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There is a profound problem with making any serious objection to fan-translation in anime or manga that I feel absolutely has to be addressed if you want your objections to be taken seriously. Precocious Curmudgeon did not.

Simply put, fan-translations are what drove demand for product in the industry's earliest days, and to a large extent, companies still select licenses based on what fans have chosen to scanslate. If you think it is a coincidence that Naruto only became Viz's golden goose after the Naruto fan-translation community became so large and well-organized that it was the subject of BoingBoing blog posts, you are being incredibly naive.

Likewise, the early anime VHS distribution companies of the 80's were formed by fansub circles that developed the contacts required to buy rights to the shows they were subbing. To this day, if you know someone with a significant collection of vintage fansubs, you can see virtually all of the major names currently involved at ADV in the credits.

Before I can take any "you should never look at fan-translations, ever" argument seriously, I need to see that the commenter in question has considered how the industry will get along without relying on fan-translators as tastemakers who point out what properties people are going to be interested in. There is not a single top-selling Bookscan manga that wasn't extensively fan-translated before the license was picked up, nor can I think of a single major anime hit as of late that wasn't extensively fansubbed before (or even after) licensing.

You can make plenty of arguments that, yes, the presence of free fan-translated versions of the shows after the time of licensing is detrimental to sales of the official version, and I won't argue with that. What I have yet to see argued is that the official content producers would have any idea what to release, or that there would be any demand for the product, without the fan-translation circles playing the tastemaker role and getting rough translations of major properties out into the hands of "early adopters", who can then spread the gospel elsewhere.

Honestly: do you think Hana Yori Dango would ever have been licensed, if not for its extensive time as a critical darling in the fansub and fan-scan communities? There is good reason to believe that the licensors in questiion wouldn't have even known what the title was, let alone thought they could make money off of it.

I'm perfectly cognizant of the tastemaker argument, Lynxara. I just said that, in my opinion, it's not sufficiently persuasive in the face of the reality of denying the creators compensation for their work or respecting their right to control the distribution of their intellectual property. If you find that naive, that's your prerogative.

I suppose my point, David, is that I don't find your point persuasive in light of the history of the material. There is simply no reason to believe that the American industries are capable of taking a major Japanese property, creating an American demand for it, and then satisfying that demand without the role the fan-translators inevitably play in the dissemination of content. If anything, there are far more examples of them taking tremendously successful Japanese franchises and running them fruitlessly into the ground, satisfying no one, and ensuring that pre-existing American demand for material cannot be translated into revenue for the original creator.

I do not take issue with your moral arguments, and you will notice that I at no point addressed the legality or morality of the fan-translation community. They are, bluntly, both illegal and morally questionable, which is part of why they must be discussed openly and intelligently. (I do find it amusing you have interpreted my argument as if I were calling you naive for believing copyrights have value, which is not what I said at all.)

What I am addressing here is just the fact of the community's existence, and the fact that it's not going away anytime soon, and its impact on the legal distribution channels we now have. Before you can really say "fan-translation is inexcusable on moral and legal grounds, and so I will never look at it", you must address the simple fact that, for the most part, what gets licensed is based largely on what has built up pre-existing demand through dissemination of fan-translation.

Ignoring fan-translation based on blunt moral/legal grounds is then utterly myopic, because the publishing structures in place are such that original creators only have a chance of receiving compensation for their work after illegal dissemination of it has created demand for the product. How are you above or separate from the fan-translation structure if the copy of Yakitate!! Japan you're enjoying was licensed based on dissemination of fan-translation? No, you're still part of the chain, you're just farther down, and ignoring what's happening "higher up" is kind of ridiculous.

The real issue that needs to be discussed with fan-translations, rather than just pretending it doesn't exist, is how to wean both the anime and manga industries off of this crutch. ADV to its credit has been attempting to pick up series based specifically on what has been lightly or not fansubbed at all, and unfortunately they've gotten nothing for their trouble but financial trouble and loss of more valuable (and extensively fansubbed) licenses. TokyoPop's attempts to be less reliant on licensing via their OEL program frankly seems to be resulting in abominable behavior like The Pact. Both industries need to learn how to manufacture their own hits, rather than riding pre-existing demand, and until they do the fan-translation problem is one that belongs to everyone who reads any property that was ever scanlated.

I'm asking this in all seriousness (and I apologize for the defensiveness of my original response): how do you recommend weaning publishers off of this particular teat? Formalize the relationship with the most ethical and informed fan-subbers, the genuine taste-makers who can spot and have spotted these potential hits? Is that even weaning or is it just surrendering? There's a horrible inevitability to your argument in that proof of western demand through an ethically shaky focus group that suggests (but doesn't guarantee) eventual returns for creators is the most reliable guiding force in licensing choices. And what about the subsidiary argument that supports fan-subbers who offer illegal translations simply because they believe that the material in question will never be licensed for English-reading audiences?

That's a totally fair and reasonable question, David. In fact, I think it's the one that really needs to be asked, because it's so damned hard to answer. My argument does have a horrible inevitability, but I can assure you that right now-- and pretty much for many years previous-- it is how things have worked. If the official licensors don't talk about this often, it's because they hate to admit it publicly.

(They they were quite eager to do so when the market was much smaller, in the early 90's-- it was then seen as a way to grow the product.)

I'd be lying if I said I knew a surefire way to fix this, and it would honestly be terribly arrogant to think a viable solution was simply being overlooked. The way manga and anime rose to prominence in American culture is extremely anomalous, so there's just no easy model for dealing with it.

Viz I think may have some solutions up their sleeves that they just don't have the resources to implement. When they licensed the Death Note anime, they immediately promised that they would be putting episodes up for legal online purchase with subtitles for a modest fee, and they would be available very shortly after the episode aired. Effectively, they would provide the early "tastemaker" version of the product. To my knowledge, this ended up not happening, and so the series was fully fansubbed before it appeared dubbed on TV as part of the [adult swim] block. If it had happened, I personally think fans would have supported it.

Likewise, back before manga circulated widely in the tankoubon-like TPB form currently available in most bookstores, it was issued in comic book sized collections that usually gathered up two or three of the weekly chapters. For Inu-Yasha's release in this form, Viz announced it as a simultaneous release; the American serialization would start a few weeks after the Japanese serialization. The long-term legacy of this decision appears to have been very little Inu-Yasha fan-translation, because there was only need toward the end of the series when Viz fell significantly behind.

Based on these two incidents, I think it's a problem of resources: fans will support the official versions of the product from start to finish if they are offered with the same or even slightly less immediacy than the fan-generated versions can offer. However, right now either industry is simply not sufficiently large that they're able to produce simultaneous releases of new properties likely to be major, even though being able to do so would clearly grow the product. In the healthier video game industry, this technique has been used successfully (if not 100% so) to cut down on fans buying "imports" of titles from other regions before American editions came out.

I definitely think that direct dealing with the fan-translation community is futile. Most companies that tried to do so ended up finding their efforts soundly rejected. The fan-translation community often views the official industry with absolute contempt.

Regarding arguments about properties not likely to licensed-- such as older ones, or ones that were licensed but stopped publishing before completion due to lack of profitability-- that's probably the most difficult question to answer when it comes to fan-translation. While unquestionably illegal and arguably immoral, it is hard to argue that you do immediate harm by translating something with no commercial value that you simply want those who are not fluent to be able to understand. The problem is that vintage anime is becoming radically more marketable, and vintage manga may follow, and then it becomes very hard to say that a property has absolutely no potential commercial value in the US.

As an example, Media Blasters took a major risk by licensing a fan-favorite vintage series called GaoGaiGar, and the release has turned into a financial mess because the enthusiastic fans who saw the fansubs did not buy a commercial release in sufficient numbers to support it. Now, would Media Blasters have even tried if not for the show's tremendous following over the years? Should they have tried is perhaps a better question.

So there I think the problem is one of distribution. I feel it is inevitable that things will be fansubbed, because when someone discovers something totally unknown that they think is great, they want to share it with friends who aren't fluent. The problem is that by putting the material online, it can be accessed by very many audiences that are outside of the one intended. The problem with the anime fansub archive Crunchyroll was ultimately that Japanese and other Asian viewers were using it to watch anime over easily available local sources that generate most of a content creator's revenue.

Likewise, fan-translations in English easily become translations in Spanish and French (or vice versa), which can then damage a property's marketability in those territories. Fan-translators could cut back on this problem by simply distributing their products less widely, such that what could get into the hands of the avid collector who will buy anyway is not so easily getting into the hands of casual fans. Figure out how to do that and you've solved the overarching problem of digital distribution in all mediums.

hmmm...I haven't weighed in here yet because I'm stilling thinking about certain aspects of Lynxara's argument.

Do I think the U.S. market was dependent upon the "taste making" aspects of scanlation / fansubbing? Yes, very much so but I'm very consciously using the past tense here...when I look at the kids who are picking up anime and manga today, I don't think they share the same experience as those of us who came into fandom ten years ago (which is about when I started with anime, even if it too much longer for me to take to manga). The fandom folks I interview (around 18-22 years of age) tend to NOT rely on fansubbing / scanlation for the most part (although some do, of course). This may be a generational fan thing (folks commenting on the other post constantly reference the dark days of VHS subs *shudder* bringing an entirely different history / experience to what it means to have *access* to any of this media.)

I don't see fansubbers and scanlators as influential today as they might have been in the past simply because almost everything is fansubbed -- good, bad, mediocre, what-have-you. Companies really couldn't make decisions based on what the fan community follows anymore, I think how a property fares in the Japanese market is a much more significant consideration to the companies these days (and frankly, since this is all just speculation on my part...what the hell do I know? Not much, I only know what I observe in terms of the scanlation / fansub community and what is happening in the U.S. market. I suppose I'm cautious about making specific links between these two groups / practices because of how their perceptions of themselves and their goals are so extraordinarily different. Some of these people might have started in the same place (i.e. fandom) but now fandom is comprised of different generations and people who move into the corporate side of things share an entirely different worldview about these objects and what can be done with them in the U.S. as consumer goods.

It is absolutely untrue that everything is fansubbed or scanlated. This is a widely-held misconception but that doesn't make it any less wrong. I could easily come up with a list of a dozen recent anime and manga properties off the top of my head that aren't bad, but were incompletely or just never fan-translated for reasons to do with taste and demographic.

It was frequently argued that Nabeshin's Nerima Daikon Brothers had to be a terrible show before ADV picked up the license, because no one had ever fansubbed it (in fact, it wasn't fansubbed because it was a full musical and so would have been extremely difficult to translate without scripts on hand). Likewise, there's a surprising amount of Shounen Jump comedies that go utterly ignored; Death Note's pseudonymous author probably worked on them.

The fact is that the pipeline of material is so absolutely biased in favor of what is fan-translated, that if something isn't fan-translated, there's no English language source of information about it, and then fans assume it doesn't exist. That leads to the "everything is translated" misconception, which is utterly, totally untrue. You think everything is fan-translated only because the selection of licensed material is ridiculously biased in favor of things that have been fan-translated before. If this was not the case, fan-translations getting into the hands of the 15-year-olds that do buy the majority of manga wouldn't be such a commercial threat.

Note that how properties perform in the Japanese market is sometimes relevant to performance here, and sometimes the two have nothing to do with each other. The Big O was such a tremendous success on American TV that American money funded its second season, but only the most hardcore of Japanese fans cared about it. One Piece is still probably the hugest of all Shounen Jump properties in Japan right now, but its US performance was horribly mismanaged, and so Naruto and Bleach have totally eclipsed it in popularity. Code Geass was outrageously popular when it hit in Japan, but American reaction to it is considerably more lukewarm. Taste just changes when you move over the Pacific, which means a big Japanese hit could be huge or could utterly miss the mark.

Just a quick note: I distinguish between scanlation and fansubbing in terms of the amount / type / impact of work being done, and right now fansubbing seems to cover an extensive amount of material released CURRENTLY in Japan that scanlation practices still don't / can't (although, jeez, there is also an astounding amout of scanlation going on).

Meanwhile, I only noted that U.S. media comp. are INFLUENCED by Japanese sales numbers -- I would never claim that top sales in Japan relate *directly* to top sales here (obviously, One Piece being one of the prime examples as you mention).

Also, not a month goes by a U.S. publisher doesn't announce a title (sometimes quite a few!) that have never seen scanlation. Sometimes these are books connected to a certain author brand (i.e. Yugi Yamada or Fumi Yosinaga for instance) but sometimes they are just titles the publishers think are good, will sell because they are like title x or title y, because they have close ties with a particular Japanese publishing company (actually this is the reason a LOT of non-scanlated titles get to the U.S. as far as I can tell -- for instance, Go! Comi seems to have close relationship with Princess Comics, as a lot of their shojo comes from that mag).

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