tymmur
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Posts posted by tymmur
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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.
22 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:First, really there's no translation quality/choice drama in other otaku niches? I've seen people going apeshit over minor details in anime translations and inconsistencies between the fan and official versions.
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.
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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.
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4 hours ago, adamstan said:
So after doing that thought experiment I fully get the point of the "anti-honorifics" crowd.
waves hand Those are not the anti-honorific arguments you are looking for.
The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded.
4 hours ago, adamstan said:We're doomed...
Speak for yourself. I stick to honorifics
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15 hours ago, SaintOfVoid said:
but what´s concerning is how they seemingly got disposed of without much proper notice beforehand, feels abit inhuman to me, like sure it´s called human ressources, but...
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.
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3 hours ago, marcus-beta said:
What is the problem with the steam?
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.
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1 hour ago, MrZangaroo said:
Could you post once a week or 2 just a "It's still going" so people don't lose hope?
thanks and keep up good work
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.
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17 minutes ago, Ryleona said:
I heard people talking about. I heard a lot of miked opinions though.
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.
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6 hours ago, HoplessHiro said:
Why so many ppl like Nagi the least. She is a very cheerful girl T_T.
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.
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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.
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7 hours ago, knightnightmare said:
But then again there is no bad choice here.
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.
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3 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:
I'm not sure it's a good example. Books about Poirot were originally written in English, and he was a foreigner living in England.
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.
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17 minutes ago, Tamaki Sakura said:
I'm just going to note the double standard that allows foreign honorifics from Western cultures, such as 'Monsieur' or 'Herr,' to exist in English translations, while non-Western honorifics such as '-san' are shunned.
Good point. Anybody talking about removing honorifics should try reading Hercule Poirot.
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On 3/8/2018 at 7:25 AM, Iolita said:
is it possible to keep the band-aids? (is my fetish)
How do you obtain useful fetishes like that? In fact you should make some sort of "teach yourself to get a fetish for mosaic censorship". You could be rich if you figure the right way to do this, particularly if you get a proper Japanese translation.
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2 hours ago, Toranth said:
Marketing should be primarily directed at growing the audience - those very same people that are random VN buyers on Steam are the ones companies should be aiming to attract - as long as they can do it without alienating the existing core audience (VN community members). If removing honorifics convinces those casual VN players to buy more, then it is the correct decision.
"without alienating the existing core audience" is the contradiction in your statement. Every single time there is a poll or debate about this, the result is the same. Kicking out honorifics will alienate the core audience. The question is if it's bad enough to make changes to if or what people will buy, but then again I question if honorifics will have an effect on first time buyers at all. I mean it's not like its a big issue for them before they pay and have the VN on their HD and once they paid, it's likely not what makes them quit.
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1 hour ago, Toranth said:
Second, the poll is a self-selected poll. That is, rather than randomly selecting people from the available populations, it allowed people to choose to participate. Self-selected polls are very vulnerable to differences in enthusiasm. People that feel strongly about something are much more likely to go and participate in these sorts of polls than those people that do not have strong opinions. This is why there is an entire field of statistics dedicated to polling methods: because careless polls produce inaccurate results.
To put it really simple, say we have a room with 10 people who all bought VNs in the past and we ask those people. We get that 2 wants honorifics, one is strongly against and 7 don't care. In other words that poll gives:
- 20% for
- 10% against
- 70% don't care
Now we ask everybody in the room to answer if they like. 6 of the don't care are like "why bother. I'm happy either way". The result from the now self-selected poll gives:
- 50% for
- 25% against
- 25% don't care
It's the same people and the same question, but the results differs greatly. While the numbers are made up, the poll in this thread is of the latter type and it's important to remember to not treat it as the first type, hence claiming "it's the eternal truth. We did a big test and got this result".
I know I didn't add much new information with this reply (if anything). However since the quote is the core essence of how trustworthy the poll results are, I feel like it would be best to try to explain it in a way, which makes it easier to understand. The quote itself is fine, but the choice of words are keywords from statistically analysis and I fear people with no training in statistical analysis whatsoever will have a hard time understanding "academic talk". We have to remember that some users are of university level, some dropped out of school and the majority is somewhere in between. Figuring out how to write to target all those levels at once is tricky to say the least.
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9 hours ago, Decay said:
Basically, this survey was utterly meaningless from the start, but I'm sure we all knew that already.
I'm not sure I fully agree with that statement. What I find interesting is actually not the numbers themselves (pro honorifics were predictable), but rather Fuwa vs global. I would have expected Fuwa to stand out more, like more long time readers, higher percentage of Japanese skills etc. While the trend is there, the difference is way less than I expected.
3 hours ago, Hetzer123 said:They claim they do it for etymology reasons. They assume the meaning would be lost if they leave it untranslated (Homura = Fire = Pyra) because the audiences don't speak Japanese. Sometimes it would sound weird if they leave it untranslated. (like some Pokemon name) I see VNs rarely localize their names.
Translating the names. I never really thought about that, like thinking it's something you don't do. We could call Ichigo for Strawberry in a translation, but would it really make sense? I suspect that it would quickly end up sounding more lame than informative.
In case you are wondering about how bad it can turn out, here is a video with ms money moon moon.
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3 hours ago, Dreamysyu said:
So, the results show that VNs are mostly played by weebs. Nothing new.
We do not have any evidence that any of the VN readers are weebs, at least not if we go by the Urban Dictionary definition.
QuotePay attention to the word "use". The survey asks if people want to read honorifics, not if they want to use them themselves. There is a big difference. My guess is that the vast majority of the "want honorific" voters doesn't actually say honorifics themselves.
QuoteHe occasionally uses romanized Japanese words instead of English equivalents, such as "kawaii" instead of "cute" and "baka" instead of "dumb" or "jerk" (it has both meanings).
Using Japanese words like they are English doesn't seem to overrun the forum either. It can happen, but not in a regular conversation. I think I did once or twice to use it as a pun/point for something, kind of like saying "Me fail English. That's unpossible". We all know there is a message to intentionally writing the sentence incorrectly, in which case it doesn't match the weeb definition.
That's one of the hard things about surveys: figure out what you can conclude based on the results. There is actually a real science to this and this survey tells us very little other than the numbers themselves. Claiming VN readers are weebs are about as accurate as claiming VN readers are left handed. None of those claims can be ruled out, but we do not have any data to support either claim either.
Had I made the survey questions, then I would have asked for OELVNs and translated from Japanese VNs. Why? Because wanting honorifics in a VN written by say an American, which possibly takes place in America is a strong weeb indicator. Wanting honorifics in a translation where honorifics is used in the original, particularly if used diversely, as in choice of honorific carries a meaning is a completely different story. The questions in the survey were not detailed enough to dig into this specific issue, meaning we can't jump to any conclusions.
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1 minute ago, Hiashi said:
You know, I sometimes wonder if there are some tech-savvy readers in Japan that also take the time to demosaic eroge like this and distribute the patches on 2ch or something.
Considering they could be jailed for releasing uncensored genitals, I would assume that's not the case. I assume there are many who wants to do so, but figure it ain't worth the risk.
And no, don't make this thread go off topic with Japanese censor law bashing. We all agree they are silly and adding 10 posts about it will only act as trolling or spamming this thread since that's not the topic here.
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2 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:
Lose can lie to them?
Doesn't really matter. Sekai is still to blame if they make a contract where Lose can do this without breach of contract. It's as simple as that. Lose might be to blame too, but I can't see a scenario where Sekai is perfectly innocent in this mess.
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5 minutes ago, Nier said:
No it's not, pure station has exclusive content not found in the western PC version, only Japan and China are getting pure station.
What are we missing and how can you be sure there is something we didn't get?
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8 minutes ago, Nier said:
But it's not complete is it? He is still working on it to restore the untranslated lines and fix bugs?
It depends. According to the Fakku statement (which also state they are a shop, not a developer/publisher) the changelog contains some fixes like that. Before making anymore requests to the restoration patch, it would be wise to make sure they are still issues in the new release.
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4 hours ago, Chuee said:
Because they want to move away from porn. 2D porn featuring children is far from socially acceptable over there, and that affects their ability to work with certain companies (anyone remember the time they tried partnering with some railway company for some charity promotion or w/e, and they quit working with them after figuring out the type of games they make?).
That's an argument for removing the H scenes, not to keep the H scenes and remove nipples in the bath scenes. Besides if I had a railroad company, I wouldn't associate it with anybody who publish such clueless "facts" about trains. I would fear getting a reputation in the public eye like the company, which doesn't understand overloading engines and risk frequent breakdowns and other similar issues. It's the polar opposite of trustworthy reliability, which the key for a railroad to attract customers. You could also argue that the fact that Maitetsu adds non-existing problems to trains and discomfort to passengers is not attractive for a railroad company either. This comes before even considering the H scenes.
If they want to get rid of their loli reputation, why license the 18+ version at all? The only plausible explanation for that would be that they decided to leave 18+ after signing the contract, in which case they run off from the contract they signed. Not living up to a contract they signed themselves is also a horrible way to attract other companies to work with. Regardless of how you explain this, Lose screwed up big time. It would likely have worked better for them to just accept the 18+ contents and then not sign contracts in the future if that is what they want.
8 hours ago, Nandemonai said:Actually, I'm not so convinced this is wrong. The Mythbusters did a very similar test in the Spy Car Escape episode: they tested smoke screens. Jamie rigged up a smoke grenade on the outside of the car, and exactly that happened: Smoke went through the ductwork and poured into the interior of the vehicle (which matches closely the scenario described in this scene).
I find it somewhat suspicious that a train car wouldn't have had this problem fixed at the prototype stage. It makes more sense if the car was originally not used with a steam locomotive.
Still about Hachiroku scene 3
SpoilerGood point, but not comparable. The air goes under the car and then it encounters the bottomless trunk. This creates turbulence, which apparently is strong enough to pull smoke forwards. The design of no roof combined with a windshield also caused a lot of turbulence. In other words the smoke merely revealed an already horrible design, one which can't be compared to the more block like design of a train as trains turbulence around trains is entirely different.
Also as you stated, if it had been a problem, it would have been discovered at the prototype stage. Odds are that history has provided countless examples of design flaws (like the Mythbusters one) where the first trial run reveals that it's not going to work. Something was changed, the new design worked and we will never hear about it. Not using it with steam wouldn't solve anything because it's not better to suck in diesel exhaust. Besides do a google image search for caboose and you will notice that almost all of them have a chimney of that design despite being designed to be pulled by steam. The only explanation for using a specific design as the standard design is because it works as intended.
The same goes for the locomotive. If the cab had been filled with smoke, the crew could suffocate and otherwise not work correctly. The fact that they built more than 600 of this design indicates that like other steam locomotives, this wasn't a problem, at least not outside tunnels.
In short smoke is added for plot and drama, but has little or nothing to do with reality.
This toxic attitude regarding translations needs to end.
in Visual Novel Talk
Posted
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.