[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

7 hours ago, Palas said:

What I mean is, certain environments develop indigenous language practices and, while "new" doesn't mean "Improved", "new" means "new" and you can't consider professional writing derived from a certain cultural approach and certain consuming habits to engage the audience in the same way in other environments. Why yes, IM is a perfectly solid source of writing techniques if you know what you're dealing with. Prose in VNs is not the same as prose in books and there's literally nothing you can do to stop, say, 4chan's habit of telling stories in... the way they do, with endless strings of greentext. Poor writing? Well, I dare you to employ the best writing techniques there are with the correct usage of punctuation to tell a story in a fast-paced environment such as a message board. And people tell stories there, to great effect. RIP professional writing, but who cares?

You seem to approach the correct point of view, before taking a detour and landing upon some weird conclusions. The conclusion is on the post after this one. The conclusion being you take some acceptable theories, and then fail to apply them to ellipses use. But first some detail.

Quote

Text messages are all about spontaneity and unfettered back and forth. Ending a short reply/message with a period seems like you’ve carefully constructed that sentence instead of relaxing & being yourself. It looks much more contrived, and it doesn't take far to go from that to insincere. It’s the textual equivalent of someone who uses perfect grammar in a Pub. Not really the place.

I’m not surprised at IM linguistic techniques; once you realise these things are supposed to be informal chatty stuff, certain universal rules apply. Like, correct someone’s grammar only if you’re looking for a fist sandwich, that kinda thing. Language is all about techniques which produce effects, and applying those effects not blindly following rules.

That's a good place to begin. I was discussing here the weird habit of periods being recognised as angry, but this also applies to the use of exclamation marks. Exclamation marks promote the sensation of enthusiasm, so they're quite welcome in IM, however they are quite imprecise and so they're frowned upon in writing prose. Think about it, exclamation marks indicate that someone exclaimed a sentence, but very often someone will only exclaim a word or 2, which means italics would be more appropriate. But there's also many ways to exclaim something, so narration will provide a more detailed image for the reader.

And here we once again come to the different purposes between writing fiction and conversing in IM. Writing fiction is about providing a detailed image for the reader, detail and precision if valued. IM conversations is about letting your hair down and relaxing with people, so enthusiasm, emotion, spontaneity, not being guarded is valued. These mean completely different language techniques. It means, for example, allowing errors to creep into your writing and not thinking about it.

So taking what you learn in IM and plonking it into your fiction is a quick way to make it fail. You're applying the wrong language techniques. You keep talking about IM and 4chan to be this great new source of linguistic techniques. To be honest, IM linguistic habits are nothing new, they're the textual equivalent of how people behave at the pub or when out with close friends. People have historically told great stories in these environments, but they're not stories you would go out and buy. ("Then Rob, he started licking the hippo, mate. Full on licking it, right on its rump. AHAHAHAHA!!!!11111!") Also 4chan's greentext is hilariously bad, but it does the job, the job NOT being to provide a detailed image for those who read, the job more being to summarise events. So yeah, when it comes to writing fiction I'm really uninterested in these great new writing techniques forwarded by these places, because they not suited for writing's purpose. Well, you could use 1 or 2 here or there, but while I'm familiar with them I don't see a great deal of use out of it.

Shakespeare was a great forwarder of language for writing. Why? Because many of his advancements dealt with IMAGERY, which aligns with the purpose of prose writing in fiction. The phrases "seen better days", "all the world's a stage", "off with his head", "this is the short and long of it", "the Queen's English", "it's Greek to me", "infinite variety", "pure as the driven snow" and many more. All used today, all to do with imagery. They are not glorified summaries, which is what green text is (how is that new?) They are not examples of using sloppy English to make yourself seem more spontaneous and genuine. He also did a lot of other stuff, but a lot of that had to do with character and genre and structure etc.

The only reason prose in VNs isn't the same as prose in books is because prose in VNs are mainly written by amateurs. The purpose of the prose is the same in VNs as it is in books, and so the same techniques apply. They'd benefit more if they were written by actual writers. 

7 hours ago, Palas said:

Thus, if a certain audience is used to seeing ellipses in a certain way, there's nothing wrong with keeping them or even expand on their usage in creative ways - as long as, like you said, there's a certain effect you want to put across and do it systematically. That's what a code is.

Only those under 30 make punctuation errors in their IMs and think it's endearing. Those over 30 still accurately write sentences in IMs. Which means right here, you've split your audience. Now you have to investigate how many of those under 30 who use IM see it that way. Now you have to investigate how many of those people under 30 and see it that way there are relative to the whole population. 

But it doesn't really matter, because very few people would interpret ellipses use the way Vorathiel interpreted ellipses use, which is why I brought it up. If Vorathiel had promoted ellipses as a pause, which is a very common error and misunderstanding, then I wouldn't have said anything. It's so common that practically everybody thinks that. Fewer people, MUCH fewer people, think ellipses affect how people speak words, and even fewer would re-imagine a line in a lazy way because of ellipses use. So that code is known only to a few, which makes it practically useless when expecting a reader to interpret images.

7 hours ago, Palas said:

It's all the better that writers didn't write games, because it helps in the development of indigenous writing techniques. Doesn't matter that it isn't considered good by the Gods of Good Literature - they're dead anyways.

I'm not applying literature standards, I'm applying good old genre fiction standards which are FAR more lenient. But sure, if you want to think these 'new' techniques are a threat to professional writing, you're perfectly free to.

[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

4 hours ago, Palas said:

As with just about anything, context is the most important factor. I mean, periods at the end of sentences don't make them feel stiff, stern and even angry on books - but on IM services, it sure does.

I use periods at the end of sentences in IM all the ti- oh! I see  

4 hours ago, Palas said:

The ludic usage of language in general and its written form signs in particular is a prerequisite to write, especially in new media such as video games and the internet.

The history of writing in video games is as follows.

Ace Developer, also pet detective: 'We don't have enough money to employ a writer, who's the best writer of the three of us?'
Quasi Ace Developer, hates pets: 'I can spell, and can assemble a sentence given enough hours.'
Ace Developer: 'Good! You're now our new writer. Congratulations, you WON'T be paid extra.'

In other words don't take the writing in video games, and especially old video games, to be an indication of a new and improved way of writing. It's improving now, but historically the task was given to one of the coders and was serviceable at best. On to the internet. What can we say about the quality of writing typically found on the internet ...

[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

4 hours ago, Palas said:

Then it's just a matter of setting up a code for your prose, not of following some rule to add narration or not ever use ellipses if laziness is the intended effect. 

As with just about anything, context is the most important factor. I mean, periods at the end of sentences don't make them feel stiff, stern and even angry on books - but on IM services, it sure does. Likewise, our perception of what a certain punctuation means varies over time and media. The ludic usage of language in general and its written form signs in particular is a prerequisite to write, especially in new media such as video games and the internet.

Pretty sure you can use ellipses liberally if you do it consciously. It's the same as, say, fading to black in movies to change scenes. It's a resource, nothing more, nothing less - but filmmakers came to hate it and swore never to use it as if it was inherently lazy or bad. It's not the case, obviously.

My point was not that you can't use ellipses for lazy characters who are being lazy, my point is that it doesn't come across so it needs to be specified. I'll get back to this a bit later. I've got a bad headache so I'm talking through pain, meaning this post is probably a little all over the place and my tone will be clipped.

The general rule of thumb is this: If you want the reader to feel a certain effect, then you should ensure that effect comes through. If half the readers feel 1 effect, another third feel something different, and one more third feel nothing at all, then your prose fails. It's poor writing. It means you're creating obfuscation and you need to fix this. Why?

The goal of writing -> project images in the reader through the use of techniques employed by the writer. If you can't get those images across, you've failed. If that imagery comes across in an undesirable way, you very well may have failed. If that imagery isn't as detailed as the story needs it to be, you've failed. Beginner writers always want to produce fancy effects and use unconventional techniques without first learning the basics, they're always talking about the limitless possibilities. Rule of thumb - wordsmiths have limitless possibilities, beginners do not, because beginners will cock things up.

The examples Vorathiel put forward fails because he's talking about effects generated through only ellipsis use. You are talking about clarifying that, which is the right path to go. Narration is the most common technique, but you can choose others if you wish. However, if that 'code' for your prose turns readers off because it's a code only you subscribe to, once again poor writing technique. If that 'code' is something which people can't grasp - poor writing technique.

What if I write 'the man with the hat' and expect everybody to infer it's a red hat? Some will, some won't. While ellipses can be a product of laziness in a character, they're not always the product of laziness in a character, just like while a hat can be red, it's not always red. if you want the colour to come across you specify in some way, using some technique. Same with 'tone', ellipses never affects the tone of spoken words, nor do they affect the pace of spoken words. If you write an ellipsis thinking it does, your knowledge of ellipses is lacking. 

IM services employ poor writing techniques and a lot of 'in crowd' jargon, similar to pub speak. I wouldn't write like I speak in a pub, similarly I don't write like I do in IM services. They're also have a limitation on characters which encourages different writing standards. DON'T learn to write professional prose from fricken IM, please. It's like saying 'poems use a lot of adverbs, I'll stick that in my novel' then get surprised when people say 'piss off with your purple prose'. Poems use excessive adverbs because of limitations in space, and even then not always.

Master writers can probably employ ellipses however they wish. Wordsmiths can usually do whatever they wish and make it look easy. Beginner writers, and amateur writers, don't know how to manipulate imagery in the reader at will and therefore tend to cock things up. And that includes most fan translation teams. The 'no rules in writing' doesn't apply to them. Take all those cool ideas (which are perfectly valid, and most people have  them) and put them on ice until you know how to manipulate imagery in a reader at will. That means not creating obfuscation, knowing intimately exactly what every technique does and does not do, then you can apply those cool ideas. Don't break punctuation rules just because 'language evolves so I'll be a part of evolving it' and 'people do this stuff in IM services', because do you know what that will do to your book in most cases? Imagine a big fire, with people dancing around it.

Mass fading to black in movie screens, for no other reason than 'it was a way to end the scene and we have no clue how else to do it' IS lazy movie making. Because they're not utilising the technique, they're just saying 'fuck it, I need to end this scene and this is a pretty easy way of doing it.' Using such a technique so thoughtlessly is lazy. The same as all those musicians in the 90s ended songs by fading out, I had a teacher who would rant about how lazy that was.

Do I sound harsh in this post? Eh, whatever. I can't fix it whilst I have the continuous urge to throw up. Hmmm, I think I drank too much caffeine. Bad headache + nausea + trembling + greater than usual cups of coffee tends to mean I drank to much caffeine.

[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

Just now, Palas said:

...Yes, they do?

They can, but they don't have to. Case in point, the speed with which your sentence is conveyed is exactly the same (for me) with or without an ellipsis. All that changes is the length of the pause at the beginning.

Without narration (or additional information,) how a reader reads an ellipsis is completely up to the reader. What Vorathriel interprets as 'laziness', I interpret as 'exasperation' and 'introspection'. Laziness does affect the line, so the way he interpreted the meaning of that ellipsis affected his interpretation of that line, but I managed just as valid and yet completely different interpretations which don't draw out the pacing in the way he suggests. Introspection merely has a gap at the end of the sentence and exasperation is 'fast paced' dialogue with sighs and foot stamping.

Ellipsis means a 'gap'. Whether you interpret that gap to mean 'laziness' which then affects how you read it is an inference of the reader. An ellipsis (by itself) only denotes laziness in the character if the writing is poor.

[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

1 hour ago, Vorathiel said:

But here it's impossible to think that of character A. He sounds lazy, sounds bored, sounds like he don't want to do it.

To me that person sounds exasperated, which is what happens when the reader has a limited amount of detail to work with - they'll supply detail themselves using their own biases or experiences.

Ellipses don't affect the tone or pace with which a person says something, it just denotes a gap. In normal writing tone or melody would be supplied by narration if it was important, otherwise it's just left up to the reader's imagination. Usually VNs will rely on voice acting to supply the tone for them, if no voice acting is provided using ellipses to try and impart 'tone' is just poor writing. Even with voice acting, using ellipses to try and impart rhythm or pacing and stuff like that is ...

To be honest, I read Fred's sentence the exact same way with or without an ellipsis. Probably with a slightly longer pause with the ellipsis version, but nothing to affect the pace of the sentence and nothing to denote added laziness. I view it as more introspection between sentences maybe? Again, with a lack of detail the reader can interpret it however they choose.

[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

6 hours ago, Darbury said:

English too! [Option] + [;] on a Mac gives you an tidy little ellipsis. I'm sure there's a way to do it in Windows too, but who's got time for that?

The Windows version actually makes a lot of sense - it's Alt + 0133. That's more buttons to press than just doing the damn thing yourself, so I'm questioning WHY it's termed a 'shortcut.'

But by not providing an ACTUAL shortcut Microsoft may encourage their userbase to limit the number of ellipses they use, and so their customers benefit from their harshness. Whereas Apple, even though they had the best of intentions, may be doing a lot of harm through providing their customers with an ACTUAL shortcut for ellipses. 'Oh look, it's so easy to type, I'll just sprinkle it everywhere and OH NO! Now look what I've done.' 

The road to Ellipses Hell is paved with the best intentions. For shame, Apple.  

[Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations]

That is fricken comprehensive. Brilliant job! 

One of everybody's pet peeves ... SHOULD be one of everybody's pet peeves!

[[In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon]

I'm hella surprised 0.0

Now I'll have to play it, cause I can never resist the siren call of decent RPGs for long  

[Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.]

21 minutes ago, Palas said:

Second, no. The dichotomy between gameplay and storytelling is absolutely false. Its storytelling techniques are gameplay techniques too, should you consider the story not only as the process of collecting events in a certain order but also as information that can affect a player's behaviour towards the information system (namely the story itself) at hand. As such, interactive storytelling is not (only) the process by which a story stems from a player's decisions, but the process by which a certain narrative can affect the player's behaviour towards the information he is given through stimuli. Contingency is far more important than agency, as it happens even in the absence of choice, and is a crucial aspect of gameplay.

Visual novels use literary text as its primary source of information, which means it is the literary text that delivers the information a player seeks to shape his behaviour. Other systems of the lack thereof absolutely don't matter as long as they don't have a self-contained feeling of progress that can steal the text's primacy in doing so. For instance, an RPG level system doesn't stop a visual novel from being a visual novel as long as the text doesn't become its subset to give falour or explain its system to the player (which is the case when "goblin loses 4 hitpoints" stops being a source of information in and for itself and becomes the translation for the RPG system).

Therefore it doesn't matter what choice system a visual novel uses or what other systems it has. If progression inside the game system is delivered through literary text, it is a visual novel. There are no pure visual novels - it's just a system that can happen in any genre and just happened to have its own genre by putting this literary text in evidence as much as possible.

Man, it's much too early in the morning for such heavy reading. I haven't even had a cup of coffee yet, nor a cup of tea ... and now my brain is fried already  

Mental note: Drink coffee first before reading anything Palas writes.

[Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.]

@DarburyYeah, it took about a month  ... mainly cause I kept getting distracted.

Gone Home could very well contain visual novel storytelling, TBH I haven't played it. I looked it up and couldn't find any screens where the narrative was delivered by the text, so it looked like a pure adventure game. But sure, if narration of the story is partially (or wholly) delivered in the form of an epistolary novel then I was definitely wrong. You certainly have a case that it is some form of VN.

(A lot of people have a 'length' requirement on the text in relation to gameplay, so if reading the text doesn't take a certain number of hours or if it doesn't contain a certain amount of words uninterrupted by gameplay, then they won't consider it. But I find that definition useful only if there's a separate category for shorter works, like in the book world we have novel, novelette, short story and so on. Because VNs don't have these other categories, I find this qualifier a tad useless. Stories aren't devalued because of their size - I'm sure we all remember the rumour of Hemingway's 6 word story. So I don't believe story events in games should be devalued solely because of their size related to gameplay. So some people might say you're not reading in Gone Home for a significant enough length of time vs exploration, but that's VERY subjective and I don't think it should be disqualified on that basis alone.)

I split kinetic and visual novels because I come from an interactive storytelling background (i.e. RPGs) and interactive storytelling is like the 'defining characteristic' of what RPGs are, and what CRPGs should be in the future. It's a bit of bias on my behalf  

32 minutes ago, Zakamutt said:

The problem with the term interactive storytelling is that most games these days are not storyless, and are certainly interactive. It's pretty hard to find non-silly terms though.

It's a very old term, I suppose xD

[Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.]

3 hours ago, Darbury said:

Without knowing where the outer edges of the art form are, both mechanically and creatively, we can’t fruitfully explore those edges. And that leaves us with wave after wave of lookalike kickstarted VNs whose main selling points are the number of romanceable characters they have and whether or not they feature imoutos. There will always be a place for that, of course, but there's room for so much more.

I made a definition a very long time ago (more than a year now) to try and do exactly that. If I recall correctly, it still had a few problems.

Interactive storytelling describes the process of telling a story that is created out of the actions of the player, moment to moment, decision by decision, scene by scene. Interactive storytelling is when the narrative can be influenced by the users, either through gameplay decisions/actions, or decisions emanating from the story (from Crawford.)

The above definition makes it clear that Visual Novels, famous for their “routes” and divergent stories, are clear examples of interactive storytelling. And yet with Mass Effect and the Walking Dead examples of interactive storytelling, not all interactive stories are Visual Novels. Visual Novels are more specific and are clearly a sub-genre of the Interactive Storytelling form.

It is also clear that the genre of Visual Novels describes STORYTELLING techniques, and not gameplay (because “pure” visual novels have no gameplay.) This is important, because it indicates that a “visual novel” is a tag (term) denoting a storytelling technique, and not a gameplay style. And because storytelling tags and gameplay tags are different, they can co-exist alongside one another. So Visual Novels don’t have to “compete” with tags like RPG or Adventure.

So what is a Visual Novel? All “Visual Novels” have 3 things. 1) They are novels and should be written as such. Therefore they must rely on the text to partially narrate events to the reader (whether that is description of physical events or internal monologue.) 2) They present choices to the user through the narrative (or dialogue,) these choices allow the user to affect the story. This is different to allowing the user to affect the narrative through gameplay decisions 3) They contain images which depict the setting of each scene of the story.

If a game has only VN storytelling techniques, then it is a Visual Novel. If the gameplay is also an attraction, then it's a game which contains VN storytelling techniques. This does not make it any less of a VN, it means that it has gameplay accompanying the VN storytelling.

Interactive Fiction is another subgenre of the Interactive Storytelling form. These games differ from those of its sister genre (Visual Novels) by not including background images depicting the setting of each scene the text is currently describing.  They can either be all text, or include flavour images which don’t depict the entire scene, but help add flavour to the text.

Kinetic Novels are almost identical to the definition of a Visual Novel except there is no way for the user to affect the story through narrative or dialogue choices. Because of this Kinetic Novels are not a part of the Interactive Story genre despite sharing a great many similarities to Visual Novels.

Dating sims are not VNs. They are sim games which may or may not contain VN (or KN) storytelling. So something like "True Love" would be a dating sim with VN storytelling. Games like Persona contain dating sim gameplay, but no VN storytelling. This is because 'sim' is a tag denoting gameplay, and has nothing to do with the storytelling techniques within (if it has any storytelling.)

Most adventure games people usually identified as VNs are most likely adventure games with Kinetic Novel storytelling (no decisions in the story to branch narrative.)

[Gone Home is a visual novel. Deal with it.]

1 hour ago, Zakamutt said:

I very much enjoyed Gone Home when I played it. I considered whether I would call it a visual novel afterward and during, but rejected the notion. Why? It's just too interactive. 

Two words: Gyakuten Saiban. Why VNDB, why? https://vndb.org/v711

TBH, Gone Home fits comfortably in adventure -> adventure having a combination of exploration, puzzles, and a story. If you're going to call this a VN, you'd be calling most adventure games VNs like 'The Walking Dead' ... and Phoenix Wright.

[DS Dal Segno]

The best system I've seen with customised names is Mass Effect. You can customise the first name, but the last name is always the same, and everybody addresses you by the last name. It was pretty cool, benefits of customisation combined with the benefits of a set name.

[The Feminized Historical Fantasy]

The genre doesn't offer any meaningful statement about what it would be like to go to a certain historical period where the important people were women and not men. And the two I've played (Koihime Musou and Eiyuu Senki) have mainly used the 'they're all women' thing as an excuse for a harem and lots of sex, so it's very superficial in that regard.

But they're still enjoyable if you like historic worlds or history (I thought Eiyuu Senki was fab because I like turn based strategy games.)

[Thoughts on the Cipher protagonist in VNs]

No. Most VNs (when translated) are first person stories, and because most things you're 'viewing' in a first person story is filtered through the protagonist's personality, prejudices, and thoughts, a boring and passive protagonist usually makes for a boring a reading experience. It's one of the reasons why in the translated scene, I find most stories which feature (what the community calls) a 'self-insert protagonist' dull. Writing rule of thumb - the main narrator/protagonist of first person novels should be an engaging character. 

[Deemo: A Genuine *Visual* Novel]

9 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

But is a picture book a visual novel?

If it has narration, and branches/choices, I don't see why not?

[Do you like Japan?]

Japan is a pretty neat country with a fascinating take on society. However, their work culture stinks, their school culture stinks, they're not so cool on gender equality - many factors add up to my opinion of 'while Japan would be an awesome place to visit, I probably wouldn't want to live there. Unless I became a successful writer, and could work from home. Maybe then ...'

[A bit of Hapymaher, as a motivator and because I'm evil]

Will patiently wait for this to be translated ... cause I'm not gonna learn Japanese  

[Weaboos and Otakus: Top Eight most Annoying Questions (Clephas version)]

Continuing on from my last point, latter era plate armour was thick enough to stop a bullet. This was because they had to actually stop a bullet. So no, chuck away the fanciful idea that a katana could poke straight through, because that's what it is - fantasy.

[Weaboos and Otakus: Top Eight most Annoying Questions (Clephas version)]

@Zidan: Also, if plate could be penetrated that easily, people wouldn't wear them. Why? Because a bow and arrow would go straight through. But you should be able to tell that just by looking at it, the plate isn't actual plate. Which brings into question other stuff about the video - if the plate isn't actual plate, what else are the fudging?

 The vid is bogus.

[Weaboos and Otakus: Top Eight most Annoying Questions (Clephas version)]

58 minutes ago, Zidan209 said:

Katana is actually the best sword, better than longsword or broadsword

No actually, it isn't.

 

 

Also: http://www.thearma.org/essays/longsword-and-katana.html#.VptRu-h96aE

At the end of the day, these are the key facts:

- Katanas can't cut through metal armour, and in fact early incarnations of the katana were defeated by Chinese studded armour. They are inferior at thrusting. They are shorter than 2 handed weapons, and thus have less reach. They have a poor guard. And, in fact, they weren't the first choice of weapon for a lot of samurai. Longswords are more adept at dealing with armour, have more ways to attack, have a better guard, and have superior reach. Katanas are obviously better at slashing, but against someone in chain or plate slashing attacks are at a disadvantage (although obviously for facing the type of armour in Japan, the katana could arguably be the more suited weapon.)

Furthermore, in a one-on-one deal, observe carefully the points made about the rapier in the video above.

[Weaboos and Otakus: Top Eight most Annoying Questions (Clephas version)]

Broadswords being made to 'smash or cut' is as incorrect as the myths about the katana. Actually, most broadswords were light compared to katanas (unless they were ceremonial). They were double bladed, compared to katanas which had a wedge (obviously heavy), and so two handed longswords were longer and weighed about the same as a 2 handed katana (speaking in generalities.) 

Broadswords were made to cut and thrust. There's a whole bunch of European one handed swords named 'cut and thrust' swords, for a specific reason. Armour was heavy, and people wouldn't wear it unless it was effective. There were a few ways to bypass full bodied armour 1 - thrust at the joints. This is why a lot of European swords have a nice taper compared to Japanese swords. There's even some swords made only for thrusting, including a massive 2 handed one. 2 - Bash and crush bones underneath the armour. You don't do these with swords. You do these with maces, or halberds, or blunt weapons. Pole arms. 3 - Take them to the ground and finish them off there, polearms sorta combined reason number 2 with reason number 3.

Hollywood likes to have people walking around with 'heavy' 2 handed swords, bludgeoning people. This didn't happen  I prefer European cut and thrust swords mainly because of the versatility, but katanas are obviously far superior in cutting flesh.

[A Few Thoughts on Cheese]

Heh, that's nice piece of satire there. Most amusing article I've read all week :3

[POLL: To San or Not to San (Honorifics in VNs)]

Out of curiousity, what would be your solution to characters referring to another character as senpai?  Let's say it's your standard moege that has one senpai route, and that is how the main character always refers to her.  Other characters generally refer to her as A-senpai or just senpai.  If you are removing honorifics, how would you deal with this situation?

There isn't a magical ‘one-word’ solution that can be applied to all situations. Context would have to be taken into account in each instance, and one of the myriad tools available in the English language applied. Everything from ‘sir’ to full use of name, to use of only a surname, to a more respectful/formal/polite wording of the sentence, to nothing at all.

You will on occasion find words which don’t translate into another language, this is due to languages being different from one another. That being said, different techniques in each language produce similar effects, in this instance the job of a translator would be to find the effect most fitting in the language they're translating into and applying that. But this takes good knowledge of both the languages in question, not just one. 

Also, on another note - though I suppose it technically falls under the culture group - as someone who has a good listening comprehension of Japanese I find reading something with a lack of honorifics while I am still hearing them in the spoken Japanese dialogue a bit jarring.  But then again, that's one of the casualties of playing in the original Japanese and then going back and playing something in English - you're almost always going to find something that bugs you with the translation.

To be honest, if you understand Japanese then the translation isn’t meant to be pleasing on your ears. Japanese and English are incredibly different languages, so of course there’s going to be jarring moments in most translations. The idea of a  translation is to get the audience to understand the relationship of those characters, not to keep ‘senpai’ solely for notions of cultural or linguistic purity. 

 

Also, on the subject of honorifics as plot points... the 'stock standard' routes of most high school based charage/moege is usually one kohai, one senpai, and two girls of the same age.  Obviously this changes if they are deliberately catering to guys liking older girls, in which case you might get ALL the routes being senpai characters.  

Bloody cliches.

[POLL: To San or Not to San (Honorifics in VNs)]

Leaving 'san' in is a perfectly fine translation philosophy only when the term and the cultural significance is explained in footnotes (or explained in the game.) If you'll note, more literal translations in literature are accompanied by hundreds of footnotes at the end, and more liberal translations in genre fiction usually aren't. This is because assuming the audience has prior knowledge of another culture while translating is an incredibly flawed translation philosophy. The idea that 'these words are incredibly common, the audience will know what they mean', which is an idea commonly floated, is weird logic that I don't subscribe to -> you translate for those who don't know the language, and thus during that process you don't assume that they already do, in fact, know the language.

If footnotes are incorporated, or explanations, sure, feel free to keep honorifics in. But if not, then under no situation is keeping honorifics a satisfactory translation philosophy and I really don't give a toss what culture seekers think on the matter. Because you're translating for ALL non-Japanese speakers, not just a select portion of them.