Mangagamer freelance translator: Why I'm no longer working with Mangagamer

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

You can probably guess that most MG releases are niche products that don't sell well, but I don't know if people are aware of exactly how poorly they sell. Most releases on the MG store sell well under a thousand copies, and it's extremely rare that something goes over 2000. The Alicesoft games generally sold 1500-ish on the MG store, though Sengoku is close to 2000 last I heard. Evenicle has sold closer to 15000 total thanks to being on Steam, although Steam takes some of that profit, and most games don't do that well on Steam either.

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Translation is the main service that MG provides, so the rates for translators are actually better than most other roles. Editors seem to make half a cent per character for the most part. 'Project managers' make a flat fee of at most $100 for a project that may go on for years, so there are no dedicated project managers, just people in other roles who take that position as well. Testers previously made a flat fee of $50 a project and got a free copy of the game, but I'm told that just recently they may make up to $200.

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The maximum rate for a translator at MG is currently 1.75 cents per character, a raise from the previous max rate of 1.5 per character back in 2016, as I recall. What many would consider a normal, comfortable rate for more ordinary fiction translation jobs is 4000 characters a day, at which rate you would be making $70 a day and something like $17000 a year if you dared to take vacations.

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TL;DR: Mangagamer apparently underpays translators and everyone else.


That seems to be quite normal though in the space of visual novel publishers. Heard it from other people working for other VN companies, that they pay you pennies.

I wonder what can be done about that though? The visual novel market, thanks to Steam, exploded. A decade ago you had maybe 3-4 prominent visual novel releases each year. Now you have like maybe 100, with Indie VN from everywhere. Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, self-published, published etc.

 

[Chopchop]

Holy shit. You'd make more working at a fast food store.

Paying flat rates like that is insane.

 

[Cor]

I wonder what can be done about that though? The visual novel market, thanks to Steam, exploded. A decade ago you had maybe 3-4 prominent visual novel releases each year. Now you have like maybe 100, with Indie VN from everywhere. Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, self-published, published etc.

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Very little. Is the same problem as trying to get eyeballs on your published book. Just *entirely* too much competition, partly cuz production costs for a VN are so much lower than for most other types of games.

 

[Kyougar]

Selling ten times as much on Steam, mentioning 30% regardless.

 

[Kyougar]

BTW, anyone know how much the Translators on Webnovel, etc. get? I am baffled how many novels get translated from China/Japan/Korea and you can read the novels for free. The Microtransactions can't really be that lucrative.

 

[Tolby]

I tried to use their store, but they never sent me the registration activation e-mail. I tried multiple e-mail addresses. They don't want my money.

 

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

BTW, anyone know how much the Translators on Webnovel, etc. get? I am baffled how many novels get translated from China/Japan/Korea and you can read the novels for free. The Microtransactions can't really be that lucrative.

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I only know that for chinese webnovels, they are still "fantranslations", not official and its done by fans or Chinese who want others to experience the novels too.

 

[RKasa]

Not surprised that the VN market is undergoing its own Indiepocalypse of sorts (VNpocalypse?), but this is eye-opening, in part because it's coming from someone who worked with a major publisher in the space, and I'm glad they're putting this out there.

As an aside, underpaid translators were (and still are, depending on the publisher) a problem in the manga localization business as well.

 

[Kyougar]

I only know that for chinese webnovels, they are still "fantranslations", not official and its done by fans or Chinese who want others to experience the novels too.

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But there has to be some incentive from the owners of Webnovel to translators to continue translating. Some novels get 7 to 20 new chapters a week, constantly. And Webnovel makes money off the later chapter unlocks.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

I seem to recall Tokyopop doing similar things back in the day, for translations as well as original works. they were viewed as similarly scummy once that came out.

 

[Delusibeta]

I had assumed that the staff working on these games had been poorly paid, since that was basically the only way I could see Mangagamer affording to localise so many increadably niche VNs.

With that said, I don't think the practice is that uncommon: I recall reading a call-out of Crunchyroll for engaging in similar practices, and I do know other services such as Viki outright state that they do not pay their translators. Mega corps such as WarnerMedia and Rakuten have no excuse.

 

[guru-guru]

Yikes. I've just started doing freelance Japanese to English translation recently, and I think the lowest rate I've had has been $0.06 per Japanese character. 0.0175 is ridiculously bad.

 

[sredgrin]

I think your conclusion that there are 100 notable games released a year kind of flies in the face of the actual story. It's the same as before, maybe 5-10 instead of 3-4, and the rest are clearly only appearing to the hyper niche audience that buys practically everything in the genre. There really isn;much that can be done to improve the sales of the rapey games Alicesoft makes.

 

[Curler]

With that said, I don't think the practice is that uncommon: I recall reading a call-out of Crunchyroll for engaging in similar practices, and I do know other services such as Viki outright state that they do not pay their translators. Mega corps such as WarnerMedia and Rakuten have no excuse.

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I only used Viki once years back with The Rose of Versaille was on its exclusively at the time. The "amazing perks" on that Viki page is hilarious!

 

[Delusibeta]

I think your conclusion that there are 100 notable games released a year kind of flies in the face of the actual story. It's the same as before, maybe 5-10 instead of 3-4, and the rest are clearly only appearing to the hyper niche audience that buys practically everything in the genre. There really isn;much that can be done to improve the sales of the rapey games Alicesoft makes.

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I mean, if you had assumed that your $30 VN was going to sell 2000 copies, that leaves you with a total budget of $60,000, before considering payment processing fees (which is a lot higher for porn). That does not leave a lot to split between translators, editors, testers etc. It's the classic indie developer problem of having to split one person's decent wage up to multiple people.

 

[Chairmanchuck (另一个我)]

I think your conclusion that there are 100 notable games released a year kind of flies in the face of the actual story. It's the same as before, maybe 5-10 instead of 3-4, and the rest are clearly only appearing to the hyper niche audience that buys practically everything in the genre. There really isn;much that can be done to improve the sales of the rapey games Alicesoft makes.

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I am talking about legal releases. A decade ago you only had JastUSA and MangaGamer just started out. Most of the "bigger" releases came from fantranslations like MuvLuv.

And just in this year from the "bigger" releases you got Saya no Uta, Ciconia, ef, Higurashi 7, Steins Gate Elite, AI, Yuno, Our World is Ended, Aokana etc. along with smaller ones. You didnt have that 10 years ago.

 

[ShyMel]

It is really sad that one of the biggest visual novel localizers pays peanuts. Unfortunately I imagine they are not the only company doing so since vns in general are not high sellers.

 

[Deleted member 1055]

I wonder what can be done about that though? The visual novel market, thanks to Steam, exploded. A decade ago you had maybe 3-4 prominent visual novel releases each year. Now you have like maybe 100, with Indie VN from everywhere. Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, self-published, published etc.

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Going by that TwitLonger, MangaGamer's rates were terrible even before Steam helped broaden the market for visual novels:

The rate I received when I first started with MG was 1 cent per character, so $40 a day and maybe $9700 a year, which would be below what you'd make at a minimum wage job.

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In general, it seems that most of the other, bigger localization companies have alternative income sources to pay for their VN releases. JAST has J-List, Sekai Project relies heavily on crowdfunding, and Sol Press fund their operation via LNs and Manga releases, having confirmed that they lose money on their VNs. MangaGamer themselves also seem to help fund their bigger releases by publishing a lot of shorter porn titles, but it seems that they are quite underfunded despite that. That just leaves NekoNyan, but their long term viability and whether or not they actually pay a reasonable rate to their employees is unknown. It is possible that NN will also increasingly move to crowdfunding in the future, despite initially coming out strongly against it.

Selling ten times as much on Steam, mentioning 30% regardless.

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That cracked me up too.
And MangaGamer was/is probably paying some pretty hefty payment processing fees besides, on top of eating charge-back fees themselves, considering the kind of payment processors they have to use as a small company selling adult content.

 

[NoKisum]

I mean, what kind of wages do you expect working for a hentai company?

 

[Theswweet]

I mean, what kind of wages do you expect working for a hentai company?

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Not everything that MG publishes is an eroge, if you don't have anything helpful to say about the situation you don't *have* to comment on it.

 

[Annoyinmous]

Why would you leak those sales numbers like that though, are MG store numbers public anywhere?

 

[Dhoom]

That Kickstarter line is worrisome. Things aren't looking good for Umineko Gold.

 

[TrishaCat]

Selling ten times as much on Steam, mentioning 30% regardless.

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The fact that being on Steam can help a game's sales by so much is one of the things that makes the rejection of several of Mangagamer's games on Steam so frustrating; Steam keeps disallowing a lot of their titles, and I can't help but wonder if the increased visibility and sales would allow them to pay their workers significantly more.

I mean, what kind of wages do you expect working for a hentai company?

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Standard wages
You're still doing translation work; you should be paid more. Its a hard job with a skill a lot of people don't have.

 

[kikuchiyo]

As someone who majored in Japanese, there's a reason why I didn't go into translating as a career. It pays absolute peanuts compared to the work involved in being fluent, and the on-going work of actually translating material.

 

[LordGorchnik]

This can be applied to the game industry in a nutshell, or even compared to the "glory days" of being employed at places like Gamestop.

We can pat "X" position peanuts because even if you quite there are YYY # of people who would be willing to work this position because its GAMING!

 

[CloudCircus]

As someone who majored in Japanese, there's a reason why I didn't go into translating as a career. It pays absolute peanuts compared to the work involved in being fluent, and the on-going work of actually translating material.

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Higher level Japanese to English translators in technical fields can make upwards towards 80k USD in-house and 100k USD freelance if they are quick. Rates for translators in non-technical, entertainment-related fields are notoriously low.

 

[NoKisum]

Not everything that MG publishes is an eroge

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I will admit, this comment made me unsure I was thinking about the right company. So I googled them, and not only was I right in the first place, but I'm pretty sure I'm on a watch list with what I just saw.

 

[Rosebud]

I will admit, this comment made me unsure I was thinking about the right company. So I googled them, and not only was I right in the first place, but I'm pretty sure I'm on a watch list with what I just saw.

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MG works in many awesome things like When They Cry and Fata Morgana

 

[Deleted member 1055]

The fact that being on Steam can help a game's sales by so much is one of the things that makes the rejection of several of Mangagamer's games on Steam so frustrating; Steam keeps disallowing a lot of their titles, and I can't help but wonder if the increased visibility and sales would allow them to pay their workers significantly more.

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Going by the list of MangaGamer titles that have been leaked via SteamDB, Doddler, or talked about by MangaGamer themselves, Valve seems to reject about 10-15% of MangaGamer submissions, so not a lot in the grand scheme of things. And that includes titles such as Damekoi (aka. "The Most Forbidden Love in the World"), the submission of which must have been preceded by some very heavy drinking at the MangaGamer office. Of course, MangaGamer does not appear to submit their most fetishy titles to Steam, but it is also not reasonable to expect any store (much less Steam) to sell those.

 

[MilkBeard]

MG works in many awesome things like When They Cry and Fata Morgana

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Yeah. I'm not interested in their usual publised VNs, but When They Cry and Fata Morgana are pretty great VNs (House in Fata Morgana is one of my favorite games of all time at this point), so they sometimes do put out quality stuff.

It's a shame the pay is so bad but these things just don't make much money.

 

[Dedication Through Light]

wonder what the solution is as if the product can barely sale then of course theres barely anyway to pay those that work on it a livable wage without the company assuming debt and going under.

Make the VN industry big in america

 

[LossAversion]

I will admit, this comment made me unsure I was thinking about the right company. So I googled them, and not only was I right in the first place, but I'm pretty sure I'm on a watch list with what I just saw.

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Except you weren't but ok, lol.

 

[Bomi-Chan]

i worked as a translator for a dvd-release in germany.
i got 500€ for it, but it had to be done within 5 days.
i have to say, the amount of work invested in it was totally not worth it.
i had to translate the movie which was 2,5h, the extras, the trailers and they asked me to translate the directors cut line which had very bad tone and eventually was cut from the german movie release.

in total i worked more than 12h/day to get this done. the last day i remember was almost 20h because, i had to get the extra-stuff done.

anime/manga are similar badly paid, because these days there are more and more people from other countries offering less money.

 

[Nanashrew]

I seem to recall Tokyopop doing similar things back in the day, for translations as well as original works. they were viewed as similarly scummy once that came out.

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They did. They somehow managed to lower how much translators get paid across the market. I remember Rich Amtower talking about it in his long rant that translators should be paid for their work on Twitter before he left the platform. He used to freelance in the manga industry before joining Nintendo.

I miss Rich Amtower's fiery tweets tbh.

 

[L Thammy]

I'm actually really surprised that Alicesoft games do that poorly. I guess I had no idea of what sort of numbers those games do in general.

 

[kikuchiyo]

Higher level Japanese to English translators in technical fields can make upwards towards 80k USD in-house and 100k USD freelance if they are quick. Rates for translators in non-technical, entertainment-related fields are notoriously low.

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I mean anything in technical fields is going to get a pay bump but you'll still also need the technical knowledge.

 

[Deleted member 679]

I don't know shit about translation, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems awful to pay "per character". That has nothing to do with how much work goes into it, right? I feel like it would be a lot more fair to just agree on a certain value for that particular project.

 

[Sagadego17]

I will admit, this comment made me unsure I was thinking about the right company. So I googled them, and not only was I right in the first place, but I'm pretty sure I'm on a watch list with what I just saw.

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can you even try not to fail any harder?

 

[aSqueakyLime]

I will admit, this comment made me unsure I was thinking about the right company. So I googled them, and not only was I right in the first place, but I'm pretty sure I'm on a watch list with what I just saw.

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🤔

 

[NoKisum]

Except you weren't but ok, lol.

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Whatever thousand year old neptunia style dragon I saw would disagree with you.

can you even try not to fail any harder?

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Only if I went on a massive loli search spree right after. Even I'm not that stupid.

MG works in many awesome things like When They Cry and Fata Morgana

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Whoo, that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Didn't know it was based on a hentai series.

 

[Rosebud]

Whatever thousand year old neptunia style dragon I saw would disagree with you.

Only if I went on a massive loli search spree right after. Even I'm not that stupid.

Whoo, that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Didn't know it was based on a hentai series.

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It's not hentai lmao

 

[Master Alucard]

ouch hope they can stay in business even with those sales

 

[Deleted member 35077]

I mean, what kind of wages do you expect working for a hentai company?

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This is just wrong, as they also release all ages visual novels, aka ones that are okay for children to read. Not everything they have hand in translating have sex scenes.

 

[Deleted member 48828]

It's sad, but I'm not suprised. Translators are some off the most undervalued workers out there despite their services being vitally important. I don't know if it's because it's "just" text work, but companies constantly underpay you for your work if you're not a freelancer who can command decent rates.

 

[LossAversion]

Whatever thousand year old neptunia style dragon I saw would disagree with you.

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There's nothing to disagree with. It's just a fact that they produce more than hentai.

 

[Sagadego17]

Whatever thousand year old neptunia style dragon I saw would disagree with you.

Only if I went on a massive loli search spree right after. Even I'm not that stupid.

Whoo, that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Didn't know it was based on a hentai series.

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Can just fucking stop you're just embarrassing your self now

 

[FriendlyNPC]

Might explain why it takes them (literally) half a century to bring all Higurashi episodes to the west :(

 

[Syril]

They did. They somehow managed to lower how much translators get paid across the market. I remember Rich Amtower talking about it in his long rant that translators should be paid for their work on Twitter before he left the platform. He used to freelance in the manga industry before joining Nintendo.

I miss Rich Amtower's fiery tweets tbh.

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Tokyopop also screwed over creators' rights with their practice of claiming half the copyright on all the independent comics they published.

 

[NoKisum]

Tokyopop also screwed over creators' rights with their practice of claiming half the copyright on all the independent comics they published.

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Damn, really? That explains how stuff like Princess Ai and Pantheon High never got proper follow ups.

 

[Nanashrew]

Tokyopop also screwed over creators' rights with their practice of claiming half the copyright on all the independent comics they published.

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Yep. Horrible company.