Darklord Rooke

Unless they consider they're job to localise, which is a special type of translation. Most VN translations localise to some extent, how far they take the localisation process is really up to them. This was what babiker was talking about when he was talking about translations targeting a wide audience. These get panned by certain fans who like things as close to the source as possible, but it really wouldn't be an issue if the fan-tl community were more accepting of the idea of multiple translations of each title.

I'm of the opinion that anything is fine so long as you don't misrepresent yourself.  I tend not to like H-Scenes unless they are really bound up into the story(e.g.  Muv-Luv doesn't really need them, but School Days would need an extensive re-write to get around their absence), but they are easily skipped, so if I was translating, I'd keep them in for sake of completion.
 
Censorship is bad, but that's not what this discussion is about.  Censorship is suppression by an external agency.  If the exclusion of H-Scenes was mandated by the government, or by some other agency capable of enforcing such a decision, that would be censorship.  But someone that is actually doing the work deciding what does and doesn't go into the project is not censorship, but rather editing.  There is a difference.
 
Take, for example, the Star Wars prequels.  Some people liked them; a lot of people did not.   There are people that have gone to great effort to create their own edits of the movies to improve on the experience(at least in their eyes, anyway).  One such edit did as much as they could to greatly reduce the number of scenes that Jar-Jar was in.  That was not an act of censorship, because the creator of the edit was the one doing the work.  No one told him he had to(and if you just really like Jar-Jar, no one is telling you you have to watch it).
 
The thing is, in order to accomplish the goal of the OP, you have to do more than simply not translate.  You have to actually remove the scenes themselves, or you will still have an eroge, simply with some scenes still in Japanese.  So rather than censorship, this sort of effort would be more akin to the practice of game modification, a rather celebrated practice among PC gaming enthusiasts.
 
Of course, the important thing is that if you are going to modify a game(or a VN), it is vitally important that you label your project for what it is.  If I go to download a translation of Saya no Uta and end up with a version that cuts out all the gorn, I will have something completely different than what i was looking for(not to mention a remarkably short VN).  On the other hand, if I see an announcement for "Saya no Uta [ALL AGES CUT]," I'll know ahead of time that this is not the download I want.
 
I understand how some people wouldn't want this practice to become widespread, especially since translation groups are less likely to pick up a project that someone else already translated.  But aside from this being an improbable outcome, it isn't really anyone's call other than the people working on the project.  Trying to tell someone how to engage in their hobby is a good way to get them to stop sharing their results.  And as long as they're honest about their work, what does it really matter?

So you were too busy to read my post, but had the time to rebut it?... makes sense.
 
but anyway, so we can get somewhere in this argument, i do agree with you that taking out the h-scene would be changing the game, but that's just how the process of translating is. translating is literally changing; and its not just the language: jokes have to be changed to sound funny, sometimes entire pieces of the script have to be deleted, entire scenes, not just h-scenes, altered so they don't look too weird, out of context, or simply incomprehensible.
 
while i cannot give you a clear example of this when it comes to VN's, (as i have never translated one before) but I'll tell you something that happened to me: after watching all the Harry Potter movies, my brother bought all the novels in Arabic. i tried to read the fourth one, and the amount of alteration to the story was... quite a lot to say the least. the translator removed all, and i do say all the romance that was involved. why? because the western understanding of romance can be very insulting to many people in the middle east.
 
That's just one example, I'm sure if you asked experienced VN translators, they will tell you many such stories.
 
again: if you want the original so badly, there is no running away from learning the language.

You were supposed to rebut his post, not my paraphrasing of his post 

He said there are two methods of translating, neither of them wrong. You can either stay as close to the source as possible, or aim to reach as wide an audience as possible. He went on to explain that if you aim to make your work available to as wide an audience as possible, you may choose to remove such things. He said translators need to change the novel.
 
I'd recommend taking a deep breath and reading through it slowly before you rebut it. I don't care if you do, but I don't believe you read what he said.

No he isn't.

Well,  as much as what I'm going to say seems of topic, it still needs to be said.
 
Many people here are questioning what is the true role of a translator, and how much power does he have over the work of art he is translating? Before anything, I must exclaim that i have been translating different stuff (ie: movies, books, conversations) for almost a decade(8 years now) . From English to Arabic, witch i'm fluent in, and from Arabic to English. so , even if i don't know any Japanese, i can still say a thing or two about translating. (not bragging here, just making things clear)
 
   First and foremost; a translators job is not simply to change the language; its to change the entire work. The usual goal is for the targeted audience to receive the same meaning and feeling the original work possessed.
 
            And usually, to achieve this goal, many things have to be changed in the original, including removing stuff the new audience might find annoying, unnecessary, or out right insulting. And of course not all the targeted audience will agree on one thing; but if, per say, most people in the west find something like h-scenes to be offensive; then the only reasonable thing the translator should do is remove them; so they may reach a larger audience.
 
          But if the translator does not care if it reaches a larger audience or not, and just want's the translation to be as close to the original as possible, then that's his choice. At the end of the day a translator is a changer, whose mission is to make his translation:-
1. As close to the original as possible
2. As acceptable to the new audience as possible.
 
And sometimes these two goals clash, and the translator is forced to choose one to prioritize over the other. Witch is why its better to have more than one translation; each one with a different  priority.
 
And while i also prefer my VN's without h-scenes,( i probably hate them more than anyone around here does), i think that any VN, that has h-scenes, should have at least two translated versions: one made with the purpose of reaching a large audience, and one with the purpose of staying as close to the original as possible.
 
And just a last note: you can never have a translation that's equal to the original. if you want the original that badly, your best choice is to learn the original language, which is in this case, Japanese.

I kind of ride between the two of them, with more of a slant towards the flow side (although with an extreme stance against outright removals/changes, as you can tell from here).  Obviously a translation won't be completely perfect; editors wouldn't exist if that was the case.  But you can modify a line or scene in a way that still conveys the true meaning of it without condemning that vision.  Case in point, you have good translations where they make the flow better, and bad translations where they remove that meaning, a la Konosora.
 
 
Again, I feel I've portrayed myself a little poorly here.  Konosora is a bit of a bitter ember for me as a symbol of 'bad translation' and doing exactly what I have issues with.  I love Sekien no Inganock, but I'm not going to rake Ixrec over the coals because he couldn't keep it in iambic pantameter.  I would however be upset if he changed the relationship between Ati and Gii, or changed the scene with Petrevkova (or however you spell her name, the mer-lady in the third-last chapter) because he thought a scene with her boobs out was gross and didn't want others to see it.  My main issue is that H-scenes can sometimes be important for certain plot-related objects, and to just dismiss them and write something different for them because a translator doesn't like them sets a bad precedence.
 
I'm probably just getting worked up and arguing too strongly :/.  I'm against extremes and cutting things out completely.
 
 
And if a company releases an all-ages version, that's awesome.  It means a wider audience can reach it, great.  I don't have an issue with that because it's the writers/company/people far more involved with the VN than we could ever hope to be are making the decision to do so.  The translator isn't part of that decision, so I don't think the translator should make that decision on their own.

The topic was split from another thread ... probably a little poorly. The discussion in another topic descended into a discussion on whether H-Scenes should be TRANSLATED, but for some reason it was titled as cut.
 
Meh *shrugs*

As expected from my partner, you have some nice arguments now~
 
*goes back to playing devil's advocate*
 
As expected of my partner as well, you've got some pretty high standards, huh. You're basically saying that you need the full experience or else you can't support the release at all, perhaps you'd be better off with the "-hime" than me, really.
 
Think about it- they're certainly not giving you the full experience when they translate parts of it, but doesn't it seem too radical to just say "oh, a part is missing. Sorry, your efforts are insufficient to please me. Full VN or GTFO."
 
Why is it that groups that leave a partial patch translating parts of some routes are totally ok but people who leave H-scenes out aren't? I mean, think of it- H scenes are generally just a small part of those VNs (since I'm yet to see a group translate a nukige and leave H scenes out. Unless you're like moenovel, but I'm not going into that now). That means the group successfully delivered you over 90% of the visual novel. Yet you still can't be satisfyed at all? Hell, with that much made, the probability of someone picking up what that group already did and adding the H scenes back raises a lot. Aren't you the selfish princess, nii-chan~
 
(I've been meaning to tease you since quite some time ago. Hehe, mission complete~)
 
This is also a bad argument. It's the same strawman Flutterz did without meaning to, except it's the exact opposite. The thing there is that the overall quality increases this way. I'm pretty sure no one here would complain if someone picked Clannad 60 years from now own and added all sorts of incredibly cool effects- this is not what taking out H scenes is. A more fitting example would be someone copying the exact same movie and just taking out a random scene from it, while still kepping it in the 50's quality- I'm pretty sure most people would object to that.
 
 
I still can't help but think neither side is right. You're all way too radical about it.

Obviously people who like H-scenes are going to be pro H translation.  So what else is new?
The censorship argument doesn't work on me; once an unauthorized translation is decided upon, unauthorized censorship may also be applied (as long as it is advertised as such).  The alternative is authorized translation and authorized censorship.
 
As for me, I now skip all H content, and all my projects will be non-H.  That doesn't necessarily mean all-ages, but it certainly means not X-rated.  If a consumer version is available for a particular title, that one will be translated.  If not, the PC version will be translated but censored so that I don't have to think about X-rated content.
 
One thing I'm willing to do is provide a means for an uncensored project to be forked (i.e. derived) from mine up front, while it is still in progress, instead of making someone provide a restoration patch later.

Looking for a new VN to read? Need a recommendation?
Please read this before starting a new thread.
 
If you don't find what you want here/want something very specific because you have particular tastes, feel free to start a thread.
Try to be specific about your demand. If all you want is something good regardless of genre or particular elements, just consult the lists below, they have tons of stuff. 
 
Member Lists
 
Some members compiled some lists of good titles. Maybe you will find what you want to read there.
 
The Fuwanovel list of Notable OELVNs
50 translated VN you should read before you die
Another 50 translated VNs to read before you die
Non-Ero VNs
"Get the hell out of here" VNs
Top 10 dark VNs to read before you die
50 untranslated VNs to read before you die
 
Clephas' lists:
Science-fiction (translated and untranslated)
Chuuni (see what he means by that in the thread) (translated and untranslated)
Fantasy (translated and untranslated)
Kamige (translated and untranslated)
For beginners (untranslated)
Everything else (untranslated)
Ecchi (borderline non-nukige) (untranslated)
Gameplay (untranslated)
Chicken soup for the soul (see definition inside) (untranslated)
Catharsis (untranslated)
 
Existing threads
 
Someone might already have asked for what you're looking for. Here are some already answered demands: (note: those are most probably old threads, don't reply to them or at least check the date)
 
VN with gameplay
VN with a Christmas setting
Romance with happy ending
VN with animation
VN with incest
VN with an older main character
Astronomy, star mythology
Loli VNs
VN with non-human heroines
 
...If you see threads to add to that list, feel free to PM me or another mod.

Localised copies sell barely anything. Barely a year ago, MG's top selling title barely registered 2,000 copies. JAST can't stay afloat by themselves, it needs to be propped up by JList. And translator's at MG rip through shitty nukige in a couple of weeks because they're poor and need the extra money. Compare this to Christine Love, who sold 30,000 copies of her indie VN and you'll start to realise how bad their situation is. 
 
It's hypocritical to talk about respecting an author while pirating their works. Whether it's expensive to obtain or not, respecting someone is to take into account their wishes and feelings, like their desire to be paid for the stuff they do. You can talk about respect for literature as much as you want, but once you start talking about respect for the author, you start treading into hypocritical territory. And while the writer has already been paid, you forget they work at a developing studio, many of which are struggling to stay open in Japan (the creators of EF, for example, have almost had to close down.) Purchasing their game and flooding money back into the developer will directly affect the writer and the situation they are in. 
 
I am calling the fan-tl community hypocrites if they want to discuss the feelings of the original author, because while you may import your games, the majority do not. Let's not pretend anything, the majority of the people who use the fan-tl patch will be playing it on a pirated copy, so when you're discussing the feelings of the author, you should know they would care sfa about how badly their work is being butchered and more that thousands of people are downloading it without paying. That would be the concern of the writer, NOT 'God no, Joe Black has missed all my sweet Japanese nuances, how dare he!' Game writers and small game developers are struggling to stay alive, their first concern would be the money their company is missing out on.
 
If you want to translate something because you have respect for the work and you want a high-quality translation for everybody to enjoy, then do it. It shouldn't matter if it's been done before or not. If you don't want to because some group has already done it, then don't do it. The translators can stop fucking whinging that somebody has got to a project before they could and is doing a bad job, though. That's called 'time to grow up', and it's sickening to see this teenage drama flooding the translation field. If they want to do a better job, they are welcome to do it. And the fans who can't read Japanese themselves? Well, it's just tough luck. Until people start buying more products and making visual novels profitable to localise, you're stuck with the inconsistent nature of fan-tls. And yes, that means taking the bad with the good.

Regarding moderation and rulesets versus random spam and thread derailing - such posts are often like those little yellow flowers, that grow on your lawn. One or two look nice and definately add to the atmosphere, but if you won't do something with them fast, soon there's going to be thousands of them growing everywhere around. Spam only attracts more spam; posts without any actual merit should be removed, since they are like cancer.
 
I think these forums became way too lax in terms of moderation and rulesets. There's too much breeding ground for nonsense and when one does see he's allowed to post in a whimsical kind of fashion, others start to do it as well. I have nothing against "friendliness", but note that it does not always go along with being substantial on internet message boards; It's very easy to derail preety much anything. People should remember, there are no real friends in people you randomly meet over internet - only users, who share their interests. Getting overly friendly with everyone around often leads to dissaray. There's a big difference between being "open", "welcoming" and "matey", where people simply pat themselves on the back all the time. In that way, a lot of people sense that loose atmosphere and get the wrong impression they are allowed to do anything they want, while that shouldn't be the case.
 
Forums like these should always try to remain neutral and it's the job of the moderation team to keep everything in order.

I've been around here ever since Fuwanovel was even born. I lurked for ages afterwards before I resurfaced again and trust me, barely anything important changed and I doubt it ever will. Aaeru wanted to create a more newbie friendly community, dedicated towards visual novels and she kind of succeeded. Unfortunately, the sole fact of what Fuwanovel became is it's own limiting factor and nothing won't get past that without people themselves influencing some major changes within the community.
 
Personally, I find threads like the whole G&C section, voting systems, post count and other fluff completely meaningless and distracting; I don't mind talking about certain medium related topics, like anime/manga/LN's or japanese popculture, but certain threads simply shouldn't be ever allowed to exist and get instantly purged when they surface. In fact, stuff like voting systems, membership levels etc. tend to be subjective and do everything except serving their actual purpose, not to mention they are often breeding grounds for various community-related issues and useless drama. Ask yourselves: do you like to share knowledge with others, because you feel it's the right thing to do - because you're doing it for yourselves, or because you're doing it only cause of other people around you? If it's the first one, there's no need to actually judge whether one person is more useful than another; it's actually unfair and insulting. Second choice always leads to massive circle-jerking and in the end, tends to hurt and leave deep scars within the community, changing it into something no sane person would ever want to be a part of.
 
It's also a question whether people gather here just to feel secure and chit chat about eroge, or because actually they want to contribute something, share interesting stuff and work on visual novels, in one way or another. To be honest, Fuwanovel is the first and barely covers the second. It used to be slightly different in the beggining, but I guess that's one thing even Aeru didn't predicted; as communities grow bigger, they also tend to go more lax and lose their original goals or purpose, unless there's some sort of a control, which firmly, yet gently steers it into bright, open waters.
 
I can't agree with statement that whole visual novel community remains toxic and elitist. Which part of it? How many of the sub-communities do you see? How many of them do you think we have? How many do you actually know? Visual novels were, are and will always remain a niche. You won't change that. It's not possible. Most propably, never. There are veterans around here as well and as much as I'd love to see vn's to flourish and become something more recognizable on the same level as - lets say - anime or manga are, I have to facepalm more often everytime when I see people trying so hard, you can sense the pain radiating from their very own pitiful existences. We arent doing anything for the internet, or people. We are always doing it for ourselves. World isn't interested in our vn's; they don't care about some shitty chinese porn games. At least, not yet so stop trying. Be more reasonable. Start working around the very own corners of the place you belong to. Perhaps, things will slowly change for the better as the time passes. They always do. It's not something you have any actual impact on, anyway.
 
To be honest, people don't even talk that much about vn's anymore, either. Most discussions that happen are on personal, very subjective level and relate to trivial things which have no actual value, or "substance"; you rarely see anything objective and meaningful (as in, contributing) nowadays.
 
To be honest, I'd rather wish to see Fuvanovel "less friendly", but more useful - both for people within and outside the community.

That gas-mask cool. POST-APOCALYPTIC All the way!!!!!
 
PS: Wink's is perfect!

There is nothing stopping another group taking up a project that's already been translated. It may not regularly happen, but there's nothing stopping people from doing it, ala the Flyable Heart's translation. If the translation community want to stop anybody who doesn't meet their standards from translating visual novels, then that is elitist and excusionary behaviour. If translators are pissed at a translation, then they can release their own patch. They don't tend to do this because they worry their version won't be read, and frankly I don't care a whit about those selfish concerns.
 


Yep, once again you should stop right there, the fan-tl community who pirates most of this stuff shouldn't be using the artists feelings in their argument. It's hypocritical.

Well if the other two translators and TLC are qualified, well then *that* is fine. That's not the problem. If you admit (and he admits) that his Japanese is not up to stretch, then he shouldn't be translating. A TLC's job is to double check for the TL and to make sure the post-editor lines are still accurate; it's not to mark and correct a consistently spotty translation. Neither the TLC nor other TL's can prevent the hit to quality caused by an incompetent translator, short of translating the lines in question themselves.
 
Anyways, I think Rooke recognizes this as well, but he's like
1) The translation might have some merits (e.g. good writing), and there are quite a number people who will enjoy it.
 
I don't think multi-TLing is bad, only:
a ) you want to keep things consistent
b ) every TL has to be competent
 
Stawp that. The fact that someone is unable or unwilling to take on an task doesn't take away their freedom to criticize other people's attempts at that task.
 
Depending on your standards, it's also reasonable to believe that below a certain point, doing something that badly becomes unacceptable. It's not particularly friendly to tell someone to be grateful for something they find unacceptable.
 
-----
 
So I've seen the debate of allowing/supporting "bad translations/projects" versus criticizing and opposing them pop up from time to time, and have been wanting to take a stab at sorting this out.
 
Some people tolerate or support all translation projects, largely independent of the quality. I'll call this a laissez faire to translation projects (not particularly concerning oneself with the quality). On the flip side, you have people who would rather not have these poor quality translations occur. Of course, you can't physically stop the group from doing it, so the alternate options are:
a) criticizing the group, in a hope in convincing the project members or other community members;
b-) complaining about such groups (distinguished by a lack of significant purpose or an attempt to convince);
c) vitriol and slander (whether the original accusation is true or false);
or d) investigating and pointing out bad translation works.
{Note that B, C, D are 4chan's VNTL translation thread}
 
Now this post isn't about what people do on either sides of the stance, it's the reasoning behind the laissez faire stance or it's counterpart. From posts in this thread and elsewhere, I've picked up on 3 angles of debate.
 
1) Differing views of the Value of a Product: "Why would you spend so much time working on something to produce a product which I judge to be of little to no value (based on one or more factors). Based on my hand-wave reasoning/intuition, this is not really valid. People value things differently. Asking that is like asking "Why do you see things so differently?".
 
This is the primary reason for supporting laissez faire translations (not particularly concerning oneself with the quality). If people want to take on the translation (various reasons: e-fame, perceived contributing back to the community, wanting to utilize their Japanese or other skills), and other people want to play the game, then who is anyone to stop them?
 
2) Repercussions: A bad translation most likely *will* kill any possible chances for a good translation down the road. I think this is generally accepted as true. With that in mind:
"Even if you stop this translation from going ahead there's no guarantee that the next one will be any better (the previous one by Yandere looked pretty bad as well, for example.)"
This argument won't deter someone in the following (possible valid) mindset.  If only one release can happen and I see one that is unacceptable by my standards, I'll oppose it for sure and take my chances with the next one. If I think unacceptable = not worth doing = enough of a waste of time to be worse than not doing it at all, then the possibility of having the translation never be done doesn't deter me either. As a side note, the odds are probably pretty good that Eustia will get a translation within the next 5 years.
 
3) Literature integrity: First of all, I think it's safe to say that the majority of us believe that VN's have artistic or literary merit.
Here's one of the two stances: "I'm respecting the literature that the author put out. This is not a debate about intellectual property rights, it's a debate about respect for the arts."
Honestly, I haven't seen any one state their reason for an opposite stance on this front. There's probably not a whole lot of room to argue against on this one.
If the people releasing the a bad translation misrepresent it as "good" and representative of the original work, then that's unacceptable for most people, I think. As a side note, the people who would do bad translations are more prone to misjudging their capabilities. No group releases their patch calling it a bad translation. Even in the face of being pointed out, it's understandably difficult for the team members to acknowledge that, much less publicly renounce the fact. Overall it's not the most pleasant situation for both sides (this would fall under "repercussions"). If people for some don't learn that a certain translation they read was bad, and think the bad translation is representative of the original work, then that's definitely unfair to the original author. Whether this is unfairness is unacceptable or not, I don't know what people think about this. Note that people might discuss what they read and the popular (flawed) opinion might arise that is unfair to the original author. If most readers are aware of that the translation is bad (it should be widely known to fall under this case), then they know at least that the translation isn't representative of the original work, though they won't be people to know *where* the inaccuracies are. They might be less quick to judge the original author. However, I argue that people are still going to attach their perception of the translated work heavily to the original. Firstly, people are going to judge anyways because expressing one's opinion (on a work) is a pretty common thing to do, and you're not going to disclaimer everything you say or think with the the thought that sections could be wrong. It's easy to forget that a bad translation could possibly affect every part of the VN (you don't know as the reader). I think it's also disheartening to: feel that the game one has had the chance to read (and enjoyed) bears a bad translation, and is inferior because of it. confront the fact that the one's perception of the game is probably negatively impacted by the translation and any verdicts one makes is through that translucent screen. As a result, I think in practice people don't give relatively much thought regarding a bad translation they knowingly read and judge. So the end result is largely the same (unfair to the author). In conclusion, I believe that Angle 1) are the primary reason why people would support laissez faire translations (not particularly concerning oneself with the quality of every translation). Angle 2 and 3 are basically all demerits to this stance. Namely, one would believe that the enjoyment held by the persons involved outweighs the closing of that VN to a possible good translation or any literary injustice.
 
I think both stances are valid, but I get the feeling of inconsistencies creeping into some posts.
TLDR: If you support X, consider your stances and the logic that would finally arrive at you supporting X. Make sure you are clear on what you disagree with. That's my two cents, anyways.

Also, considering Key's target audience (fanboys of its earlier works), Rewrite's genre-switching and the excessive gaps in quality between its various routes and the story flow greatly weakened it as a game.  To be blunt, the common route feels like 'Key if Key sucked donkey turds' and the heroine routes feel like 'second rate chuuni' in most cases.  The degree to which the writing and scenario quality explodes (in a good way) in Terra in the Japanese version made it feel as if it really were a completely separate game, made at a separate time, with only vague linkages with the rest of the game.  I honestly didn't have a problem with dropping the heroines as they existed in the rest of the game, but I know that Key fanboys might have trouble with that kind of thing, so I don't blame them if they developed a distaste for that aspect of Terra. 

"Aaahhhhhh
 
AAAAAAAhhhhhhhh
 
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
 
Shinji Ikari - Evangelion.

I wasn't being sarcastic by the way. It took me a while to locate the demo!
 
That being said, I love the quality of the writing. Quite slick. Not really a VN that interests me, but the quality is quite impressive. I'll be keeping an eye on your studio. Good luck!

All the Final Fantasy games after X.

Then you should talk to him with a stern expression on your face and wielding something pointy in your hands.

The choices would be SRPG, or turn-based strategy similar to XCOM. 
 
Best game on the PS3 though.