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Was this done with the permission of Kairosoft? Kairosoft may not approve of an unlicensed translation of a game that they still distribute on their web site, f

Was this done with the permission of Kairosoft? Kairosoft may not approve of an unlicensed translation of a game that they still distribute on their web site, for various reasons including that a poor quality translation may tarnish their business reputation. (edit: Nothing about permission in article.)

andrewzah 5y ago
I strongly doubt a fan translation of a game from 1997 is going to reflect on or tarnish -anything-. Fan translations are very common, and without them games would be forever unavailable to people who don't speak that language.
- bdowling 5y ago
  Kairosoft is a company of about 20 people with capitalization of 100 million yen (not sure what that means exactly). [0]. They make games for current game consoles including Nintendo Switch and Sony Playstation 4, and games for iOS and Android. [1]. That's not the kind of company that doesn't care about its reputation or protecting its brand image and trademarks. Kairosoft also produces English translations of many of its games. [2]. According to this photo from the article, the translation appears to be incomplete and leaves much of the text appearing as strings of question marks. [3] I don't believe that a company that produces dozens of games, including for current systems and many translated into English, would approve of an incomplete fan translation of one of its games. [0] https://kairosoft.net/company/ https://kairosoft.net/company/ [1] https://kairosoft.net/game/ https://kairosoft.net/game/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft [3] https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png
  - staticman2 5y ago
    I don't see how this is harming anyone even if it's a bad translation. And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net.
    - bdowling 5y ago
      > And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net. It doesn't upset me. It's just that no one making fan fictions or fan translations should be surprised when they receive a cease and desist letter, DMCA takedown notice, or copyright infringement complaint. edit: Actually, it does bother me that some of us think that it's perfectly okay to distribute fan translations of other people's work. It seems like when the work is a game or is in a language that few of us understand, like Japanese, respect for the rights of the creators goes out the window. This causes real problems for the creators, particularly individuals and small companies, that might want to enforce their rights, but don't have the budget or legal resources to do so. So, many of them are victims of international "fans" who do whatever they want. Here, there's no indication that the fans even tried to contact the company about doing a legitimate licensed translation; they just did whatever they wanted to without any regard for the rights of the creators.
      - SirGiggles 5y ago
        I'm of the opinion that a fan translation is acceptable, so long as it requires the end user to have purchased the original product. In some visual novels, patches are distributed via delta patches that are designed to be used on the binaries provided by the original installation. Or in some other cases, the group only provides certain modified archives which are installed by overwriting the original installation. In both cases, the end user who doesn't understand Japanese (or in some other VNs, Chinese) are able to play while the publisher/developer still gets compensated for their work.
      - viraptor 5y ago
        Honestly, if you're not translating for market X, then I can't see a moral reason to object to making a complete fan hacked release in that market. If the company is interested enough to do their own translation, that's a different issue. But for things which you'll not be able to enjoy in a legal way, even if you want to spend the money? I'm all for piracy of software / books / music / art in that situation.
    - thrdbndndn 5y ago
- numpad0 5y ago
  Japanese understanding for copyright is like enforceable shrinkwrap software licensing entitled to authors, literally “authorship rights”. American version is like rights holder’s right to protect mostly financial interest, almost literally “copy-rights”. When ones from different sides meet a misunderstanding like this happens; one side says “it’s not going to hurt your sales”, the other side says “how dare you mess with someone else’s binary” and the discussions go nowhere. As for resolution, an emerging choice is to make the author monetize the pirated translation and let them take down the free version. Don’t work always as sometimes the rights holder consider that a negligible gain or minor loss with high reputation risks to day jobs. So, “it’s not going to hurt sales” won’t work. “Do you have any idea to make it official” is probably better.
  - ngcc_hk 5y ago
    Actually the issue is Japanese “copyright” is very hard issue. I knew it killed bubblegum crisis in my days.
nanoshelter 5y ago
The article spells out how the company responded...
malwarebytess 5y ago
I have serious doubts that someone downloading this near 30 year old game's clearly fan translated version is going to be shocked and appalled by the poor quality translation and then reflect this onto Kairosoft's "business reputation." How about weighing a couple potential morons thinking less of a company against the archival value and reach of a project like this? In my view it isn't even close. The translation is worth it. Not everything needs to be reduced to "business reputation" and "$". Especially when we're talking about 24 year old japanese software. If anything a translation would improve outcomes for the company in myriad ways. One may be laying groundwork for a modern product that they could actually sell.
- bdowling 5y ago
  The company here can decide for itself whether it is in its best interest to allow an unlicensed fan translation of one of its programs. If it is, then the company does nothing. If not, then the company will tell them to stop what they're doing.
  - BEEdwards 5y ago
    Why are you doing work for Kairosoft unpaid? Like at least put in an applications, your time is valuable.
    - ratww 5y ago
      > Like at least put in an applications Job interviews take way too much time. People have better things to do, such as working for free translating old games.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    According to this fan wiki I found (https://kairosoft.fandom.com/wiki/Kairosoft_Wiki https://kairosoft.fandom.com/wiki/Kairosoft_Wiki), Kairosoft hasn’t touched PCs since 2001, and has been doing mobile stuff. They have done more than a few games that seem to be in the same general genre as this one, but haven’t done a new version of Book Store Story. Maybe this will result in them seeing this outpouring of love for a 24 year old game and deciding to do a remake to their modern standards! Or maybe a Cease & Desist letter from a lawyer. We shall see.

andrewzah 5y ago

I strongly doubt a fan translation of a game from 1997 is going to reflect on or tarnish -anything-. Fan translations are very common, and without them games would be forever unavailable to people who don't speak that language.

bdowling 5y ago
Kairosoft is a company of about 20 people with capitalization of 100 million yen (not sure what that means exactly). [0]. They make games for current game consoles including Nintendo Switch and Sony Playstation 4, and games for iOS and Android. [1]. That's not the kind of company that doesn't care about its reputation or protecting its brand image and trademarks. Kairosoft also produces English translations of many of its games. [2]. According to this photo from the article, the translation appears to be incomplete and leaves much of the text appearing as strings of question marks. [3] I don't believe that a company that produces dozens of games, including for current systems and many translated into English, would approve of an incomplete fan translation of one of its games. [0] https://kairosoft.net/company/ https://kairosoft.net/company/ [1] https://kairosoft.net/game/ https://kairosoft.net/game/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft [3] https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png
- staticman2 5y ago
  I don't see how this is harming anyone even if it's a bad translation. And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net.
  - bdowling 5y ago
    > And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net. It doesn't upset me. It's just that no one making fan fictions or fan translations should be surprised when they receive a cease and desist letter, DMCA takedown notice, or copyright infringement complaint. edit: Actually, it does bother me that some of us think that it's perfectly okay to distribute fan translations of other people's work. It seems like when the work is a game or is in a language that few of us understand, like Japanese, respect for the rights of the creators goes out the window. This causes real problems for the creators, particularly individuals and small companies, that might want to enforce their rights, but don't have the budget or legal resources to do so. So, many of them are victims of international "fans" who do whatever they want. Here, there's no indication that the fans even tried to contact the company about doing a legitimate licensed translation; they just did whatever they wanted to without any regard for the rights of the creators.
    - SirGiggles 5y ago
      I'm of the opinion that a fan translation is acceptable, so long as it requires the end user to have purchased the original product. In some visual novels, patches are distributed via delta patches that are designed to be used on the binaries provided by the original installation. Or in some other cases, the group only provides certain modified archives which are installed by overwriting the original installation. In both cases, the end user who doesn't understand Japanese (or in some other VNs, Chinese) are able to play while the publisher/developer still gets compensated for their work.
    - viraptor 5y ago
      Honestly, if you're not translating for market X, then I can't see a moral reason to object to making a complete fan hacked release in that market. If the company is interested enough to do their own translation, that's a different issue. But for things which you'll not be able to enjoy in a legal way, even if you want to spend the money? I'm all for piracy of software / books / music / art in that situation.
  - thrdbndndn 5y ago
numpad0 5y ago
Japanese understanding for copyright is like enforceable shrinkwrap software licensing entitled to authors, literally “authorship rights”. American version is like rights holder’s right to protect mostly financial interest, almost literally “copy-rights”. When ones from different sides meet a misunderstanding like this happens; one side says “it’s not going to hurt your sales”, the other side says “how dare you mess with someone else’s binary” and the discussions go nowhere. As for resolution, an emerging choice is to make the author monetize the pirated translation and let them take down the free version. Don’t work always as sometimes the rights holder consider that a negligible gain or minor loss with high reputation risks to day jobs. So, “it’s not going to hurt sales” won’t work. “Do you have any idea to make it official” is probably better.
- ngcc_hk 5y ago
  Actually the issue is Japanese “copyright” is very hard issue. I knew it killed bubblegum crisis in my days.

nanoshelter 5y ago

The article spells out how the company responded...

malwarebytess 5y ago

I have serious doubts that someone downloading this near 30 year old game's clearly fan translated version is going to be shocked and appalled by the poor quality translation and then reflect this onto Kairosoft's "business reputation." How about weighing a couple potential morons thinking less of a company against the archival value and reach of a project like this? In my view it isn't even close. The translation is worth it. Not everything needs to be reduced to "business reputation" and "$". Especially when we're talking about 24 year old japanese software. If anything a translation would improve outcomes for the company in myriad ways. One may be laying groundwork for a modern product that they could actually sell.

bdowling 5y ago
The company here can decide for itself whether it is in its best interest to allow an unlicensed fan translation of one of its programs. If it is, then the company does nothing. If not, then the company will tell them to stop what they're doing.
- BEEdwards 5y ago
  Why are you doing work for Kairosoft unpaid? Like at least put in an applications, your time is valuable.
  - ratww 5y ago
    > Like at least put in an applications Job interviews take way too much time. People have better things to do, such as working for free translating old games.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  According to this fan wiki I found (https://kairosoft.fandom.com/wiki/Kairosoft_Wiki https://kairosoft.fandom.com/wiki/Kairosoft_Wiki), Kairosoft hasn’t touched PCs since 2001, and has been doing mobile stuff. They have done more than a few games that seem to be in the same general genre as this one, but haven’t done a new version of Book Store Story. Maybe this will result in them seeing this outpouring of love for a 24 year old game and deciding to do a remake to their modern standards! Or maybe a Cease & Desist letter from a lawyer. We shall see.