Leecher Rant

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If you are visiting from a site that hosts a lot of light novel translations (I will not link to them because I refuse to give them traffic), then please stop reading Great Tang Idyll on that site. It hosts an incomplete version of my translation anyway. The closest I will get to linking them is to the Novel Updates forum thread where the translators are discussing ways to try to circumvent it.

THEY DO NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION

NONE WHATSOEVER

IN HOSTING MY TRANSLATIONS!

The site I am talking about here rudely leeches translations from a bunch of novel translation sites and hosts them on their own site while illegally claiming copyright to them without even crediting the fan translator. They can get away with this because the translations are unofficial translations and are not officially licensed so DMCA or any other claims to copyright abuse to get them to stop are legally murky and unfeasible. This is similar to the manga aggregators who host the fan scanlations without permission in order to profit off of the traffic from visitors who go to them for the convenience and don’t care that this action discourages the people producing the content in the first place from continuing thus leading to the translated content drying up or a drop in quality.

The only reason they seem to have linked back to my site is probably because they couldn’t manage to copy and paste the full contents of my footnotes (Ha! My tendency to lecture saved me here) because their scraping script seems to strip all of the hyperlinks out of the original text. The reason they do this is because they make money off of the ad revenue from the traffic and views that they get. But they have not done any work other than setting up the site and this is basically a slap to the face to me because I am trying to see if I can do translations full-time with my own site and this will only get in the way—possibly to the point to which I will find it harder to keep up my motivation and my output would drop. It has already been a bit of a slog for me because of the existing demands on my time to work for a living as I struggle to balance my schedule with translating.

After all, what would be the point if someone is just going to come by and take credit for all of the time and work I have invested and profit off of it just because they can? They are literally leeching off of me and other translators like me who currently have nothing but enthusiasm and love for the novel to keep themselves going. Even though I have asked for some financial support through donations and Patreon, that money will mostly be going to either the Chinese author (by paying for the raw) or to the future cost for hosting this site on its own domain. It would probably take years, if ever, to make this a full-time job. Of course, a pleasant surprise of suddenly being able to just translate all day would be nice but I don’t want to disappoint myself so keeping my expectations low here.

Sorry for the wall of text but it is rather upsetting… 😦

21 thoughts on “Leecher Rant”

    • Thanks for the suggestions. I think I will need to do some kind of random text liners every now and then but it sucks because it detracts from the reading experience. 😦

      Also, the image with watermarks might defeat them but it would also turn away a lot of readers since the image would need to be of a certain dimension to make the font legible and then that would probably be not so doable for people with slower connections or on their mobile devices… Plus, they could simply download the image themselves and probably do some OCR on it if need be.

      After all, it’s a lot easier on their end to expend some extra effort to get the end product when they don’t actually have to worry about the process of producing it in the first place.

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  2. Please, do give me their site address! I will specially install adblock before going on their site and span~! Hehehehe~ If people didn’t know about the existence of NU they will know~ Buhahahaha! Bow to NU power! NU was the best thing to exist in the last 3 years since the boom of light novel translations, it links many translations sites and it’s releases, making the readers not only keep their reading list in check but also helps readers to discover others novels! It’s greatness shall be diffused! If you don’t want others to know about the site, then go to my site and post there and I shal span with all my mighty!!

    Liked by 2 people

    • LOL, thanks for the offer. Yeah, sites like NU are a service to both the translators and the readers since it still aggregates the novel feeds but doesn’t steal content without permission by simply linking to it.

      I have posted to satisfy your curiosity. It is just a huge blow to my motivation knowing there is someone waiting to just copy my work without asking and then thinks linking back to my site will make up for the insult.

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  3. Sorry to hear that the leecher site is hitting you too. I heard about it, but haven’t seen the site myself. Not that I’m curious since it’s bad for all of the translator’s hard work to be taken like this.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Noticed the site a while ago… I don’t think there are many people using it till now. Because I dd take a look but was unable to find even a single comment on the page.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Yeah, it looks like there is a small group of people using it that either are unaware of how the site stole its content or don’t really care. They do have novels that have been licensed up on there too (which is another problem for the translators who might have removed their translations to comply with the license holders but could now be in trouble because of this random guy’s actions). The few comments I see on the site could be sockpuppets for all I know. But I’m pretty sure they’re not creating such a site out of the goodness of their heart as a service to readers.

      Anyway, I was ranting because I was trying to vent to try to prevent it affecting my motivation… It is just very irritating. 😡

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  6. Really now, in the past there’s already a site like that but then the owner of the site stop doing so when the complains came, so really, the current sites that do so is really shameless, when I saw sites like those, it makes my mood off, really uncomfortable….

    And…. I’ve forgotten about it since I haven’t used it even though I learn it when studying but isn’t there a setting or something that makes the words when copied appear as codes? though I think it will be time-consuming to apply it and I’m not sure if it’s applicable to wordpress ~_~.
    But well, I really don’t remember it so never mind it.

    Well, one thing to do against those sites is attacking it but well, we’ll have to wait if there’s some capable people that would be willing to do so.

    — Anyway, hope you do well~ ^^.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Hey, i know this is a bit late since i just read this yesterday after randomly clicking this novel on NU, but i have a suggestion…
    How about you create a blank space then insert the white text like “Read this at solitaryidler.wordpress.com” secretly… i bet they will unsconsciously copy it without checking it first since it was hidden because of white text…

    Or putting a chinese word untranslated like for example (since i don’t know chinese i just use japanese) : 怪物 物語, just put “Kaibutsu Monogatari” there while leaving the footnotes to notify the reader what is the meaning of the translations…

    Btw, can you send me their website at my email? acterservice@gmail.com, if i have a chance i’ll spam that place, btw are they the one who steal a content from another well known website translations in NU?

    Liked by 1 person

    • I’ve tried that before but they’re doing this through automatic content scraping bots so it strips that kind of coding and doesn’t prevent them from copying it. They also found a way to copy the footnotes as well though they don’t have the links since they automatically strip their copied content of hyperlinks. They copy from a lot of huge sites with novel translations including Wuxia World, I think. And spamming them won’t work because they have CloudFlare and keep their comments locked down.

      Thanks for the offer though. I pretty much will need to either wait for them to get DMCAed out of oblivion by the publishers for the translations of licensed light novels they have up there or get my own hosted site where I can install plugins and ban IPs to more effectively prevent this.

      I am trying to focus on the positive instead of wasting my time and energy on them because it just means less translations for you guys. Thanks again for your suggestions and for visiting! 🙂

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