Reading the comments above, I guess one may suggest a polling (after this poll preferably) where people must choose between two world:

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...

> Remember, most of the time when you donate, you're actually just buying beer for the scan team, rather than facilitating scanlation.

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.

If it's the question of just quantity of groups - you are certainly right, as there are numerous groups that just release a dozen chapters max and disappear afterwards.
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)

Things can only be unethical because of one of the two reasons:
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?

As someone who scanslate I do buy my raws and will sometimes ask for money or just have my donation button up. I find it absurd for groups to ask for a monthly goal of $100+ for the website, bandwidth, and raws. But maybe it's because I'm such a small group and don't go through so many titles a month. I probably only use $20 every few months for ebook raws unless I finished a lot of titles at once. My website is about $100 a year though but I pay that out of pocket.


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. =)



________________
Owner of Antisense Scanslation.

These groups that extort "donations" have completely twisted the relationship between leechers and scanlators. In one of my groups, leechers actually keep asking us to accept donations just so we scanlate faster. I'm tired of explaining to them that they are confusing tipping as gratitude and hiring someone to work.

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.

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Active translations list
Completed translations list
Dropped translations

Hi!! to answer your questions, take a look at the Wild Fang Project, we not only took donations, we demanded yearly memberships. Call me evil, sure, but the world doesn't spin without the "green"
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!!!

Oh and cmertb can tell you, once I tried to hire him to no avail, cause Shura no Mon wasn't his manga style, which is understandable still love your work a lot cmertb san

Pffft! Why pay them when you can just marry them? Free translations for life!

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.

________________
Owner of Antisense Scanslation.

Arleaa, I have a hard time making my GF check my english scripts for free, and It's her native language. If you marry Japanese people for free labor, you'll be single quite soon

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.

________________
[img]https://i.imgur.com/ERg8slD.gif[/img
[img]https://i.imgur.com/HphHlPh.gif[/img]
Tv Tokyo - Anime & Manga ~ MinatoAce

But what to do when the volunteer doesn't know a lick about translation/manga edition?
The recruiting section is full of those...trying to recruit a group of "everyone else that know"