Sadly, when royal road asked the author of LMS to translate more volumes he refused and asked that their translations to be removed when the times comes...

The author also said that LMS will be translated in to chinese and japanese in a few years and that later than that it will be translated in to english... As for how long we need to wait for the publishers to release the english translated volumes is unclear but we will have to wait at least 4-6 years before that, and another 3-6 years before publishers catch up to volume 21...

So unless another translators picks up LMS we will have to wait around 8 to 10 years at the speed of publishers.
You can see this by yourself if you visit their homepage and read the news at the birthday at page 6

Ore no Riaru to Netoge ga Rabukome
Anime -Westbound Apocalypse
- Fog hill of the 5 elements
- Batman of Shangai
- Kuiyu chouyuan

thats some bull.. he wants to make us wait that long to finish this novel 😕 we'll probably see random groups now picking this up to finish it without even asking him like Royal Road did.. Guess being nice and telling him and acknowledging him as a good guy and letting people that arnt korean read his stuff wasnt good enough.. besides im sure alot of people who really like LMS would pay money somehow to get to keep reading it.. i know i would

Quote from bigjoe009

thats some bull.. he wants to make us wait that long to finish this novel 😕 we'll probably see random groups now picking this up to finish it without even asking him like Royal Road did.. Guess being nice and telling him and acknowledging him as a good guy and letting people that arnt korean read ...

Dude, why are you so entitled? It's his writing. He owns it. While I'm not really a fan of LMS, but I still respect him as a writer.

If he doesn't want to give his permission for other language, it still his call.

Now, if you're really serious about paying money, and respect the writer's right, you could just buy the license yourself. Get yourself an investor, and contact the publisher (or the author).

Either way, don't be a jerk and feels that you owned his writing, just because, he used to let people read his work for free for a period of time. He's a professional writer. You should respect that.

Im all good with publishers picking up things and translating them in to english IF it were not by their speed... they pick up novels and mangas and they translate them at 1 volume each 2-6 months in most cases and in the others is like 1-2 volumes per year... if their speed were at 1 volume each 2 months or so, i wouldnt mind buying them

Ore no Riaru to Netoge ga Rabukome
Anime -Westbound Apocalypse
- Fog hill of the 5 elements
- Batman of Shangai
- Kuiyu chouyuan

Since I am not really a fan of the LN cult, I see it surprising that translators ask authors for permission. I haven't heard of single instance where scanlation groups asked for permission.

I found LMS recently as I was searching for similar series like The Gamer (read it btw) I really loved it.

For those who want to read beyond vol 20, search for JawzTranslations, they already translated vol 21.
Please add them to MangaUpdates to give them more publicity.

Huh. Haven't read this in months, only saw releases of it but I thought it was Japtem that asked the author for permission? A year ago, I think, the author gave Japtem permission to translate up to 10 or 15, I can't remember. So Japtem redid all the translation from vol.1 and Royal Road continued on with vol16 or 17, despite not having permission. Now the author is giving permission to translate to vol.20. Royal Road is already on 21. So why would they care now? I also went to Royal Road's site and couldn't find the announcement you're referring to. Either I suck at searching, or they took down the announcement.

I saw Japtem's announcement though. I think the real reason behind it is because very few people are reading their version since those chapter were already translated before. Most are waiting for the latest on Royal Road

EDIT: Yep I suck at searching. Found it xp If the novels really does get released in english it's likely translations will stop completely, even at that jawz site(atleast that's what happened to some LN's I've read, even popular ones). Until then however it's still fair game. It sounds like it's a little ways off from now though. You can try reading Ark (Novel), it's very similar. And I actually like it better than LMS

[img]http://vdexproject.net/p/46642/partymini.png[/img]

Quote from nakie08

Huh. Haven't read this in months, only saw releases of it but I thought it was Japtem that asked the author for permission? A year ago, I think, the author gave Japtem permission to translate up to 10 or 15, I can't remember. So Japtem redid all the translation from vol.1 and Royal Road continued on ...

I will be blunt, you just suck at searching XD.

Here is the news http://www.royalroadl.com/newsletter-2014/6/
as for what it says is this:
**Many of you who have been reading this novel, have been wondering for a while, about what will happen to the translation.

I will explain it now.

Since we finished translating the first 20 volumes, which the author gave us permission to translate, we contacted the author, and requested permission to translate more volumes. To our surprise, we did not receive permission and we were informed by the author, the following few sentences:

The Light Novel Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, will soon be translated and sold in Chinese and Japanese, and later within a year or two, it will be translated to English and sold over Amazon for the fans overseas to buy.

The author has also informed us that he will release a new novel [Dawn Traveller], and under the condition, [of removing them if he got them officially released] we have permission to translate it.

RoyalRoadl will be taking up the job of translating the new novel and we will respect the author’s request and remove the translation we have done, for Legendary Moonlight Sculptor when the time comes. **

Ore no Riaru to Netoge ga Rabukome
Anime -Westbound Apocalypse
- Fog hill of the 5 elements
- Batman of Shangai
- Kuiyu chouyuan

Why not just offer your service? They can use your translation, and the re-edit + proof read + QC. A lot of Visual Novel got translated this way. They re-edit the fan translation, and in some case, they even hire the fan translator to work for them per project.

Hmm, that's a weird post. Yeah someone talked to him a year or two ago and got permission for 1-20. The thing is though, volume one has already been released in america. That publisher went under afterwards and another publisher aquired the rights to that volume and the license it had which was up to volume 20. This new publisher has responded to questions that at this time they have no intention to continue with lms, though that could change in the future. So as far as I can tell the american rights up to volume 20 are held by a publisher with no interest in further translating. What that post from the author says confuses me because I don't think he has the rights to sell an english translation in america anymore. Could they sell it digitally internationally in english? Still seems like it'd infringe on the license.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-moonlight-sculptor-heesung-nam/1112212951?ean=9781257178322

Since we don't have the contract, we don't know the terms of the license. The volume you linked is published by a self publishing service, is that the old publishers copy or the new one?

Guys, I (sorta) got a it of good news for you. Someone has translated volume 20 and is doing 21 too for lms. You could probably find the link somewhere on Royal road comments, since it's against policy to post it here. ^_^

Wow, randomly came back to the series page after telling people about it on reddit, I remember this forum post.

It's been over ten years and nope. We never did get an English license. Dude should've just given his permission. Feels like most English readers have forgotten or never learned about this series. Doesn't help that the manhwa was so late in coming out.

Well the novel is now finished. I think this may have been one of the main novels that boosted the number of readers. I stopped close to the end so need to finish it!

I breathe Manga.

Take it away and I can't survive...