translating novel

AncestorDuck

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Is it allowed to translate novels that already have an "official" translator on Webnovel? Most of them are so bad.

Obviously, this would be without the intention of making money.
 

Indicterra

Making the Emperor proud, one corpse at a time
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Is it allowed to translate novels that already have an "official" translator on Webnovel? Most of them are so bad.

Obviously, this would be without the intention of making money.
You can do anything with a novel as long as you have legal permission from Author.

If you don't, then it doesn't matter what you do with novel, it's wrong.

Atleast That's my way of thinking
 

Dieter

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You can do anything with a novel as long as you have legal permission from Author.

If you don't, then it doesn't matter what you do with novel, it's wrong.

Atleast That's my way of thinking
Legal permission an author can't give if the translation is licensed. But the author should let you know about that.
 

beast_regards

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Only with permission of the copyright owner.

Which, in case of the Webnovel.com, is not author, but Quidian, a Chinese company (I think based in Hong Kong, but I am not sure)

This could be tricky. There are translations, and there are adaptations.

Translation comes under the different license. There are legal definitions, but translation doesn't change that much (that's why translation is bad from Asian languages are bad, usually, they require a word-for-word translation because that's what they were legally allowed to do)

You see, the translation from any Asian language requires such a major rework that your work wouldn't be translation per se, but the derivative work instead. You would have to change so much for it to make sense, yet still use copyrighted elements, which is the very definition of derivative work. It is the same category as fan-fiction.

Whether you do or don't make money is irrelevant from a legal perspective.

You coudn't publish derivative work without the permission of the author.

However, if you have the legal permission, well, it is basically adaptation, and you could do whatever (you and owner agreed upon)

Since you couldn't get permission from the copyright owner, it's rather pointless, since by signing the Webnovel's contract author completelly lost control over the novel and became contracted to do the work of writing instead.

Now, the Scribble Hub allows posting of fan-fiction. How that works is not an exception. SH assumes you have the permission, and declares you took all the responsibility by posting, so if the actual copyright owner complains, they delete the whole thing.
 
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