- Jan 2, 2018
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Actually, they don't. Fan translators have no intellectual rights to their translations unless they have permission from the original owner of the IP to make said translation. Even then YOU don't own the translation the original author still does because it is their intellectual property. They just provided you permission to translate and presumably allow you to get paid for the work with the caveat you give them a cut of some sort. If an original author wanted to stop you from making your fan translation they can legally sue you to stop as the IP owner. It has happened in the past and will continue to happen. Also if they wanted to steal your work they are legally entitled to do so because you do not own anything of the code and your work is technically under the law, theirs. So no, there is nothing you can do to stop anyone from stealing your fan translation because You don't own it.Translators do have copyright on their work, even if they don't have any right to the source material.
You don't care about those right? Suit yourself, but don't twist reality to justify your position
Only copyright holders have the sole permission to translate their works or to have someone translate their works. It is technically illegal to translate a game without the permission of the original author. Ironically enough for a fan translation to actually BE legal it has to differ creatively from the original works enough to be consider a unique work itself. So by that definition MTLs are "legal" because they creatively differ enough from the original work to stand on their own two feet (joking of course, no they don't)
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