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**Scenario:**

A streaming site has streaming rights to an anime and then a different company
picks up the title for DVD/Bluray viewing.

**Question:**

Does the second company have to re-subtitle the show even though that work has
been done already by the streaming company?

Because I assume the subtitles _belong_ to the company who made them - Do
companies sell them on maybe?


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anime-production licensing
Are some translated anime needlessly subbed twice?


Some of it may depend on the region/country which the original translation was
created and where the second company's region is. In the U.S., translations
are derivative works, which are copyrighted separately themselves but cannot
be produced without the consent of the original work's copyright holder.

And because the reason for doing the translation and distribution (be it
streaming or physical media) is to localize for a region's consumers, there's
usually no reason to need a new translation but it ultimately depends on the
original copyright holder. Sometimes, simulcast streams have translations that
were done under a heavier time constraint, even if the scripts are shared to
the translators before the original airing of episodes. There's less
supervision in some of these cases and the original copyright holder (e.g. the
Japanese Studio) may not have the same control they'll have if they work
directly with an editor or a script director for the licensor (e.g. the
streaming company or distributor). At the same time, the original license
holder may ask that another translation be used instead of the licensor
creating their own new translation, though I'm not sure how often that ends up
happening.

I don't have any numbers or citations to give you an idea of how many streamed
translations end up being re-used by other distributors, but they would either
pay a licensing fee to the translation's copyright holder (be it the streaming
company or a translation service), or they could just buy it. The original
copyright holder, though, would most definitely have some say about this when
the license to distribute is hashed out. If the original copyright holder is
OK with reusing another translation, then that's probably what usually ends up
happening. Otherwise, the studio may demand a new translation with more direct
input.

Note that translations, even on physical media getting reused isn't uncommon,
especially with distributors for different regions but the same language
(U.K., U.S., Australia, etc). Also note that some studios get new translations
made for the _same_ property on newer releases (e.g. ADV's Neon Genesis
Evangelion's perfect collection vs platinum collection).


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