Scanlation Nation

From Wikipedia: Scanlation (also scanslation) is the scanning, translation, editing and distribution of comics from a foreign language into the language of the distributors. The term is most often used for Japanese (manga), Korean (manhwa), and Chinese (manhua) comics. Scanlations are generally distributed for free via the Internet, either by direct download, BitTorrent or IRC. The word scanlation is a portmanteau of scan and translation (or scan and translation).

From me: Hmmm… Portmanteau, big fancy French word (mental note: use portmanteau at least three times today).

Scanlation is, strictly speaking, illegal for being an unauthorized translation of a published work.  Under the Berne Convention, the author has the right to make or to authorize the translation of his work.  However, while the act of scanlating may be essentially illegal, in practice, it is not as blatantly (in-your-face) lawless and uncontrolled as the act of uploading movies or series for streaming or download.  Interestingly, from observation, the manga scanlation community appears to be an organized effort by several groups with an established code of ethics (if you can call it that), a sort of virtual mafia.  Probably aware of the illegality of the act and its potential commercial damage to the author, scanlators have set limits to what they can translate and how to distribute.

Here are a few observations:

(1)    There are only a few groups of scanlators around and they seem to know or, at least, seem to be aware of one another.

(2)    A manga series is never scanlated twice by two different scanlators.  Two groups of scanlators may coordinate to scanlate a series but they almost never scanlate the same series if another group has already started scanlating.

(3)    Scanlators only scanlate unlicensed manga.  Once the manga gets licensed and officially translated, they remove it from their site.

(4)    They never mean to profit from the scanlations.  Scanlations are free and access to them are not conditioned on a paid membership.  Donations are for site maintenance expenses and for purchasing originals.

(5)    They rarely authorize retranslation probably as a measure of control over the integrity of the translation from the original.

(6)    They rarely authorize hosting of their scanlations in another site.  When they do authorize, the hosting site is subject to certain rules like removing the manga from the site when licensed and prohibiting the distribution of the scans for profit.  Authorization may be a form of control to make sure only unlicensed scanlated mangas get distributed online and that they are not distributed for profit.

Interesting…  So, scanlators are not cutthroat criminals.  Their means may be illegal but their intentions are pure, kind of like a Robinhood for the foreign otakus (Japanese term for manga and anime geeks).  In the eyes of the law, their violation is clear-cut.  From a socio-cultural point of view, particularly the manga-reading non-Japanese speaking/reading community, scanlating is an acceptable practice for it contributes to the cultural and artistic experience of said community specially when it appears that a manga will never get licensed because it does not appeal to mainstream America.  There is also some cultural and artistic value in the preservation of the integrity of the text of foreign comic books which scanlators often achieve but is almost always lost in official translations since the latter are designed to appeal to a foreign audience and are “westernized” for that purpose (i.e. names are altered, characters speak American slang).  A gray area, therefore, seems to lie between the law and the socio-cultural contributions of scanlation.  So, is Robinhood good or bad?  Depends on whose side you’re on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanlation