A popular belief in the fan translation community is that distributing only a binary patch, which must be applied to the full, original game, is legal. There have never been any legal cases involving fan translation issues, and such projects have been relatively widespread over the Internet for years.
So no, without consent, making a fan game is not, generally speaking, legal. There is something that creators can do if they want to make a fan game however, and avoid receiving a nasty cease and desist in their inbox.
Last but not the least, if you have written a book yourself and you want to translate it into another language and sell it, you can do that, unless, you have already sold your copyrights to your publisher, in which case you'll have to do things differently.
It is considered "fair use" to quote - even liberally - from another work for the purpose of criticism. When you use translated quotes, you should only quote as much as you need to show the author's point, and then amplify it with your own thoughts.
Some fan translators are very good, some are very very bad. You just gotta be careful when reading. And then you have the risk of people interpreting things their own way when translating something, which is really always a thing but it leads to worse results when the work isn't done by a professional.
Most fan translations, particularly from well-respected fan groups, are just fine. Some are outright great. The problem is, you never know what you're getting. Professional translations can be a crapshoot as well, but they're generally far less of a crapshoot.
Anyhow, you need no one's permission to translate anything you like – translating is always legal – it's only publishing your translation that requires permission.
How to translate a book: Everything you need to know
- Establish an end-goal. Think about why you want to translate your book into another language.
- Determine a target market.
- Consider using machine translation for common phrases.
- Hire a professional translation service.
- Edit and proofread.
- Publish, market and monitor.
The Top 5 Sites With Free Light Novel Downloads
- Armaell's Library.
- Anime Light Novels.
- Rekt Novel Compilations.
- Henkanepubs.
- Lnwepubs.
NovelUpdates is generally more reliable. Most novels get updated directly from the RSS feed of the translator, so it's always up-to-date. I would trust novelupdates more, and it has links to fan translations.
The "translating" part is perfectly legal - you have full rights to make a translation for personal use as long as your original copy is legal. And since web novels are distributed by the author it is a legal copy.
The two separate copyrights do not completely separate the original work from its translation, however. Although someone will own a copyright in the translation, the owner of the original copyright maintains rights over both works, to which the copyright in the translation is subordinate.
Generally speaking, no, translations are not public domain. Even if the original is out of copyright, a translator owns the copyright of his or her translation. You must determine the copyright status of both the original and the translation, and then honor all current copyrights.
Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section "What Works Are Protected."
