narihira:

Looking at a bunch of things going on in various fandoms recently, it boils down to this:

Translating is really hard work. If you’ve never done it, never spent time trying to master another language enough to translate something, I don’t think you can comprehend just how difficult it is—even for pros, let alone amateurs. Formatting your translation so that it’s readable, looks nice, and is convenient? That’s even more work, but I won’t get into that. 

People who translate things for their respective fandoms do so because of a deep love for the subject matter and perhaps even the fandom, but also because they’re in the mood to do so. When you’re doing something so time-consuming and difficult completely for free, your mood is a pretty big part of it.

If you want to see more translations in a timely manner, or you want people to help you out with your translation projects, it generally helps if you’re not a big, entitled douchebag about it. Translators don’t owe you shit. Also helps if you don’t go against translators’ wishes and steal/disseminate their work without their consent. All that does is piss them off.

Translators don’t ask for much and give up a whole lot of their time and energy for others’ entertainment and enjoyment. It’s never been an equal trade in the first place. If people are going to continue to disrespect translators and their work, love for the subject material/fandom is not going to keep them going for long. I guarantee it.

I recently received a question from an anon asking “What happened to KonataP?”

The short answer is: bulling/trolling

The longer answer goes, well, all the way back to KonataP’s song “Enemy of 334 people”.

The number “334” had two meanings in her song:

1)334 can be read as “sa-mi-shi” (lonely)

2) the number was also supposed to mean “I could only trust 1/300 people”

334, however, was a “taboo” number which the somewhat unknown 2channel/NND community called “なんでも実況J” didn’t allow anyone else to use.

They kept commenting on her video and bothering her, but no matter how much KonataP tried to explain the meaning of her title, they wouldn’t stop. They stamped her as a liar and said “we know you’re lying - stop trying to excuse yourself!!”

Even with a lot of negative feedback though, she stayed strong and continued to upload new songs.

The second incident happened when KonataP released another song, Lie of April. In this video, trolls accused KonataP of making a disgusting song about lewd dreams. Although we’re not sure who’s behind it, it’s pretty certain that it must have been the same group behind this as well.

As a result of her videos becoming well-known due to the trolling, she was also accused of doing all of this as a publicity stunt.

In the end, she finally gave up producing songs and deleted her Skype, Twitter and Niconico Douga account. She has also decided that she will not return.

(Source: KonataP’s blog in Japanese)

——

I’d like to add that this isn’t the first time in Vocaloid history that someone has been trolled/bullied/flamed by a large group of people.

The first major incident I remember goes back to summer 2010 where Yunomi, the illustrator of Just Be Friends, was accused of plagiarism. 

Recently, Neru has also been targeted of plagiarizing other songs without permission.

Although I don’t want anyone to start arguing about who’s right or who’s wrong, I’d just like to use this opportunity to say this to everyone in the English-speaking Vocaloid community: please be civil.

There are a lot of talents out there and it’s sad to see so many quit. I hope that our growing community will be able to handle cases such as these better. If anything does happen though, please be sure to support the artists, ok?

Thank you.

Title: Stella / Sutera / ステラ
Composer: Dixie Flatline (mylist/4193884) (Web: http://yeheyuan.tumblr.com/) ←yes, he has a tumblr!
Video: Mogelatte （mylist/22088435）
Vocal: Mew

Karaoke:http://piapro.jp/t/cTCV

Romaji: Sunny Subs

Original: [NND]