Proposal to commercialize English Clannad

[Polarem]

Hi all,

For those who haven't seen me around before (-- my fault, as I've been quiet --), I'm Polarem, who came along about 5 months ago and (somewhat) revived the Clannad translation project. I've been slowly but steadily doing cleanups with my colleague XCN when we have time, with kind external assistance now and then. At the current rate, my optimistic estimate is that the project will be complete in 2 years.

I was approached by a guy who's attempting to acquire the overseas rights to sell Clannad visual novel on the iPhone/iPad. He's asking for permission to use the fan translation, and is hoping to enlist volunteer (unpaid) help from the TL community for completing the translation and for testing.

Here is his rationale for his proposal:

I would like to highlight the community involvement as a key point in our marketing activities in order to recognize the work of the Clannad project translation group and contribute to bridging the gap between the overall translation community and the producers of works like Clannad. I hope that this collaboration would be the first in bringing other unlicensed, untranslated works (e.g. Fate, Ever 17, etc. as well as other manga, anime, etc.) to potential overseas fans.

Since most of the work so far is not mine and I'm quite new to the community, I'd like to ask for your opinions and advice, as the major contributor and the experienced TL community: What are your thoughts on this proposal? What benefits/issues do you see? Would you want to be affiliated with it? Should I accept it?

[ainsoph9]

While I personally have no leadership role here, my response is going to be that you will either need to give more information like who this guy is and all. My second thought is that you PM TheLastGuardian and those directly involved in the project thus far, asking them for their opinions. Lastly, if this guy is actually genuine and trying to use this community's translation, I would suggest contacting a law firm to keep your (and our) bases covered. I realize that you may not be able to afford a lawyer personally, but not having one in a case like this is just dumb and would probably cost you and maybe even this site money. In any case, I would suggest just starting out by contacting TheLastGuardian, see what he says, and going from there.

[Polarem]

Thanks for your reply, ainsoph9. I've sent TheLastGuardian and Velocity7 a PM. One challenge is that it's been an open community project (when I contacted Velocity7 a few months ago about resuming the translation, he said to "credit Baka-Tsuki"), so I don't think we have a full list of contributors. XCN has also pointed out that it's not possible to track down and verify the identities all contributors, which I imagine is needed for permissions and proper crediting. I'm personally keen to see an official translation happen, but if it's not legally or financially feasible, or if people aren't interested, then I guess the fan translation can't be part of it.

Anyway, for the record, he introduced himself as [EDIT: deleted on request], and a worker in the Japanese video game industry for the past 7 years. The full background he gave me was:

[EDIT: Sections removed]

I studied Japanese Studies [...] and have spent over nine years living and working in Japan, including two years in Chiba Prefecture on the JET program, two and a half years in Tokyo and four years in Osaka. Manga is my first love about Japanese pop culture, but I’m particularly fond of anime and Japanese video games too.

I’m based in the US, but still travel to Japan fairly regularly and use Japanese daily in my day job. It’s been a while since I’ve done translation-specific work, but my experience includes translating Sony’s Post Pets, a video game called Doshin the Giant, Shadow Lady and Dragon Half manga and a fansub project for The Adventures of Mini-Goddesses. I’ve also provided input into localization for a number of video games[... .] I’ve been working in the video games industry for the last seven years and spent the last two of those working in licensing and merchandising over the US and Europe.

The company that would be involved in the Clannad translation project is simply my own private limited company, which I formed for consulting work and projects like this.

[larethian]

To be honest, I'll not recommend using fan translations. But before anything, first things first, three things:

1. Who is this guy and what is the name of his company? Is this just a thought or something in concrete? Has he already prepared a licensing proposal to Key?

2. You need to contact all the named contributors to get their permissions. Or else those parts should be re-translated by someone willing.

3. You need to contact TLG to see whether Baka-Tsuki's translation agreement allows or forbids that.

Once licensing occurs, even with people willing to work for free [which is ridiculous to a capitalist like me unless it's for pure interest (like what I'm doing right now) and in this kind of scenario I'll want to keep the content I created(or rather reformed) free and uncommercialized], the content must be taken down from the wiki, and removed from public view. Once the licensee owns the right to the VN franchise, he will then have the duty to protect the content he created in the said market(in this case it will be the content he's taking and putting his name as the owner LOL!); that's why they must be taken down.

[ainsoph9]

If this guy is genuine, which it sounds like he might be, I will say that he is on the bleeding edge of what most licensing companies are only beginning to consider (i.e., using fan translations). As I indicated before, this is a HUGE legal risk. It is legal to do to my knowledge, if it is done right. However, the implementation is probably going to be more difficult than the theory of doing it. Fortunately, most of the risk is on Mr. King's side. Yet, that does not mean that he could not take advantage of the BT community or its proprietors. Hence, I would recommend that nothing further be done until you hear back from TLG and the other parties involved in the project. Also, depending on their pending answer, having Mr. King make an appearance here at the forum might not be a bad idea to give him some credibility. Furthermore, it concerns me that he seemingly did not contact TLG and the other parties involved in the first place and, instead, only went to you. That is not meant to be a smear against either of you. Rather, my gut instinct on something like this is to use extra caution, IF this goes ahead.

[b0mb3r]

^ what he doesn't realize is.

* takes off mask *

I am actually MR KING!

[ben1234]

If this guy is genuine, which it sounds like he might be, I will say that he is on the bleeding edge of what most licensing companies are only beginning to consider (i.e., using fan translations).

If I recall correctly, the translations for the Da Capo games were actually bought from the fan translations

I could be really wrong and shooting at thin air though

[ainsoph9]

I think that you are correct. I know that it has been done for at least one other game.

[Mystes]

After reading this proposal here's what I think:

- Fan-translation is meant for the fans. If there's a price charged for the fan-translation in English, then we ought to refuse.
- Unless you get more information and certitude that this guy is serious and is really represnting a company, etc...you can not be sure about his true intents.
- We are a LN (also VN) translation team which wordks for free. How can we let our products, which caused a pain in the ***, be used as a bait for selling?
- BT might be known a bit more, and there will be a company which would use our fan-trans for F/SN, for Toaru and other fan-trans (again, sothing gained form it)
- Though my points were all negative, if it encourages people stopping hacking the games and encourage LN/VN production, then it's not bad. But we are still a non-profit company.
- What does TLG think of this?

[ainsoph9]

While I agree that caution and all is necessary here, I am not so quick to be so negative about the whole issue of being non-profit. Firstly, I would not blame TLG if he wanted to recover some of the costs for running this site. Most likely, the site is not free or cheap. If it is, great; if not, I appreciate him even more for making this kind of thing available. Secondly, no matter how we feel about this, the novels are not really "our products;" for that matter, the translations are the only that we can lay somewhat of a claim to, but even then, we have a very limited claim. Also, this site, forum included, is not a formal "company" that has "products" to my knowledge. Feel free to correct me on this. Really, this site is subject to TLG's decisions and the law first and foremost.

[Mystes]

Let's summarize it; TLG rules.

[ainsoph9]

Suck up.

[TheGiftedMonkey]

- Fan-translation is meant for the fans. If there's a price charged for the fan-translation in English, then we ought to refuse.

This.

Any way you look at it, it could go quite badly for the community here. Too much risk involved for a service that we already provide for free. Suddenly having our name out there associated with a product can end up being a very big flare for C&Ds. I'd put money on this being shot down immediately by Big Boss.

[Mystes]

- Fan-translation is meant for the fans. If there's a price charged for the fan-translation in English, then we ought to refuse.

This.

Any way you look at it, it could go quite badly for the community here. Too much risk involved for a service that we already provide for free. Suddenly having our name out there associated with a product can end up being a very big flare for C&Ds. I'd put money on this being shot down immediately by Big Boss.

Well, BT is already a danger to some LN licencing companies. For example, who would wait 'till 2022 to read Index NT volume 1 if BT already translated it?

The problem here is that not only LN licencing companies will look at us more seriously, but will also they will try to find a way to shut down this.

[ainsoph9]

Kind of like, "Thank you for all of your support over the years...by the way, we are going after all of our fans who helped us along the way," right?