Hi all,
After discovering yet another unauthorized reproduction of spcnet.tv translation work on Amazon's Kindle store (which I had Amazon remove yet again), I began to get rather ticked off and started to think of ways for us to 'go legit' and protect our translation rights.
I took the initiative of contacting Mr. Graham Earnshaw, who as most of you probably know translated the Book and the Sword for Jinyong, and got it published. He suggested that he could reach out to Minhe Publishing (the copyright holder for Jinyong works) and Mr. Louis Cha, and help us start up formal publication of our works. The amount of money we'd make would likely be very small (he noted to me that his royalties for Book and Sword never exceeded 4-digits), but it would 'legitimize' us and allow us to protect our work. We would do distribution either through the Kindle Store or through other means, and maybe, if everything worked out, we could set up a 'one stop shop' for English translations of Wuxia, since we have translated so many Gulong novels as well, and a few of other authors.
I think the Condor Trilogy would be our first target, since those three works have the highest profile within Jinyong's literature. I have already spoken to foxs individually, since he contributed so much to the trilogy in particular, and foxs likes this idea.
Of course, if we ever make money on this, there would be 'profit sharing' (again, not expecting much money) based on contribution and/or overall effort, but at this point, I think it's too premature to be talking about percentages or formulas, etc. All of us have done our translation work for the purpose of expanding the reach of wuxia novels to the public, and I think this would be a great way of expanding the reach of our work even further (to the world, perhaps!), while protecting our work.
I would like to hear from various translators, especially the ones involved in the Condor Heroes trilogy, on if they would be willing/amenable to this proposal. I'm not going to go into discussions of percentages/formulas right now; I just want to hear who objects, and who does not. If you object, that is totally fine, we would probably end up retranslating the work you did independently. But I would hope that in the same spirit of SPCNET collaboration that led us to finish so many works, that we can all work together in making our work public and 'legitimatized'.
I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts.