Nandemonai

So it would seem .  I can't find the "delete post" button, so I guess I will leave my vile necromancy there for people to make fun of

ಠ_ಠ

It sounds strange because it's being translated by a Chinese company who doesn't actually understand English.

So it would seem .  I can't find the "delete post" button, so I guess I will leave my vile necromancy there for people to make fun of

You're responding to a 3.5 year old post.
It sounds like Pablo already has editing secured.

I was joking, obviously. I know full well that importing physical copies from Japan isn't exactly for everyone. But hey, if someone is really opposed to downloading a pirated copy, that's a fine solution. Also, I'm not some kind of anti-piracy crusader - I like buying and collecting things, but I do have tons of pirated stuff as well (the only thing that actually rubs me the wrong way is making up retarded justifications for piracy, but that's beside the point).
And yeah, I don't want to support MoeNovel eighter or even nineter. But that's not just about support - it's mainly about work. MeruP's work to be exact, since I have no idea how to make any patches. And since making and distributing a patch for the Japanese version will be the easiest, that's the priority. Whatever happens afterwards - I don't care. I won't be stopping anyone from making a Steam-patch or whatever - the TL will be publicly available, anyone can mess around with it (as long as they properly credit us and make it clear who's responsible for their Steam-patch, so that people won't be bugging us about troubleshooting stuff ).

Yeah, uploading a few MB to Mediafire is totally no different than seeding a few GB torrent.
Except that's not a patch. That's distributing a pre-patched pirated version of the VN, and if anyone from our team thought this is a good idea, I'd advise them to refrain from breathing for an hour or two. ^^
Hey, nobody tells anyone to torrent pirated stuff. They can always get this.
Do YOU know what you are talking about? You do realize that copypasting files form one official English release into another might be a tiny little bit different than modifying contents of an official English release with ~2GB of hacked bits of modified Japanese files? Not to mention that those two VNs have different engines and are integrated with Steam in a different way. That's comparing apples to... not even oranges, but potatoes.
That aside, like I said earlier - I just want to finish the patch for the JP version and move on, so that's the top priority. If you somehow convince MeruP to make a Steam patch - fine (Shaun is doing a great job in that regard XD). If you make one yourself - fine. I don't care.
As for TL-progress, 6/10 scripts from Amane's route are done - that's around 55% (H-scenes are slowing me down, because my tolerance for vanilla stuff is quite limited... ).

I was puzzled by that too, but after checking on the page again it is showing 35 reviews. Not sure what that was about. 

That's no great surprise, considering this was literally a popularity contest.  People have most recently read the stuff focusing on the new characters, so right now they'll (generally) be more popular than the original cast, who starred in a game released in 2009.

Err - no, not really.   Well, kinda sorta.  "They" are a bunch of different companies, all doing their own different thing.  Some of these companies avoid cutting out h-scenes wherever possible, but not all.  But then there are releases like Wild Romance, which didn't just censor the h-scenes, it also rewrote innocuous parts of the script (just look up the thread here about it).  And then there's If My Heart Had Wings, which took an h-game and cut out all the way down to the kissing scenes in a deliberate attempt to target a larger audience.  That the game featured a route where sex is unavoidable (the characters start out as sexfriends then it turns romantic) didn't matter to them at all.  They just made stuff up, and the result is apparently literally gibberish (as in parts of the script are plain and simple impossible to understand).
Pay attention to who releases a game.  MangaGamer has a good reputation.  Jast USA mostly has a good reputation, but it's been marred by a few regrettable incidents.  Sekai Project may or may not be releasing uncensored versions of everything they've announced; apparently not even they know for sure.  I am, however, fairly sure Sekai Project wants to release the adult versions.  Beyond the big three are other companies doing sketchy things.
At the end of the day, companies make their decisions not based on what the censorship will do to the work in question, but what it will do for their bottom line.  The temptation to go for the wide mass-market appeal by heavily censoring something has already worked at least one time.  Just check out IMHHW's sales on SteamSpy.

The troll is strong with this one, yes.  Post strong trolls, you will.  But for maximum effect, you can't just give a bad review to a good - I mean, popular game.  You want to make sure to insult people who like popular things.  Never mind that something is popular because lots of people like it, liking a popular game automatically means that you have no taste.  If you really wanna troll, you can't just rate Steins;Gate a 6.  You also have to post a condescending review like this:
[sarcasm]Steins;Gate huh more like Steins;Grate amirite folks? Haha, all you folks out there with good taste know what I'm talking about.  I'm just shocked at how many sheeple there are out there that like this lowest-common-denominator crap [/sarcasm]

The troll is strong with this one, yes.  Post strong trolls, you will.  But for maximum effect, you can't just give a bad review to a good - I mean, popular game.  You want to make sure to insult people who like popular things.  Never mind that something is popular because lots of people like it, liking a popular game automatically means that you have no taste.  If you really wanna troll, you can't just rate Steins;Gate a 6.  You also have to post a condescending review like this:
[sarcasm]Steins;Gate huh more like Steins;Grate amirite folks? Haha, all you folks out there with good taste know what I'm talking about.  I'm just shocked at how many sheeple there are out there that like this lowest-common-denominator crap [/sarcasm]

^ Basically what Mitch said.
In addition, remember this -- the lower you rate popular VNs the more elite you appear, boosting that dank weeb street cred. Easy on those 10's boy

That's because in moege, h-scenes are actually used for relationship development, often very lazily. Amid all the moans and squelches, you'll hear a sudden barrage of "I love you"s and then the protagonist has an emotional epiphany over a few lines, before the moans and squelches start up again. This may happen for both characters, often in the first h-scene of the route. They also may develop the dynamic of who's in control of the relationship here and that kind of thing. It's lazy because they often forgo relationship development outside the h-scenes. They use the sex as a crutch so they don't have to build up a romantic and/or emotional mood outside of sex and probably the confession scene or whatever. 
The problem is that when you remove h-scenes from games that use them as a crutch, they end up predictably falling apart. The routes have that empty feeling to them because the relationships feel underdeveloped. That's completely valid to criticise when it happens, too. This leads to people saying that sex scenes in general are necessary for proper relationship development, but on the contrary, I feel like stories that don't use sex as a crutch often have stronger relationship development overall. Himawari is a good, recent example of this, in my opinion. The all-ages version doesn't have the h-scenes, obviously, but it barely matters because the way the characters and relationships develop still feels fairly natural. They also left in anything important in the lead-up and aftermath of the sex scenes. Because indeed, it's often the stuff that leads to sex and happens as a result of sex that's far more important to relationships than the sex itself. Himawari was written with that in mind, is much better for it, and loses nothing when you remove the actual sex.
Going back to the original question posed, I do prefer to read the uncensored original version whenever possible. But I'm not gonna hand-wring over it if I can't. It's often just not that big of a deal.

The game isn't really a raising sim.  Those are highly repetitive games featuring a few events that are repeated over and over, in order to raise stats.  Littlewitch Romanesque eliminates the repetitive events in favor of a nice minigame, but more importantly, it is crammed full of story events.  Learning a new spell or completing a quest always has a unique event associated with it.  There are a lot of other unique events that pop up as the game goes on.  The main problem with raising sims is that outside of the core gameplay loop (picking a schedule and seeing the same few events over and over) there often aren't many unique events.  I definitely recommend the all-ages version of Littlewitch Romanesque, if you've got a problem with the artstyle.  (They're not technically underage at the time you sleep with them, but that really doesn't help very much.)
 
As for the OP, basically this is the way I think of it.  When you buy a game, you are sending a message:  do this some more.  I am not a very big proponent of censorship; I remember what things were like in the bad old days of Nintendo heavily bowdlerizing any and everything.  Of Playstation 1 RPGs being heavily altered to remove references to drinking and so on.  They sucked, and I'm not on board with them coming back.  I don't mind small alterations to games, but I do mind major changes.  Generally removing h-scenes qualifies as a major change, but it doesn't have to.  For example, Chou Dengeki Stryker is basically better off without the h-scenes.  The problem is that it's hard to tell whether I'll mind the censorship before I buy the game, so I tend to lean away from buying censored things.  The big exception to this is anything censored for legal reasons.  If the people releasing the game are worried about going to jail unless they change something, well, I still don't like it, but I understand.
Ultimately, there are no right or wrong answers here.  Some people try to make it a moral issue; I suppose it is, when you get down to it, but the problem is it's squarely within a grey zone.  The line can be drawn more or less anywhere you want to draw it.  Personally, I bought Aselia from Jast USA, and I don't regret it.  I wasn't happy the adult version wasn't brought over, but I understand, and I'm okay with what we got.  But I'd never consider buying If My Heart had Wings, or Wild Romance.  Other people don't have a problem with censorship at all.  They aren't wrong, they just don't have the same priorities.  Still others are vehemently opposed to any censorship whatsoever, to the point they think charging more for adult versions is wrong.  I think this is kind of silly, personally, but I could never prove it.
My advice for the OP is to decide on your own principles, whatever they are, and then research titles to make sure you don't buy any that are on the wrong side of them.  How much does censorship bother you?  No one else can answer that for you.

Arunaru and tulip goddess maria (the person translating Rance Quest) went official with MangaGamer, and MG partnered with Alicesoft and released 5D and 6.  There is zero chance of a fan translation for Quest getting released.  The only way it will be getting a translation is through that partnership.
I'm honestly quite baffled as to how you missed that.

The game isn't really a raising sim.  Those are highly repetitive games featuring a few events that are repeated over and over, in order to raise stats.  Littlewitch Romanesque eliminates the repetitive events in favor of a nice minigame, but more importantly, it is crammed full of story events.  Learning a new spell or completing a quest always has a unique event associated with it.  There are a lot of other unique events that pop up as the game goes on.  The main problem with raising sims is that outside of the core gameplay loop (picking a schedule and seeing the same few events over and over) there often aren't many unique events.  I definitely recommend the all-ages version of Littlewitch Romanesque, if you've got a problem with the artstyle.  (They're not technically underage at the time you sleep with them, but that really doesn't help very much.)
 
As for the OP, basically this is the way I think of it.  When you buy a game, you are sending a message:  do this some more.  I am not a very big proponent of censorship; I remember what things were like in the bad old days of Nintendo heavily bowdlerizing any and everything.  Of Playstation 1 RPGs being heavily altered to remove references to drinking and so on.  They sucked, and I'm not on board with them coming back.  I don't mind small alterations to games, but I do mind major changes.  Generally removing h-scenes qualifies as a major change, but it doesn't have to.  For example, Chou Dengeki Stryker is basically better off without the h-scenes.  The problem is that it's hard to tell whether I'll mind the censorship before I buy the game, so I tend to lean away from buying censored things.  The big exception to this is anything censored for legal reasons.  If the people releasing the game are worried about going to jail unless they change something, well, I still don't like it, but I understand.
Ultimately, there are no right or wrong answers here.  Some people try to make it a moral issue; I suppose it is, when you get down to it, but the problem is it's squarely within a grey zone.  The line can be drawn more or less anywhere you want to draw it.  Personally, I bought Aselia from Jast USA, and I don't regret it.  I wasn't happy the adult version wasn't brought over, but I understand, and I'm okay with what we got.  But I'd never consider buying If My Heart had Wings, or Wild Romance.  Other people don't have a problem with censorship at all.  They aren't wrong, they just don't have the same priorities.  Still others are vehemently opposed to any censorship whatsoever, to the point they think charging more for adult versions is wrong.  I think this is kind of silly, personally, but I could never prove it.
My advice for the OP is to decide on your own principles, whatever they are, and then research titles to make sure you don't buy any that are on the wrong side of them.  How much does censorship bother you?  No one else can answer that for you.

Not sure why there haven't been any updates.  I can't say that I'm the person who should decide when those should get issued, or what they should say.  But I will say this: it has not been dropped.

Alright, I see it's been basically six weeks since the last update.  That's no good.  No additional progress to report; school started back up again for my editor, and he's been crazy swamped.  Don't worry, The Winds of Winter is still coming guys, I swear!

They're still working on Kuroinu.  Seems like it's going to take them awhile too, since if I recall what they're working on right now is just the first part or something?  I forget, it's been a while.

I wouldn't recommend it, all you'd end up doing is creating some bad habits for yourself and relying on translation that isn't even guaranteed to be correct, let alone read good. You should make your goal clear - do you want to read VNs in Japanese, or do you want to translate them (in your head or with tools) and read them in English? Do you want to learn the language, or do you just want to somewhat understand it enough to make sense of it through different means?
If you're indeed trying to learn the language, machine translation should be out of the question, even if it might seem tempting and easy. When put to good use, the previously mentioned Mecab/JParser is a much more reliable and flexible tool. It will help you with the words you don't know, but it should also allow you to eventually think about the sentences in Japanese, instead of just going the extra unnecessary step and translating everything in your head. It will take a long time and it certainly will take more effort than relying on machine TL, but it's way more worth it in the long run if you're at all serious about learning Japanese in the first place. Once you get the vocab, you can just skim the text as is, even if you don't know a word here and there - relying on machine TL even at such a late stage would just set you back.
Also just quickly on the topic of internet dictionaries, the Weblio ja-en dictionary is a great resource that's not often mentioned, perhaps for it being primarily a Japanese page. Despite that, it will often give you much more specific and natural results- it might be more useful for translation than anything else, but it is a reat reference point if you can't find something in jisho/tangorin, or the translation there just isn't satisfactory.

Use something like jisho.org instead.  You can put in a whole line and it will make highly accurate guesses as to what all the kanji romanize to.  (Just be sure you know what's a proper name, it can't recognize those at all.)  Definitely don't even try Google Translate, it doesn't do that thing anymore that it used to do where it would highlight part of the source sentence when you hover over parts of the translation anymore (I guess cause that's not how it works anymore).

Funbag Fantasy, I believe, ranked in previous years under its original name, Kyonyuu Fantasy.  That might have been one of the reasons that they licensed it in the first place.  I'm glad to see it did well; it's always good to see anticipated demand (from a survey like this) translate into real success.  That doesn't always happen.  Sometimes they ask you to build it, and you do, and then they don't come.
Also, nobody seems to have commented on the very suspicious "typo": dominant (with interior italics in the original).  "nan" must be some kind of clue.  I don't see anything on the results list that would have the acronym NAN.  Any well known games with that abbreviation?
Why can't they just post little slivers of the covers of unannounced games?  That way we can find out what their plans are before they announce them.  I foresee no way this could backfire.

I know MangaGamer probably loves the fact that there are no voices. Voices increase the cost of licensing games by an absurd amount.

Funbag Fantasy, I believe, ranked in previous years under its original name, Kyonyuu Fantasy.  That might have been one of the reasons that they licensed it in the first place.  I'm glad to see it did well; it's always good to see anticipated demand (from a survey like this) translate into real success.  That doesn't always happen.  Sometimes they ask you to build it, and you do, and then they don't come.
Also, nobody seems to have commented on the very suspicious "typo": dominant (with interior italics in the original).  "nan" must be some kind of clue.  I don't see anything on the results list that would have the acronym NAN.  Any well known games with that abbreviation?
Why can't they just post little slivers of the covers of unannounced games?  That way we can find out what their plans are before they announce them.  I foresee no way this could backfire.