If a company licenses a fan translation, is the translation group paid?

[arishii]

Are they paid for the license, or is the fan translation public domain?

[Narcosis]

TL is never a public domain, unless otherwise stated. Getting paid depends on a lot of factors. In overall, they should be paid for their work, always. Some give it away for free, others are willing to do so when doing an unofficial TL and hoping some publisher eventually picks the game they are working on. It's a middle ground for that kind of work they do, if they want to remain 100% clean. Some publishers get away with actually paying a dime or offer other things in exchange; certain "agreements" are made.

[Heizei_koukousei]

The dark side of business. ANYTHING to make a quick buck

[astro]

I don't get what you are trying to ask. Are you asking about a company licensing a GAME that has a fanTL, or the actual fanTL? Because you can't really "license" someone else's work, so that makes no sense. They can't use your fanTL even if it was supposedly 'illegally' translated in the first place. In the former scenario, though, it all depends on the TL group.

[Decay]

He's asking about cases like Steins;Gate, Grisaia, and Cartagra, and whether or not the translators get compensated. Yes they do, but the circumstances are often different. JAST for example is infamous for being rather stingy, no one gets paid until the game is actually released. So even if you work your ass off and provide a speedy translation, you won't see a dime until JAST gets around to actually releasing it. How long has Sumaga's translation been complete and "in editing" for? Not much is known publicly about MangaGamer's or Sekai Project's methods of compensation but one can only hope they're more fair than that.

[MKDude]

I won't speak for MangaGamer, since our only pairing is for the game we're not done with yet (Shin Koihime Musou) but while we've yet to negotiate any compensation, the team has mostly agreed that we just want free copies of the game we did this much work on. So if they're cool with that, I have no complaints.