A troubleshooting tip (I just got some interesting feedback) for those who might have problems with 18 first chapters on Lezhin:

make sure Lezhin is in Korean, and that there are (currently) 24 chapters.

It is apparently possible that the whole website is switched to japanese, with only (currently) 5 chapters available.

Unless the scanlators make specific overlays for the japanese version, it will not be supported.

edit:
you can edit the language in your account settings. 4th parameter. Switch the the Korean looking alphabet, if the website looks like japanese or chinese and not korean (they look different).

last edited at Aug 27, 2015 10:50AM

So the lesson is....don't have standards? Don't stand by your principles? Keep providing free labour to the folks doing this? Help me out here.

Playing a little bit the devil's advocate here, but I'm a little bit surprised to read this from you (the few moderation I've seen from you was consistent and based). The lesson, but I'm sure you know it, is that it takes only one "asshole". Not only that, but what artist and what scanlator has any standards that don't apply only to themselves (like any regular person), but to their audience?? Your comment read like a non-sequitur to me.

For now, we will be sharing translations privately. If you have a tumblr account and message Halmoni, she may ask you to screenshot proof that you have bought the chapters in order to prevent the leaking of her translations.

What anti-leaking device does tumblr or halmoni herself have that Lezhin doesn't??
Plus, either halmoni release incomplete work ("only" her translation as a text file, for instance), and therefore people would pay Lezhin for a subpar experience, either she release fully typeset images, which is less legal than the overlay thing to begin with. I can't get my head around this.

I do not know what happened to the chinese WDTFS translation team, but I'm understanding you are not actually stopping the translation. As Sandoval from El Secreto de Sus Ojos would say, there's no escaping your passion like that.

Even if you build a tiny and well knit community which you share your translation "privately" with, it's still sharing on the internet. Worse, when your translations will be leaked it will impact your ego more profoundly than just now. Will you engage in some sort of witch hunting amongst your close peers?
And it stiffles creativity. I've been shown many fanart in this forum, for both WDTFS and Fluttering Feelings. What will happen to that in a closed garden? And what will happen to the conversation? It fosters hugboxes, and it encourages you to do wicked things like bending your own rules to attracts the fanart artists (for instance).

All in all, no problem with me as it will allow me to focus more on Naver and other free webcomics publishers. I was a little bit dubious about Lezhin, and this adventure will have been informative.

Best wishes, and good work.

Hmmmmm.

No matter how you do it, as soon as you share your translation over the internet it will leak elsewhere.
That is how internet works, and it has very strong upsides.

I understand you want it to bend a little under your rules and your wishes (however respectful and nice they may be) for you to contribute your valuable time, but there's no compromizing the internet.

For me, the overtooning thing is an alternative way of reading webcomics that has its upsides and downsides, and not an exclusive way. I did not want to force my views onto you, and invested some of my time to allow you doing what you want on Lezhin, but I am a little sad to see how things turn out.
It was predictable. And ultimately you spoiled the energy of those who were more than willing to listen to you and throw money at Lezhin, your best followers. You led them nowhere.

Now, I still respect you because you are a translator and somebody who tries things. I am not somebody who think there will always be somebody to pick up the torch, for I have seen exceptions. But I think you should focus more on the good people, and less on the rest.
If you think it's a good thing to be able to read through overlays, why wouldn't there be other people who think like you and will use it? Of course some others won't, you can't bend the internet.
Why don't you ask Lezhin their own opinion about you translating their stuff? After all, defending their work, be it in korean or english, is their work, not yours? What do you think will happen if Lezhin hire an official translator and release their webcomics in english alongside the korean?

Nearly all scanlation is "illegal", and nearly all existing legal translation is leaking on the internet.

Our own scanlation of Cheese in the Trap hasn't been leaking much, but it has at some point. We then stopped for awhile, and when we got back on work we begged leakers to at least wait until the serie is complete (we cannot threaten to stop once it is complete ^^).
Strangely, it hasn't been leaking since then, and now that Cheese in the Trap is being officially translated (far behind), the official is leaking (not our problem).

Best regards, and please think more about how your plans work in failure mode. It is very important (failure happens, and damages must remain under control as much as possible).

Should be working again, apparently Lezhin is changing how it works internally (you don't really see anything different on the surface, but I do). It's really bizarre so I wonder if there are more changes on the horizon (right now it was pointless changes for them, so it might be tied to other future things).

I had to adapt the script, so make sure your addon is updated if you use one, or make sure the thing loaded by the bookmark is up to date if that's what you use (just access http://static.oddsquad.org/js/naver.reader.oss.js and refresh with F5 so you're sure your bookmark is refreshed).

It happened to me when I made an account and waited too much (I was translating and analyzing layout) before validating my account.

I had to go back where you have to choose the method of validation, hard refresh (F5), select the third option (international user), and proceed relatively fast.

I just tried your method, but it didn't seem to work for me. Thanks for the help, though.

Just a thought, but can you try with another browser? I think the manipulation has to be done only once, so if you succeed with another browser it might be enough ^^

It happened to me when I made an account and waited too much (I was translating and analyzing layout) before validating my account.

I had to go back where you have to choose the method of validation, hard refresh (F5), select the third option (international user), and proceed relatively fast.

I've only skimmed this serie so I can't say anything about the plot, but what makes me tick a little bit is how the males are portrayed, and especially how they are "standing". I don't know how to explain, but the way they "pose" looks unnatural to me (or very unattractive ^^). I suppose that since it is a yuri, it's maybe on purpose and males are goofballs?

@snowangel526
can you submit a screenshot?

I can't believe the sheer involvment and artwork when it comes to erotic stuff.

I mean, sure my fav webtoon Cheese in the Trap has its fanart, but there's no comparison... it's overflowing here!

Arh arh, especially since some of the fanarts aren't put to shame at all by even the original artist artwork.

edit:
Now the registration and login processes should have a few helpers if one uses the bookmark/plugin. Due to the ephemereal nature of the adult verification (I don't really want to make multiples accounts and once you're verified you cannot do it again), it shall be a little bit difficult for me to verify when (if) the layout change in the future.

last edited at Jul 3, 2015 3:51PM

I took a screenshot from Cheese (because there was many chapters, so multi-page).
http://bumblebits.net/static/img/screenshot3.jpg

It only shows the releases for that webtoon. It's already potentially multi languages, although I need to think how to restrict access to raws (for the moment, raws are shared acress languages).

Depending on where you click, you access the local page for that webtoon or the publisher's site (in general, all the images link to the publisher website, and texts link are for internal navigation).

It's a centralized place only for my server, if somebody want to make its own overlay server, it is entirely possible.

To edit the stuff (title of the webtoon/chapter, released status), you need to enter the desk area (it's all very similar looking but with edit options, and with a future "translate directly on the images" thing that is one of the two reasons I do this - the other being allowing other people than me to manage overlays releases on my own server). You'd have to log in (the little key top-right) as I don't really know how to make full anonymous (I'm not talking about you =p) contributions really possible yet (you have to be invited in a group before being able to even edit their stuff). Can register locally or use already existing foreign account like google or whatever.

Making a tutorial over there is, I think, a good idea ^^ (Oddsquad being a specific team, maybe other team don't want to link to it, and bumblebits is more neutral).

edit:
my own design skills are non-existant, so it's not really... erhh... shiny, maybe that will come later.
edit2:
yeah there's 5 elements per page because I wanted to show the whole page thing =p can't take a screenshot with 10 or 25 per page =p

last edited at Jul 3, 2015 2:23PM

Given that the bookmarklet instructions aren't specific to Fluttering Feelings, I might make a more generalized page for the bookmarklet later. Maybe. We'll see.

I'll be happy to copy it once I'll have released the public interface (for readers and groups ^^) for overtooning ^^
http://bumblebits.net/static/img/screenshot1.jpg
http://bumblebits.net/static/img/screenshot2.jpg

(I plan(ned?) to use popeye images to enhance the tutorial and make it... non webtoon specific ^^).

edit: the screenshots were when I had no information on who was working on Fluttering Feelings and I had bet on Yuri project (sorry Kyra and sorry Dynasty scans =p it's fixed now)

last edited at Jul 3, 2015 1:41PM

I won't comment much on the trolling and drama (even if I disagree a little bit, I honestly don't know if it will prove to be beneficial or not in the end).

As for scanlation in general, even though you have to pay to view the chapters, the scanlation work is still unpaid work (only the artist and the publisher benefit from your money in this case). This to say that scanlators aren't held to the same standards (of facade civility for instance) than the publishers: you are not their clients.

I'll try to add translation for every step of the registration and payment process as fast as I can (not superfast though, there are other things I have to do ^^). It has already been partially done in Naver for instance (not yet Lezhin), but as the business model of Naver is different, it wasn't very important for me to focus on that at the time.

And yes, it looks very difficult (relatively) for the moment, because it is a fanmade initiative to "push" people to official websites. It is a decentralized solution which requires (for me) understanding and adapting the layouts of many websites (it is not only one unique reader). Sorry, but at least half of the difficulty is navigating through the publisher website and knowing how/where to pay for stuff. It isn't really our fault, is it?

Best wishes, enjoy the drama and the novelty ^^
Don't rush into things. If you don't trust or if you don't like this particular serie enough to pay for it, well there's ton of excellent free content everywhere! (bless this day and age!).

I'm reading a little bit about people who want to read this smexy webtoon with the help of mobile devices like iPhones. BEWARE because I'm not sure low memory devices can tolerate so much HD images being overlaid (especially now that I've desactivated the weird downsizing on Lezhin, so they are really HD now). Some work has been done already to accomodate low memory devices, but I think it's still insufficient for the lowest one.

edit:
why do the guides mention you have to use your smartphone to buy coins by the way? I'm sure there is a reason, I'm just curious.
I see that once you're logegd in, you can buy coins through http://www.lezhin.com/payment , but maybe it isn't as international as the smartphone app?

last edited at Jul 3, 2015 8:07AM

@Anonymous
interesting question,

I want the script to be independent from me and my own server. If a scanlation team want to distribute their own information about their overlays, without using my own server as intermediary, I want it to be possible.
Consequently, by design, at the very minimum some data has to be stored on localStorage (which is the poor man way of being able to configure an userscript/bookmarklet): the server adresses.
This would allow users to remove my own server if they so desire, and/or add others instead (to this day, none exists though, I've originally setup BlackHorus' feed as a way to understand by example multi-feed requirements, but it's my own server aswell).

By "server", I mean places where information about overlays (where to find them) is available.

To adress the problem you've mentionned, I should simply add the listing of the servers stored in localStorage, and offer a button which "refreshes" them (ping them as if it was the first time).

Basic information about the webtoons is stored aswell, to avoid constant traffic between all the servers (faster, less spying on user activity, etc...), but it isn't yet very well implemented as we are very far from managing a big list of webtoons. I don't recall if I edited the "modified_at" date for fluttering feelings, but in the case I have, the problem you mentionned should resolve itself within a week anyway: past some inactivity limit, a server will be automatically refreshed (to check if there's new projects, things like that).

You can bug me on the github page (I think registration is required there) or the oddsquad forum ( http://oddsquad.userboard.net/ registration not required). I'll be absent until 10 june though ^^ so fingers crossed

@Anonymous

Sorry for the late reply, I don't really check here often.

Your diagnosis is right, I didn't bother to update the BlackHorus server because I thought it would not matter if it says it is not compatible with the script, as long as the main feed is compatible.
But I was apparently wrong, as apparently the script doesn't like it when one feed is incompatible and messes with localStorage. It is a bad behavior that I will fix (if a server is offline the script shouldn't care that much, for instance), in the meantime I'm updating the BlackHorus feed.

Indeed, you did not notice this problem earlier, because I properly updated both feeds when I added comico.jp. But I didn't bother when I had to add comico.toast.com.

One cannot have multiples domains in Access-Control-Allow-Origin, but one can uses the wildcard "*" that matches every websites, and one can adapt this header depending on the referer. As I didn't add toast.com as possible referer, the server just returned the default (the first) publisher: Naver ^^

edit: I think the problem is that I changed the blurb of Fluttering Feelings (following the scanlator instruction), but there are currently "forbidden" characters in it (slash "/"). So the script refuses to register the webtoon. I'm editing the blurb back as temporary fix. (extending the allowed characters is easy but will come with other things next update).

@kith

What works and what doesn't when you try the bookmark or the plugin? Do you see the "new" logo "star in a bubble"?

last edited at Jun 3, 2015 11:28AM

Ahah don't worry, you look reasonable ^^

One has to take decision and smell the winds sometimes.

Note that in some future, I will also add the possibility to "roughly" translate directly on the webtoons, in a format that is importable in photoshop (that is the program my team uses for typesetting).
Since it is simply html "on top" of the raws, it is therefore only available through the script ^^ (if you so chose to publish your translation script in the first place, which we probably won't).
Here's a prototype that can give you a rough (ah!) idea:
http://static.oddsquad.org/others/bubbling-prototype.html
Just click 4 times on a bubble (once on top, once, bottom, once left, once right). This will add an html bubble whose content you can edit. You can change the form and color of the bubble. This prototype is very basic, as you cannot add translator's notes (which is another kind of "bubble", nor comments), nor can you edit the dimensions afterward, nor rotate etc...
For my team, the purpose of that thing is to allow translators to translate directly on the manga (not using an intermediary text file, less switching), and to allow typesetters to directly import the translation in photoshop (no copy pasting and placing the bubbles). Allowing people to read the "rough" translation is just a byproduct. It's faster.

Best regards.

Hello,

I am the programmer of the overlay-thing, which I name Overtooning (like overtuning). (thanks OrangePekoe by the way ^^)

When a new person approaches me to learn how to use my script, I'm always googling where they come from so as to get an idea of the fans they have, and what information they have or have not (the fans, I try to give all the information to the scanlator directly). I even did this faster than usual this time because I was surprised to discover "Fluttering Feeling" was not a "free" webtoon (requires registration and/or fee and/or silly games) like all the others I'm used to. And I'm even more flaggerbasted now that I'm learning it's just for temporary roughs ^^

Just to get this out of the way: I don't meddle with the scanlators that wishes to use my script, there is no condition. So I am powerless against any decision your dear scanlators take.

I'm here to give my opinion on the subject.

First, concerning the value of foreign viewership.
I do not know how foreign viewership is perceived (and maybe filtered out). On the face of it, it is a strong possibility that foreign viewership does not generate as much money for the hosting companies, simply because they offer less deals for foreigners (and/or do not have international advertisers).
Of course, that does not make it a "con" at all, since viewership gives them opportunities which they can adapt to. On top of the fact that the author ratings are definitively relatively boosted in the short/middle term (long term it depends the company reaction: do they reject or embrace international viewership).

Second, concerning the mobile support.
Mobile support is a concern of mine, and I already went a long way now. I do not know the comico websites yet, but if there are problems there, you can totally cry and whine, I will be listening (do that where I hang out though, not here since I just registered ^^).

Lastly, the exclusive requirement of the script.
The 3 days window of the korean comico website sounds like a harsh condition to me (it must be easy and painful to miss a chapter). But if after these days you do release the whole chapter outside of the script, then it sounds okay to me. And if that's true, then I guess you are affecting only a subset of people: those who want to read the roughs within 3 days. It'd be just a tradeoff: the pain of initially installing the thing vs the pain of not read the chapters ASAP.

I believe however that if you really think the script method has its use and advantages, there is no need for exclusivity. If the script is any good, adoption should follow, if it isn't good, don't push it down people's throats ^^

My own team has made only one webtoon script-exclusive, it is the one that prompted the script in the first place: Cheese in the Trap. This webtoon has been made exclusive because the author specifically forbade the translation of her work outside of Naver, and we wished to comply. We had a very strong incentive.

Another team adopted it for a webtoon that is being officially translated: Kubera. And it is exclusive aswell. It exists because the official translations are still lacking a bit (it will become better with time) and especially lagging far behind (the last chapter that was unofficially scanlated at the time the official translation started).

So in that regard (exclusivity reasons), Fluttering Feeling is like an extreme to me, but, again, its scanlation is not my business.
I just hope I'll be able to help the people who have problems if the roughs remain exclusive ^^

Best regards.

last edited at May 26, 2015 2:27PM