Hi, it’s been a while!
First, I would like to apologize for disappearing. And a big thank you for everyone who waited. My life has been kind of crazy these past years, partly because of health and financial problems. I always wanted to come back, but I just couldn’t, up until now.
About the project:
In February, I finished translating the game. After that, I started going through the script and fixing my mistakes, which there are quite a lot of. I’m trying to make it more understandable and unified, so I’ll take my time. My plan is to finish up in March and move on to the next game, but…
Problems:
I’ve been thinking about the legality of this, and I have to contact the publisher somehow. I need some kind of approval to post any part of the game. Even if it’s just a patch containing a single file. I doubt they’d go to court with me, but I don’t exactly want to get DMCA’d either. I’ve looked around a bit and most VN publishers are against fan translations, and take them down quickly. It would be sad if all of this would go to waste. So, if you have any suggestion about this, please leave a comment or contact me.
If everything goes well:
I want to keep on doing this. I have a list of games I want to work on, and I was thinking about putting up a poll, so you guys could vote about what should be the next one. But there is no point, if I don’t have approval from that publisher. For example I have a few Alice Soft games on the list, but I highly doubt they’d like that. We’ll see, though.
Washi Translations 
Good to see you’re still alive and kicking! I understand you’re worried about possible legal trouble and I hope you can avoid something like that. Looking at the company that made the VN and the parent brand it looks like they haven’t made a VN in several years so who even knows if they’re still alive. You should probably still try to contact them though. Also I would advise against going for AliceSoft games. They’re already pushing their stuff into the west with Mangagamer so if you were going to get any sort of DMCA I would say that they would be the ones to do so over a company that isn’t even attempting to sell their visual novels to the west if that makes sense. Whatever you decide to do I just wanted to thank you for your work and I hope I get the chance to read one of your translations.
LikeLike
Thank you! I’ll definitely try contacting them. And I figured Alice Soft games are out of question which is sad, because they have some really great ones. Hope Mangagamer licenses the ones I have my eyes on, though.
LikeLike
Any publisher will almost always say no to patches simply because they have no idea whether you’re distributing game files, misrepresenting their game, charging for it, whatever. You’ll never have any actual legal issue over it though, translations alone are less illegal than manga scanlation and you never see anyone get done in over that.
Your best bet is simply to upload it to nyaa and spread word, once something is on the internet and people know about it it’ll never go away.
LikeLike
Thank you for your comment! I’ll contact the publisher, just in case. But I’m sure you’ll get to see the translation in one way or another.
LikeLike
If you are serious about it, then you should contact JAST since they have the best connections with WillPlus.
LikeLike
You mean JAST USA? I thought about providing the patch to a company who does localization. Maybe they’d be able to do something with it. We’ll see, though.
LikeLike
I’d recommend contacting the publisher directly and get a license from them, and do a KS to pay for it.
Whatever you do, don’t contact Sekai Project if you don’t want to get killed off like I, Aroduc, was. Just a fair warning.
LikeLike
Thank you for your comment. Yeah, contacting Material/WillPlus will be my first step. I just hope I’ll be able to “publish” this in one way or another.
LikeLike
Hi ! It’s been almost two years since the last post
I really want to see this vn in english, if you feel like wanting to contact with the vn publisher, do it, but who really knows if they are going to answer
I just came here to say thank you for translating this vn, looks awesome !
LikeLike
Thank you for sticking around! Glad to see you still here. I’ll contact them, just in case. We’ll see what happens.
LikeLike
In this case, i think that the easier method is to simply get a bit creative about the distribution of the patch. Direct links pointing to this website are obviously a no-go, but uploading it to trackers (private or public, it’s your choice) use of magnet links or even IPFS (https://ipfs.io/) or through VPNs located in privacy conscious places (Netherlands, for example, but you could even get one in China or something like that if you’re that worried) should do the trick.
About copyright legal protection, it really depends: companies usually externalize those services to law firms, DMCA takedown services (these aren’t legal operators per se, more like an IT service) and they may act if they receive a notice about copyright infringement (usually done through automatic monitoring software, but it could be done manually as well); after that the first step is usually a cease and desist letter that has no legal value, it’s basically just telling you “please stop”. After that, if the copyright holder wants, they’ll ask the firm to initiate legal action. Do consider that the more involved lawyers have to get, more money is charged to the copyright holder.
Still, all of this depends on the jurisdiction, so some laws might apply while some others may not. As a very broad generalization, if the holder does not have his product/service/whatever registered in the local copyright office, then you’re in the clear.
Some legislation also have exceptions, where translations or other non-profit works are allowed regardless of the copyright holder’s intention under certain circumstances, such as academic, educational or scientific purposes.
Finally, you’re free to go ahead and contact the companies involved, but the truth is that their reply is probably gonna be one that considers their self interest, and not an strictly legal response, so do have that in mind, and as Aroduc already commented, be careful of other organizations or firms with conflicting interests, such as those dedicated to translating these works, in this case it’s recommended to at least investigate their background, check if they’re involved in shady practices and so on. Sekai project at the very least has been confirmed to use other people’s asset without prior authorization.
In my humble opinion, in an ideal world developers/publishers would reach a contractual arrangement with fan translators and incorporate the new language support in their products in order to reach a wider audience, and potentially more sales (thus more profits) but certain transaction costs tend to get in the way of traditionally organized VN companies. Maybe there’s an opportunity for someone to act as a bridge between devs and fanlators waiting to be filled, who knows.
tl;dr VPN’d torrent upload or IPFS (or any other network protocol of your choice)
LikeLike
Thank you for the explanations. You have provided a lot of good information to me.
To be honest, I would happily provide the translation to the developer/publisher, if they would release it. But I know that if I were to contact them, they would likely turn me down and tell me not to post a patch. Hell, I would even give it to a localization company, but I have my doubts.
I will probably use one of your methods, but we will see. For the time being, I just want to be done with this. I have been on this project for too long.
Once again, thank you for the help!
LikeLike
If you want to profit off it or release officially at all, you should contact the original creators BEFORE you start translating much and make a deal then. Sort out licensing and publishing before devoting a ton of time to something like this.
Otherwise people generally just release things completely free as a patch and let the internet propagate it. In such a case a DMCA really wouldn’t mean anything beyond removing it from your site/s specifically, it would never remove it from the internet entirely. It’s really no big deal unless you actually value such things morally for some reason.
Waiting until it’s complete to do any preparation of this sort and not just releasing for free right away is like, really really silly.
I understand the desire to release officially or profit off work, but the order of actions here is just weird as heck.
LikeLike
Do you need help with TLC/QC/Beta testing?
LikeLike