Infernoplex

The problem with thinking 'prose' is all about muh chuunige or whatever is that much of comedy is just as dependent on good unmetered writing as whatever the so-called prose nerds like. Would Grisaia's common route, which could well have continued into moe style routes rather than what it actually does with a few tweaks, really have been close to as good with a lame translation? Good prose doesn't have to mean big words or descriptions tinted dangerously close to the violet end of the spectrum either. Nailing character voice, which seems to me like something you'd want in a character-focused moege to make the girls feel alive, is entirely a prose problem, and indeed a translation quality problem.

Speaking of weight and measurement systems, a VN I used to work on had one of those lines where I had to make a choice regarding metric/imperial system. Let's just say I am too European to start using "feets" instead of "meters". I hope my American friends will be able to forgive me, for I cannot imagine in my mind what 26.2467 feets stands for, but I sure as hell can imagine how long 8 meters is.
Actually, it was not one but a couple of lines. And there was also a line where I had to choose the paper format, LOL. I forgot what it was about, but I recall finding out that the standard paper format size in USA is not the same as everywhere else in the world, including Japan. I think I just left all units and sizes as they were in the Japanese script xD

Ever17's loc is actually the most amusing for using american units; it loses the different depths of the park differing by arc numbers. I think I caught it anyway using either the voiced line or dividing the feet by 3 or whatever, but it was still pretty funny. I wonder if 17 yards would've made sense?

I suddenly remembered our chat on Discord.
And yeah, all your points stand true. Knowing all these things that I've come to realize after following this scene for so long, I dare not to publicly speak ill of any VN translation's quality nowadays, whether it be official or fanTL. The situation has really gone for the worse. It saddens me to say that most English-only VN readers will never understand what it looks like to be the one having to work on this stuff. The stuff you said are things only someone who has worked on visual novel translations can truly understand. All the time, I see VN fans complaining about the minorest of shit that they don't like in some translation works out there (from honorifics inclusion to whether there's too much swearing used in the translation and other types of silly shit), not realizing how difficult it really is to fulfill all of their selfish demands.
The people they are looking for to do those "proper translations"... those people don't work on visual novels. I'd really like it if they could stop deluding themselves into expecting amazing translation works done by anyone who's working on VNs nowadays. Only hardcore VN fans and hobbyist type of freelancers work on VNs nowadays. Nobody who has any semblance of self-respect won't come anywhere near VNs. That word you just used in your post... "ungrateful"... that's exactly how I would describe working on VN translations. Ultimately UNGRATEFUL.

Speaking of weight and measurement systems, a VN I used to work on had one of those lines where I had to make a choice regarding metric/imperial system. Let's just say I am too European to start using "feets" instead of "meters". I hope my American friends will be able to forgive me, for I cannot imagine in my mind what 26.2467 feets stands for, but I sure as hell can imagine how long 8 meters is.
Actually, it was not one but a couple of lines. And there was also a line where I had to choose the paper format, LOL. I forgot what it was about, but I recall finding out that the standard paper format size in USA is not the same as everywhere else in the world, including Japan. I think I just left all units and sizes as they were in the Japanese script xD

The problem is that you can't actually get a lot of good criticism. Usually it's 99% vague autistic screeching. With that said I'd love for that autist anon on 4chan to go through one of my translations in case I let some mistranslations slip through, I can just ignore whatever things I don't care about in his evaluation. That's only the reading-the-japanese side of translation though which is not that big of a part of it. It is incredibly rare to get critique on an actually useful level, and it's certainly not going to come from the fans who actually get upset about most translations.

Maybe he meant that he refuses to change FROM metric while translating (which is used in originals, as Japan uses it)?
EDIT:
Looks like it
BTW It seems that my memory of Fureraba wasn't as unreliable as I was afraid

Unfortunately, probably because of aforementioned short deadlines and similar reasons, it doesn't work as it should - from the SolPress titles I've played so far (Sakura Sakura and Hitotsuba), it was always obvious which version was the "true" one, as the other one had various hiccups. Probably because nobody had the time and money to retranslate it using different style that would suit the selected option the best - there were just quick replacement-like edits, and IMO they were not enough.

I flatly refuse to CHANGE TO IMPERIAL is what I mean. Haha.

Ungrateful was with respect to fan translations. If you pay for something you have the right to get what you paid for, but the problem is there are so few translators they get worked too hard with too short a deadline and in that scenario it's not their fault if quality drops off. Solpress does indeed have the honorific toggle option - which means we have to do even more translation for the same (very low) fee by the way. I'd love to translate in English instead of American, but that's not up to me. As for changing units, I flatly refuse to do that.

Oh, it most definitely was. I thought I even had a screenshot of it, but apparently not.
At any rate, it's the sort of think Kyousuke might say, occasionally. Most characters wouldn't say that and don't.
BONUS:
 

VNs were a mistake.

See, that's exactly what I was talking about. I can already tell that based on what you said here, you definitely aren't gonna be a fan of either Nukitashi or, for that matter, the VN that's coming out in just a couple of days, Sankaku Renai. I can already tell you right now that both of these are gonna be full of "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and maybe some "low class american idiots swearing" (not sure about the third one, but with TBAC being the main TL for both Fureraba and Sankaku Renai, it's quite possible he may have used that style of swearing again... that is, if he considered it appropriate for the VN in question). That's just how comedy VNs work. I don't know how else you could properly localize these. They are pretty much dumb in Japanese, and so I don't see any problem with them sounding dumb in English too (and hence one of the major reasons I avoid moege with accent on comedy like a plague - they are a huge pain in the ass to work on, and whatever you do, someone's always bound to consider your comedy writing "idiotic").
Also, that last piece of advice I marked in your comment... Man, do you even realize what "make it as widely acceptable as possible" even means? I hear that all the time and I am really starting to believe you people have no idea how many disagreements among everyone on this there are. "Widely acceptable" implies that whoever's working on VN translations should go out and always measure how many people want translations to be in one or the other style (I've seen some folks trying to measure this by doing surveys) and then act according to the results. Do you realize how unfeasible doing this all the time really is? First of all, even the fans themselves don't really know what they want. I see so many disagreements between people who want honorifics/no honorifics, who want liberal/non-liberal translations, who want dumb memes/no dumb memes, who want masterful prose writing (LOL at this one!)/no masterful prose necessary... etc, etc. How's one to decide on what to do?! Who's able to satisfy all these contradictory demands?! I don't know anyone who has ever seriously tried to measure what the VN fans want, and it's probably for a good reason. Even if they could, there's just no way you would be able to satisfy everyone, or for that matter "as widely acceptable as possible" size of community. "As widely acceptable" is just a myth. You don't know what's really "widely acceptable" as you're often gonna see complaints from a sizeable portion of community no matter what you do. There's just no way to accurately measure this, especially if you consider the new fans who might be coming in and who aren't necessarily gonna be weebs.
And that's one of the major reasons why I believe translators like Arunaru and his ilk do what they do. They don't bother with "as widely as acceptable as possible". There's no such thing to begin with. So... what's a TLer gonna do then? Simple. They judge according to what sounds good to them and how they imagine the VN should read like. This sort of bias in translation... you get it all the fucking time, no matter who's at the helm doing the translation. I can tell you that every TLer out there has his own fucking way of translating something, and that's why no 2 translations are ever the same. No, I don't approve of translators who overlocalize and invent up silly shit just for the sake of novelty (no, I definitely don't approve of random Spanish lines that feel forced and out of the setting at hand), but that's just how things in this industry go. I don't let my "preference on style" cloud my judgement. Otherwise, I'd have to start despising the so-called "rewriting" that so many translators do. In fact, all the translations that we read are in fact nothing more than re-imagining of the Japanese works they are based on. Even the most literal translation you could dig out is still a re-imagining of the original work at hand (just remember that Japanese doesn't really have accurate English equivalents for many of its words and expressions and you'll understand what I mean by this).
So you can recognize the inclusion/exclusion of honorifics as a style choice, but not "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and "low class american swearing"?
Tell me, have you read anything in pure Japanese so far? And if yes, imagine you were a TL. How would you translate this commonly used simple phrase from Japanese "よろしくおねがいします"? I'll tell you... if you have any sanity as a translator, you won't ever TL it as "Please treat me well.", no matter the context (I've yet to see a crazy-enough TLer who would do that). Basically, what all TLers do here is, they "rewrite" it every time they see it, depending on the scene, character, tone, etc. You people have to understand that translation work is more art than science. What you refer to as "rewriting the entire fucking thing" is exactly how all translations in a nutshell are. They are essentially someone's rewriting (I called it "reimagining" earlier in my post) of the VN at hand. Unless you're reading VNs in Japanese, you are always gonna be reading someone's reimagination of the VN based of its original. And while we can criticize a TLer's accuracy of translation, his creativity to carry over the Japanese lines, etc, etc. I would never go and say that TLers are "void of rationality and critical thinking" for just being liberal with their reimagination of the work at hand. In fact, I think totally opposite here. If they didn't do this type of stuff, then I'd question their sanity and rationality.
I am in no way endorsing what NekoNyan did with Fureraba. I didn't even read it myself to judge their work yet. That said... if the biggest complaint one can make about a translation work is "swearing", then I don't really believe that translation was as bad as some are making it out to be. We have far, far bigger problems with translations nowadays. Personally, I am more pissed off about poor grammar, typos, and overall QC issues plaguing so many of official releases coming out nowadays. I consider that to be real shoddy work and that's what I am more worried about than some localization choice. Also... "people at large complain about this" - how many people? Did you measure? I am asking you this because I tend to see a lot of pro and anti-sentiments regarding this. I've seen a lot of praise from some of the more casual VN readers, loving Fureraba's localization. And then there are more weeb-oriented fans who absolutely abhor the localization of Fureraba. So which one is the right way? The casuals? The weebs? How do you satisfy all of these people at once? Is it even doable? No, I definitely don't think so.
 

Oh, God... oh GOD!!!
They... oh my... now that's indeed something that would make me go WTF if I see it in a translation. I definitely need to check out Fureraba when I get the time.

Triggered. Note the 'What you want.'

I suddenly remembered our chat on Discord.
And yeah, all your points stand true. Knowing all these things that I've come to realize after following this scene for so long, I dare not to publicly speak ill of any VN translation's quality nowadays, whether it be official or fanTL. The situation has really gone for the worse. It saddens me to say that most English-only VN readers will never understand what it looks like to be the one having to work on this stuff. The stuff you said are things only someone who has worked on visual novel translations can truly understand. All the time, I see VN fans complaining about the minorest of shit that they don't like in some translation works out there (from honorifics inclusion to whether there's too much swearing used in the translation and other types of silly shit), not realizing how difficult it really is to fulfill all of their selfish demands.
The people they are looking for to do those "proper translations"... those people don't work on visual novels. I'd really like it if they could stop deluding themselves into expecting amazing translation works done by anyone who's working on VNs nowadays. Only hardcore VN fans and hobbyist type of freelancers work on VNs nowadays. Nobody who has any semblance of self-respect won't come anywhere near VNs. That word you just used in your post... "ungrateful"... that's exactly how I would describe working on VN translations. Ultimately UNGRATEFUL.

Just listen to what majority of fans want and you have a ttanslation where half of the words are in romaji

Yeah, just the other day I was saying the same thing to someone in private chat. You won't get Jay Rubin to work on 2D porn waifu games, LOL xD
That's true. That's why I said that we are forced to trust localization companies' choices for editors. I am not expecting TLers to fight with editors regarding stylistic choices. In fan-translations - yeah, we can fight all we want amongst ourselves. But in pro scene, it's just not gonna happen. Actually, I think in many of these professional localizations, editor and TLer never get to meet each other xD

Fair point. I may be downplaying the issue a bit, but it's generally true that no translation style can ever fulfill everyone's expecations at the same time. For some, the swearing and overlocalizing can indeed make a VN unplayable, depending on the person. On that same note... there are those of us who can read pure garbled messes produced by machine translation too. I'll never understand why they can enjoy reading VNs like that. That type of people falls into the "who approve of literally anything" category, and yes, I'd consider those people dangerous for the industry, especially so if they are even willing to pay for the experience of reading a machine translated work. I am not saying VN translations shouldn't be criticized. That wasn't the point of my post earlier. All I am saying is that some things are allowed when you're localizing a Japanese work. Not everyone has to necessarily like the style someone picked up for the translation of something. There are certain localization choices I despise in localized works too, but I don't let that cloud my judgement of the overall quality of the translation. That's the point I was trying to make earlier. It's perfectly fine, and in fact, very encouraged to criticize translations. On that note... yeah, I agree that some people who work in this industry tend to be rather unwelcoming to criticism. I'll give you that. That's true, and I don't approve of such behaviour. I think every translation work should be judged on its own merits.
It slipped my mind earlier, but yeah, sometimes it's the editor who changes the style of the script. That's one of the problems I am aware of. Usually, I'd prefer if the TLer checked the changes done by the editor and approved of them, but... in the pro scene, that seems to not be the case. Or at least, not often. Most of the time, the TLer just finishes the translation and moves on to other things, while the editor is left over with the script and does whatever he wants with it. So yeah... that's kind of a blind spot. I am not a fan of that, but it's just how things go in this industry. That said, the stuff I talked about regarding the style of translations still stand. If the editor has the final say, then we just have to trust his judgement on style. Speaking of it... the situation with editors is even worse than with TLs in this industry. Ugh, not really in the mood to talk about that xD But yeah, if the editor decided to go with overswearing in Fureraba, then we can't really blame TBAC for it. Actually, I don't want to assign blame to anyone. I'll still consider that a style choice, made by the editor instead of the TLer. Well, you say you found reading it "quite funny". I guess the editor made the right call in your opinion then? Fureraba is supposed to be funny and dumb from what I know.
This is not really true. Even on this very forum, I've seen lots of criticism directed toward fantranslations. We even have people discouraging fanTLs here (and I can kinda share that sentiment sometimes, depending on who's doing the fanTL). You may have not experienced it with To Heart 2, but some other translators did get bashed pretty hard (and I approve of criticising translations when it's for good reasons, as I've said earlier in the post). I don't really know about the To Heart 2's case, as I've never read it, but I did hear from some random sources where I hang out that the VN is "boring". Some even attributed it to the translation quality, but as I said, I didn't read it and I don't really have an opinion to share on it. Generally, I'm fine with most things in translations (you may remember what I voted for as my bare minimum in that translation quality poll you made here), as long as it's not pure machine TL. I can tell when a translation is lacking in quality, but I certainly don't have any high standards or requirements. And I steer clear from bashing any work done by anyone, be it a pro or fan. I do criticize translations, but I don't engage in flaming like I've seen some folks who do that.

I suddenly remembered our chat on Discord.
And yeah, all your points stand true. Knowing all these things that I've come to realize after following this scene for so long, I dare not to publicly speak ill of any VN translation's quality nowadays, whether it be official or fanTL. The situation has really gone for the worse. It saddens me to say that most English-only VN readers will never understand what it looks like to be the one having to work on this stuff. The stuff you said are things only someone who has worked on visual novel translations can truly understand. All the time, I see VN fans complaining about the minorest of shit that they don't like in some translation works out there (from honorifics inclusion to whether there's too much swearing used in the translation and other types of silly shit), not realizing how difficult it really is to fulfill all of their selfish demands.
The people they are looking for to do those "proper translations"... those people don't work on visual novels. I'd really like it if they could stop deluding themselves into expecting amazing translation works done by anyone who's working on VNs nowadays. Only hardcore VN fans and hobbyist type of freelancers work on VNs nowadays. Nobody who has any semblance of self-respect won't come anywhere near VNs. That word you just used in your post... "ungrateful"... that's exactly how I would describe working on VN translations. Ultimately UNGRATEFUL.

That's true, and I find the posts difficult to read and cringe when I see them. Sure if a translation is an edited MTL or doesn't remotely resemble the original text then even for free you shouldn't be happy to get that, but outside of that... the debate shall continue forever on that front. Even the best pros make mistakes is all I can say (and I don't consider myself one of the best pros.) I understand how the armchair experts that have excellent Japanese skills feel when they see a bad translation, but just remember who it was that put the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of their own time in for free for many people to enjoy some rendition of the original art form. The pool is very shallow to draw upon so you're not going to get translators that translate Murakami's works translating 2D porn for either free, or a few thousand measly sales at best.

See, that's exactly what I was talking about. I can already tell that based on what you said here, you definitely aren't gonna be a fan of either Nukitashi or, for that matter, the VN that's coming out in just a couple of days, Sankaku Renai. I can already tell you right now that both of these are gonna be full of "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and maybe some "low class american idiots swearing" (not sure about the third one, but with TBAC being the main TL for both Fureraba and Sankaku Renai, it's quite possible he may have used that style of swearing again... that is, if he considered it appropriate for the VN in question). That's just how comedy VNs work. I don't know how else you could properly localize these. They are pretty much dumb in Japanese, and so I don't see any problem with them sounding dumb in English too (and hence one of the major reasons I avoid moege with accent on comedy like a plague - they are a huge pain in the ass to work on, and whatever you do, someone's always bound to consider your comedy writing "idiotic").
Also, that last piece of advice I marked in your comment... Man, do you even realize what "make it as widely acceptable as possible" even means? I hear that all the time and I am really starting to believe you people have no idea how many disagreements among everyone on this there are. "Widely acceptable" implies that whoever's working on VN translations should go out and always measure how many people want translations to be in one or the other style (I've seen some folks trying to measure this by doing surveys) and then act according to the results. Do you realize how unfeasible doing this all the time really is? First of all, even the fans themselves don't really know what they want. I see so many disagreements between people who want honorifics/no honorifics, who want liberal/non-liberal translations, who want dumb memes/no dumb memes, who want masterful prose writing (LOL at this one!)/no masterful prose necessary... etc, etc. How's one to decide on what to do?! Who's able to satisfy all these contradictory demands?! I don't know anyone who has ever seriously tried to measure what the VN fans want, and it's probably for a good reason. Even if they could, there's just no way you would be able to satisfy everyone, or for that matter "as widely acceptable as possible" size of community. "As widely acceptable" is just a myth. You don't know what's really "widely acceptable" as you're often gonna see complaints from a sizeable portion of community no matter what you do. There's just no way to accurately measure this, especially if you consider the new fans who might be coming in and who aren't necessarily gonna be weebs.
And that's one of the major reasons why I believe translators like Arunaru and his ilk do what they do. They don't bother with "as widely as acceptable as possible". There's no such thing to begin with. So... what's a TLer gonna do then? Simple. They judge according to what sounds good to them and how they imagine the VN should read like. This sort of bias in translation... you get it all the fucking time, no matter who's at the helm doing the translation. I can tell you that every TLer out there has his own fucking way of translating something, and that's why no 2 translations are ever the same. No, I don't approve of translators who overlocalize and invent up silly shit just for the sake of novelty (no, I definitely don't approve of random Spanish lines that feel forced and out of the setting at hand), but that's just how things in this industry go. I don't let my "preference on style" cloud my judgement. Otherwise, I'd have to start despising the so-called "rewriting" that so many translators do. In fact, all the translations that we read are in fact nothing more than re-imagining of the Japanese works they are based on. Even the most literal translation you could dig out is still a re-imagining of the original work at hand (just remember that Japanese doesn't really have accurate English equivalents for many of its words and expressions and you'll understand what I mean by this).
So you can recognize the inclusion/exclusion of honorifics as a style choice, but not "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and "low class american swearing"?
Tell me, have you read anything in pure Japanese so far? And if yes, imagine you were a TL. How would you translate this commonly used simple phrase from Japanese "よろしくおねがいします"? I'll tell you... if you have any sanity as a translator, you won't ever TL it as "Please treat me well.", no matter the context (I've yet to see a crazy-enough TLer who would do that). Basically, what all TLers do here is, they "rewrite" it every time they see it, depending on the scene, character, tone, etc. You people have to understand that translation work is more art than science. What you refer to as "rewriting the entire fucking thing" is exactly how all translations in a nutshell are. They are essentially someone's rewriting (I called it "reimagining" earlier in my post) of the VN at hand. Unless you're reading VNs in Japanese, you are always gonna be reading someone's reimagination of the VN based of its original. And while we can criticize a TLer's accuracy of translation, his creativity to carry over the Japanese lines, etc, etc. I would never go and say that TLers are "void of rationality and critical thinking" for just being liberal with their reimagination of the work at hand. In fact, I think totally opposite here. If they didn't do this type of stuff, then I'd question their sanity and rationality.
I am in no way endorsing what NekoNyan did with Fureraba. I didn't even read it myself to judge their work yet. That said... if the biggest complaint one can make about a translation work is "swearing", then I don't really believe that translation was as bad as some are making it out to be. We have far, far bigger problems with translations nowadays. Personally, I am more pissed off about poor grammar, typos, and overall QC issues plaguing so many of official releases coming out nowadays. I consider that to be real shoddy work and that's what I am more worried about than some localization choice. Also... "people at large complain about this" - how many people? Did you measure? I am asking you this because I tend to see a lot of pro and anti-sentiments regarding this. I've seen a lot of praise from some of the more casual VN readers, loving Fureraba's localization. And then there are more weeb-oriented fans who absolutely abhor the localization of Fureraba. So which one is the right way? The casuals? The weebs? How do you satisfy all of these people at once? Is it even doable? No, I definitely don't think so.
 

Just goes to show how questionable stylistic choices can destroy an otherwise acceptably accurate translation for a considerable chunk of the audience. Readers are not robots constantly analyzing the accuracy percent, after all, they just want to enjoy the stuff they read, and original obnoxious "style" of the translator can hamper that enjoyment a lot more than actual mistakes in the translation which they possibly wouldn't even notice without a TLC. Though, at the same time people occasionally complain about the stuff they wouldn't like in the japanese version either and project those dislikes on the translation so what do I know? The line is thin and the end is not in sight.
Any work in a creative field is generally a thankless job so when you obtain the power to implement questionable ideas you personally like, it's easy to forget that you ultimately do this work for the people to enjoy.

See, that's exactly what I was talking about. I can already tell that based on what you said here, you definitely aren't gonna be a fan of either Nukitashi or, for that matter, the VN that's coming out in just a couple of days, Sankaku Renai. I can already tell you right now that both of these are gonna be full of "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and maybe some "low class american idiots swearing" (not sure about the third one, but with TBAC being the main TL for both Fureraba and Sankaku Renai, it's quite possible he may have used that style of swearing again... that is, if he considered it appropriate for the VN in question). That's just how comedy VNs work. I don't know how else you could properly localize these. They are pretty much dumb in Japanese, and so I don't see any problem with them sounding dumb in English too (and hence one of the major reasons I avoid moege with accent on comedy like a plague - they are a huge pain in the ass to work on, and whatever you do, someone's always bound to consider your comedy writing "idiotic").
Also, that last piece of advice I marked in your comment... Man, do you even realize what "make it as widely acceptable as possible" even means? I hear that all the time and I am really starting to believe you people have no idea how many disagreements among everyone on this there are. "Widely acceptable" implies that whoever's working on VN translations should go out and always measure how many people want translations to be in one or the other style (I've seen some folks trying to measure this by doing surveys) and then act according to the results. Do you realize how unfeasible doing this all the time really is? First of all, even the fans themselves don't really know what they want. I see so many disagreements between people who want honorifics/no honorifics, who want liberal/non-liberal translations, who want dumb memes/no dumb memes, who want masterful prose writing (LOL at this one!)/no masterful prose necessary... etc, etc. How's one to decide on what to do?! Who's able to satisfy all these contradictory demands?! I don't know anyone who has ever seriously tried to measure what the VN fans want, and it's probably for a good reason. Even if they could, there's just no way you would be able to satisfy everyone, or for that matter "as widely acceptable as possible" size of community. "As widely acceptable" is just a myth. You don't know what's really "widely acceptable" as you're often gonna see complaints from a sizeable portion of community no matter what you do. There's just no way to accurately measure this, especially if you consider the new fans who might be coming in and who aren't necessarily gonna be weebs.
And that's one of the major reasons why I believe translators like Arunaru and his ilk do what they do. They don't bother with "as widely as acceptable as possible". There's no such thing to begin with. So... what's a TLer gonna do then? Simple. They judge according to what sounds good to them and how they imagine the VN should read like. This sort of bias in translation... you get it all the fucking time, no matter who's at the helm doing the translation. I can tell you that every TLer out there has his own fucking way of translating something, and that's why no 2 translations are ever the same. No, I don't approve of translators who overlocalize and invent up silly shit just for the sake of novelty (no, I definitely don't approve of random Spanish lines that feel forced and out of the setting at hand), but that's just how things in this industry go. I don't let my "preference on style" cloud my judgement. Otherwise, I'd have to start despising the so-called "rewriting" that so many translators do. In fact, all the translations that we read are in fact nothing more than re-imagining of the Japanese works they are based on. Even the most literal translation you could dig out is still a re-imagining of the original work at hand (just remember that Japanese doesn't really have accurate English equivalents for many of its words and expressions and you'll understand what I mean by this).
So you can recognize the inclusion/exclusion of honorifics as a style choice, but not "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and "low class american swearing"?
Tell me, have you read anything in pure Japanese so far? And if yes, imagine you were a TL. How would you translate this commonly used simple phrase from Japanese "よろしくおねがいします"? I'll tell you... if you have any sanity as a translator, you won't ever TL it as "Please treat me well.", no matter the context (I've yet to see a crazy-enough TLer who would do that). Basically, what all TLers do here is, they "rewrite" it every time they see it, depending on the scene, character, tone, etc. You people have to understand that translation work is more art than science. What you refer to as "rewriting the entire fucking thing" is exactly how all translations in a nutshell are. They are essentially someone's rewriting (I called it "reimagining" earlier in my post) of the VN at hand. Unless you're reading VNs in Japanese, you are always gonna be reading someone's reimagination of the VN based of its original. And while we can criticize a TLer's accuracy of translation, his creativity to carry over the Japanese lines, etc, etc. I would never go and say that TLers are "void of rationality and critical thinking" for just being liberal with their reimagination of the work at hand. In fact, I think totally opposite here. If they didn't do this type of stuff, then I'd question their sanity and rationality.
I am in no way endorsing what NekoNyan did with Fureraba. I didn't even read it myself to judge their work yet. That said... if the biggest complaint one can make about a translation work is "swearing", then I don't really believe that translation was as bad as some are making it out to be. We have far, far bigger problems with translations nowadays. Personally, I am more pissed off about poor grammar, typos, and overall QC issues plaguing so many of official releases coming out nowadays. I consider that to be real shoddy work and that's what I am more worried about than some localization choice. Also... "people at large complain about this" - how many people? Did you measure? I am asking you this because I tend to see a lot of pro and anti-sentiments regarding this. I've seen a lot of praise from some of the more casual VN readers, loving Fureraba's localization. And then there are more weeb-oriented fans who absolutely abhor the localization of Fureraba. So which one is the right way? The casuals? The weebs? How do you satisfy all of these people at once? Is it even doable? No, I definitely don't think so.
 

See, that's exactly what I was talking about. I can already tell that based on what you said here, you definitely aren't gonna be a fan of either Nukitashi or, for that matter, the VN that's coming out in just a couple of days, Sankaku Renai. I can already tell you right now that both of these are gonna be full of "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and maybe some "low class american idiots swearing" (not sure about the third one, but with TBAC being the main TL for both Fureraba and Sankaku Renai, it's quite possible he may have used that style of swearing again... that is, if he considered it appropriate for the VN in question). That's just how comedy VNs work. I don't know how else you could properly localize these. They are pretty much dumb in Japanese, and so I don't see any problem with them sounding dumb in English too (and hence one of the major reasons I avoid moege with accent on comedy like a plague - they are a huge pain in the ass to work on, and whatever you do, someone's always bound to consider your comedy writing "idiotic").
Also, that last piece of advice I marked in your comment... Man, do you even realize what "make it as widely acceptable as possible" even means? I hear that all the time and I am really starting to believe you people have no idea how many disagreements among everyone on this there are. "Widely acceptable" implies that whoever's working on VN translations should go out and always measure how many people want translations to be in one or the other style (I've seen some folks trying to measure this by doing surveys) and then act according to the results. Do you realize how unfeasible doing this all the time really is? First of all, even the fans themselves don't really know what they want. I see so many disagreements between people who want honorifics/no honorifics, who want liberal/non-liberal translations, who want dumb memes/no dumb memes, who want masterful prose writing (LOL at this one!)/no masterful prose necessary... etc, etc. How's one to decide on what to do?! Who's able to satisfy all these contradictory demands?! I don't know anyone who has ever seriously tried to measure what the VN fans want, and it's probably for a good reason. Even if they could, there's just no way you would be able to satisfy everyone, or for that matter "as widely acceptable as possible" size of community. "As widely acceptable" is just a myth. You don't know what's really "widely acceptable" as you're often gonna see complaints from a sizeable portion of community no matter what you do. There's just no way to accurately measure this, especially if you consider the new fans who might be coming in and who aren't necessarily gonna be weebs.
And that's one of the major reasons why I believe translators like Arunaru and his ilk do what they do. They don't bother with "as widely as acceptable as possible". There's no such thing to begin with. So... what's a TLer gonna do then? Simple. They judge according to what sounds good to them and how they imagine the VN should read like. This sort of bias in translation... you get it all the fucking time, no matter who's at the helm doing the translation. I can tell you that every TLer out there has his own fucking way of translating something, and that's why no 2 translations are ever the same. No, I don't approve of translators who overlocalize and invent up silly shit just for the sake of novelty (no, I definitely don't approve of random Spanish lines that feel forced and out of the setting at hand), but that's just how things in this industry go. I don't let my "preference on style" cloud my judgement. Otherwise, I'd have to start despising the so-called "rewriting" that so many translators do. In fact, all the translations that we read are in fact nothing more than re-imagining of the Japanese works they are based on. Even the most literal translation you could dig out is still a re-imagining of the original work at hand (just remember that Japanese doesn't really have accurate English equivalents for many of its words and expressions and you'll understand what I mean by this).
So you can recognize the inclusion/exclusion of honorifics as a style choice, but not "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and "low class american swearing"?
Tell me, have you read anything in pure Japanese so far? And if yes, imagine you were a TL. How would you translate this commonly used simple phrase from Japanese "よろしくおねがいします"? I'll tell you... if you have any sanity as a translator, you won't ever TL it as "Please treat me well.", no matter the context (I've yet to see a crazy-enough TLer who would do that). Basically, what all TLers do here is, they "rewrite" it every time they see it, depending on the scene, character, tone, etc. You people have to understand that translation work is more art than science. What you refer to as "rewriting the entire fucking thing" is exactly how all translations in a nutshell are. They are essentially someone's rewriting (I called it "reimagining" earlier in my post) of the VN at hand. Unless you're reading VNs in Japanese, you are always gonna be reading someone's reimagination of the VN based of its original. And while we can criticize a TLer's accuracy of translation, his creativity to carry over the Japanese lines, etc, etc. I would never go and say that TLers are "void of rationality and critical thinking" for just being liberal with their reimagination of the work at hand. In fact, I think totally opposite here. If they didn't do this type of stuff, then I'd question their sanity and rationality.
I am in no way endorsing what NekoNyan did with Fureraba. I didn't even read it myself to judge their work yet. That said... if the biggest complaint one can make about a translation work is "swearing", then I don't really believe that translation was as bad as some are making it out to be. We have far, far bigger problems with translations nowadays. Personally, I am more pissed off about poor grammar, typos, and overall QC issues plaguing so many of official releases coming out nowadays. I consider that to be real shoddy work and that's what I am more worried about than some localization choice. Also... "people at large complain about this" - how many people? Did you measure? I am asking you this because I tend to see a lot of pro and anti-sentiments regarding this. I've seen a lot of praise from some of the more casual VN readers, loving Fureraba's localization. And then there are more weeb-oriented fans who absolutely abhor the localization of Fureraba. So which one is the right way? The casuals? The weebs? How do you satisfy all of these people at once? Is it even doable? No, I definitely don't think so.
 

See, that's exactly what I was talking about. I can already tell that based on what you said here, you definitely aren't gonna be a fan of either Nukitashi or, for that matter, the VN that's coming out in just a couple of days, Sankaku Renai. I can already tell you right now that both of these are gonna be full of "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and maybe some "low class american idiots swearing" (not sure about the third one, but with TBAC being the main TL for both Fureraba and Sankaku Renai, it's quite possible he may have used that style of swearing again... that is, if he considered it appropriate for the VN in question). That's just how comedy VNs work. I don't know how else you could properly localize these. They are pretty much dumb in Japanese, and so I don't see any problem with them sounding dumb in English too (and hence one of the major reasons I avoid moege with accent on comedy like a plague - they are a huge pain in the ass to work on, and whatever you do, someone's always bound to consider your comedy writing "idiotic").
Also, that last piece of advice I marked in your comment... Man, do you even realize what "make it as widely acceptable as possible" even means? I hear that all the time and I am really starting to believe you people have no idea how many disagreements among everyone on this there are. "Widely acceptable" implies that whoever's working on VN translations should go out and always measure how many people want translations to be in one or the other style (I've seen some folks trying to measure this by doing surveys) and then act according to the results. Do you realize how unfeasible doing this all the time really is? First of all, even the fans themselves don't really know what they want. I see so many disagreements between people who want honorifics/no honorifics, who want liberal/non-liberal translations, who want dumb memes/no dumb memes, who want masterful prose writing (LOL at this one!)/no masterful prose necessary... etc, etc. How's one to decide on what to do?! Who's able to satisfy all these contradictory demands?! I don't know anyone who has ever seriously tried to measure what the VN fans want, and it's probably for a good reason. Even if they could, there's just no way you would be able to satisfy everyone, or for that matter "as widely acceptable as possible" size of community. "As widely acceptable" is just a myth. You don't know what's really "widely acceptable" as you're often gonna see complaints from a sizeable portion of community no matter what you do. There's just no way to accurately measure this, especially if you consider the new fans who might be coming in and who aren't necessarily gonna be weebs.
And that's one of the major reasons why I believe translators like Arunaru and his ilk do what they do. They don't bother with "as widely as acceptable as possible". There's no such thing to begin with. So... what's a TLer gonna do then? Simple. They judge according to what sounds good to them and how they imagine the VN should read like. This sort of bias in translation... you get it all the fucking time, no matter who's at the helm doing the translation. I can tell you that every TLer out there has his own fucking way of translating something, and that's why no 2 translations are ever the same. No, I don't approve of translators who overlocalize and invent up silly shit just for the sake of novelty (no, I definitely don't approve of random Spanish lines that feel forced and out of the setting at hand), but that's just how things in this industry go. I don't let my "preference on style" cloud my judgement. Otherwise, I'd have to start despising the so-called "rewriting" that so many translators do. In fact, all the translations that we read are in fact nothing more than re-imagining of the Japanese works they are based on. Even the most literal translation you could dig out is still a re-imagining of the original work at hand (just remember that Japanese doesn't really have accurate English equivalents for many of its words and expressions and you'll understand what I mean by this).
So you can recognize the inclusion/exclusion of honorifics as a style choice, but not "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and "low class american swearing"?
Tell me, have you read anything in pure Japanese so far? And if yes, imagine you were a TL. How would you translate this commonly used simple phrase from Japanese "よろしくおねがいします"? I'll tell you... if you have any sanity as a translator, you won't ever TL it as "Please treat me well.", no matter the context (I've yet to see a crazy-enough TLer who would do that). Basically, what all TLers do here is, they "rewrite" it every time they see it, depending on the scene, character, tone, etc. You people have to understand that translation work is more art than science. What you refer to as "rewriting the entire fucking thing" is exactly how all translations in a nutshell are. They are essentially someone's rewriting (I called it "reimagining" earlier in my post) of the VN at hand. Unless you're reading VNs in Japanese, you are always gonna be reading someone's reimagination of the VN based of its original. And while we can criticize a TLer's accuracy of translation, his creativity to carry over the Japanese lines, etc, etc. I would never go and say that TLers are "void of rationality and critical thinking" for just being liberal with their reimagination of the work at hand. In fact, I think totally opposite here. If they didn't do this type of stuff, then I'd question their sanity and rationality.
I am in no way endorsing what NekoNyan did with Fureraba. I didn't even read it myself to judge their work yet. That said... if the biggest complaint one can make about a translation work is "swearing", then I don't really believe that translation was as bad as some are making it out to be. We have far, far bigger problems with translations nowadays. Personally, I am more pissed off about poor grammar, typos, and overall QC issues plaguing so many of official releases coming out nowadays. I consider that to be real shoddy work and that's what I am more worried about than some localization choice. Also... "people at large complain about this" - how many people? Did you measure? I am asking you this because I tend to see a lot of pro and anti-sentiments regarding this. I've seen a lot of praise from some of the more casual VN readers, loving Fureraba's localization. And then there are more weeb-oriented fans who absolutely abhor the localization of Fureraba. So which one is the right way? The casuals? The weebs? How do you satisfy all of these people at once? Is it even doable? No, I definitely don't think so.