Localizers come after Monster Camp devs for empowering fan translations

Developer Beautiful Glitch and publisher Those Awesome Guys released a “Fan Translation Modtool” for their game Monster Camp and not everyone is happy.

Localizers are criticizing the creators of Monster Prom for creating a modtool which empowers international fans to translate the game for their community.

FAN TRANSLATION MODTOOL

We’ve launched a modtool for “Monster Camp” that allows for people to individually or collectively make fan translations for the game.

We’ve also created a channel in our Discord server for anyone interested in teaming up for specific languages! pic.twitter.com/O46770PnUr

— Wishlist “Monster Con” (@monsterprom) July 19, 2024

Similar to their criticisms with AI, translators and localizers now have a problem with fan translation. Their argument is that empowering fans is taking away work from the industry, when in truth these are translations that wouldn’t happen anyways.

The fact of the matter is that some translations aren’t economically viable, with the official Twitter account for Monster Camp claiming that a full translation would cost around $60,000 USD for one language.

Fan translations have been a part of fandom for decades. Before anime went mainstream, many series were only available via dedicated fans subtitling and uploading episodes. Many manga titles are still only available via scanslators who work off donations.

Fans have come to the defense of Beautiful Glitch and Those Awesome guys, pointing out that usually mod tools are celebrated in the gaming community and accusing localizers of being “weird” about this particular incident.

Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp is available now on PC, Mac, and Linux (via Steam), and Nintendo Switch.