Board Thread:English VOCALOID discussion/@comment-100.0.123.57-20171025035138

As the title says, there has been a lot of controversy over the treatment of translators who make English subs. Hazuki no Yume and TheBlackCero are notable examples of this causing people to not only stop making subtitled videos, but wiping their channels nearly entirely of their subbed videos to avoid drama. Another affected user is Sensei Evil, who similarly stopped making subs and wiped his channel of videos in response to drama. This is problematic because English subbing is what allowed Vocaloid to become popular in the English-speaking community in the first place, and all these awful things are not only driving away talented translators but causing their handiwork to be removed online. Often, this means the original is forever lost, and its only possible to find plagiarists, if even those for the more obscure and/or difficult to translate artists like Kairiki Bear.

Several have been harrassed on the basis of one or more of the following:

-- Complaining about restrictions placed on the usage of a song. Most commonly, translators will be upset by users either not crediting them for their subs or translations or plagiarising them. This is the biggest thing that will send the harrassers coming. For example, Hazuki no Yume and TheBlackCero, amongst other things, disliked how people were stealing their translations and subbed videos and not crediting them, so after years of trying to talk it out, they got frustrated and tightened their rules. Now you could not use any of their translations to sub fanvideos and the like. This just upset the harrassers further, and they dialed up their plagiarism and insult barraging. Eventually, an innocent mistake from popular cover artist rachie was the last straw-- and as a result, they got embroiled in an entirely avoidable flame war that killed Hazuki No Yume and the Black Cero's channels as well as damaging rachie's reputation even after she apologized and promised to credit translators in the future.

-- Somebody notable or popular got mad at them. Basically, the internet bandwagon effect. This set off a chain of events that lead to Sensei Evil quitting. In this case, several users were already upset that Sensei no longer was accepting requests. This caused a bandwagon effect where he was bombarded with messages calling him a weeb and a fake translator (baseless accusations, btw). This was correlated with him suddenly being put on the unrecommended producers list on the vocaloidlyrics wiki, causing the bandwagon effect where people spewed hate at the guy just because vocaloidlyrics didn't recommend his translations. Eventually, he just didn't want to deal with the stress anymore and quit, taking down all his content with him to avoid drama.

-- Because, pretty much. The internet is a dangerous place, and there's all kinds of unsavory elements lurking around-- weebs, copyright trolls, trolls that are bullies in general, racists, sexists, etc. These unsavory elements have always been around in the vocaloid communities, and having to fend off some of them is a risk taken when endevouring into the subbing and translating community. However, the weebs and copyright trolls of the Vocaloid community seem to be especially empowered and armed to the teeth in recent years, making the risk of being dogpiled or harrassed by them much higher than it was before or should be.

I will reiterate: translators are important. Subbers are important. They are the lifeblood of the English vocaloid community, and we need to raise awareness of these issues and controversy surrounding the morality of their actions as well as the issues surrounding various responses. For example, was TheBlackCero's insinuation that rachie should die because of her plagiarism a justifiable, if extreme, expression of frustration, or a completely inappropriate response to an issue that doesn't warrent capital punishment? Should people try talking it out with plagiarists first (which would have prevented the whole drama with rachie) or should they just slam the copyright hammer and block the user instead (saving the translators time and stress in dealing with them, especially with dealing with plagiarists that are unreasonable and mean)?

What sort of things should be used to preseve their content? Is it okay for fans to reupload their videos or post their translations when they have been taken down? Is it okay for fans to restore their websites and blogs of subbers for the purposes of preventing trolls from buying them up and/or to preserve whatever content they can salvage? How can we protect and help what translators we have left? Should translators who quit because of harrassment return once the drama dies down?

This problem very often results in info being wiped from the internet, beyond what a typical netizen like myself is able to dig up. Sensei wasn't so bad as he left a video explaining the situation and stuff. But HazukiNoYume and TheBlackCero, as I found, only had left on the internet what their fans were able to salvage. The best I can do is provide a megathread that compiles lots of info about the events surrounding the harrassment and flame war of HazukiNoYume and TheBlackCero. as well as the emotional impact they have on the translators, their fans, and the community at large. All of those translators' stories provide a glimpse of the larger problem of harrassment which often goes silent in the vocaloid community.

Sensei Evil's exit video with comments explaining why he had to go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REQmpKATfWg

Reddit discussion about Hazuki No Yume and TheBlackCero's sudden departures and fallout. Contains lots of screenshots of and perspectives on the events that went down on Twitter and beforehand on that fateful date the flamewar with rachie (and maybe JubyPhonic, though rachie was at the epicenter of it) exploded: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vocaloid/comments/6nsue3/hazuki_no_yume_has_removed_all_of_her_videos/

Fan preservation of Hazuki No Yume's wordpress blog, which contains her most recent translation and subbing usage policy before her departure: https://hazukinoyume.wordpress.com/ 