Terms of Use for the Translation Work Hosted on Phanto.MOE

These are rules that apply to everything I have translated! Please, understand that I work extremely hard on the translations I make, and I would appreciate if you abided by some simple rules regarding them.

Rule #0 is no snitching.

I translate some paywalled material under the assumption that non-Japanese-speaking fans do not represent not lost sales, as English speakers are unlikely to purchase (e.g.) novels that they are not able to read. Other materials, such as current magazines, Fan Club posts, and other miscelaneous items and events are handled on a case-by-case basis, and there are times where I will decline to translate them.
Even in cases where I translate these materials, I strongly encourage you to buy and support legitimate copies of any material whose translations you've enjoyed.

It is under the assumption that you will follow Rule #0 that allows me not to hold content back; aside from time-gated translations, which will always eventually be released for all to read, I will not permanently lock any translations behind a Discord server or password system. Do not ruin this for everyone by being an asshole.

Support the official releases in all situations where it is feasible to do so.
Stream and view official versions of the songs, music videos, and audio dramas instead of unaffiliated reuploads.
Accept that sometimes, if you can't afford to pay for content, you don't get to access that content.

Terms of Use for My Translations

1. These translations are not to be treated as unimpeachable canon, nor as tantamount to official text.
   I am a fallible human, and Japanese is not my first language. I try to make translations as accurate as I am able, and I have people who check my work for accuracy, but please know that I am one guy and sometimes I make mistakes or simply guess wrong.
2. You may not reupload or republish large parts of my work to any platform, app, or site.
   This encompasses everything from posting the entire story in screencaps on social media, to using it as subtitles on a video, to just reuploading it to your own space or wiki. The only places you should find my translations in full are this site (phanto.moe) and on its dedicated DreamWidth (pararai.dreamwidth.org). Please ask before using large parts of my translations for any reason.
   You may not put my translation work on any wikis, and I would prefer it not be used on a source for any such platforms.

   Note that you may freely use small portions of my work without asking for commentary or transformative purposes (examples: screencaps of portions of translations in order to react to them, using lyrics or quotes in your twitter bio or as instagram photo captions, referencing them in fanart pieces, referencing it in meta and analysis), but I suggest that you link back to my site when you do.
   I can be contacted most reliably on Twitter for any questions.

3. You may not not use any part of my translations for "quote bots" or any other kind of automated or gimmick account, no matter how small the piece being used. I do not consider this transformative.
4. You may not use my translations as material for a large language model (or any other form of "generative" "AI"), such as (e.g.) setting up a character "AI" chat bot. I strictly and emphatically forbid the use of my work as training data.
5. Please do not retranslate my work into any other language.
   I often have to take some liberties -- usually minor, generally consisting of sentence structure and idiomatic language -- and occasionally have to take my best guess at things that are unclear to me. As such, I am not comfortable with my translations being used as a pivot language or a basis for further translation. I have only ever given my permission to two people to translate extremely small amounts of material (on the order of singular tweets).
   If you would like to translate the materials into a non-English language, please do it from the original language. I understand that this may not be as accessible, but nobody has my permission to translate large amounts of my work and anyone who claims to is lying.

Notes on Translation Choices

• My translations are choose-not-to-warn. The scenario text of Paradox Live at various points contains depictions of potentially upsetting subjects, such as mental illness, terminal illness, misgendering, suicide, gun violence, police brutality, and child abuse (list is not comprehensive). I do not and will not provide itemized content warnings. I personally do not feel that many of these depictions are particularly explicit, but they are present. I do not provide itemized content warnings on my translations. By reading my translations, you are ACCEPTING THE RISK that you may read something that you may find upsetting.
• My assumed audience is fluent English speakers with casual familiarity with Japanese culture and media. With this in mind:
  • My translations contain slang, colloquial (American) English, and other myriad localization choices that may sometimes stray from the 100% literal words being spoken, in order to better communicate the effect. There is no such thing as a neutral translation, and I will not pretend to be making one.
  • Certain forms of address (Iori calling Yohei "Danna", Zen calling Iori "Waka", the Akan Yatsura kids calling Iori "Aniki", Chungsung's use of "bocchama", and most honorifics) are left as-is rather than adapted, purely because I prefer it that way. I am working under the assumption that, if they are in deep enough to be reading translations for a Japanese-only drama track franchise, then the audience can be assumed to be familiar with the connotations of these terms.
• Any time that a pun or joke has been localized rather than directly translated, I try to include a footnote denoting this, but the goal is that the joke should work without the note. But also, I am very funny, and you should appreciate the work I put into translating lame jokes.
  More generally, the idea is that any of my translations should be completely comprehensible without any footnotes, but what footnotes I include are there to explain translation choices that I think are of particular interest.
• Anne is written as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns, and the handful of early references to them "actually being a man" are not excluded, but they are nudged slightly to parse better with the current depiction of the character.
  • This primarily just means instances, generally within the first ~year, of Anne being "a man" have been changed to the phrasing "not a girl"; I personally believe that the text also supports a read of Anne as a transgender woman, and believe that she/her pronouns would also be appropriate for Anne; however, I just think this is the easiest way to keep the lines intact in spirit without directly perpetuating harmful attitudes about trans women.
  • If you want to handwring about "westerners" imposing themselves: canon material has been changing their tune about how Anne is depicted and written since the early days of the franchises. Exchanges about them being a man have been excised from the stageplay adaptation of Pride; official Japanese-facing English text (e.g. the SWANK ad copy, which is in English for stylistic reasons) uses neutral pronouns; and as of 2023, wholly-Japanese text has been removing reference to them being a man from e.g. their profile. In the original Japanese, in the present day, Anne is consistently and explicitly portrayed as being some variety of transfeminine. Cry about it to someone who gives a fuck.
• I use he/him pronouns for Aoi under the assumption that he is a trans man. Even if he turns out to be explicitly nonbinary, his gender is not at present a matter of public knowledge (or even, it seems, a matter of knowledge throughout VISTY), and therefore his public-facing identity is -- for all intents and purposes -- binary male. I will revise this stance later if necessary.
• Sometimes there are things that are unclear, that happen offscreen, or that are stated and later retconned. I try to make note of places where this happen.