Infernoplex

VNs had, still have, and will have a niche community for all time to come. They are never gonna be as popular as other games or other mediums of entertainment. No matter where or when. I don't think they are even popular that much in Japan nowadays, much less to speak of other countries.

It bombed xD

Yeah, they have to keep it all-ages and innocent because of payment processors, I guess.

You mean mine? It's from Koirizo. Oh, wait, sorry. You meant the banner pic. That one is from this VN.

Disregard "non-native English speakers shouldn't be editors" comment. While it's true that it's preferable for an editor to be native in the language they're editing text for, it's definitely not an absolute necessity. You can be good at editing even if you are not a native... as long as your English doesn't completely suck.

No one ever made any in-depth guides on editing visual novels. It's so niche that even those who have some decent skills editing them didn't have time/will to write up any in-depth guides. However, that's not to say there aren't any. You can find some old editing... I'd like to call them "tips"... on this very forum. You can find these in Darbury's blog and Fred's blog. Not sure who else had them, but there's probably a couple of more that I may have forgotten. Other than that, you may want to look into what I like to call "generic editing guides", not specifically aimed at editing Japanese media. There's a couple of books on this matter that you can find easily on Google. Look for tips on good writing and such. That said, the most important editing guide that nobody can really offer you is... to be a creative writer. Actually, most editors aren't creative. You may get away with being a "shit editor" in this scene, but if you really want to become a good one, you need to practice a lot of writing and having a general idea at what good prose sounds like. And to achieve this... you need to read a lot. Preferably works with stellar writing (up to the point of real literature). But if you want to be just another editor, then that's easy. Anyone can join this scene as an editor, based on what I observed. Even as a pro. Yes, the barrier is that low. I guess you just need to know English well enough, and they'll hire you. Another thing you may want to look up for is feedback. Edit something and then ask people around (both pro and amateur) what do they think of it. If they are any helpful, they'll let you know where you screwed up or where they think you can improve, etc. etc. Just collect all these tips for a while, and you'll get the "editing guide for VNs" that you are looking for. For example, sometimes you'll get feedback from TLers themselves on what they think is a good editor. Like, this one for example, written by Quof. The only real way to learn editing is to practice it and ask for feedback. I don't really know any other way. Not like anyone has ever written a very detailed guide on editing for VNs. So you just gotta make do with what's available.

...Y-You didn't have to remind me in such a bold way

@Dreamysyu - Yeah, I've seen pics of issues like these in Hapymaher popping around. I think there's some of it on Fred's twitter account too. It's a small sample, but yeah, it does indeed look like MG didn't do a great job on Hapymaher, which is a shame. But... even with all of this said, I'm not for raising pitchforks at MG. The truth is - this industry is driven by amateur freelancers for the most part. And of course, from time to time, some lower quality TLers/editors slip in and do a poorer quality work. It happens to all loc companies. So yeah, I was unfair to Sekai earlier. All these companies are hiring from the same pool of freelancers. The quality of a localization at the end mostly depends on who got to work on the said titles. And in this very amateur-driven industry, I guess we shouldn't expect absolute perfections from any localized titles. Granted, some localizations turn out worse than the others, but that's the kind of industry this is. As long as it's not a complete machine translation, I won't complain. Maybe I am giving these companies too much slack, but I am not really sure if there's a good solution to fix this problem.

Fred, I don't have insight on people that Sekai is hiring like you do. So of course I'd get worried, not knowing who's working on a great title such as Amatsutsumi. But if you vouch for their skills, then I guess I have nothing to worry about. I wish them good luck ^^ As for Hapymaher... never read it myself, but I didn't hear many people complaining about its translation (to my knowledge, only you and Virgin said it was bad). Between Sekai and MG, I am more inclinied to trust MG on quality translations even though MG can also screw up a translation sometimes, and maybe Hapymaher falls into that category. I heard Magical Marriage Lunatics was a bad translation... but I don't often hear about MG doing a shoddy work (nowadays at least). For Sekai, on the other hand, I often hear complaints about censorship, bad/lazy translations, etc. Heck, if I recall correctly, you also criticized them pretty hard for their work on Hoshizora no Memoria. Anyway, this is all just hear-say. I never really read any work by them so far. It's unfair of me to judge them based on just what I heard about their translations, so I'll give you a benefit of the doubt that they may have gotten better lately and that I can trust them to do a better job on localization. However it turns out, I am still hype for more Purple Soft VNs localization

I was never disappointed by any of AX convention announcements so far. Maybe because I am a type of reader who enjoys reading everything (except BL and Bara I guess). From every publisher, I have at least one title to get hyped about. Amatsutsumi is definitely the biggest announcement from Sekai. And they somehow got Feng (although they didn't pick up the titles I want from them). I'd argue that Eiyuu Senki Gold is a fine announcement from JAST (I didn't play the first one yet, but I intend to play it at some point). MG announcing more Waffle nukige is great, and I am quite hype about Mugen Renkan (darkge, give me more quality darkgeee!!!). And Sol Press didn't disappoint me either. They got 3 Windmill titles. All medium to long sized. I don't know much about the titles themselves, but I don't think they are bad at all. In short, I am not disappointed at all.

I bet the deadlines for their contractors are tight. TOO TIGHT. I don't doubt for a moment they really aim to meet these release dates, but I think SolP may be having some financial difficulties if they really intend to pump out 4-5 big titles in a span of just a couple of months. Also... not sure they can sell all of them that well that way. The VN market didn't suddenly grow bigger to support so many VN releases in such a short time period. At least I don't think it did. I am kinda worried actually. If JAST, SolP, MG, NekoNyan, and Sekai (Maybe? They said Majokoi should be out soon) all intend to pump out a bunch of titles just in the next 4 to 5 months, I can't see them making much money back on their investments. It's like 10 or more titles are coming out, and I am not sure VNs are selling that great to support so many releases at once. They are just gonna cannibalize each other, sale-wise.

Ah, true. That reminds of Hiqo Soft. As soon as they are on their deathbed, they give a couple of their titles for localization.

Shogun? xD I think that'd be pretty surprising actually Unless you meant Denpasoft, ahahaha Anyway... Amatsutsumi and now feng got snatched by Sekai. Damn. Can they stop picking up the good stuff, pleaseeeeeeeeee...

Good luck with the project. But as I said... it needs a retranslation. Editing can't save it. At least not much. You can maybe hide some of its MTL-ness, but the core work is still not representative of the original writing in Japanese.

Steins;Gate on Steam is not the JAST's version (and it's not sold by JAST). Also... you forgot Eiyuu Senki on Steam, and Seinarukana. There could be more I forgot myself.