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Speaking from the heart, I agree with most of what Aizen-sama said. I also approve of his use of my quote up there. Now, to be clear here... it hurts horribly the first time someone criticizes your translation. I experienced this repeatedly as a fansubber for anime and it only gets worse for VN fantranslators because it is text and not audio. Do you know the reason so many translators experience 'burn-out'? It's a combination of the sheer amount of work they put into what was, to them, a labor of love, only to have some smartmouth jackass publicly insult them for typos, nitpick about word choices, and generally make an ass of themselves... As he quoted me saying above, when you put that much time into something, only to have someone snipe at you over the details, it slowly corrodes your motivation, leaving you apathetic toward translation in general. Moreover, when you are a translator looking for just a few words of encouragement and you get some ****head wailing about how the translation is behind schedule, it pretty much shatters you. Human beings aren't designed to work without some sort of compensation, whether it is a full belly, cash, emotional satisfaction, or social encouragement. With something as time-consuming as VN translation, the pathetically small amounts of money offered by those who want to 'pay' a translator and the emotional satisfaction from a job well done just aren't enough to motivate one to finish one of these projects. If you worked the same amount of hours some people put into fantls in a retail job in the US, you would actually make more money than you could from a 'professional' translation job in many cases. So... for those who think translation is 'easy' or 'pays well', get a clue. Even I never seriously thought companies would willingly pay what that kind of work deserves when I was a newbie, and that was over a decade in the past.

Another thing is that most people in the community will never even try to experience fantl from the other side of things... they don't realize how much time it eats up, that emptiness you feel when you realize you've used dozens of hours of your personal time only to put out a patch that people bash left and right for 'errors' and other shit. If you make a fantl patch good enough to attract a company's interest in a localization, please do cash in. I'll cheer for you with all my heart (this statement is a generalized one directed to all fantl groups).

Dude, I will say I disagree with you, but Im very very glad to find someone like you. In my opinion, all elements of a work of fiction must be treated equally. Writing can be just as powerful as art or cause the same amount of damage, if bad, imo. I also watched that video but what opened my mind about the subject was this post. Before reading that, I also thought that story and characters> everything else. But then, I started searching and studying more and I finally realize art, soundtrack, animation, voice acting, etc. can all bring emotions and be intelectually stimulating just like story and characters. It makes me sick seeing people saying stuff like: "I dont care about art" because that is not an opinion, that is a lie. People 'think' they dont care about art because they never studied how it is used and thus do not realize its impact. Those people tend to think good art is just being pretty and therefore it is easier to make than a good story. Now even if I disagree that writing is inferior to art or soundtrack, it makes me really glad to see people like you, at least to balance the amount of overrate writing gets from the community.

You're much better off just getting someone who knows what they're doing translating it in the first place. Translation checking is a luxury some localization projects have, but at least in fan translations, it's largely there to compensate for the fact that most of the people working in fan translations just aren't very good translators. 99% of the time, if they were passable at translating, they'd get out of fan translation and translate for a living. If the translation is best described as garble, no editor can save it short of going to check every translated line and effectively redoing the work. I think what you're saying here is predicated on a mistaken assumption people often make when talking about localization: that there's some sort pidgin language between Japanese and English (let's call it Fantranslationese). Bizarrely, some people not only believe in the existence of Fantranslationese, but they have even convinced themselves that they prefer to read Fantranslationese over English. But make no mistake: Fantranslationese is not a language, and it does not communicate anything like what the original Japanese did and what a decent English translation would. Fantranslationese is a pale shadow of a language, and an editor can only do so much to fix a "translation" attempting to use it short of retranslating the work because the editor otherwise doesn't actually get an experience like reading the original. Relying on editors to inject flair into a Fantranslationese script means you lost all the flair that was in the original. You're certainly not there yet, but you're well on your way to writing fanfiction instead of a translation, if you go this route. Editors should be polishing a translation, smoothing out rough edges and ensuring consistency. They absolutely should be fixing the translator's mistakes, always with the aid of the translator, because the editor sees the work differently and therefore is going to rarely find translation mistakes due to their different view. This is a given especially because of how ambiguous and context-dependent Japanese is. I never want to work on any project with a translator who believes this.

Surely too many VNs have lead many fans into a form of weird masochism.

There seems to be a similar theme to your answers, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is. I think you’re being a little too subtle...

And Nayleen descended from the heavens to smite both bitch and whore (banned his ass for good) and he saw that peace had returned to the lands once more.

Definitely appreciating whatever Ezee has done for the team so far. It's sad to hear that one of your members is leaving, but life goes on. You guys have been doing a good job, imo. More power to your team~

Maybe because he wants to share more games with the world,despite it mostly being a thankless job. People can rant about stuff and still be involved in said stuff. I absolutely hate this aspect of translation as well but i still want to to be a translator.

^ pretty much. People, even if new, should first do some interior or exterior research before posting these retarded posts that have already been done to death. The level of ignorance shown with these posts/threads only comes to show how much people don't know and/or don't care about what happens behind the scenes and just want the end result. And it indeed isn't, if you aren't doing it for: Learning, like say, practicing for better linguistic skills or just overall better understanding of a language. Have huge amounts of motivation and drive for it. Want to get involved more in the scene, or use it as a stepping stone in your future career, or something of that sort. I'm very much triggered that people aren't double-checking on what they're doing on the internet or in general, and donations for fan-translations are a very good example of that. If they'd just dig around for a bit, they'd find pretty easily that paying money for fan-work is in most cases illegal. People honestly should pay more attention before bashing something they don't like, but that part of humans won't change, ever. Things be dumb and unfair to the end, so better get a thicker skin before sliding deeper. Or at all, really.

Meh. I'll stick with not learning Japanese.

In terms of books I sampled (read the first ten chapters at least) the number balloons to 300 or so... the seventy I'm talking about are the ones I was finding the most interesting. Here is a list of the ones I enjoyed the most (even if some were trashy). The Chaos Seeds (think an isekai/other world story with a protagonist who constantly swings back and forth between enlightened self-interest, pragmatism, and lust for power/stat geeking). The Stork Tower (extremely interesting dystopian future with a genius street rat who makes powerful enemies in the virtual and real worlds) Light Online (protagonist starts out as an out-of-luck NEET who is about to be turned into a virtual slave and then manages to rise high by playing a VRMMO in an unusual style). The Ten Realms - Protagonists are an amputee mercenary named Erik and his comrade and best friend Rugrat. They end up in the Ten Realms, two soldiers in a land of magic, and they quickly realize the only way to be themselves is to gain power and challenge themselves. Sort of a blend of Wuxia cultivation, military fantasy, and craft obsessive nation-building with two foul-mouthed soldiers with hidden depths leading the way. The Dark Elf Chronicles- In a future where a 'zombie particle' has contaminated most of the lifeforms on Earth, a few survivors try to live long enough to find a way to copy themselves into an online game while also stabilizing said game so it won't be a pure hellworld when they do so. Tons of ups and downs in this story. The Shadow Sun series- In this one, a mysterious System essentially unleashes massive numbers of super-powered monsters to cull humanity in preparation for aliens bidding on the land and resources. Very much a survival apocalypse story for the first three books. The Silver Fox & the Western Hero - Pure Wuxia with hardcore cultivation and horrid levels of racial prejudice... and a young former American plopped down in the middle who has a stat sheet in his head. The protagonist seems fairly normal, until he isn't. He is intelligent to the point of being brilliant, and absolutely devoted to the path he chooses. However, he is also capable of rising above his own desires at key points. Honestly, I can't wait until the next one comes out. Battleborne- First in a new series about a soldier who dies with his unit and gets reincarnated as a combination of several races by a Valkyrie as reward for his life of war and bravery. All Trades- A former conman goes into a virtual reality game to earn the money to give back to the family that supported him after his term in prison. He really has turned a new leaf, but he quickly finds himself riding the figurative tiger by the tail as he tries to do right by those around him while also earning enough money to pay off his loan shark.

Well, of course a prologue wouldn't work in a mystery horror story, but that's not what I was talking about. It's particularly meaningful for high-concept fantasy and sci-fi world that can be confusing to the player if it's not explained properly. Giving just enough context to make it comprehensible at the beginning, and minimize the need for infodumps when the action picks up pace is pretty optimal. In the case of your story, I simply think it could've done with a lot less info in general. I'd like it more being vague than just explaining the lore this way. That is a good point, but if you think of it as another method of "scattering" the infodumps to keep the complexity of the world without creating the walls of info in the middle of the story it should still be worth it. I also don't like encyclopedias if they contain information actually crucial to understanding the story – as you said, it can be cool for fleshing out your world, but it can't be a primary method. ...I might also be speaking from one specific trauma of an EVN with a world that was pretty much incomprehensible because of lack of proper exposition, and with encyclopedia which created more questions than it answered. A good prologue could've done miracles for that game.

Conjueror gave it a bad review, so no thank you.

That's a fascinating way to think about it, I think you're right. I'm hardly well versed in Chuuni but I was also curious as to its meaning at heart. I think it's about greater purpose/meaning, ascending beyond the bounds of everyday thought and society, power to resist shackles and to be able to carve one's emotions upon the world. It differs from power fantasy in that the focus in about escaping society and having purpose, as opposed to masterfully puppeteering the real world.

Does not like pink blood. 0/10 Review. Doesn't get the "essence" of the game.

I wish the community would be a bit more tolerant about translation quality of fan translations, or at least offer criticism in a more constructive manner instead of just bashing it. While I never worked on a fan translation, I worked with a few team members on a mod for a computer game for years. So I do know what it's like to work on a huge project in your spare time. And there are times when just hate it and want to pack it all in. And when you then just get some bashing comments instead of encouragement, you really want to scream out...

Most new VN addicts when I first started were definitely the type to feel 'entitled'. Actually, this applies to some extent to all people who want an excuse to pirate video games... The only way to get past that stage is to realize that you aren't the center of the world and people don't move to your convenience. I guess I can be at ease because I just buy the Japanese versions and play them, but I remember it being harder before I started doing that... a lot harder. Nonetheless, most people who start whining about 'selling out' are morons. Selling fantranslations to localization companies is practically an established tradition in the community now, after all. Edit: I guess it is because I actually had a good understanding of economics combined with having experienced the tug of war between Minori and NNL at a distance over Ef, but I honestly cheer whenever a fantranslation group 'sells out' that way. The jackasses who want their free content can whine all they want, but they, quite frankly, cease to have any moral ground to stand on the second they decide not to pay for the official versions when they come out. I'm not a hard-to-the-bone capitalist, but I still think that if you are going to play a game, you should pay the money if you have money. Edit2: And, what official localizations do, in my mind, is provide a much easier way to purchase Japanese games... especially since a lot of the Steam versions have the Japanese text selectable, lol.

I 100% agree with you on almost everything, and that's the reason we get so well along in this scene in the first place. Anyways, yeah, the scene and groups is getting isolated, and it's pretty damn visible too; I doubt all the lunatic entitlement, putting TL-groups and the members within on a pedestal, and the clear lack of straightforward ways of communicating with the groups helps. Also, don't use IRC as a communication-hub for god's sakes, IRC is terrible. The easiest way to leviate this "chasm" growing between TL-groups and people waiting for patches is just making that easy way of communication. So, if there's any groups and/or group members reading this post, just set up a Discord server, for fucks sake. Takes literally 30 minutes. Joining hands with other groups as a group of your own really is a good way of helping other groups helping themselves and vice versa. Unity's also a really good thing, and the groups get things done more efficiently this way, which s why Aizen and I started that whole Discord server in the first place. As for the entitlement, that's not goin' anywhere anytime soon. People will be salty shitheads until the end of time. All we can really do aside from communicating with them is to wait for quote-on-quote "selling out" to become more common and to more fan translation projects to start cooperating with the official localization companies. As for Fuwa as the hub of translation projects, frankly, it's too outdated to work properly. Sure it gives publicity nicely, but that's basically it looking at what else it does well. Maybe at some point there'll be a better option for a hub, but only time will tell.

You're welcome. (Still working on the dollarpound.)

Darbury "Ïf prëtty wërë äll thät mättërëd, Ï'd püt ümläüts övër ëvëry vöwël. Bëcäüsë ït mäkës thëm löök lïkë thëy'vë göt lïttlë Mïckëy Möüsë ëärs."

This is a pretty good narrative between @Darbury and @Palas that I'm reading... on my computer screen... with the on-screen text matching their avatars... THIS ISN'T A BLOG! IT'S A VISUAL NOVEL!!!

Just because you failed doesn't mean others can't do it. I'm reading untranslated stuff quite well after a year of learning.

Mate, I have no idea why you even pay attention to people complaining. People don't like that you advertise? Tough. People don't like what you have to say? Tough. People don't like the way you say things? Tough. A significant number of people on the internet need to learn how to ignore shit they don't like without a piece of software to do it for them. It used to be a valuable skill back in the day. On the other hand they are also free to complain, and whine, and bitch, just as you're free to ignore them. Do as you wish within the rules, you're lucky enough to live in a free country. and let people react how they react *shrugs*

出る杭を打つ is drawn from a Japanese saying that is basically the opposite of the American saying 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'. He is taking an even larger risk than Sanahtlig is hinting at by saying this. Japanese companies in general do not take kindly to their employees putting the company out there on a limb, and the industry already suffered badly as a whole from the infamous Rapelay incident and a number of follow-up incidents. I don't think those of us over here can really comprehend the pressures the average Japanese companies are under. For one thing, social pressure can turn into economic pressure with alarming swiftness over there. For another, Japan is reliant enough on other countries' trade for its survival that these kind of scandals overseas can cause hysterical reactions from their lawmakers. The eroge industry, being a niche industry by nature, is vulnerable to crackdowns in a way that the car and food production industries aren't. Since eroge are basically a guilty pleasure and a luxury, there are plenty of lawmakers that wouldn't see a problem with doing away with them if it meant they could improve their own chances of remaining in office. It isn't like they are universally accepted, even by otakus... so before you criticize eroge-makers for being 'xenophobic', you should at least try to see the bind they are in.

Because it only takes one "scandal" for everything to be destroyed. And trust me the West is the best at coming up with scandals. There's demands by fans, but over here you also have all the people who turn games into a political thing and would likely attack many of Japan's games to fill their political agenda. The west is plagued by people that work for the sole sake of running their mouths over every little thing and turn it into a national issue. Because they have nothing else to do with their lives but to complain, otherwise they have no jobs. Eroge becoming popular here would be like building a huge bait for them. I'll say it again, all it takes is one game to get enough attention to make the whole company come crumbling down. We have nothing but our own culture to blame.

Are Japanese the xenophobic ones or are we the ones that forced them to take action against something that used to be normal for them? I really don't like thinking that the Japanese are just xenophobic, we're a huge part of the problem, we're the ones that overreact and have power over them, that's why they don't want to consider us, because we give them a hard time for it. I really liked seeing this side of a developer, it really goes to show that it's not just because xenophobia, but because they want to avoid legal trouble we western folks give them.

Haruuru's translation of the Main routes is long-since done. I was mostly working with @ittaku in an advisory capacity (details, colloquialisms, other stuff that requires a ridiculously long background). It is true, and we both agree, that the Main route is much, much better than the Branch route. Not only are Tonoko, Shino, and Miyabi much better heroines, but everything from the protagonist's personality to how the heroines' emotions and characterizations are handled are so dramatically different in quality that there is no possible comparison. The only real exception is that Yuuna's route has some good drama/story, probably more as a coincidence than anything else (Misaki and Sumika's routes were... basically somewhat above average charage fare at best). I don't quite agree with the reviewer in this case, as I always reviewed based on the Main path and ignored the Branch entirely, simply because my first experience of it was enough to put me off permanently. The Main routes have some truly epic feels, great character interactions, and are the truest to the 'nature' of the school's purpose, which is confinement and segregation from the larger sister school's population and the general population in general. This is ironic, since the Branch school girls are supposedly more of an 'embarrassment' to their powerful families, whereas the Main School heroines are supposedly only problem children after the fact. Perhaps the way the Branch school's writer screwed up the most was that he quite simply didn't manage to match two of the three heroines to the school's purpose. Neither Misaki nor Sumika had any business being in the Branch school at all, considering that they were both capable and had personalities that were not necessarily 'embarrassing' to their families (in both cases, they are loved deeply and don't have any traumas or major issues that should have resulted in them ending up there). Yuuna's route stands out from the other two Branch routes... to a degree that you have to wonder if the same writer had anything to do with it. It is also the most overtly morally distasteful of the paths (not in the teacher-student relations sense though), which is probably why it has such impact. Yuuna's presence there also makes a great deal of sense once you've done her path, which is different from the two redheads. Miyabi's path tends to get deified by fanboys, which I can understand. Tsukasa's actions, the characters' reactions, and the feels are all so well coordinated that it is impossible not to cry numerous times throughout the path. However, it needs to be said that both Tonoko and Shino's paths are of the same level of quality, if having someone different tracks (the last part of Shino's path had me rofling, though).

I was discussing this with a friend recently, but it was our consensus that Maggot Baits is one of the few eroge that could benefit from having all its h-scenes removed... To be blunt, the h-scenes are in the way (vanilla or evil h, it doesn't matter). As for pacing, that's actually typical of Kurashiki when he doesn't have Takahama, Marimo, or one of his other Light people keeping him from doing what he wants. Sora no Baroque had a similar problem. The writing is good, the story is good, but the pacing is abominable. Edit: I liked the game's story, but the H was gratuitous in several negative ways (understatement).

Reborn as a censored goat in another world.

On average, the estimated time to delivery (ETD) is 255 days. On average, the actual time to delivery (ATD) for companies that already delivered is 633 days. On average, the tardiness in delivery (tdd) for companies that already delivered is 401 days. The slowest company (taking into account realized deliveries) is Frontwing, with an ATD of 716 days and tdd of 532 days. Despite this, their ETD is 150 days, with games from 2016 and 2017 yet to be delivered. Optimistic much? I was bored, so here's a pie chart...

WHO IS SAYING WHAT

In another stomach, far far away through Clephas's infinite bowels, two figures that looked distinctly similar to Alden and Jazid came into being. However, no one would have mistaken them for the originals, for their eyes glowed orange, their expressions twisted with blissful glee. Whatever their pasts, their memories, it no longer mattered... all that mattered was the one, fundamental truth they had discovered. "Cannibalism is Love," They intoned in deeply happy voices, as one, their mouths opening wider than they should have been able to to show steel trap teeth and a long, sharp tongue covered with tiny teeth designed to tear flesh from bone. Yet two more Clephas Cultists awaited there, in that place, for the chance to step forth and spread the beautiful truth they had discovered to the universe.

Finding someone who can both write and translate is pretty hard, Zaka. In a world where most people lose their ability to understand the written language the second they get out of high school or college, that's asking a bit much. *Clephas smiles, malice dripping from every word* That said, speaking from the translator's point of view... that won't work. Most people simply don't have the ability to construct coherent sentences while bringing text over from another language. That is why both edit and tlc stages become necessary in most cases. Not to mention that translating VNs is a lot of work, so the translators often just don't have the energy for it. How much Japanese does an editor need to know? That's a decent question... to be honest, rather than trying to double up a translator and editor, it makes a lot more sense to just have a translation-checker do the first run edit. In my experience, 90% of a good translation checker's job ends up being making the raw translation make sense. TLC is a lower stress, less time-consuming job than translation, in general... and unlike a Japanese-incompetent editor, he generally has a better chance of figuring out what's wrong and knowing when to look deeper. Ideally, the regular editor's job would just be smoothing the rough edges and/or turning dull text into prose.

My advice is not to try to match my output... to be blunt, I'm seriously pushing the edges of my own limits just to keep going. Cherry pick your favorite genres and ignore everything else.

The problem with mindless praise is that it is ineffective at making creators' works better as it does not point out what made the work good in the first place. I imagine Narcosis, an aspiring salty vn writer, is also thinking about the "hugbox" effect that exists in certain places to shield creators from any criticism - considering there is or at least was at some point a specific badge to put in your profile if you want honest criticism of your work at Lemmasoft, it's not like his fears are entirely unwarranted. It's a p. decent mirror with the problem of mindless bashing not helping you make your work better by pointing out what was bad. It's not like either has no information content; one tells you to stop making things in your current fashion, another tells you to continue in similar fashion. However, they would appear suboptimal from a creator's perspective. Outside of a creator's perspective, mindlessness on either side does not promote thoughtful discussion or trying to understand people that think different to you, and instead encourages forming groups around liking or not liking something. This is certainly one way of enjoying fiction, but not everyone appreciates it very much - not to mention polarization is where nuance, oh sweet nuance, goes right out the picture. We could use less of it, wherever we are.

Thank you for exemplifying the exact reason people give up on translations. I'm glad such healthy mentality as "don't bitch about work, just work or get out" is so prevalent.

This is kind of why i sorta lost my drive to translate vns. Thank you for so eloquently expressing the thoughts of so many translators have.

I'm glad to see your enthusiasm for editing continue after cutting your teeth on my project. Just like translating, you will keep getting better with every editing task you do, and then you'll look back on your earlier works and be disappointed by what you did. In your case, it's clear how much you've been thinking about this based on your further research towards improving your editing and I'm glad to have had you as an editor. The community should welcome any competent volunteer and be even more grateful when they're as thoughtful as you're being about the process.

I realized halfway through the blog post that I was eating a hot dog while reading it (with mustard, of course). It rated somewhere around a 2 on the "surreal moment scale". I have absolutely nothing of substance to add to the conversation, though.

I don't see any use in stretching the definition of visual novel. What good does that do anyone? It's okay for these games to be something other than VNs. It's okay to like things that aren't VNs, you don't have to transform everything you like into a VN. I just don't get why people want to do that so badly.

No, no, you are entirely mistaken. My interest in male genitals increases threefold per giant, blurry pixel. As for the translation choice, I'm not a native, tricky sounds as English as any other word to me. Same goes for useless. If anything, I found it curious how it had been translated as "tricky", which I hadn't seen before, but that's about it.

Sure. But "trash tier" is a fairly pompous (and unconstrucive, I might add) way of critiquing. One would expect some levels of credential from someone willing to make such statements.

As a professional graphic designer myself, indeed rotating text is the way to go. You can also modify a font and/or let photoshop's pharagraph tool do the magic but in the end what you want is to keep type space even and readable.

I couldn't agree more. Wait, wut?

Thank you so much, I truly feel honored for this post! I'm glad my work has been appreciated. This whole thing truly did begin with that idea. For those curious about the back story, in early 2014 or late 2013, Tay had this idea for a VN literary journal, and I was one of the people who applied to write for it. My article was going to explore the complex relationship between Mai and Sayuri in Kanon. The VN journal ended up not happening. My activity on the forums also gradually faded for a while, and then when I returned I felt really guilty as I remembered that I was partly responsible for the VN Lit journal not happening. So I finally sat down and rewrote the previous draft I had (I ended up scrapping most of what I previously had). It took a week or two of repeatedly rereading Mai and Sayuri's routes, writing and rewriting, and listening to the Kanon OST (for inspiration), and on June 30th I finally finished and published it on the forums. The first thing I did afterwards was pm Tay an apology, and I ended the message saying something along lines of "I hope you believe in the adage 'better late than never'". Since then, when a VN truly speaks to me I try to organize my thoughts of it on to paper (well, digital paper). Anyway, once again thanks for this post!