Pre-90 announcement of stuffs (Ads, Xian Ni, translating permission for MGA)

This will be somewhat lengthy but it has important stuff. Brace yourselves.

---

First of all, hope you enjoyed the bombardment of chapters to start the week with. I spent the entire Saturday and a bit of Sunday to work on those (phew) but twas fun :)

But now, prepare yourself for a bombardment of announcements. Dun dun dunn…

Okay, anyways. One of the main points. The dreaded/not so dreaded…ads! Originally, I planned to add them when MGA reached chapter 50, but then I felt I didn’t do enough translations to deserve the ads so I postponed it to chapter 100.

But since there’s only 10 more chapters until chapter 100 I might as well prepone it. Of course, there’s also another reason. If you read my FAQ, I said that a portion of the money I get from ads would go to the pile of money for extra chapters since: Ads comes from views, views comes from viewers, therefore ads comes from viewers, therefore viewers are “donating views”, therefore viewers are donating by viewing. (#logic)

That still remains true. As for the portion/percentage, I really have no idea how much of it will go into the extra chapters since I never dealt with the ads things before. So, just assume a decent amount of the money from ads will go to the extra chapters. However, I really doubt that it will be a lot so don’t expect much.

The other reason why I’m add ads is because the donations has slowed down. Not in any single way is that a bad thing and I would be quite burnt out if I had to translate too many extra chapters so the small break is quite a good thing. Also because of that, to avoid the chapters going out too slow, by implementing ads gives me some excuse (?) to translate more so that’s the other reason why ads are coming.

Okay, that’s done for ads. Since the website is from wordpress, the ads are from wordads so I don’t think that there will be too many, if any, inappropriate content. I’ll have it by a viewing basis instead of clicking (if I can) so it’s a bit more passive. I’ll also try to not have any popups if there are any because those are annoying.

Next topic, Xian Ni. A small announcement, but I’ll mention it nonetheless. No, I have no dropped Xian Ni and it seems to be getting quite interesting and less confusing (horrah~). If you have noticed in the spreadsheets, I have not progressed from chapter 151. To be honest, I haven’t even started on it. The reason being is that I haven’t actually caught up to that chapter.

I’m currently at chapter ~140 and I want to make sure I don’t miss too much. After all, the information slides pass the brain more easily when you read it compared to when you are translating it. So the reason why I am more knowledgeable in MGA compared to Xian Ni is because I have a deeper impression on MGA instead. But anyways, that’s that and I should start to translate chap 151 tomorrow or the day after. The chapters have indeed been extended (looking at chapter 141) to 6000 characters. AKA, roughly 4 MGA chapters. Ouch. Therefore, don’t expect too much from me but I’ll try my best.

Before the utmost important point of this announcement, a tiny reminder. First of all, I release 2 chapters of MGA everyday, normally. I cannot guarantee anything at all. Some days I might not feel like it so I might not post any. (But that rarely happens) I release an extra chapter when I reach $80 of donation. HOWEVER. Please, please, although probably impossible since it’s money, please don’t view it as a “payment”. It is not because of donations will chapters come. It is because of chapters do donations come. Yes, probably hard to think of it that way, but I would like people to donate as a thanks instead of donating because of more chapters and I put out more chapters as a thanks to that thanks. Anyways, just a bit of my thought and not that important.

As for the most important part of this announcement which takes up half this post. Permission for translations. Because of my guilty conscience, I really would like to formally and thoroughly get permission for translations. So, starting from last week, I contacted the 17k staff (the website that hosts MGA and other novels like CCM, ZL, SR, and quite a few other Chinese novels) because I couldn’t find any way to contact the actual author.

Because it’s a large website, the staff needed a bit of time to reply. So, roughly every two days, I get a reply back. One week later, I am almost at the end of the request but it really did go quite unexpected and various things might happen soon. Hopefully nothing bad, but I don’t know what to expect.

First of all, the reason why I actually asked for permission. I’ll be honest. I really don’t know much about internet laws or intellectual property so I don’t even know if I can get sued for translating a web novel (NOT a published novel), so just to be safe, I’d like to get permission.

Some might say that it’s unnecessary. After all, I’m just a tiny little translator while the 17k website hosts thousands upon thousands of web novels (over 300 thousand if I’m not mistaken), so they wouldn’t really notice things like this.

However, the important part (that’s pricking my mind) is that what if they notice. I would never have thought that I would get so far into MGA nor did I even think about getting permission because web novels are free whereas light novels/novels aren’t, so there shouldn’t have been a problem with that. But, technically, the author does own the web novel so he does have his rights over it, and probably he could ask for it to be taken down, suing me, etc. etc. if he wished. Although most likely he wouldn’t because it’s too annoying. Of course, that’s the author. What about a huge website/company like 17k?

I want none of that legal business so I might as well do everything with a clear conscience without it banging on my brain everytime. Again. They probably don’t give a damn about me, but it’s just for my sake if you will. Always good to have everything in the clear. Anyways.

I’m pretty sure if no one tells them, they won’t search for English translations of the novels so under normal circumstances, nothing would happen. However, there might be people that dislike me for whatever reason and they might take the initiative to contact the website and, well, ruin everything.

Especially because I have donations, and whenever money is involved, people get more motivated to sue (I suppose?). I wouldn’t really care about all this if I didn’t take donations, but since I did, I want to make everything clear so no trouble arises in the future. So, what happened in one week?

First, since I couldn’t find a single way to contact the author, I contacted the 17k staff and asked how I could ask the author a question. So, they redirected me to the book’s comment area and told me to ask there. So, I did ask there. However, there are over 40 thousand comments at that comment area, so obviously, even if the author did check the comments, he would not notice mine.

A few days later, after seeing no response, I contacted the staff again and I asked if there were other ways of contacting the author. So, they gave me the author’s QQ number (kind of like Skype I suppose) so I could contact the author there instead of the comment area. So, since I didn’t have QQ, I went on google, downloaded it, made an account and I sent a message to the author, requesting permission for translating his web novel, MGA.

He was quite quick, and after a night, I got his response. He said that personally, he did not mind me translating the novel. However, he sold the rights of the novel to the 17k website so I had to ask the 17k website. At that point, it meant the web novel was technically no longer “free” because the 17k bought the rights of the novel from the author. When other people (me) made money (donation) off of “their” web novel in which they paid the author while I was “making money” off of it for free, one had an advantage and obviously, if found out, the 17k might not let it rest.

So, after understanding that, I contacted the staff once again. I said something like: “The author himself was willing to let me translate the novel, so I was wondering if the website would allow me to translate the novel.” A while later, I got the response from the staff.

After that, the end result is this. Because the translations are publicly released and not for “personal entertainment”, a formal discussion is required. I have absolutely no idea where this is going to go. But, if they ask for money and it’s reasonable, then I won’t really mind. I haven’t spent any of the donation money (more like I don’t know where to spent it on) so given a reasonable price, I won’t mind at all. Donations are meant for things like this after all.

So, that’s where I am at. I am currently in the process of the “formal discussion” and I should get a response tomorrow or in two days. Hopefully all goes well, but I’m just saying all so everyone has a more general idea on what’s going on in these days and also to give a general idea to those curious about permission for web novel translations.

Okay. That is all. Like I said, the permission is mostly for my own conscience and they probably don’t care too much, but I just want it out of the way. That is all for this lengthy announcement (1.6 k words), and see you all tomorrow!

P.S. I don’t mean to sound annoying or irritated, but the reason why I pushed the release schedule one hour later was so that all the chapters would be released at once. If two chapters come out without the third, don’t expect a third.

P.S.S. Although a bit late, any comments that look even remotely like a spoiler will be deleted. Anything about future chapters, be it true or false, will be deleted. So even if it isn’t a spoiler but looks like one, it shall be deleted.