Webtoon is sunsetting one of its most integral and impactful services after a decade: Fan Translation. This service change hits particularly hard.
On September 25, Webtoon posted an official notice that it will discontinue its Fan Translation service in November of this year. This comes after the company launched the service in beta format back in 2015 to meet the demands of its expanding reader base.
What is Webtoon Fan Translation?
Webtoon Fan Translation has existed for a decade. Its intent was to allow various webtoons from the site’s Originals and CANVAS lines to be translated into any language readers wanted. This allows international fans of said series to have easy access to reading their favorites in their native language.
So 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,” ya know? You’d have a team of fans who would take the time out of their day to translate each episode. The progress would be marked so users would know the percentage of the episode that is translated in their desired language and even the percentage of the overall series that has been translated so far.
The other neat thing is the translated episode will even tell you how many lines a specific contributor put into the translation. This is a cool feature that shows how much love was put into the project, which was entirely volunteer. Fans were not compensated for translation services.
A Screencap of the Italian translation of The Little TrashmaidWhy is Fan Translation shutting down?
As for why this wonderful feature is being sunsetted, Webtoon’s notice states, “Maintaining and evolving this platform has become increasingly unsustainable…we believe it is the right time to sunset this service and prioritize investments in areas where we can have the greatest impact.”
While this may explains why the service will be discontinued, my biggest concern is that there is a demand for these stories in multiple languages. This move will no doubt contribute to an increased chance of piracy and unofficial translations being spread online in an effort to allow easy accessibility to these stories across the globe.
After the shutdown on November 26, Fan Translation services will no longer be available and access to the site will be closed.
Perhaps more urgently, contributions and translation data from the past 10 years will be securely and irreversibly removed from Webtoon’s servers as of the shutdown date. If you have any fan translations on the site that you do not want to lose to the digital void, PLEASE back them up in any way you can. This could include backing up the address on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which would allow others to continue accessing the translations as well. Once the Fan Translation servers are shut down, it will be impossibly to recover any records or access the site and its contents.
This marks the end of an era in Webtoon’s history as the platform continues to evolve and grow, expanding from the digital space to printed media and even Hollywood.
The end of Fan Translation is very bittersweet as years of effort by fans and users will soon cease to exist. It’s also a grim reminder that even on the Internet, nothing can truly remain forever. Backups of physical and digital media are the only proper way to preserve these pieces of the Internet, as anything can disappear with or without notice.
Until next time. <3
English (US) · 