RIDI has shut down Chrysanthemum Garden, a danmei fan translation site.
On October 1, fans noticed that the domain for Chrysanthemum Garden, a fan translation site that hosts danmei titles and, up until August, Korean novels, was gone. The notice on the website says simply: “RIDI’s content is being deleted and [chrysanthemumgarden.com] is shutting down due to a Cease & Desist Notice from RIDI Corporation.” Fans also noticed that the site’s discord channel was also abruptly deleted.
Established approximately in 2019, Chrysanthemum Garden announced a closure of its site in July on their Discord, stating that due to a loss of their advertisement platform, they could no longer sustain it financially. “We have tried many alternatives, but even the second best options have ended up providing a tiny fraction of what we had been earning. Not only do we no longer earn enough money to provide a revenue split with translators and authors; we can no longer even cover the cost of hosting the website.”
However, because Chrysanthemum Garden was scheduled to close at the end of July, translators and authors would be able to find some way to transfer their novel from the site.
Not long after, Chrysanthemum Garden posted another announcement, postponing the shutdown, saying that “We’ll try other options–many lovely people have suggested different ways to support the site–so we’re going to keep it alive.”
While the large majority of works on Chrysanthemum Gardens are danmei titles, they have also been translating Korean novels. In August, they took down all of their Korean translations due to a cease and desist order from RIDI while also requesting that those on Discord not share any Korean content illegally on their channel which includes “art, comic, novel, cropped or whole, or anything else.”
Fans were devastated to find the site wiped clean with no notice. A few translators on the sites have addressed the shutdown and spoken about finding ways to transfer their translations to other platforms.
Fan translations have historically straddled the line between what’s ethical and what’s not. Some fan translations will request that readers provide proof of payment from the Chinese publishers before they’re allowed access to read the translation to support the authors. Many have taken down their fan translations when an official English license has been announced so the authors can earn money. On the other side, there are some fan translators who have put their translations behind a pay wall with the money not going toward the original authors, and most of the times, these translations are machine-translated.
As the English publishing space grows more interest in translation works from Asia, publishers have also hired fan translators to do the official translations.
RIDI and other Korean sites such as Kakao Entertainment has been cracking down on piracy sites as well as fan translation sites in recent years. Kakao Entertainment shut down Bato.to earlier this year.
Source: X, formerly known as Twitter
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