I’m not really someone who goes around explaining their jokes, but I apparently have to for this occasion.

On April 20th, I made a joke post about translating a novel about someone who suddenly becomes Hitler. I’m not sure why some of you guys would even ask me whether this novel existed or not when I clearly linked the web novel version of it and also the author’s blog.

For the people who so kindly machine translate my stuff, often missing the context, this is what I meant:

In any case, the joke was about me translating it. It honestly wasn’t anything impressive and the novel didn’t leave any significant impression on me so I never did intend to translate it. However, it seems someone, who either clearly doesn’t know how to read English or just skimmed through my post, became incredibly trigger happy. They reported me to the publishers of 〈I’m Hitler!?〉, who coincidentally also publishes the novel 〈Anna de Balzac’s Loss of Concept〉, and that resulted in me receiving an email from them earlier today.

The person who reported me also assumed that the poll I made in the ⌈”I’m not dead yet” update⌋ was to decide on what novel I was going to translate next, despite the fact that I never clearly said if I was going to translate them or not. I was actually trying to gauge out what sort of genre attracts the attention of you, the readers, the most.

Here’s the email I received from them. (Sorry for the low-quality image, I’m posting this from my work computer which still runs on Windows XP)

The basic gist of the email is this:

1. Due to the characteristics of the work 〈I’m Hitler!?〉 both the translation and publishment of the story overseas is forbidden.

2. The publication right of 〈Anna de Balzac’s Loss of Concept〉 is current being discussed with an American and a Japanese publishing company. Moreover, since I’m apparently profiting from my translations by distributing it through my patreons, they’re deeming this as illegal. (This part doesn’t make much sense since I don’t put my translations behind a paywall nor do I give my patreons exclusive access to my translations. Everyone who donates should be aware that they’re solely doing so as a “donation”.)

So yeah, they’re basically threatening to take legal actions if I even dare to translate their stuff.

I already did a small back and forth with them and explained that I didn’t intend to translate their novels, and they said that they won’t do anything as long as I kept that promise. So don’t expect me to translate anything from this publishing company.

P.S 〈Anna de Balzac’s Loss of Concept〉 wasn’t an exceptional book out of the three books I bought, so this isn’t really a huge loss for me.

P.P.S 〈Million Dollar Bill〉 was actually my favorite novel out of the three as long as I ignore the fact that most of the characters were named after famous people related to music. They’re only named after them, the characters don’t actually mirror the musicians. However, due to this little reporting incident, I’ll be making sure to get permission to translate the series beforehand.