Webtoon is discontinuing one of its most important and influential services, fan translation, for the first time in 10 years. This service change is particularly hard-hitting.
Webtoon posted an official notice on September 25th that the fan translation service will end in November of this year. This comes after the company launched the service in beta in 2015 to meet the demands of a growing readership.
What is Webtoon Fan Translation?
Webtoon Fan Translation has been around for 10 years. The aim was to allow readers to translate the various webtoons from the site’s Originals and CANVAS lines into any language they desired. This allows international fans of the series to easily read their favorite works in their native language.
For example, are you a fan of The Little Trashmaid, but you happen to only speak and read Italian? “Non parlo né Leggo l’inglese”, right? There will be a team of fans who take time out of their day to translate each episode. Progress is marked so users can see the percentage of episodes that have been translated into their desired language, and even the percentage of the entire series that has been translated so far.
Another great thing is that translated episodes will also show you how many lines a particular contributor has added to the translation. This is a great feature that shows how much love goes into a completely volunteer project. Fans were not compensated for translation services.
Screencap of the Italian translation of “The Little Trashmaid”
Why is Fan Translation being shut down?
As for why this great feature is being retired, Webtoon’s notice states, “The maintenance and evolution of this platform is becoming increasingly unsustainable…We believe the time is right to retire this service and prioritize investment in areas where we can have the greatest impact.”
This may explain why the service is being discontinued, but what concerns me most is that there is a demand for these stories to be seen in multiple languages. This move will undoubtedly contribute to an increased likelihood of copyright infringement and unofficial translations spreading online, making these articles easily accessible around the world.
After the closure on November 26th, fan translation services will no longer be available and access to the site will be closed.
Perhaps more urgently, postings and translation data from the past 10 years will be securely and irreversibly deleted from Webtoon’s servers as of the closure date. If you have fan translations on your site that you don’t want to lose to the digital void, back them up whenever possible. This may include backing up addresses on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine so that others can still access your translations. Once the Fan Translation servers are shut down, you will no longer be able to recover your recordings or access the site and its content.
This marks the end of an era in the history of webtoons, as the platform continues to evolve and grow, expanding from the digital space to print media and even Hollywood.
The end of Fan Translation is very bittersweet, as years of hard work by fans and users will soon disappear. It’s also a harsh reminder that nothing truly lasts forever, even on the internet. The only good way to preserve these parts of the Internet is because anything can be lost, with or without notice.
Until next time. <3
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