A fan translation of Dies Irae battle scene 2

[Conjueror]

Hello guys.
 

I had a bit of extra time on my hands so I decided to put it to good use and practiced my skills on translating another excerpt from Dies Irae. It's a direct sequel to the battle scene in my previous translation (and it's not even over yet, haha; I smell a trilogy on the horizon). Again, don't expect Shakespeare, but I tried to bring the nuance of Masada's writing across to the best of my ability (I imagine with debatable success).

The scene has spoilers, obviously, but most of them are so cryptic you'll likely have no idea what's up if you haven't read the work already anyway.

 

Text-based TL on my blog:

https://vnrw.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/translation-dies-irae-beatrice-vs-eleonore-part-ii/

Subbed YT videos:

 

[sanahtlig]

Can't really comment on accuracy, but some of the lines might need to be rewritten to present the ideas with greater clarity.

 

An undeniable sensation of piercing through her target still on her fingers, Beatrice turned back at her adversary from the edge of the hall her lightning leap took her.

 

 

The reverberations of their exchange echoing through her sword arm as she rushed past her target, Beatrice turned to face her adversary from the edge of the hall.

 

 

That's how I'd rewrite it.

[Zalor]

I wasn't expecting you to continue this, but I'm glad you did. I'm a bit too busy to read it now, but I just wanted to post my gratitude. 

[Conjueror]

Can't really comment on accuracy, but some of the lines might need to be rewritten to present the ideas with greater clarity.

 

 

 

That's how I'd rewrite it.

 

I'm much more concerned about my English than my Japanese, so your comment is definitely very helpful. The only thing is that it's not the clashing of blades she's still feeling "on her hand" but having cut through the flesh of her target. The point of that line is to drive it home that she definitely manged to hit Eleonore. But your suggestion gave me some nice ideas.

 

This was one of the problematic lines I would have wanted to discuss with an editor had I been working on a serious project. I think I pretty much gave up and went with an almost literal take with this one initially.

[sanahtlig]

Ah, thank you. The only thing is that it's not the clashing of blades she's still feeling "on her hand" but having cut the flesh of her target. The point of that line is to drive it home that she definitely manged to hit Eleonore. But your suggestion gave me some nice ideas.

[Conjueror]

That confused me, because I didn't see any mention that Eleanor had been injured in the 60s or so following that line--being that tekotae means resistance, whether it be flesh or anything else.

 

Ah, yeah, tegotae can mean either, but the very following line is: "Silent befuddlement left Eleanore’s lips as she traced her fingers along the cut on her cheek."

EDIT: Heh, I imagine trying to follow Dies Irae without context must be no easy task. I had to read it twice to make sense out of it, and there is still stuff left that eludes me. Incidentally, Eleonore actually doesn't carry a weapon and was just evading up to this point, so there could have been no exchange between the two.

[sanahtlig]

Feeling her sword connect as she rushed past her target, Beatrice turned to face her adversary from the edge of the hall.

That should capture the correct image, minus the lingering echo part.  The original sentence isn't that complex, so the English sentence probably shouldn't be either.  Sometimes it's better to simplify rather than capture every nuance, if that does a better job of maintaining the flow.  Less is more.

 

Alternatively:

 

The echo of her blade rending flesh lingering as she rushed past her target, Beatrice turned to face her adversary from the edge of the hall.

[Scorp]

Does anyone wanted to do a real english translation for game or everyone interested only in video translations?

[Zalor]

Does anyone wanted to do a real english translation for game or everyone interested only in video translations?

 

To my knowledge, Conjueror is mostly doing this as a means to practice his skills in translating Japanese into English; both of which (I believe) are foreign languages to him. As for the likely hood of a translation team picking this VN up, I highly doubt that will happen in the near future. Even Moogy listed this as one of the hardest VNs to translate. If you're interested in why this is such a difficult VN to translate (which was a question I had a while ago), you should check out the discussion in this thread. 

[Conjueror]

Feeling her sword connect as she rushed past her target, Beatrice turned to face her adversary from the edge of the hall.

The complicated part about this line (apart from the annoying tegotae word) is that it's reflective of the second line of the scene "Finally, a hit… finally she caught up to..." and doesn't really describe a new action, so I was worried that adding a verb indicating her motion next to the sword part might mislead readers into thinking that the cut of the cheek might be a second "hit" she landed on Eleonore. If you think it checks out though, I'll use this line as it definitely is a lot clearer than the monstrosity I came up with.

 

Alternatively:

The echo of her blade rending flesh still lingering on her fingers, Beatrice turned to face her adversary from the edge of the hall.

Might be a good idea to cut rushed/leapt altogether. I'm just not sure if "lingering on her fingers" is an expression that makes sense in English or not.

Does anyone wanted to do a real english translation for game or everyone interested only in video translations?

I'm pretty sure there are quite a few who would be interested in translating it, but, like me, lack the proper skills to do the game justice. I think Makoto might be the only one in the business who could even feasibly tackle it at the moment, but even so, this is what Moogy had to say on the subject:

Makoto and I tried to get the license for it once, but light said they weren't interested. It's honestly probably for the best because god damn the prospect of translating that game...

I think trying to imitate Masada's writing style in general would give me a heart attack.

 

[sanahtlig]

Might be a good idea to cut rushed/leapt altogether. I'm just not sure if "lingering on her fingers" is an expression that makes sense in English or not.

Well, the original Japanese only mentions "blade", and this references the Japanese concept of a master swordsman being one with one's sword--the sword being an extension of one's self.  In a sense, even mentioning her fingers detracts from the overall image.  If you really wanted to refer to fingers here, "fingertips" would probably make more sense.

 

I don't feel the "rushing past" adds the sense of an additional action, but you're right that the original seems to refer to a completed action rather than a continuing action.

 

Obviously this single line isn't that important.  It was just the first line I came across where the English was pretty shaky and couldn't be left in its current state.  I suppose the "simplest" editorial fix would have been to simply change "her lightning leap took her" to "where her lightning leap had taken her".  That would've fixed the grammar at least, though the line would've still been significantly bloated compared to the original.  If you're interested in mirroring the original style (which I think you are), adding bloat is something you really want to avoid.

[Conjueror]

If you're interested in mirroring the original style (which I think you are), adding bloat is something you really want to avoid.

[sanahtlig]

By the way, would you ever consider a job as an editor if it was a properly paid position? Your combination of English skills and the rudimentary knowledge of Japanese would make you an ideal candidate for such work.

Maybe.  I have a feeling I'd be terribly slow at editing, especially starting out.  Professional work tends to have tight deadlines, which I can't exactly accommodate when I'm supposed to be working on my dissertation.

[Scorp]

To my knowledge, Conjueror is mostly doing this as a means to practice his skills in translating Japanese into English; both of which (I believe) are foreign languages to him. As for the likely hood of a translation team picking this VN up, I highly doubt that will happen in the near future. Even Moogy listed this as one of the hardest VNs to translate. If you're interested in why this is such a difficult VN to translate (which was a question I had a while ago), you should check out the discussion in this thread. 

No, this is not what I mean. I was mostly interested in the technical side, so does anyone really tried to reverse that? As I saw lot of scenes in Youtube, which were translated from the game, but seems it would be much more convenient, if translators have original text as plain text from the game, not having to get it through video... Also, if put it on some community translation platform like transifex, it would be easier for everyone involved to see the scripts and suggest translations...

[sanahtlig]

Conjueror's just doing this for fun.  There's no reason to go to the trouble of hacking the game just to translate a few scenes.  That said, putting the partial translation on a community translation platform would be a convenient way to solicit feedback.  The video translation is more of an end-user focused solution; it makes it really difficult to comment on individual lines.

[Conjueror]

No, this is not what I mean. I was mostly interested in the technical side, so does anyone really tried to reverse that? As I saw lot of scenes in Youtube, which were translated from the game, but seems it would be much more convenient, if translators have original text as plain text from the game, not having to get it through video... Also, if put it on some community translation platform like transifex, it would be easier for everyone involved to see the scripts and suggest translations...

I actually had CryingWestern (Caleb) try that, and the results were: "fuck this shit - it's impossible". It seems Dies Irae is "hard" on all possible aspects.

He might be able to tell you more about his struggles on this.

[dowolf]

I'm not going to go into too much detail, but some general style suggestions:

--Semicolons: Learn to use them! They are indispensable, and something like this practically demands them. Yet there was a sad lack of them at times, and a number of times they were misused. For instance, at the very end you have "Yet the victor was certain, as long as a miracle did not occur, the tide of battle was as good as set in stone." That comma at the beginning splices; make it a semicolon! Alternatively, you could make the second comma a semicolon instead--the point is, this sentence is in desperate need of some semicolon loving.

A number of the times you did use semicolons, they were paired with incomplete sentences. M dashes work far better here: "Citizens you wish to protect, your beloved friends; there is no better sacrifice than their pure souls." should be "Citizens you wish to protect, your beloved friends--there is no better sacrifice than their pure souls." Also, colons: "Now I can wholeheartedly agree; indeed, it is not scary in the slightest." should have a colon.

 

--Ellipses: You're overusing them. Ellipses are going to feel very languid, very slow; in other words, they engender the exact opposite emotion that you should be going for in a fight scene. Let's examine a sentence from early on in 1-3: 稲妻と化したその身体は、炎も銃弾も透過する, which you rendered as "Taking the shape of lightning itself, she penetrated fires... she pierced bullets." Consider instead "Her body became a bolt lightning, zipping through fire and bullet alike." This sentence feels much more alive.

Some other examples of ellipses should be replaced with M dashes, another solid tool you seem to be neglecting, such as Eleonore's statement around the six minute mark in 1-3.

--Periodic sentences: Basically, this is a complicated way of saying to write a sentence such that the most important information is at the very end. This causes the sentence to build like a crescendo into something magnificent. To use another example from early in 1-3, "Finally, a hit… finally she caught up to her elusive superior who might as well have been above the clouds to her before." could become "Finally... Though there had once been a greater gap between them than the gap between the land and the clouds, she finally managed to land a hit." This feels triumphant. (I also took the liberty of rewriting the metaphoric bit here, though I still kept it pretty literal because I like the literal metaphor a lot.)

--You clearly sought to use past tense for all narration, which makes me love you forever. Just sayin'
 

[Scorp]

I actually had CryingWestern (Caleb) try that, and the results were: "fuck this shit - it's impossible". It seems Dies Irae is "hard" on all possible aspects.

He might be able to tell you more about his struggles on this.

I am 100% sure that everything in this world is possible I maybe try it myself, just I am generally interested in PSP version (as I cannot read near PC, and do not want to buy a tablet with Windows, so I play or on PSP, or on Android emulator PPSSPP). Anyway do not think there is much difference.

[Conjueror]

I am 100% sure that everything in this world is possible I maybe try it myself, just I am generally interested in PSP version (as I cannot read near PC, and do not want to buy a tablet with Windows, so I play or on PSP, or on Android emulator PPSSPP). Anyway do not think there is much difference.

I'm actually using the all ages release on PC, too, Amentes Amentes. So the PSP version should be pretty much identical.

 

 

I'm not going to go into too much detail, but some general style suggestions:

 

Whoa, thanks for all of this. They say semicolon is the trickiest of punctuation marks to use, and now I sure know why, haha. I guess I should better buy a book on this.

I actually intentionally slowed the "Taking the shape of lightning itself, she penetrated fires... she pierced bullets." down because I kinda interpreted this as not a part of the battle scene itself, but a reflection/reminder of what has been going on so far (this battle scene resumes after a long succession of other stuff, so this sentence is basically smth like "oh yeah, she took the form of lightning and was penetrating fires and piercing bullets while you were gone!"). Your sentence still has the same effect, I think, but at a faster pace, and I'm not sure if I want this particular sentence to run as fast, thuogh my personal sense of flow might be very well off in this case. I agree that battle scenes should be written in crisp, energetic prose in general though and I might be overusing ellipses quite a bit; good point there.

 

I'm not a big fan of present tense narration, and feel it's a lot easier to construct beautiful and effective sentences in the past tense when it comes to English writing. You can pretty much go either way when translating Japanese because they use all the tenses in the book whenever they want and don't give a shit. Masada's writing lends itself to past tense a lot better than most VNs as he writes his thing like a novel with very few present-tense-forcing exclamations like "どうしよう" or "やばい" in his narration, and god bless him for that.

 

Anyway, thanks for taking your time to pen all that advice down; it'll help a lot!

[Darklord Rooke]

I actually intentionally slowed the "Taking the shape of lightning itself, she penetrated fires... she pierced bullets." down because I kinda interpreted this as not a part of the battle scene itself, but a reflection/reminder of what has been going on so far (this battle scene resumes after a long succession of other stuff, so this sentence is basically smth like "oh yeah, she took the form of lightning and was penetrating fires and piercing bullets while you were gone!"). Your sentence still has the same effect, I think, but at a faster pace, and I'm not sure if I want this particular sentence to run as fast, thuogh my personal sense of flow might be very well off in this case. I agree that battle scenes should be written in crisp, energetic prose in general though and I might be overusing ellipses quite a bit; good point there.