Fred the Barber

I watched WataMote a year ago or so and loathed it. Only ragrets. It was kind of like Welcome to the NHK, but less funny and without any of the redeeming qualities.

I watched Kara no Kyoukai / The Garden of Sinners. Pretty enjoyable. Episode 5 was far and away the most interesting episode: best plot, most developed cast, and an utterly confusing way of telling the story that, while occasionally frustrating, mostly just served to get me to watch more carefully. I actually liked episode 6 quite a lot, despite it being on the weak side on plot, largely because it introduced a fun, cute character who nonetheless kicked ass; "cute" was in terminally short supply throughout this show, so that was a breath of fresh air. 2 was also an outstanding episode, although I almost wish they hadn't gone back to resolve the threads it left open which were closed off in the show's finale, episode 7. 1, 3, 4, and 7 all were weaker episodes (hard to blame 1, though, since it had to serve as an intro; but there's less excuse for the rest), especially 7, which was also on the long side for honestly not having all that much to say. The "extra" episode, 8, was simultaneously somewhat interesting, in how it explained a lot of the mechanics of things, and mind-numbingly boring, since literally nothing happened. Would've rather I simply hadn't watched it and had ended the series at episode 7. Oh well. In summary, it had some boring episodes and some truly excellent ones, and it was quite a departure from my usual fare, so no regrets from watching Kara no Kyoukai. I'm now watching Watashi ga Motete Dousunda / Kiss Him Not Me, because I thought the title was funny and because I like watching the occasional lighthearted comedy + reverse harem. I don't watch them often, but normally I find reverse harem shows to be a little less shallow than normal harem shows; this one, unfortunately, isn't, at least so far. That said, things are looking up a little bit as of episode 5, so I'm hoping it gets a little more enjoyable for me soon. Episode 5 had a couple of nice features: 1) it introduced a little yuri slant, which I do not mind at all, and 2) it took a step towards overturning the extremely shallow premise of the show... before going right back to the start. I don't see quite how they'd fix the bigger thematic problems I have with the show, but episode 5 gives me a little hope that they just might do so.

Seems like a high price to pay, if all you get is HuniePop.

No, I pay for my games: I bought a boxed copy and applied the latest patch. The version I played didn't have hundreds of errors either, but neither does S;G 0. And, no, I'm not implying that an official release shouldn't be held to a higher standard than a fan translation: I'm still arguing (like I already said) that fan translations are almost universally lower quality than official translations. My claim that S;G0 (which you're calling out as low quality) is substantially higher quality than KoiChoco (which you're calling out as a paragon of fan translation) is simply supporting that argument. S;G0 isn't perfect, and I wish it were better. But it's honestly pretty good. I have no qualms complaining about things that should be improved (including that release), and in particular I'm on board with the Dies irae complaints you're making, based on sheer count of issues. I just think this side argument that's sprouted up (that fan TLs tend to be higher quality than official TLs) is ridiculous, based on my own experiences, and I'm pointing out discrepancies in your examples to demonstrate that. Edit: Wanted to add a bit more on the KoiChoco thing: the KoiChoco release I played did have a metric shitton of tense mistakes in narration. It didn't know if it was in past or present tense, and that was enormously frustrating for me to read; I'm pretty sensitive to that particular mistake at this point, but I don't think most people are. I don't recall seeing such errors in S;G0. As far as odd phrasing or word choice, I frankly don't recall seeing much at all of that in S;G0, whereas I do definitely remember seeing a moderate amount of it in KoiChoco (though much less than some of the more egregious fan translations, like, say, 11eyes).

Of the fan patches you're praising for updates, I've only played Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, and fairly recently (well over a year after their last release, I believe), and I can attest it's still got a fair number of errors. It's no 11eyes, by a long shot, but it's not as good as a typical release-date MG release, or S;G0. I actually don't understand the fixation on that one; it's seriously fine.

Don't know who phar is, but as far as I understand, Makoto's, koestl's, and moogy's work are all official releases at this point (at least the ones that are good; ask moogy about the sharin fan TL and see what he thinks...). I've also seen some pretty convincing evidence (i.e., a bunch of screenshots) that the fan releases are not as high quality as the subsequent official release, in the case of Saya no Uta, and I'd be surprised if that's not the case for those same peoples' other works. Regardless, maybe those are good: I guess what I want to argue isn't that there aren't occasionally acceptable quality fan TL releases, so much as that acceptable fan TL releases are the exception, not the rule, whereas I'd say the opposite for recent MG, SP, and JAST releases (that I've seen, at least; I hardly play every VN out there).

Recent professional English VN releases from known good localization outfits (anything recent from MG, SP, and possibly JAST?) are universally higher quality than fan translation patches. The team that did Dies irae was not associated with any of those, and this was their first project; they likely incorrectly believed they didn't need (or perhaps could not afford at the rate they promised? who knows.) as much QC as is merited. Turns out that when you have hundreds of thousands of words to deal with (Dies irae might even be into the millions?), even if you're pretty damn good, you still make a lot of mistakes. I'd be curious to see a citation of a really excellent fan translation, which some people in this thread seem to be asserting not only exists, but even go so far as to imply it's the norm. Honestly, even the best ones I've read have universally been filled with errors (at least as high an error rate as what you're seeing in Dies irae, given the number of lines you've quoted and the size of the script), and that's to say nothing of abominations like 11eyes. KoiRizo is a great example of a fairly well-written script, for a fan TL, which is again still chock-full of errors, because QC is both hard and hard to prioritize for fan TLs. Or we could go look at, I dunno, the Little Busters! fan TL, which doesn't even have word wrapping in the entire script. I've certainly never read a fan TL with as high a quality as the S;G0 release being called out in this thread, for instance, even though S;G0 does indeed have at least a couple dozen errors that I found when reading it. I think that's nonetheless still pretty solid for a script of its size. I also don't even usually see fan TLs releasing patches; the aforementioned KoiRizo, for instance, certainly had someone who was willing and able to make all those fixes, but the people making the patches couldn't be bothered to take them. Fan TL is a fine thing for getting exposure for stuff that otherwise wouldn't get it, but you're kidding yourselves if you genuinely believe it's higher quality than what you're getting from known good English VN publishers.

Because one recommendation is better than a dozen, here's one each of VNs and shows I rated 10/10 and would recommend without qualification to absolutely anybody: VN: Steins;Gate Anime: Chihayafuru

I started watching Gurren Lagann (finally). I tried it once, years ago, but I think the fanservice put me off at the time; I've since been hardened to that (heh), so now I just find it to be another draw of the show. The show itself is looking pretty good, two episodes in. I can't even fathom where it's going, or perhaps more accurately I can't fathom how it's going to get where the brief cuts to space opera scenes indicate it's going, but I'm happily along for the ride right now. The setting is interesting, the characters are fun, and even the fight scenes (normally kind of boring for me, TBH) are entertaining. Also, since apparently I can't restrain myself from judging the writing quality of JP translations these days: the subs are lovely, to the extent that they're making me fully grasp just how wildly uneven anime subtitle quality is (and that, to my surprise, newer stuff seems to often fare worse than stuff from a few years ago). I expect it's a combination of: 1) there simply being more of this material getting translated, thus meaning there's more demand than talented people capable of supplying it; 2) the fact that nonetheless a supply of translators has arisen to fill that gap, some obviously less qualified than others; 3) tighter timelines on translations, thanks to the prevalence of simulcasts; and 4) likely a race to the bottom on pay, as it turns out that less-qualified people can do the work with minimal repercussions on a show's sales and popularity, thus justifying a lower price point for translation than the qualified people would demand. That's all pure conjecture, of course; it's not like I have any data or knowledge of the industry, or for that matter even enough data points (I honestly don't watch nearly enough anime, old or new) to be willing to claim that quality is getting worse recently. Still... the Dragon Maid subs kinda sucked, and that made me sad since the show was otherwise great.

My takeaways: Disappointed girls don't like Spice and Wolf more. Disappointed so few guys have watched Ouran High School Host Club.

Akatsuki no Yona is simply amazing, especially if you're a fan of strong (in the sense of strength of character) female leads. One of my very favorites.

I watched Plastic Memories, and I have complicated feelings about it. The characters were pretty bland, and the plot was ludicrously predictable every step of the way, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy watching those characters act out that plot anyway. The main characters were the blandest, none more so than Generic Male Main Character (I've long since forgotten his name, if I ever knew it), but even the female leads were forgettable. The further out side characters were a little more interesting, but not much. I think the setting played a big part in my enjoyment, and the plot, while ridiculously predictable, still tugged at my heartstrings. The central motivating idea behind the show was, frankly, great. That, coupled with the way the story stuck to its central themes and morals all the way to the end, made for a compelling tale to watch, even while there were no surprises or twists, and no particularly interesting people. The sheer inevitability of it all was, perhaps, its greatest strength. In the end, despite my gripes, I thought it was really good. Not great, but really good.

Unfortunately, not much progress to report, despite all the time since the forums went down. TL is unchanged, edit caught up to TL: Edit: 37080/40208 (92.2%), +875 (2.2%)

Why can I only give a post one like. If I ever write something in English about beef stew and someone translates it to Japanese, I hope they'd do me the common courtesy of translating my beef stew as "nikujaga" instead of writing "beef stew" in katakana. Regarding numerals, AP and Chicago (and probably the others) agree that numbers ten and under should almost always be written out, and certainly in this case. If you're making mistakes like that in publicly-released materials, you probably need a style guide, so here's a free starter kit, a lightweight, VN-centric style guide: https://github.com/FredTheBarber/EditingPublic/blob/master/style guide.md