tymmur

I don't think it's that toxic here on Fuwa compared to elsewhere. I have seen statements like "ïf you aren't able to read the VN the way you are intended to read it, you have no business reading VNs" (essentially banning all translations). "VNs should all be rewritten to adapt into American culture because people don't get Japanese culture. Also non-Americans shouldn't read VNs if they can't accept American culture everywhere". "Doki should be banned from releasing anime subs. They use British English, which is unacceptable". Fuwa bashing tend to be based closer to facts in the translations and generally more reasonable. If you release something, which breaks immersion and general readability, you essentially ruin the VN. People rightfully get upset when they pay for what should be a masterpiece and it's worse than just garbage: not only isn't it enjoyable, it spoils reading the VN in Japanese as well, meaning for a number of VN readers (the people who are most into VNs), reading the translation is much worse than not reading it. If you use a machine translation yourself, you know what you get (or should know). If you pay a human to do a proper job, you want a proper job. That is essentially what the translation bashing on Fuwa is all about.

My prediction: this thread will end in a flamewar about lame people not understanding the sacred language of Japanese. I both agree and disagree with you at the same time. The problem is that we have seen some attempts, which were downright awful to the level where reading the translated and untranslated versions were two completely different stories. You could argue that we could accept rewrites, but the translated ones were not worth reading. The moment we open the gates for "it's translated. It's done" is the day we accept to kill off reading enjoyments from VNs. Editing is another issue. Kill off editing and focus shifts towards making out what it says rather than understanding the plot and enjoying the story. On the other hand if we set the minimum quality requirements too high, then we will end up with no translations at all. It's a balance. We will likely never agree where the acceptable range is, but I suspect it highly depends on the reader's English skills. If you aren't skilled enough to pick up on the difference in different ways to say the same, who cares? If you do know the difference and can make out a lot of the back story, you care if the translation ruins that part. This is not even a matter of native vs non-native English speakers because even native English speakers aren't equally good at reading stuff hinted like this. Another reason why people get upset is because translators/editors just doesn't care. Release something, get the money ASAP. Who cares if people enjoy the end product. It's all about the money. I said some not so nice comments about Maitetsu on that account (though I rarely bash specific titles). The thing is it's a title with a very specific theme, specially railroad/trains. The end result shows it's not a field of expertise of anybody involved with the translation. While it's not great, I guess it's passable. What I objected about is that they have made up words and concepts. My rant included the difficulty level in looking up the right words/concepts on Google and really, if it's something you can look up in 30 seconds or less, you really shouldn't damage the meaning of the scene because you skip doing a background check like that. That's just too low for a paid translation. I think I was fair because I stated I didn't bash anything they missed if Google failed to provide the answer right away. And what was written while I was typing: there is a difference between a free fan tl and a paid translation. If you pay somebody to do something for you, your expectations will and should be higher than what you get from somebody who does something for free and gives it to you for no other reason than him being a nice guy or something like that. Yeah it sounds like my rant on The Slayers have gone unnoticed. I accidentally watched it with subs and dubs at the same time and I was like "I guess I will do an unplanned comparison". There are lots of minor differences where one version might be as good as the other one and I guess that's to be expected. However around half the lines have a new meaning, frequently making up a new dialogue or even story. Some seem intentional, like removing all references to Lina's boobs (or lack hereof) or altering the spell chant Ï pledge myself to darkness", but most of the changes are just completely different for no apparently reason. Around half the lines differs in meaning way beyond anything anything you could justify as "translation can't map words 1:1". In short: the dub is essentially a rewrite, not a translation and you will not get the same experience as with the subs. In particular jokes and gags have a tendency to vanish in the dub, which is bad for a joke heavy title.

Ages ago when I started to study the HD remake, my first step was to write a file extractor, then study the file format, make text changes, which showed up ingame, extracted the text to xml format, imported the translated text from the "old project" and once the old translation could show up in the remake, then other people could start working on the remake directly. This work was full of all sorts of safeguards like comparing the untranslated text to make sure they didn't modify it before transferring the translation. Nothing is assumed in this part of the work. I'm way ahead of you in multiple ways. I know how to translate the names and have done so. The engine splits words between lines, meaning I had to write a script to judge the length of the line and insert newlines. Not perfect (yet), but the failure rate is something like once out of 3000 lines, which is well within the range of manageable for manual editing. And yes there are some files not used in the game, including some photoshop files. However the vast majority are really boring and not useful at all. It's not like there are HCG photoshop files with a blur layer to disable or anything like that. I'm generally not talking much about the contents of the bin files if I even talk about it at all and I'm not talking about the file format. The reason is as I stated earlier: the translation project should be a tool to make English speaking people enjoy the copy of Musumaker they bought. It should not be a tool to grant access to HCGs without buying. I managed to have the file extractor and extracted files for more than two years without leaking anything online and in all honesty I would prefer it to stay that way. Official or not, I view translation projects as something, which should be in the best interest of the developer/publisher and publishing HCGs to non-buyers doesn't match that goal.

waves hand Those are not the anti-honorific arguments you are looking for. The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded. Speak for yourself. I stick to honorifics

I once saw a polyglot study guide (polyglot is usually defined as knowing at least 5 languages). Apparently they use many different study techniques, but they all have a few things in common: study at least 30 minutes each day. have fun while studying. Make sure it will not feel like a chore you have to do even if you don't want to. don't study more than one language at a time. The part about studying every single day is important because the human brain has a place for foreign languages. You need to trigger it with the language of your choice daily. If you only trigger it occasionally, you won't get it into the mindset of the language in question. It's not the amount of time you spend, it's how you spend it. 30 minutes a day is way more beneficial for remembering what you study than a 5 hour study session every Sunday even if the daily study only sums up to 3.5 hours weekly.

That's actually way more common than we would like to think. Imagine the guys handling the nuclear missile launch facilities. Imagine telling 30% of them that they are fired, but they still have to work for another 3 months. What could possibly go wrong? There are cases of fired people deleting the customer database or similar, which is why it's not uncommon to close access and then fire people. It's not nice to be treated that way, but Sekai doesn't stand out in doing so. As for what Sekai is doing now and why, all we can do is to guess. It could be anything. Maybe 20% of the people in marketing did 80% of the work. Alternatively it could be a leadership idea that marketing isn't producing anything to sell, hence have no value (not true, but company leaders have had stranger ideas than that). Approaching bankruptcy is possible, but not likely. If that was the case, they would likely cancel some titles, which they barely even started working on and that doesn't seem to be the case. Time will tell what happens, but my guess is that this won't have significant long term effect.

Please be careful when you touch her parts down below. Her important parts have a tendency to be very hot.

I can't speak for Maitetsu specially, but Steam DRM is a known cause of problems for modding communities and I guess adding a decensor patch is sort of like a game mod. It's not uncommon that mods in steam workshop are made on the non-Steam version because Steam actively prevents debugging, hence making locating and fixing bugs. I think they fixed it (partially at least), but at some point Steam required all Civilization 4 network games to go through some online server. This version not only killed LAN games, but also mod support. Meanwhile GOG sells a DRM free version with full network and mod support and it's usually cheaper. There are countless examples of this. Steam only has an interest in paid DLC expansions and are hostile towards end users messing with the game files themselves. Steam workshop gives a different impression at first glance, but Steam updates makes the workshop worse for mod creators as time goes by. For instance if a game update is out, you can't wait to update until the mods are updated, meaning you lose your savegame or just can't play until the mod creators updates the mods. The simple solution is to set the game to update on request rather than automatically, meaning you can wait until starting a new game or mods have been fixed etc. Steam used to have this feature, but removed it intentionally because good mod support is bad for DLC sales. I would have assumed that Denpa would make the Steam version and then add a patch file for Fakku. Buying the full version from Fakku would then be the Steam version with the extra file, but apparently this isn't the case. This would make updating more time consuming (hence more expensive), meaning it's a stupid decision to maintain multiple versions. The question is if the decision is made by Denpa, Lose or Steam. We will likely never know the answer to that question.

But you are supposed to give up hope. That makes the surprise and joy much better when it's suddenly released I'm planning a big post, but right now I can say I finally fixed the last engine issue and narration is finally showing up ingame 100% like I want it. No more leading whitespace compared to Japanese or dialogue. I'm not saying I fixed all issues (the Japanese version isn't bug free), but the remaining issues are all script issues, not engine issues, which is good news because script issues are much easier to fix. Even better, script issues usually affects a single line or short section rather than all lines or all lines of a certain type (which also makes spotting all of them more tricky). The HCGs are being decensored and I really like the quality of the results so far. Adding them ingame without repacking everything is tricky and time consuming, but I managed to write a script to do it automatically. The same script handles translated images, such as text on buttons. As always more people would be beneficial. On top of all the obvious tasks, I'm thinking of adding an opening for a recruiter. Somebody who can be active online (mainly other places than Fuwa) and create awareness of the Musumaker translation project and the fact that we are recruiting. If I don't have to actively look for people, then I will get more free time, which I can spend on Musumaker itself. In other words productivity can be boosted by somebody with insights in how social media works and knows everywhere where VN translator candidates hang out even if said person have no skills to work on the project files themselves.

It differs greatly depending on point of view. Considering you aim for the RPG style, I think you should give it a go. Another title which should be mentioned here is Lightning Warrior Raidy. It doesn't stand out as "the best", but it's likely still worth mentioning here.

We can't really read Nagi as unpopular based on this poll. For all we know she could be a close second for most voters meaning in theory she could be more popular than Reina if people could vote for two. Another factor to take into account is that the H scenes are somewhat nukige like. It's entirely possible that people like Nagi as a character and her route without thinking she has the ideal body for H scenes. I'm more surprised that Fukami is as popular as she is while Makura seems to be unwanted. I would have predicted Makura to be more popular in H scenes than Fukami.

There is the entire Rance series. I think you should be able to play every Rance title released so far in English if your computer can handle Kamidori. Also it's the only good VN/RPG hybrid I can think of, which you haven't mentioned already.

The main reason why there isn't a bad choice is what happens to the loser. It's to decide when each girl is being worked on, not if she should be worked on. It's entirely plausible that people who start now and can't do a marathon read will end up not reaching the girls in the poll before multiple or even all girls are done. Had the poll been "I only want to do one more. Who should it be?" then you would see the fight start and all girls would apparently be a bad choice according to other people.

I know. It's a classic and I have read some of it. My point is that I haven't seen any public bashing of Agatha Christie books for being improper English even though they contain something like this.

Good point. Anybody talking about removing honorifics should try reading Hercule Poirot.