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http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903
Previous Poll Results:
Question: What is your main goal in life?
Choices:
Fortune (money, property, etc.) - votes: 817 (14.9%)
Health (well-being, strength, long life, etc.) - votes: 384 (7%)
Spirituality (religion, enlightenment, etc.) - votes: 268 (4.9%)
Knowledge (academic, technical, etc.) - votes: 632 (11.5%)
Power (leader, politician, etc.) - votes: 75 (1.4%)
Fame (celebrity, hero, etc.) - votes: 32 (0.6%)
Beauty (fashion, body, etc.) - votes: 28 (0.5%)
Infamy (crime, etc.) - votes: 39 (0.7%)
Relationships (marriage, children, friends, etc.) - votes: 642 (11.7%)
Career (desired job, high position, etc.) - votes: 441 (8.1%)
I am content - votes: 448 (8.2%)
I am unsure - votes: 1137 (20.8%)
Other - votes: 529 (9.7%)
There were 5472 total votes.
The poll ended: August 26th 2017
Lots of people who are unsure. Reminds me of a statistic that something like 80% of students will change their college major at least once, while the average college student switches majors 3 times.
Comments (limited to first 100 replies)
» residentgrigo on August 26th, 2017, 2:43am
» SinsI on August 26th, 2017, 7:17am
Are you ready to donate to such a scanlation group?
» residentgrigo on August 26th, 2017, 8:17pm
Only established brands or creators had luck with such as of now but you never know where the scene will end up in a few years. The digital distribution scene is still the wild west.
» philip72 on August 26th, 2017, 10:50am
Nobody should pay scanlators, EVER. It violates almost every ethic possible.
Furthermore, no scan group actually needs money. They don't need fancy websites, they don't need bandwidth and they don't need to create an online community just for stroking their e-peeners. There's plenty of places that will host releases, there's plenty of great online communities and there's always facebook, tumblr, blogger, twitter, ect. in place of websites.
The only exception may be raws. 90% of scanlators get free raws online, but on rare occasions they need them purchased. But instead of begging for money, they can ask leachers to buy the raws for them.
Remember, most of the time when you donate, you're actually just buying beer for the scan team, rather than facilitating scanlation.
» punchmanga on August 27th, 2017, 6:11am
» svines85 on August 27th, 2017, 6:52am
No, at its heart, fan scanlations, which includes the translating and all the other work that goes into it, is a hobbyist activity, you do it because you enjoy doing it.......just like reading manga (or reading books, or going to movies or watching tv).
Some very small amount of groups (as I've mentioned earlier) have indeed gone an extra step or two and incurred legitimate costs (above and beyond one's labor, which don't count if it's just your hobby) in the form of websites they have to pay for, their own online reader setups, purchasing higher quality raws than are publicly available, yada yada yaya.........which, yeah, who really has a problem in those instances of these groups asking if people want to go in on it with them?
But has also been mentioned, some groups that are in the small number asking for "donations" by whatever methods, are actually holding their hand out and saying "I'll do it if you pay me", which is not the same thing as fan scanlations, and starts treading on some far more questionable ethical ground when you're talking about pirating someone else's work to begin with.
» MinatoAce on September 1st, 2017, 12:18pm
Yes, professional translation is a Work/Job, where a professional transition team work on mostly commercial materials for a certain amount of pay.
But, on this thread we are discussing about fan translations, which we're addressing as Scanlation Groups. Now these groups work as volunteer based, which means the staffs volunteer to do the work candidly.
vol·un·teer
[ˌvälənˈtir]
NOUN
a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task.
VERB
freely offer to do something:
"he volunteered for the job" ·
A good approach on asking for donation would be to be direct. For example a particular Scanlation page I visited, it was written on the donation part, " Liked our work? Then Buy Us A Beer! ". Now buying them a beer or not is your deal, but I personally like this directness.
On the other hand, LN community has even better ways to deal with this matter, but that's for another day.
» SinsI on August 29th, 2017, 9:34am
How do you know this? Have you actually experience it - or are you just slandering people?
By donating you allow the scanlator to work on something he and you both like, instead of working another shift at his MacJob to pay for his livelyhood - while giving you faster releases than once every month.
» SinsI on August 29th, 2017, 12:44pm
1) one side is forced against its will
2) it is harmful to one of the sides
Now who, or what, is forced - and who, exactly, is harmed by asking for volunary donations in exchange for services done?
» GGpX on August 26th, 2017, 4:39am
They use public raws, use free domains, use aggregate online readers as their hosts, etc. and yet they still need donations to "go on". Yeeeeeah, no. They just want to be compensated for their scanlations.
Not saying this is the case for all scanlators, obviously, but it applies to the majority of 'em that ask for donations.
» SinsI on August 26th, 2017, 7:04am
What's wrong with asking for donations?
It's not like they are putting things behind paywall and forcing you to donate.
Typical scanlation requires 12-16 hours of work per chapter.
Allocating that much every week on just pure enthusiasm is going to drain people out pretty fast.
» philip72 on August 26th, 2017, 10:59am
I've worked with several scan teams and finished numerous titles over the last 15 years, and no matter how they whine, actual scanlation isn't hard and rarely costs a cent. If someone is putting in 12-16 hours of work per chapter, they must be a retarded cripple using MS Paint or getting their raws from someone using a 1972 model Xerox to scan.
When you donate you're being a chump.
» svines85 on August 27th, 2017, 12:04am
...
Of course, in all fairness, the vast, vast majority of fan scanlation groups don't ask for money to begin with. As a percentage of the whole it's actually a tiny fraction of groups.
Looks like we might have another poll that's going to get some people riled up.......can't wait
» SinsI on August 29th, 2017, 10:05am
But if it is the question of quanity of releases by groups that accept donations - I wouldn't be so sure.
I.e. today's releases from the front page:
AK (No Donations)
Spiny Back (No Donations)
yowapeda fans scans (Donations)
Albedo (No Donations)
Persona 5 Anthology Scanlations(Donations)
Hatigarm Scans(Donations)
Cyan Steam (Let's assume no donations, though releases are on Batoto that accepts Donations)
All For Manga Group (non-English, can't say whether or not they accept donations)
Hi wa Mata Noboru (Donations)
Vanishing Graveyard (No Donations)
MangaStream(No Donations)
Pink Cherry Blossom Scans(Donations)
HAS (couldn't find them)
Snowyangell(No Donations)
LINE Webtoon x4 (License holder, so certainly takes money)
End result: 9 without, 1 unknown, 10 with Donations
And that's not counting extremely aggressive ads on some of the "No Donations" sites (i.e. mangastream or Snowyangell)
» SinsI on August 26th, 2017, 7:06am
» ceruleantear on August 27th, 2017, 12:50am
I have no problem giving a scanlation team encouraging feedback but I don't see myself giving them money.
» Breizh on August 27th, 2017, 2:34am
I buy the manga that liked though to support the authors.
» rennov on August 28th, 2017, 8:19pm
1) No-donations-means-no-scanslators world
2) Donations-exist-thus-there-is-scanslator world
I guess that poll will make it clear where people stand about piracy n stuff...
» Arleea on August 30th, 2017, 9:51pm
I really do appreciate my readers who willingly help when I need it! Again if you're uncomfortable donating then don't. Most of us do it because we want to, but sometimes some of use do need help once in awhile. =)
» cmertb on August 31st, 2017, 12:49pm
It's true that in most cases, scanlators don't need to invest a cent to produce scanlated chapters. Sometimes, they do need to buy raws. It's okay to solicit donations in that case. Sometimes, they also solicit donations for hosting. This is an unnecessary expense and should really be frowned upon. Next level is asking for donations just as a way of saying "thanks". I really can't approve of this, but at least it's honest -- you know that money isn't going toward scanlation.
But the groups that practically extort "donations" on the pretext it is required for scanlation definitely cross the line. What makes it even dumber is that the amount of these donations is a total pittance compared to the labor that goes into producing a single chapter. If these scanlators treat donations as compensation for the work they put in, then either they are too mathematically challenged to figure out they're working well below the minimum wage, or they live in an extremely impoverished third world country, or they are just so incompetent and helpless that they can't find a more lucrative activity.
I do have to wonder if they at least share the proceeds equitably within the group. Something tells me they don't.
And then as a result, the perception of the market is so distorted leechers want to offer me five bucks to scanlate more, and act surprised when I tell them to stop doing that. I have to keep explaining that if they want to hire me, they'd have to pay an amount no sane person would afford.
» feral claws on September 1st, 2017, 5:40am
How long we've been doing this? for twelve years. what do we do with the funds? Pay for the translators. You might be surprised in the recruiting forums everyone is begging for translators and translators may do one or two chapters and disappear afterward. If you ever held the leadership of a group, it is a reality that your staff will ghost you eventually and I never had a translator that actually worked for me for free.
I pay 40-50 dollars top for one volume of translation, I'll ask you 40.00 to you for a year's membership in exchange for 12 books that you previously agreed, group has members, so all of them agreed for an "offer" so in a year period, you get your books, translators get paid and PROFIT!! a manga gets done!! zero profit for me (actually more work) but that's it. A manga volume gets done, look at the list of what the wild fang project has done.
Yeah, we could get chinese translations, yeah, we could get korean translators but in Indonesia, I got this Japanese student that does wonders and the minimum wage over there is 80 bucks a month, so two books pay her comfortable month's wages and she's always delivering me stuff I want. But, as you see, My group is private and my material stay in close circles because Scanlation fans are ungrateful ones, online aggregators don't help much either (I'm sure they get paid well, otherwise they wouldn't exist) and I use them, so there, if you can't beat them, use them.
Don't give me that noise about the mangaka not getting paid, we're all pirates here, can't justify that. licensed material keep being scanlated as we speak. The mangaka doesn't get a cent from USA unless their books are printed here. So, what do I do with the donations? I spend them on LABOR and I have close to 30 volumes of exclusive stuff that I haven't announced it as "released"
cause who knows, someday I will. But I beat the system of "begging for staff at mangaupdates" with this. Free Market, we will have better quality manga and more if there was a culture for paying people for work they do. Means to an end and nothing more.
Once my series are finally over, I will retire and do something else, in the meantime, I don't care less for Japan's profits. The manga pirate life is for me HARRRRR!!!
» feral claws on September 1st, 2017, 5:43am
» Arleea on September 1st, 2017, 9:36am
No I don't recommend doing that unless you hit it off, but I must say it's a pretty nice benefit marrying someone who knows Japanese. It always helps when there's a title we both like.
» feral claws on September 1st, 2017, 10:30am
» feral claws on September 7th, 2017, 3:55pm
The recruiting section is full of those...trying to recruit a group of "everyone else that know"
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