The Eastern Edge

I just came across a news item about a site called Manganovel. I assume the name is Tokyo-based AlphaCreatio Inc.'s cheesy combination of “manga” & “graphic novel”. Very, uh… Creatio!

Anyway, the news was that a few days ago they announced that they would expand their on-line download services to include delivery of flash animations in multiple languages. Sounds great, right?

Well, there's a bit all you aspiring manga translators may want to take notice of. A la Facebook, they are soliciting the services of readers to submit translations of their stuff for consideration, and then sell back to them. Nice way to cut costs. Like Tokyopop has been forced to do, they are already doing it on-line and now they are getting free translations.
Okay, they offer credit for the translation and "points". I couldn't find an explanation of what exactly "points" are and how you earn them, but the point is that more and more places are getting enthusiastic fans to localize things for them for free.

People interesting in manga translation might think it's a great thing because, unlike scanlation sites, they can get legit experience and feedback, and claim the credit for their work. It's great. But only if translation your hobby. The truth is, if you wanna go pro you'd be killing your career.

People in IT localization have been bitching about Facebook’s little stunt for a while now, but not many outside of that even knew or saw the collateral damage coming.
I guarantee you that if these AlphaCreatio guys do well with their community driven translation project, others will jump on the bandwagon. Don't think every company in the industry, big and small, doesn't have a marketing guy watching this like a hawk.

I think it's exploitation, but that's the thing with fans; they are always eager to get involved and easy to exploit. From a comapny perspective, they were probably going to do it for free on a scanlation site anyway, so why not steal that business back? In the end, the overall impact will probably be that more fans will have more access to more legit stuff for (in theory) less money.
Good for fans, bad for pro manga translators.
But then it's not like there are factories full of manga translators who are going to end up on the streets, right? If you can translate manga you should be able to translate other things. If you can't, well, you're in the wrong business. Time to go back to being a fan and bitching about other peoples translations on forums and in chatrooms.

There are always multiple perspectives on issues like this, but Facebook and guys like AlphaCreatio are setting the stage for a new way of doing business, and a future where professional translators not in a highly specialized field (sorry, manga and anime is not a specialized field) are going to end up like this little guy:

Doh!