As OP explained in their cost analysis, these groups actually making any significant profit off of the money that they receive is so impossible that painting them as greedy (as a good portion of the reading community has done) is just silly. Lastly, Groups 3 and 4 are undoubtedly respectable for what they do. While I think Group 4 shows a strong dedication to principle, I don't think they or anybody else should use that as a way of looking down on Group 2.

I was surprised to see how quickly discussion on yesterday's June 14th Announcement was closed, and I don't think that this is an unreasonable place to continue some aspects of that discussion, as the way that scanlation groups operate is at very much at the core of many current disagreements. I'm not a scanlator myself, but the main thing I hope to get across to Reader-only users is that expecting groups to all operate purely out of some romanticized concept of passion is absurd. As with anybody who works in art or design fields, it is universally known that people who have never participated in creative work think that passion is some endless well that can produce infinite amounts of free content. (Look up ForExposure on Twitter or Reddit for countless examples of this mindset.) It's a given that the shittiest, most entitled portion of any community is usually the most vocal part as well, and the people who complain about scanlation group policies and money management are usually people who have no concept of the value of work in the first place.

If chapters were released only by Groups 3 and 4 who operate on a hobbyist level, the reading community would riot at how slow the releases have become.
And if people actually cared so much about the legal principles of Group 2, they shouldn't be reading scanlated chapters to begin with.

The groups "profiting" off of manga artists' work are tapping into a market the original artists don't have access to anyways, and I've never seen a group disobey a C&D from the original author / publisher. Those who pretend to care about the ethics of it are still the ones consuming the product and creating the insatiable demand. Furthermore, I absolutely love MangaDex and the principles on which it operates, but I find it silly how the mods try to justify their profits from merch as being different from that of scanlators, considering their entire brand and community is built off of the work that the scanlators and original artists do. It's the exact same thing, just one step up the food chain.

We as readers get to read manga for free thanks to the work of scanlators - that's an indisputable fact. Regardless of how different groups choose to operate in regards to funding, I believe that if we're consuming the material anyways, we honestly have no place to complain about the way that any of them operate.

 

[PantsMan]

@Ampharoaster
This "it's a service, why shouldn't they make money off scanlating?" and "us readers should feel grateful we even get anything!" bootlicker mentality always feels so disingenuous towards the issue. If you actually wanted to tap into and profit from the "untapped market", you'd be better off trying to join a legitimate translation company, forming your own or at least acquiring the rights to do so from the creator/publisher. Or, you know, having an actual job.

But putting the questionable legality angle aside, a group providing a service has an entirely different approach towards a series over a group trying to spread a series they like. It's how we got people throwing shitfits over sniping, as if they owned the thing, manga translations being held hostage and weird, roundabout attempts to milk ad-revenue. As any selfish reader, I personally don't really care if some groups accept money if it doesn't negatively affect their releases, or if people donate to them, but if it does impact the result then as a reader I can fully disagree with such practices. Call me entitled, but I don't think we should have this pathetic mindset of constant gratefulness for every scrap we can get, and I'm glad that the anime/manga community has been blessed with so many people willing to call out and step in whenever such a demand arises.

Hobby-only translations mean less incentive and slower releases.

I think that point is debatable to an extent, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not an actual job. I've occasionally done one-man, amateur scanlations of some Italian Disney comics and other translation work upon request, and I agree that it's not an easy task. But I still think it shouldn't aspire to be anything more than a hobby, or something I do for gratitude, e-fame (lol) or to just share something I like. This is mostly stuff done by manga readers for manga readers. I don't mind if it happens to be a lucrative hobby, but I sure as hell don't want it to become a market.

 

[Ampharoaster]

@PantsMan The thing is, and mind you this is entirely anecdotal, most of the scanlators I see DO have actual jobs. Much like MangaDex as a platform itself, the donations go towards the cost of maintaining the service. That being said, I'm genuinely curious: if a scanlator group requested donations purely for covering raws, would you be okay with it? Is the only problem you have with individuals getting paid for their work?

I agree with the official MD position of sniping being an entirely baseless claim, but disagree with the idea that individual groups try to milk ad-revenue. Besides, what "result" is actually being impacted here? Is it having to scroll past a tiny Donate/Support button? MangaDex has one too. Is it having to just bookmark different scanlation groups' sites and put them in a bookmarks folder? Maybe I just don't mind because I also read tons of webcomics on their own microsites, but that also seems like such a tiny thing to complain about.

I don't see why gratefulness for every scrap we can get a practically endless stream of free content is a "pathetic" mindset. I spend hours almost every day reading manga and comics and I imagine many other readers do too, so why shouldn't we appreciate it instead of the usual displays in comment sections of "it's MY manga and I want it NOW!"? I guess I just feel like the average reader is so sensitive to minor inconveniences to their buffet of free shit, when the food is just at a different table three steps away.

 

[PantsMan]

@Ampharoaster
As I mentioned, the point I take issue with isn't that people are profiting from this, or even just taking money for some reason or another. Appreciation is great, I just don't think it should be used as a justification for any scanlator group to pull as a response to criticism.

Idealistic speculation on the nature of scanlating from me notwithstanding, there's also no getting around that whenever (serious) drama bubbles up in the scanlating scene, there's inevitably some economic factor involved beneath. Better to avoid the whole issue by trying to keep it primarily as a hobby than any sort of significant income source.

 

[seekermoc]

To me, the problem is more a difference in opinion of what scanlation is. To me, scanlation is a hobby, where fans get together to give back to the community that supports their hobby. We do it because we want to, and because we enjoy manga and working to bring it to a wider audience.

Again, this is just my opinion, but groups who pay translators approach scanlation as a business, not as a hobby. That's fine, people are entitled to put their skills to work for a business to make money. But that's not quite what's happening here. There's nothing legitimate about unlicensed translation.

I've said this before in another thread, but if a group accepts a small amount of donations to cover the costs of buying raws or hosting their website, I can almost, but not quite, accept that. And then, only if they only accept enough to cover their expenses and not a penny more. Again, I see scanlation as a hobby, and I don't think it's right to ask your fans to pay for your hobby. Either you do it because you enjoy doing it, and you do it for free, or you shouldn't do it. However, this is just my opinion, not any strongly held belief, so feel free to disagree.

Where I draw my personal line is groups that scanlate for profit. They're neither fans doing scanlation as a hobby, nor a business where skilled employees earn a legitimate living. Instead, they're more akin to black market profiteers making money off of someone else's work. I can't see any scenario where I would consider this acceptable. This is especially so for groups, like one of the bigger groups that left recently, who scanlate licensed manga with free English simulpubs. This is just... criminal, and shouldn't be a part of the scanlation community. Good riddance to those groups and their like.

Edit: The only thing worse than JB are the children currently spamming the forums with their "JB is ghey" BS. If you have something intelligent to say, then say it, but if you can't articulate your own thoughts, then keep your mouth shut. Don't ruin it for the rest of us just to parrot out somebody else's message.

 

[junna]

I'm an older scanlator who remembers translations (read: Word docs with translations that carefully follows the text bubbles of manga because the tech to scanlate was pretty poor. Or you use whiteout) instead of scanlation.
The "IF YOU PAID FOR THIS MANGA. YOU HAVE BEEN RIPPED OFF" set because there were people who sold manga in CDs.

I have nothing against those who donate to buy manga (the goals usually are just around 30-50USD per month) because dude, we understand shipping costs an arm and a leg. However, I am a stickler for things like "paying translators".

Scanlation is not "grey" area. Scanning anything is already illegal and against the law (as arrests in China and Japan regarding scanlation has proven) and to get money? To basically profit off an illegal thing? Scanlation is now a business eh in the 2010s? That just rubs me the wrong way.

Scanlation used to be passion projects only. The "paid to translate" gang is very recent and usually young. I didn't ask a Shounen group to help translate CODA (shoujo with male lead) if it wasn't for passion and returning a favour.

Dude, go and work for a legit place if you wanna get paid for translation. Webnovel. Netflix. A Translation company. Whatever. They are always hiring.