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Pabloc

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Everything posted by Pabloc

  1. Genres don't work like that. They aren't created by one person/group, they just pop up naturally. And if they make describing and classifying stuff easier, they stay. In Japan, what we label as "VNs" is divided into two main genres - the vast majority of titles are classified as adventure games (all those that have a textbox), while some are called "novel games" or "visual novels" (those that display the text over entire screen, like Fate/Stay Night). But, since we already had the adventure games genre on the West (point-and-click stuff), and it's completely different than jADV, the VN term was adopted for the whole medium. And it works.
  2. ^ Yeah, it was just an example I picked because of it's accessibility - it's obviously not for everyone (definitely not suitable for people who don't like drama or titles without good artwork). I wasn't supposed to be a good demonstration of the whole medium, though. Just the all-ages part of it.
  3. Tell them to read a non-eroge VN (like Narcissu, it's short and easily accessible). Then, tell them to play a non-VN eroge. Ideally something with as little text as possible, like Punisher - that's a pure platform game without any text at all (well, maybe not the best example - it's not suitable for sane people ). This should help them understand what's the difference between "VN" and "eroge".
  4. Entire Yoru's route is like this (well, first ~1000 lines at least). And yeah, it's more or less how you guessed. They are already dating at this point though, so they both know they love each other. Yoru just didn't realize that this is the reason she acts a little differently, casually mentioned it in a conversation, and Aoi provided an explanation. The translator must have read the earlier part, but the context just went over his head (I mean, he even mixed up names a few times, so that Asa ended up saying "That's why Asa and I did sth."). Well, MoeNovel is an extreme example. @Dowolf Yeah, after I wrote that last line again, in the script, I noticed that something was off. I changed it into "that's what I think at least!" in the end. Sometimes I get infected by MoeNovel's stupidity and overlook such things. That's why TLC-ing trainwrecks is a bad idea in general. Scrapping the original TL and re-translating everything from scratch is much better for my sanity.
  5. Oh look, I just bumped into a perfect example of this in KonoSora (well, not that those are uncommon...): You know what's funny here? Obvious mistakes and horrendous writing aside, this whole conversation actually CAN be translated like this - as Aoi speaking about himself. It's a perfectly valid TL. Except that a few lines earlier, Yoru said that she started ignoring her own way of thinking and rules, and was wondering why. Why would Aoi suddenly start explaining how he felt? With JP grammar, stuff like this can be perfectly ambiguous and depend solely on the context. In ENG you have to be more specific, but it's entirely up to your guess who is the subject of the conversation. That's why "killing" wrong characters or labeling innocent people as murderers isn't that hard. If an important plot-point is written like this, a translator with a poor understanding of the context can screw everything up, and he won't even notice that (what he writes is a possible TL after all). And if the subject will come up in a non-ambiguous way later on, the initial error can be repeated anyway, for consistency (since the "translator" is convinced everything happened the way he wrote it at first, and he relies on guesslations all the time anyway). Screwing everything up is easier than you think. Also, "slightly competent" translators aren't a subject of this conversation to begin with. We're talking about "highly incompetent" ones. Those are the problem. When the TL is at lest slightly decent, it can be salvaged by TLC and editors. And nobody demands a "perfect" TL anyway (that's just the straw man used by people who defend said highly incompetent TLs, nothing else). Oh yeah, and my raw TL of the mentioned fragment, just for completeness' sake: That aside, what Zoom said is true. That's why people who aren't illiterate and actually care about what they are reading, should discourage shit-quality translations. Otherwise, they will be left with nothing to read, because a horde of attention whores will start spawning machine-TL-level "patches", and everyone who cares will say "Fuck it, I won't waste my time for that shitty community". But well, that's none of my business. ┐( ̄- ̄)┌
  6. MoeNovel did that a couple of times. It's not that hard, you just write "Yoru" instead of "Asa". And no, they most certainly didn't play the game. Leaving retarded cases aside, it's still perfectly possible in unvoiced lines, when the translator doesn't fully grasp the context (who the speaker is addressing is especially easy to mix up). As for Monobeno, you just said that you managed to spot mistranslations that actually resulted in noticeable inconsistencies in a VERY short fragment of a prologue, that is written in a VERY simple way to boot... Oh my, where should I even start? 1) If somebody can screw up a TL in a noticeable way, he can (and will) also screw up stuff that won't be that obvious. Which results in what Astro mentioned. 2) Making ANY noticeable mistranslations in a very basic part, pretty much guarantees that everything will be completely screwed up as soon as the slightest challenge appears. And those will appear, Monobeno features archaic speech, quite a bit of folklore and such. 3) Editors will be fixing messed up writing without knowing what the original line meant. When the writing is bad enough (like in this case), they will end up rewriting everything quite significantly. Since the TL-quality is quite dubious to begin with, this will most likely result in something even more inaccurate than the initial mess. This happened in KonoSora's restoration patch - even though it had only purely cosmetic editing, fixing broken Engrish still occasionally resulted in twisting the original meaning quite a lot. If something like this happens to any details important for the plot... Well, again - what Astro mentioned. 4) Editor doesn't know that characters (like Sumi) speak in a peculiar way. He only sees the crudely written TL. So if the TL misses something, like outdated vocabulary for example, editor has no way to fix that. Compared to the above, this seems like a minor detail though. 5) It's fine when editor refers a few specific lines in a 1000 line-long script for TLC. It's NOT fine when he refers a few lies in every 50-line long fragment. Because any TLC-er will quit in no time. I can almost guarantee that. In short - editors should only work with a decent translation, otherwise they are likely to cause more harm then good. As for TLC - if you make translation-checkers fix multiple mistakes in very simple fragments written in very basic language, they will ragequit.
  7. It's very easy. I can bet you would miss them in KonoSora if it wasn't a slice-of-life title without any significant plot points. When the translator mixes up which character is speaking and who is he/she talking to on a regular basis, they can mix up who killed somebody all the same. Someone with a poor grasp of grammar can easily produce "translations" that have exactly the opposite meaning than the original text (MTs do that very often). JP grammar is easy, but when you fail at it, you usually screw up big time. Editing can also cause a lot of damage here - inaccurate and poorly written guesslation gets even worse when an editor tries to reforge it into something readable. The more enthusiastic editor, the worse the result. I can easily imagine that such "translation" could even murder characters that didn't die in the original. And like it was already mentioned, there's a huge difference between anime/manga and such text-heavy medium as VNs. The latter don't get, and will never get multiple translations. So yeah, you can look up ratings and opinions (written by Sakura series fans and people who think KonoSora's TL is okay ) all you want. But if a VN you really wanted to read happened to be butchered by incompetent idiots, you will never be able to read it in English. Like Dowolf said, nobody sane will bother to re-translate crap from scratch. I'm not exactly sane, but even I would have never touched KonoSora if I knew the actual state of its TL. I joined just to do some TLC after all... >_> It's the same with current Monobeno project - people who mention that it merely needs TLC should all go to Hell.
  8. https://vndb.org/v5835 Unfortunately, despite the interesting premise and literally sweet lolis, it's boring as Hell. https://vndb.org/v4802 The best villain ever: Yes, he has a chaingun there. It's actually a rather solid game, highly recommended as a hilarious horror. https://vndb.org/v4866 Bugs. ^^ https://vndb.org/v9570 Educational VN about giving blowjobs. Kinda meh. https://vndb.org/v8251 The only interesting part of this one is the title, otherwise is a very uninspired crap.
  9. I wouldn't call that "literal accuracy", because overly literal translations often actually twist the tone or even meaning of sentences. But yeah, I'm not a native English speaker and I know JP, so I can overlook some sacrifices made in the writing field in favor of faithfulness to the original. That's why I'm quite forgiving when it comes to Taka-jun's translations for example. But you're right, for a TL to be considered excellent, it has to be written very well in English AND convey the same thing as the original text (not literally, obviously). All of the above applies to the translations that I read, though. When I'm actually translating KonoSora myself, I put quite a bit more weight on the writing (though I still value accuracy more, so I leave honorifics as-is for example, even though it's a crime against English ). 1) You will never get any fan-re-translaitons. Period. KonoSora is the only exception, and that's just because the main translator is stubborn like a mule. There were some fan-efforts to fix Divi-Dead, but they were rather cosmetic. I don't see Flyable Heart & Kiminago re-TL anywhere, even though the troll-patches are a pure MT (again - there was an attempt, but I think it's dead). Nobody even tried touching Gin'iro. And so on. 2) Official publishers can pick up a fan-translation and use it for a commercial release, but only when such TL is good and doesn't require too much editing (while it can lower the potential sales to some extent, it also reduces the costs). Bad fan-TLs can only cause harm here - people will already know the story (more or less), but it's quite possible that due to flawed TL, they won't enjoy it enough to support the official release. And the publisher would have to re-translate it from scratch anyway (so, they lower the potential sales, but don't reduce costs). That's why they are infinitely more likely to pick up something new. Sekai Project did pick up Clannad for re-translation, but that's a Steam-friendly VN with extremely popular anime adaptation. It can be sold to the anime fanbase alone, so even if VN-readers will ignore it, it's still a potential gold mine. In short, once something is butchered, it will stay butchered. Almost no exceptions. Now, it's true that a lot of people won't mind it. A lot of people enjoyed the butchered version of KonoSora, just like they liked that Sakura Spirit & co., or 50 Shades of Gray, etc.. Basically, a lot of people are pretty much illiterate. They don't care that some stuff makes no sense, is poorly written or whatever. Or just have extremely high tolerance for BS. So yeah, they will be happy with getting crappy translations. The problem is, they are the exclusive audience for crappy translations. People who actually care about what they are reading, won't enjoy something like KonoSora. It'll give them cancer. And since it's safe to assume you only get one translation, poorly translated titles are effectively unavailable for them forever. While lack of translation always leaves a chance that somebody (fan or a company) will pick it up. So in the end, poor TLs do harm this group. Good translations however, are universal. Both groups can enjoy them just fine. Nobody is harmed by a solid TL. So, one group effectively denies the other a chance to read some VNs in English, just because they have very low standards themselves. For me, that's a pretty good reason why exceptionally incompetent translations shouldn't exist. Plus, there's also an issue with butchering works of art, which is simply barbaric. But, that was already addressed here. Also, there's one more thing that people who blindly encourage incompetent fan-translations like to overlook. But, I already addressed it in the Eustia thread, and since it's very relevant to the recent Monobeno case, I'll just copypaste it here:
  10. Unacceptable: KonoSora (obviously), Divi-Dead (TL occasionally ruins the mood and makes the mystery quite hard to follow), Gin'iro (I don't think it even counts as translation...), all troll machine translations and some nukiges I don't remember. Borderline - Cross+Channel. Now that's a rather special case. The TL is definitely readable and sounds more or less fine, but from what I heard it still butchered quite a lot (since the original is apparently untranslatable). I still haven't given the JP version a try though, so I can't say for sure. Passable: Phoenix Wright (not exactly a VN, but it's worth mentioning), HoshiMemo, Otoboku, Rewrite. One important thing must be noted here - I have read the majority of translated titles before I learned JP, so I could only spot obviously bad stuff back then. There's a good chance I wouldn't have found anything in Otoboku and Rewrite if I have read them earlier (I don't remember what exactly, but there were some details and mistranslations that annoyed me there). I probably bumped into a few more such titles, but they weren't bad enough to remember. Phoenix Wright is a special case, since it's a localization, not a translation. It's done more or less right, but some clues that relied on kanji and puns were butchered, and in some cases American setting just doesn't work and some things seem completely out of place. Satisfactory: I'd place the vast majority of translated VNs I have read here. That might be because I have rather low expectations when it comes to translations in general, but in most cases there's really nothing terribly wrong with them. I'm somewhat forgiving when it comes to writing quality though, so I'm not too bothered by some awkward expressions as long as the TL is accurate. Anyway, people who really care about details and nuances, probably will learn Japanese sooner or later (like I did). For others, most translations should be acceptable. Excellent: There's no such thing. Translation is always different then the original, and I want to experience stories exactly how the author wrote them (if possible). That's why I dislike TLs by default. Needless to say, I hate all localizations with passion (especially Americanizations). I don't have different standards for Fan and commercial TLs, mainly because they generally are on a very similar level. Actually, Fan-TLs tend to be a bit more accurate, while commercial ones tend to be written a little better English-wise (at least most of the time).
  11. @Conjueror Errr, no. There's really only one way to TL 失礼します in this context. He isn't interrupting anything, the old guy finished talking. Note that there's even a pause before the young dude says that (the line looks like this: 「……失礼します」, when you want to interrupt a conversation you don't use a bunch of dots ). Also, when it comes to interruptions, 失礼 is used much more often in such cases (I don't remember seeing an interruption with "-masu" form). No, I can't see it as anything other than a pointless over-interpretation that turns what he said upside-down. @Sanahtlig Actually, I'd like to see those "highly critical people who judge fan translations based on professional standards". Because, for some mysterious reason, I don't see them complaining about F/SN, Muv-Luv, Umineko or [insert almost any fan-TL present in VNDB]. Ixrec's TLs are the only ones that cause some controversies on a regular basis (and the scale of such complaints is relatively minimal). People were complaining about Eustia-TL (which was abhorrent), previous Monobeno-TL (which was awful), current one (which is also horrible, at least so far), first AstralAir attempt, plus such bad jokes as Flyable Heart & co. But, that's not "demanding professional quality". Heck, that's not even "demanding passable quality". It's asking utterly incompetent people to stop ruining VNs people care about. And you can count such cases on your fingers. So, I repeat my question - where are those people who judge fan-TLs on professional standards? On 4chan? Show me one case where a TL-project was heavily bashed despite a somewhat passable TL-quality. Something tells me that this whole myth of "highly critical community" was spawned by some of those incompetent translator-wannabes who got flamed by their attempts to butcher some VNs...
  12. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%B1%E7%A4%BC%E3%81%97%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99 This is a typical expression used when you don't want to come off as rude. Because, for example, the older guy is above you in status (as seems to be the case here) and you don't want to openly show your hostility. That's how I see that scene - young dude does hold the old guy in contempt, but doesn't lose his cool and keeps the minimum level of courtesy. Leaving with "I've heard enough." makes the younger guy sound impolite even by western standards - that's precisely the opposite of what that line was supposed to mean. I don't know what is the relation between those two, but TL this line like that can screw it quite a lot. It can also twist the younger guy's personality (he doesn't seem like the type to openly express his emotions in general, but that's just my guess since I don't know the full context).
  13. After a quick revision, I'd say it's at least 5x better than that Monobeno video. And you are posting it as an unedited, raw translation, not as a demonstration of your team's TL "skills". That makes a huge difference... In my opinion, only those 3 underlined lines contain actually significant errors (unless I missed something due to lack of context). The first one was confusing and messed up. It's hard to translate without a context, so it's just my guess that they were desperately trying to protect themselves from that "curse". I have some doubts about "going mad" part, though (maybe it's something along the lines of going crazy from fear of the curse?). The other 2 lines are quite... strange. They are short and should be easy to translate, but you somehow messed them up quite badly. "That is all." sounds like that old guy explicitly dismissed the younger one, which would slightly affect the following lines. "I've heard enough." was far worse - original is a generic, polite expression, while the TL made the younger guy sound rude and fed up. Something like this can turn character's personality upside-down (that's impossible to judge from this brief conversation though). I have no idea where did those 2 errors come from, you handled more difficult lines more or less fine. Other than that, there are only relatively minor mistakes and some stylistic nitpicking on my part. It's a raw translation though, so writing style isn't a problem at this point. Most of that can be fixed by editors. It's hard to judge a TL based on such short and out-of-context fragment, but I'd say it's "almost passable" (for a raw TL, that is). I have no idea how did you manage to mistranslate "...Shitsureishimasu." as "I've heard enough.", hence that "almost". ... And now I feel like reading Dark Blue. If it slows down my pace with KonoSora re-translation, it's officially your fault.
  14. Moege is basically a sub-genre of charages. There is no solid border - when a charage is especially light on drama, especially low on plot, is filled with moeblobs and it's sexual content is too low to qualify it as a nukige, it's a moege. I'd say it's a slightly derogatory term, but I guess that's up to personal tastes.
  15. The name itself is indeed similar to such genre names like Nukige, Moege etc., but it's just a term for shitty games, as simple as that. And yeah, it fits Sakura series perfectly. Let's leave moeges out of this, even the worst titles from that genre are literary masterpieces compared to Sakura stuff (well, at least the first title, I only skimmed over that one). And nukiges = porn. They aren't even supposed to have decent storylines by definition, they are meant to be plotless pornfests (though I must say that the majority of nukiges that I have read had significantly better writing than Sakura Spirit...). Sakura Stuff isn't porn. Hence it's available to a much wider audience than your average nukige. And to make matters worse, it's an audience that doesn't know anything about VNs (aside from the common "weird anime hentai game" stereotype). That's why it annoys so many VN fans - it shows newcomers the entire medium from the stupidest possible side (nukiges at least have porn...). I can see why the series is so popular though. It seems there is a high demand for crude porn that is sold as not-porn. That 50 Shades of Gray thingy and other similar book-like-objects sell absurdly well, too. People just want porn, but they are too "prude" to get real deal stuff, so they choose such idiotic substitutes instead.
  16. 1/3) Yeah, if you have other stuff to read, it will be a good idea to leave IMHHW for later. Unless you are completely immune to broken English and occasional gibberish... 2) Imported version will be more expensive than the localized one, but if you're a collector, you probably don't want to have a butchered localization on your shelf. Well, at least I did go out of my way to get the original version from Amazon.jp. 4) Good question, I'm not entirely sure myself. The fact that I really appreciate how much I improved my Japanese while working on the re-translation is probably an important factor here. Nevertheless, the story itself is simply good, probably the best in the realistic slice-of-life genre that I have seen. I especially like that it doesn't end as soon as the protagonist gets the girlfriend, but explores the relationships quite a lot (becoming a couple is only the beginning of heroines' routes). And so far, I liked the H-scenes too, or to be exact - how they fit the characters and the story (ero-wise, lighthearted consensual sex isn't exactly my thing, I prefer darker, more hardcore stuff). 5) Personally, I think it would be the best to have 3 patches - for JP version, original MoeNovel's version and Steam version. But, I can only deal with the TL, not technical issues, so I can't promise anything here.
  17. 1) Original translation is bananas. It ranges from bad to pure gibberish. Severe mistranslations aside, the overall writing quality resembles a crude fanfic written by 15 years old kid who likes smoking weed, uses Urban Dictionary vocab all the time and doesn't know how to write in proper English. 2) Steam had absolutely nothing to do with censorship, it was only MoeNovel's idea (the VN was originally released outside of Steam). Why did they go that far? Well, they just don't know what they are doing. 3) Restoration patch only adds content that was completely removed (like H-scenes). It doesn't fix too much in the script translated by MoeNovel (so, those "big eyes" were still left as is). Some H-scenes have somewhat... hasty translations, too. Also, it wasn't made for Steam version so it causes plenty of bugs with it. Well, there were some minor issues even with the non-Steam version. 4) If you're wondering what the VN itself is about - it's mainly a slice-of-life title focused on a group of friends building a glider. Romance comes only later on, after a very, very long common route (but you can skip the text you have already read on next playthroughs, so you won't have to go over it again). It's a rather lighthearted, slow-paced novel, don't expect anything too exciting. It does the romance and relationship parts very well though. I find it rather enjoyable, even though I normally don't like down-to-earth slice-of-life at all. 5) As for the new Re-Translation patch, TL and editing are progressing (slowly, but steadily), but there were some technical issues with the new partial patch, so it got delayed... quite a lot. I'll post some proper updates (in a new thread), as soon as everything is resolved.
  18. 1) Story is the most important thing to me. It doesn't have to be awesome or epic - it has to serve it's purpose. So, VNs with gameplay or nukiges can get away with a more simplistic plot, but it's still important even in those cases. VNs are novels after all. Art is important in eroge, other titles can get away with so-so visuals as long as they have a well written storyline. Many OELVNs have absolutely abhorrent artwork though, something that bad can be game-breaking. 2) PC master race. 3) I only start reading/watching completed VNs/manga/anime/whatever, almost without exceptions. I wouldn't really mind any kind of episodic format, but it means I probably won't touch it until it's finished, or check out first episode and never go back to it if it won't be good enough. As for multiple protagonists (or rather - selectable ones), it's not that weird and some VNs do offer such choice. Ever17 did this right (just like this epic title). But yeah, it can be quite hard to do without making subsequent playthroughs boring and repetitive.
  19. Pabloc

    Nukige

    Yeah, shy, blushing face is much cuter than ultra-slutty ahegao.
  20. Pabloc

    Nukige

    Ahegao, huh? I'm not a big fan of those, to say the least. I especially hate it when they appear in rape scenes. The problem is that most of the time that I saw those, they looked just too dumb and hilarious. That can totally kill both the dark mood (and usually render the rape very hard to be taken seriously) and the romantic mood (in case of consensual ones). It's fine when those are drawn with some moderation and/or when the character is portrayed as especially slutty.
  21. Err... How about reading a tag description? -.-' Nakiges don't have to be tragic (actually - they shouldn't be, utsuges are like that). Crying is also optional (and very subjective to begin with). It's the emotional impact and format of the story that matter here - lighthearted beginning -> romance -> drama/separation -> emotional reunion of the lovers (friends?). And Period follows that formula, more or less. It's a bit more focused on slice-of-life and romance part, hence the lower tag rating.
  22. Pabloc

    Nukige

    ^ Oh, that's certainly true. It's all about right proportions - the plot should do it's job in as little time as possible. Too much storytelling - especially if it's not-so-good - can make the whole thing simply boring. Overly stupid plot can be a huge turn-off as well (at least for me) - that's a flaw of many H-oriented titles in various genres (amine tends to be especially bad in that regard).
  23. Pabloc

    Nukige

    Plot is very important in nukiges. It doesn't have to be good or complex, obviously, but basic storyline and characterization are absolutely vital for some H-scenes to work. Vanilla, romantic sex-scenes are rubbish if you aren't attached to the characters at least a little (that's why those work much better in moeges etc.). But it's rape and NTR that rely on plot the most. If the rape victim is some Black Lilith whore I couldn't care less about, then it just doesn't work. The lack of bad aftertaste that XReaper mentioned earlier is a prime example of a failure of a rape scene. It's not supposed be neutral. NTR is even more vulnerable to shitty plots and characters. When the MC is a total looser and the heroine is a dumb slut, the fact she cheats on him for one reason or another is, again - emotionally neutral. That completely misses the point of dark H in general. It's supposed to be horrible and make you feel bad. To some extent of course - if you feel too bad, it becomes unfappable (but then it can turn out to be a good drama/ustuge material, so it's not necessarily a bad thing). Without those feelings, it's not that different than vanilla consensual sex. That's why good nukiges are so rare - it's quite difficult to write emotionally engaging H-scenes (consensual or not) with limited time spent on storytelling and characterization (and when you spend too much time on that, it's no longer a nukige...).
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