The Fine Line Between Journalism and Fan Articles
In the wake of YFCz breakup, something strange happened.
I never would've found out about it if it weren't for some of my friends telling me about it publicly (nihon_hamano and tenshin26100) and in private (I won't name you guys, just in case. ;3). Thank you, guys!!
So, the translation post I made about the YFCz breakup announcement on NicoRadi was used by jpopasia.com as a news source, without permission from me or ohgacktyoudidnt.
http://www.jpopasia.com/news/yellow-fried-chickenz-to-disband::11309.html
And then, Visual Kei Heaven used jpopsia's article as their news source.....
Thanks to nihon_hamano-chan's diligently urging them to give proper credits, now jpopasia credits ohgacktyoudidnt (See the REALLY fine, gray line at the bottom of the article? Took me a while to find that one. =w=), and VKH now credits jpopasia (...yeah).
Now, I'm really not trying to turn this into any major issue or anything like that, especially now that they've given due credits, but this really got me thinking, and I wanted to know what you all thought about it.
First of all:
They (or at least jpopasia) are using fan articles as their news sources??? If they did it with mine, I'm sure it wasn't the first time? And they did so without giving any credit UNTIL they were urged to do so by a reader (who had to argue with the other commentors who basically said jpopasia didn't need to U__U* Bless her heart...)??
See, if this had happened to some other fan's article, maybe I would've just rolled my eyes and promptly forgotten about it, but when it happens to you, it's like..... WhhhhhhhhAT? Because I know how long it took me to write that article. 30 minutes, or 40 minutes tops. I just causally translated verbatim what Takumi was saying on a Nico recording as I listened to it, checked the content once, and that was that. And I did it for the members of OGYD or people that visited OGYD, not for any legitimate (>.>) news sites.
Second:
I know that my translation was accurate, so I'm not worried about inaccurate information being spread.
BUT.
Did they even know that? But how could they? Did they know I'm a professional translator? I highly doubt it. So... what if the translation was wrong???? @_@
I know that they also used YFCz HP and Takumi's blog as sources, but we all know that YFCz HP doesn't say much and Takumi wasn't exactly saying a whole lot in his blog before the Nico announcement, either. And jpopaisa's article is pretty much the summary of my translation, right?
What if I'd been a terrible translator and just made half the stuff up? If I'd written "They had disagreements in terms of direction and decided they'd rather separate now while it's still fun" or something like that, would they have believe that?
If they'd contacted me, not just to ask for permission but to also get some idea on the accuracy of the translation, it would've made much better sense.
If nobody spoke up about it, would they have just acted like the news came from their own sources? Wouldn't that be plagiarism? I don't really know how the law works in these areas, so I'm just curious.
Like I said, it's really not that I'm offended by or angry at them for using my article (even without my permission), but is it right for them to rip off information provided by fans instead of gathering information for themselves or at least getting permissions from the fans??
Oh, BTW, I did tweet jpopasia myself and asked them to credit OGYD, me, or preferably both. They did NOT respond, but they did credit OGYD afterward, so maybe that was their response? =/ I have NO idea. =___=
I never would've found out about it if it weren't for some of my friends telling me about it publicly (nihon_hamano and tenshin26100) and in private (I won't name you guys, just in case. ;3). Thank you, guys!!
So, the translation post I made about the YFCz breakup announcement on NicoRadi was used by jpopasia.com as a news source, without permission from me or ohgacktyoudidnt.
http://www.jpopasia.com/news/yellow-fried-chickenz-to-disband::11309.html
And then, Visual Kei Heaven used jpopsia's article as their news source.....
Thanks to nihon_hamano-chan's diligently urging them to give proper credits, now jpopasia credits ohgacktyoudidnt (See the REALLY fine, gray line at the bottom of the article? Took me a while to find that one. =w=), and VKH now credits jpopasia (...yeah).
Now, I'm really not trying to turn this into any major issue or anything like that, especially now that they've given due credits, but this really got me thinking, and I wanted to know what you all thought about it.
First of all:
They (or at least jpopasia) are using fan articles as their news sources??? If they did it with mine, I'm sure it wasn't the first time? And they did so without giving any credit UNTIL they were urged to do so by a reader (who had to argue with the other commentors who basically said jpopasia didn't need to U__U* Bless her heart...)??
See, if this had happened to some other fan's article, maybe I would've just rolled my eyes and promptly forgotten about it, but when it happens to you, it's like..... WhhhhhhhhAT? Because I know how long it took me to write that article. 30 minutes, or 40 minutes tops. I just causally translated verbatim what Takumi was saying on a Nico recording as I listened to it, checked the content once, and that was that. And I did it for the members of OGYD or people that visited OGYD, not for any legitimate (>.>) news sites.
Second:
I know that my translation was accurate, so I'm not worried about inaccurate information being spread.
BUT.
Did they even know that? But how could they? Did they know I'm a professional translator? I highly doubt it. So... what if the translation was wrong???? @_@
I know that they also used YFCz HP and Takumi's blog as sources, but we all know that YFCz HP doesn't say much and Takumi wasn't exactly saying a whole lot in his blog before the Nico announcement, either. And jpopaisa's article is pretty much the summary of my translation, right?
What if I'd been a terrible translator and just made half the stuff up? If I'd written "They had disagreements in terms of direction and decided they'd rather separate now while it's still fun" or something like that, would they have believe that?
If they'd contacted me, not just to ask for permission but to also get some idea on the accuracy of the translation, it would've made much better sense.
If nobody spoke up about it, would they have just acted like the news came from their own sources? Wouldn't that be plagiarism? I don't really know how the law works in these areas, so I'm just curious.
Like I said, it's really not that I'm offended by or angry at them for using my article (even without my permission), but is it right for them to rip off information provided by fans instead of gathering information for themselves or at least getting permissions from the fans??
Oh, BTW, I did tweet jpopasia myself and asked them to credit OGYD, me, or preferably both. They did NOT respond, but they did credit OGYD afterward, so maybe that was their response? =/ I have NO idea. =___=