Bookhunting: Chinese Novels

Don't Support Theft

Long rant ahead (with some solutions). Only those who truly care will read until the end.

 If any of this applies to you and you get triggered (angry), comment something worth my time instead of just giving me the rage I'm half-expecting to get after I publish this chapter. I don't want to be mean or rude at all but what I'm about to rant about is a problem on here, and it needs to be said:

Sometimes, people copy and paste the chapter translations from the books they find and post them on Wattpad. Although it's mainly for offline reading purposes only for most of them, some people actually try to pass it off as their own or give no credit to the real authors or the translators that put countless hours, days, months, and even years in making it available for us English readers. It's not fair to the translators because they are mostly doing all of the work for free, and they want people to read what they worked on, but on their own site.

Some translators are kind enough to politely ask the people who moved their translations to take the translations off of Wattpad instead of directly reporting them. And they have every right to report them because many of these translators have an official deal with the original publishing company of their translated novels. Stealing from them is the same as stealing an official, published ebook and pasting it on another site—nonprofit or not. Whether it is a Harry Potter book, a Hunger Games book, a Wattpad novel, or any translated novel, they are all copyrighted and we have no right to take them and paste them anywhere else without the permission of the original authors and publishers.

I think that most people who paste the translations just don't realize the severity of it. Most probably know it's wrong but they see others doing it, and they see that those people are getting reads and followers by doing no work of their own at all and that they don't even get reported for it. So they get tempted to move translations from the original site for reads and followers, too. There are many other reasons why they do it, but this is one of the biggest ones. 

Some sites have already try to prevent theft of their translations by making it so that you can no longer copy and paste their translations from their site, but somehow, people still manage to get around it and paste their translations on Wattpad and other sites. That's not cool at all. If they locked the copy and paste option, they did it for a reason. So why are people still doing it anyway? If you, as a reader, really like the book, it won't be a bother at all to go directly to the original source. Please support the hardworking translators and go to their site instead of taking the lazy route and giving reads and votes to the people who moved their work without permission. And it's not even just Wattpad that the translations are being moved to. There are other sites that are directly stealing from the originals without any excuses and they don't even give any credit to the translators. 

I know that some of you want to argue that you really do only want the translations on Wattpad for offline purposes only. Alright. Fine. Go ahead and paste them on Wattpad. But why did you hit that public view publish button? Is it not possible to read the translations if they are only in private mode or even still unpublished? You can even paste the chapters into a Google Doc and keep it private there only for yourself. No harm done. And if you already have translations up that you've finished reading, take them down now. Your "offline reading purposes" excuse—real or made up—is no longer valid.

And don't say what if others want to read the translations offline? too. That's their problem, and not yours. They can simply paste the translations offline and private for themselves. Don't be lazy. I know there are many lazy people out there—I myself am lazy as hell, maybe even more than a lot of you—but if you do this, you can add theft supporter on top of being lazy. I used to read the stolen translations on Wattpad, too, until I realized that all the real fun was taking place on the original sites, and I actually got to know the real translators that brought the novels to me and all the other readers. I see them upset when they find out another person or site stole their work, and some translators grow so frustrated that they even start to lose the motivation to keep translating. I'm sorry, but I don't want to see my favorite novels dropping or my favorite translators leaving because some people decided to gain some benefits from other people's work. 

I think many of us have already been guilty of watching pirated movies—*raises guilty hand*—but these translations that are being stolen don't cost you a dime to read and the translators, as I said before, are doing it for nonprofit. They have busy lives and they set aside their personal time to translate those novels, which believe it or not, take hours to translate per chapter. They do it because they find joy in sharing these novels and the culture behind them with us. But it annoys them to no end when some of the people they are sharing the novels with are taking them and posting what they worked on on another site.

If you are lazy like me, trust me when I say it's not difficult at all to go to the original source at all. In fact, it's a lot easier to navigate, share, and find more works over there. Maybe you might run into me while you're there (I'm not a bad of a person to get along with; maybe we can even fangirl together while we're there—this kind of theft problem just bothers me and brings out all the sass and snap in me). 

If you really have no choice besides the offline translations route, I don't know what to tell you—I think it's just better if you talk it out with the translator first to reach a conclusion that will make both parties happy. I'm sure they want the novels to be available to all people, and they'll try to help you.

It irks me to see so many translated C-novels in the rank listings on Wattpad. Don't get me wrong; I'm happy to see that people are enjoying them and that more people are now being exposed to C-novels. But the thing is that those novels being listed are stolen and don't belong on Wattpad. They belong on the translation site they were pulled off of. It vexes me because there are many good original Chinese setting novels published on Wattpad, but they are ranked—if they are even ranked at all—below the stolen translated novels. There are millions of books on Wattpad, but only 1000 rankings in each genre list. Those stolen novels are taking the place of other good books that deserved to be listed there. The authors of those original books worked hard to write their books, and they deserve to have more people know their work.

If you're worried that then people wouldn't know as much about C-novels and how enjoyable they are if they weren't listed, I don't think that's a problem anymore because there are many good and well-known original C-novels being published on here now, and it's catching the interest of other Wattpadders who have never read or even heard of a C-novel before.

To those of you that just want to share the amazing C-novels you find, you don't need to post chapters from the actual book and paste them on here. There are many ways to share without stealing. I myself wanted to share my love for C-novels so I made this book of recommendations to share my findings with people who are looking for something new and interesting to read. There are more ways to share your love and finds.

Remember: those authors that are publishing their own original Chinese setting novels on Wattpad are in fact sharing their love right now, and when they tell their readers which stories inspired them, in many cases, it's a translated C-novel. Their readers get curious about the piece that inspired the work they just read and want to read it, too, or at least something similar. Eventually, they find their way to the original source, and they join the official fanbase, too.

In my opinion, the translator teams and sites of the works should each make an official account on Wattpad that shares a few chapters of each of their translated works as samples. If not, at least the information on it such as the title of the book, the cover, the author, and the story description. That way we will never have to worry about them not sharing their work with us. And maybe there are some translators out there who wouldn't mind if you advertised their novels by sharing only a few chapters of their novels—with their permission, of course. I don't think Wattpad allows advertisement, but I've seen some published English authors post sample chapters of their books. And I feel like Wattpad should allow the translation teams to do it because Wattpad isn't doing enough to stop people from publishing the stolen works.

I applaud all who made it this far in my rant. With all of this in mind, I hope that you will consider my words and support the translators of these amazing C-novels on their own sites if you already don't, and also support the authors of the original Chinese setting novels who post their work on Wattpad by sharing, voting, and commenting on their story.