As I mentioned two weeks ago, Yen Press has licensed the Oregairu light novel. I promised to keep you updated on the fan translation project, so here’s the official announcement from the website:
I have written this post to confirm that, yes, we are taking down all the material from this site, as per Nano Desu policy. The unrelease schedule is as follows:
8/15 – Volume 1 will be taken down, including the ePub/PDF
9/15 – Volumes 2-4 ePubs/PDFs will be taken down
10/15 – Volumes 2-4 text will be taken downApologies for the late announcement. We reached out to Yen Press in an attempt to have some input on the terminology/translation conventions in the official release. We were unable to come to any agreement, however. In any case, we at Nano Desu support the Yen Press release, and we sincerely hope that you purchase the light novel when it becomes available.
In any case, it’s been a lot of fun translating Oregairu. I feel that I learned a lot as a translator from working on that series and I don’t regret any of the time I spent on it. In the meantime, I’ve started another translation project: Qualidea of Scum and a Gold Coin. I sincerely hope you check it out!
P.S. It should go without saying that we do not approve of piracy. Please do not distribute our translations past the removal date. Any comments containing download links will be deleted.
So, uh, yeah, as you can imagine, there’s a story behind that whole “we contacted Yen Press” subplot. It would have been nice to have some influence on the official translation, if only for consistency’s sake, but it’s understandable that an official publishing company would reject any affiliation with a fan translation group. They would only have agreed to a collaboration if our group took down every translation, even the series not licensed by any English-speaking distribution company (which is every single project, by the way). So that was the end of that.
But oh well, no harm done, I guess. On balance, I think that more is gained than lost through official licensing, even if it does mean that some readers will be unable to access the material. The English light novel world is still in flux, so my hope is that in years to come, more light novel translations will remain easily accessible online even after licensing, perhaps via eBooks or on a pay-to-read basis.
The other thing I would like to see is more alternatives to Yen Press in the market. At the moment, they do seem to have a monopoly on most of the high-profile releases. For better or worse, they’re the ones who set the standard in terms of translation quality and scheduling. It’s true that their releases tend to outstrip fan translations in both regards, but that’s not fair competition.
Anyway, those are my personal thoughts on the matter. Once again, please support the official release!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
