Okay, I’m not entirely sure what to make of this (is it legal? is it not?), but a commenter linked me to it and I had to share because it’s, basically, very cool.
Check out… SuperFogeys in RUSSIAN!
Near as I can tell, this is an ongoing project with new posts every day. The amount of work and attention to detail going in this is impressive. I can’t read Russian, so I have no idea how accurate and the well done the translations are, but the work being done to make the fonts and new word balloon shapes fit is incredible. You’d swear they were manipulating my source files, but all they have access to are the original jpegs. It’s solid work. Check out this Origins to see what I mean:
I mean, wow. I honestly don’t know how they’re doing it with such accuracy. I’ve looked at every page and I can’t spot any obvious flaws or patching.
The cool thing is that it looks like SF is getting a bit of a following over in Russia. Thanks to my browser translator, I can actually read their comments and it’s fun to see them going on the same journey we all went through years ago. They seem okay with Soviet Sam and recognize what he represents. There’s a great discussion under SF 200 about whether or not the artist changed or I finally learned to draw! I can’t wait for them to hit the end of Chapter 9.
Does anybody out there know anything about this? What IS the legality of this sort of thing? I’m not inclined to try to shut it down or anything, but I am curious.
Written by : Brock Heasley
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It’s a fuzzy legal area. On one hand, I know animes that are subtitled by fan groups and distributed for free are generally OK as long as the rights haven’t been sold for the country/language because there’s no presence. On the other hand, given that the comic is web-based, you already have presence in those countries.
If it concerns you too much, you’d have to talk to a (and I’m so sorry to suggest this) lawyer.
I wouldn’t say I’m too terribly concerned. While it’s true that being online gives SF a presence everywhere, we’re giving this away for free, same as they are. We seem to have the same goal, which is getting eyeballs on this comic. Given the issues that come with international copyright laws and my lack of vast resources, it’s probably enough just to ask them to put a more prominent link back to this site on theirs. Which I just did.
No idea about legality as it stands, but I do believe that if you contact them and give them the permission (with your caveat to add a more prominent link), you make it expressly legal. But I’m not a lawyer, so…yeah.
I do want to say that although I don’t speak Russian or really care about the translations, I think it’s enormously cool that you think it’s cool.
That makes sense. If I give any kind of approval, the illegality goes out the window. Well, that’s basically what I want to do. I hope they’ll respond well to my inquiry so I can make them law-abiding citizens again.
As both Russian and fan translator, I can confirm that it’s illegal to publish translation without consent from original owner here. But it’s up to owner to actually deal with it. So if you wanted to send some kind of takedown notice, you could. I think it’d be a good sport for him (translation is done by one guy) to approach you beforehand, but I guess this sentiment isn’t as widespread as it should be.
The translation itself is good. And I don’t use this word lightly. Too many translators don’t bother to look beyond words, luckily this one does.
That’s great to know! Thank you for the expert opinion, Shylight!
I don’t feel like making a big deal out of this as I think the benefits far outweigh any breach in protocol. Your comment only affirms that position.
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