adamstan

In that case, then it's still too bad though because Trip decided to not translated either Sora's, Misa's, Touko's and Rikka's route as the first route. But then again, if you've been busy perhaps it would be for the best so that at least you have something to look forward to lol.
In case some of the users here didn't catch it, Tsurezure was already announced the route that will be translated first, and the first route here is Marika's which is quite surprising seeing that I did thought that Trip would save her for the last because Trip's been interested with Marika since the first time he saw her, although I understand though if he couldn't wait to translate Marika's route first. Anyway, with the announcement of the route order it mean that Tsurezure obviously already released the patch for the common route, so get the patch from their website here if you want to try it first and have fun.

Translation
Prologue - 100% (1791/1791)
Main School - 100% (2691/2691)
Tonoko Route - 100% (8709/8709)
Branch School - 35% (2039/5846)
Total - 22% (15229/68206)
TLC
Prologue - 100% (1791/1791)
Main School - 6% (157/2691)
Branch School - 3% (187/5846)
Total - 3% (2135/68206)
Edit
Prologue - 100% (1791/1791)
Main School - 6% (157/2691)
Branch School - 25% (1441/5846)
Total - 5% (3360/68206)
Ittaku has fully translated Tonoko's route. He'll be moving onto Miyabi's soon enough, but he can relish in this great achievement right now. Branch School in terms of both TL and Editing is going strong as well.
We are still looking for a permanent TLC to work on this project. Please PM me if you're interested in working as a TLC for this project.
That's all for this week. See you in another couple of weeks.

From the games I played, recently I really liked Mirai from Koiiro.
Also, Hikari and Saya from Miagete are kind of childhood friends for protagonist, and in this VN there are lenghty retrospections. If you can read untranslated, then you can read +18 version  
Konomi and Tamaki from ToHeart2
Ageha from Konosora
Chiho from PrincessEvangile
Hinata from NobleWorks
Rina from Fureraba
Runa and Yukino from Hatsukoi 1/1
Asumi from Heart de Roommate (kind of )
Main heroines from Majikoi (Miyako, Momoyo and Kazuko aka Wanko) could be considered too.
The next one is put here half jokingly, but she was the first childhood friend heroine I experienced, and might be responsible for my affection towards them:
Mikae from True Love

Pulltop did release one game under Jast USA.  They're a brand of Will, which for years was one of basically two brands Jast had access to, when they rebranded as Peach Princess.
Quick ancient history lession: Jast was a Japanese h-game maker.  Jast USA translated a bunch of their titles into English.  Then the founder got cancer or had a heart attack or something.  He died, company folded.  Jast USA wasn't sure what to do; it found new partnerships with Crowd and Will and rebranded itself Peach Princess.  Eventually Peter Payne decided Jast USA was the more well-known name and re-orged under it.
Well, Pulltop being a Will title, Jast USA released one of their games: Princess Waltz, in late 2008.  They never released any of Pulltop's other titles, and 5 years later Pulltop decided to launch Moenovel.  I think it is fairly safe to say that Pulltop probably wasn't impressed with Jast USA and is unlikely to work with them again.  Their experience with IMHHW probably 'taught' them that going it alone is a 'much better' way to go, since it sold a LOT more than any numbers Jast could have put up in 2008.

Ok, so here's me and some keyboards


(photos from two different events where I performed)

Ok, so here's me and some keyboards


(photos from two different events where I performed)

Ah, it may be so.
Also, I agree with your 0-10 scale. Nice description.
As for reasons somebody gets angry with poor TL released - it may be kind of "disservice" to such reader. I mean - if translation is hard to read, it may serioulsy dampen enjoyment and impact of the story, yet if one decides to wade through it to the end, the story may be "spoiled" for them, so then even if improved release would come out, damage is done and they may lose interest in a game.
But yet again - my experience was different. I experienced only one such case - Konosora. I read Kotori's route from the initial release, then dropped it in the middle of Ageha's route. But when retranslation was released, I reread the whole thing, and enjoyed it. Ironically, in this case it was the official release that was bad, and fan-TL patch that fixed it, so the other way around Also, since I enjoyed Kotori's route even with bad original translation, and wasn't sure then when the patch would be released, that prompted me to start learning Japanese
So, what can I say - when you detect signs of poor translation to the point that it gets in your way, better to drop the title and hope for better release in the future? Or, learn you-know-what-language
 

To be honest, it feels that a lot of "poor translations" could have been avoided if the team (or individual) were more open to constructive feedback and were willing to redo some of their work.
It's definitely time consuming, but isn't it worth it knowing you did your best and learned a thing or two from it?

Well, one thing's for sure - at least it gives this almost dead forum a topic it can discuss fervently that is actually even relevant to the forum... This discussion should be a sticky that people post to each and every day. I notice everyone says exactly the same things in slightly different ways, over and over. Rinse and repeat. My turn.
If quality of final product ranged from 0 to 10, where 0 was completely incomprehensible machine translation along with bugs introduced into the game, scenes butchered, crashing, and 10 was absolute perfect translation and editing of high literary standard which is indistinguishable from the original Japanese, along with all menus translated, songs karaoked, CGs uncensored etc. then it would be fair to say that almost nothing is a 0 or a 10. Let's call a 5 a passing mark where the original story is conveyed with reasonable accuracy and with some typos and editing oversights. So what we get is a range somewhere in the middle and fan translations can fall anywhere in that spectrum, but so can professional releases. Making an incredible generalisation, fan translations are more likely to end up lower on that scale than official localisations, though anything's possible. So what it comes down to is - what is the cut off that you'd be happy with reading? Everyone would accept a 10 (though some of you still want your mosaics) and no one would accept a 0. Some people would be happy with a 3 or 4 while others with nothing less than a 7 or 8. This means that the most flexible amongst us wouldn't mind more fan translations while the more stringent amongst us won't be happy even with half the official localisations. The complaint is that some of those that only accept an 8 get angry when someone releases a 3 because they do a disservice... to whom? The game? The writers? The localisation companies? The readers? It's not a pirating issue, as those who pirate the JP version (to patch it) will likely pirate the EN version too, so the original makers won't be getting anything either way. A shit release doesn't stop a good release from being made later on. If anything, it's a good fan release that makes an official localisation less likely (unless it gets picked up.)
The question then is should fan translators be encouraged or discouraged if they end up in the 3 or 4 range? Is it helpful or harmful to the community to have these? Do fan translators use this as a stepping stone towards getting better and/or a paid job or try to get their translation picked up, and is this healthy or not for the VN scene? I think the fan translation scene is an essential part of the past, present, and future of VNs until the day we get simultaneous multi-language releases of VNs the way anime does - and that's actually far less likely to happen due to the sheer volume of VN releases and the turnaround time to translate them, unlike anime. Arguing for the giving and receiving of constructive criticism is great, however there are precious few people who can and will mentor fan translations (as others have pointed out.) The only way to make the fan translation scene healthier is to tackle less projects and have more translators and other staff helping each other. That's not going to happen since there are so few translators and so many things they may personally want to work on, so we continue with the status quo. By the way, does anyone want to help with our translation?

As others have pointed out, the idea that anime, video games, or LNs don't have their share of translation arguments is... not correct, shall we say.  I'm going to guess you're new to those communities.
Back in the early fansub days, in the early 90s, when people had to mail VHS tapes around ($12 and SASE for 2 episodes!), there was vicious fighting.  Anyone remember the Ranma Wars?  Or the fights over the Shinsengumi subs of Ruroni Kenshin?
Even in the 2000s, people used to mock most of the Inuyasha funsubbers,  The joke in the community was that every new fanboy (and many a fangirl) would cut their teeth on Inuyasha, releasing many terrible subs in the process, before either giving up or growing up and moving on to real shows.
Even now, you still get complaints.  Remember this meme?  Or sites like this one?
 
The basic fact of the matter is that translation is an art, not a science.  And as Clephas said, even good translators disagree over things.  Honorifics, slang... I got into a fight with one translator over contractions, FFS.  There will always be disagreement, and there will always be jerks who make a big deal out of it.  Your bigger claim, that a bad translation is better than no translation, is very much a matter of opinion.  To me, it's trivial to prove you wrong - just run a VN script through Babelfish, and try to read what comes out.

Daresora is very short. I finished it in forty minutes or so, that including the time when the game was playing and I wasn't paying attention and considering the fact that I'm typically a slow reader. Completing it to 100 per cent took me a bit more time, but it definitely can be done in one go.
For a longer read I recommend Ever 17.

I think that grisaia no kajitsu is a masterpiece and you definitely should play it, eventualy koiken otome is pretty good too

Ever17 is my favorite in that list, I think. Not well-paced, but worth your time, and has one of my favorite VN heroines.

I would like to seconded Koiken Otome here, and perhaps you may as well try Koi Resort in case if you want something lighter. Also in case you want some sci-fi, then you can try both of Ever17 and Steins Gate. Lastly if you want some all age VN other than sci-fi, then you may as well try Symphonic Rain. I hope that my recommendations here would be helpful to you.

Well, I won't bother repeating and explaining stuff, just join the group which suggest reading Steins;Gate, Fate/Stay Night and Grisaia Series. Furthermore, I would recommend to read them in this order because of their length. S;G is the shortest of them all, then follows Fate. Grisaia on the other hand, is long. You cannot simply stop after reading 1 part or you will lose excitement. From personal experience I recommend reading all of Grisaia VNs one after another in order to complete the experience. That is why I also recommended reading S;G and F/SN before Grisaia.

I'd agree with alpacaman in that it does depend on what kind of story you're looking for, but there are several really good titles on your list - several have mentioned Grisaia (I'd recommend that as well) but there's also Fate/Stay Night, and Steins;Gate (both of which are very good reads if you're into something a bit more serious) as well as a bunch of others I don't know enough about to comment, so I'll stick to a more general recommendation for choosing what to read when. 

Maybe you can read one or two of the shorter VNs to help you get into the flow of things, before tackling some of the longer VNs - all three of the ones I mentioned above do have some SoL parts that (depending on your tastes and mood) can be slow to get through. If you want to get stuck into a particular world/story for a long time right now I'd recommend Grisaia since the first is on its own quite long and you have both expansions so assuming you like it you can keep reading afterwards. Given your comments in the anime thread, I'd probably put Toradora Portable further away, so you have time to digest the anime before diving in to [what is probably] the more story-dense VN. Other than that I think pick one and commit to reading it and think about the other options as little as possible (easy to say but hard to do) while you read the one you've picked. 

Grisaia is a masterpiece imo, strongly recommended. Off the wall comedy ....... while exploring some psychological themes when it gets serious (and it gets more serious then most VNs). And that soundtrack! It does have a rather long common route.
Symphonic Rain has a unique art style, and a unique world. And some interesting plot twists. It's one of the few VNs (that I know of), that ditches the moe elements (for the most part).
 
For a suggestion not on your list....
* ef - a fairy tale of the two . Multiple love stories (which are somehow connected). Quite a lot of feels too....
 

It really depends on what kind of story you want to read. Seeing what kind of VNs you rated highly, Grisaia really might be right up your alley, but in my opinion (I'm currently reading it) it takes a good 10-20 hours until you get anything resembling some sense of conflict (which I personally need to keep reading for longer stretches of time). If you can motivate yourself to read something without any any actual plot for some time, but just painting really detailed personalities by means of SoL (at least for the first hours), it's a really good read.
Dengeki Stryker is a fun to read action story mocking many action manga tropes while having an interesting enough plot and cast (very cliché though, but that's part of the fun) to be entertaining beyond being just a parody.
Steins;Gate's is a great scifi thriller/drama imo, but the first half is paced rather slowly and your enjoyment of that part depends on how much you enjoy the characters and the science. What I love about the pacing in general is that it really knows when to give the reader and the protagonist some time to breath inbetween action, comedy and exposition. This gives the whole experience a really quiet vibe despite it being quite a ride. Just don't expect too much romance since the VN makes it pretty clear who the main heroine is and all the other character endings are clearly supposed to be bad endings since they are all pretty short and end on depressing notes.

Addressing the topic author...
... translation purity is a load of shit.  Good translators of any stripe basically argue over how far they go toward Americanization or retention of Japanese concepts. 
Honestly, speaking as a translator myself, I can say that there is no such thing as a perfect translation or localization.  However, that is no excuse for poor work.  Not everything is possible to translate.  It is a miracle that games like Tokyo Babel and Dies Irae are readable and still relatively enjoyable in English, considering how much of a pain the butt it must have been for the translator to deal with the emotional aspects of his work (for one thing, Dies Irae's preexisting fanbase is full of jaded a-holes like me, so he was going to get bashed regardless of what he did).  I will state this outright: Japanese translation is a pain in the ass as well as an oxymoron.  Japanese doesn't translate, it just gets interpreted into another language with concepts that approximate the meaning while completely missing nuance and subtlety. 
Machine translation is annoying because it doesn't even meet the baseline of a Japanese translation... interpretation of the original material into comprehensible English that doesn't go off into the wilds and ignore all context (this is the baseline of an acceptable but not necessarily good translation/localization).  First, I've yet to encounter a machine translator that consistently produces English sentences that makes sense.  Second, I've yet to encounter a machine translator that succeeded in figuring out the correct kanji conjugations to produce words it needs to translate to another language (thus resulting in some seriously weird outputs).  Furigana parsers just barely manage to pass muster, and even there you have to disregard the suggestions about anywhere from 30%-60% of of the time (meaning a high level of Japanese and English knowledge is necessary, in any case), based on the favored kanji of the writer and the parser's ability to handle unusual kanji choices (all parsers have their quirks). 
 

VN made by MyDearest. It looks like it was just released by Sekai - JP and EN versions simultaneously.
https://vndb.org/v24442

https://vndb.org/v24443

What's this?

Absolutely, but then the japanese have a bad sense of tact and delicacy. Goes from cute girls and romance to "omanko kimochiii", "ochinchin sugoooiii" etcetc. Even i think the h scenes can be a bit or way too much. The example i gave is what i'd really prefer.

Its 17+ why does it have to be so vaguely implied? A scene with them undressed under the bedsheets etc is a powerful enough scene and not porn, so it should be more than fine.

Maya was quite overpowered considering that she was won easily in the poll, both as best heroine and best route. As for the ending, just in case you worry about the depressing story you didn't need about Maya's route, because it'll end happily for both of them (Some divisive route at HatsuKoi aside). As for Maya, all Yuuma did was encouraged Maya to go chase her happiness so there's nothing about selling out here. Well have fun with HatsuKoi there.

Don't worry, there's still H scenes in the Friendship route

"Rumbling Hearts" is on my romance-to-watch list. I wonder how will I find it...
In the meantime I finished "Toradora!". It was amazing for me, 9/10 - it had great comedy in the first half, some drama and feels in the second, great characters, who managed to escape their stereotypes and have some nice development... really, I had nothing to complain about it and totally enjoyed it. Taiga joins my tsundere-top-list, together with Kotori Habane (Konosora) and Mirai Mochizuki Ichinose (Koiiro)