きょうすけ

First of all thanks for your reply, I truly appreciate it. I'm kind of sad after reading so much, but you pretty much nailed my fears regarding this kind of job. Considering that I'd liked to make a career out of it, but chances are pretty slim and the pay doesn't sound good etc, I'll try to pass on this and try something else, while trying to re-learn japanese as a hobby. Thank you so much for taking your time and explaining how the translation word works, which while a bit sad, opened my eyes a little bit.

Hello there, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this kind of question, if not I apologise in advance. A bit of background about myself: I'm a guy from Italy, who a few years ago, tried to learn japanese self taught metod. I started learning hiragana and katakana from japanese-lesson(dot)com, printing both kana tables and making exercises from that site. Since then I tried to read a few visual novels and I was able to read about 40% of them, while looking at new words to read, and lazily picking up the most common Kanji I've encountered while reading. After having a few troubles digesting the grammar, numbers and the more complex stuff, I found a japanese teacher who was teaching japanese for various kind of people, ranging from those interested in the language, to those who wanted to learn it in order to travel to japan. At one point I even started translating one visual novel made with the kirikiri engine, just for fun. At one point in my life though, I suffered of heavy depression, which hit me like a truck, and made me stop from going forward with learning japanese (to be honest, it made me stop living altogether, rather than just japanese, but that's OT). After seeking help, I'm slowing trying to recover, and moving on with my life, which made me decide to start this topic, and hopefully find some answers to my questions. I'm not extremely young anymore, but I have always liked to translate stuff, especially games, reason for which I'm reconsidering starting from anew, learning from scratch japanese, but I'm a bit lost on how I could make a career/profession out of it: 1) For anyone who is an official translator and working for a company (or freelancer?), could you please, enlighten me on how the whole process works? Do companies such as mangagamer and so on recruit translators themselves, or do they outsource them? 2) Do you work from home, I.E. smartworking? 3) Do you use some tools while translating? 4) How hard can it be to find a job as a translator? 5) Which JLPT certificate rank is necessary to work as a full fledged translator (I.E: would N3 be good enough, or are N2/N1 a must)? I might have some other questions, but for now these are those off the top of my head. Thanks in advance to anyone willing to answer my questions (or simply explain the process to me)!

^This. Also, it's a matter of art style too, imho (well talking only from GC era, putting aside NES/GB//GBC releases, or even SNES one unless you are into pixel graphic). Each zelda game has its own art style which is never reused and is charming on its own. Last but not least, the lore is always consistent, instead of the mind distortion AC franchise turned into. No microtransactions , loot boxes or dlc bs either (aside botw, at least though the price was fair and with a good chunk of content). My only complaint towards nintendo is extreme censorship in the west (which put me a grudge against nintendo as a whole) and well, exclusives (which to me are still cancer from a gamer pow). What I'm truly amazed though is how nintendo was able to slip through with botw inconsistent frame rate: on porrtable mode and during rain, the game runs at something like 15 fps on switch, but I'm derailing the thread with this one.

Welcome to fuwa! I hope you'll enjoy this place!

Gotcha! I... I'll don't add anything personal to this. Oh I see. Never noticed the discussion tab, kinda neat. So there were people talking about official translations in there? I'm quite surprised. Yeah I shall do too, thanks. Thanks.

Never heard of him, but I stopped caring after reading that cancerous wall of text he wrote. I'm kinda surprised by him being banned on VNDB though (I use it only as personal vn database collection, meaning I have no interaction with the community), but I don't understand why starting fights... Finally another proper reply, thank you! I completely agree with what you just said. Right now I'm not translating anything which really needs honorifics in the first place (so I completely removed them), but should I start a project which heavily focuses on them I'll be definitely make a text document which includes all of those used in said VN. Thank you for both your advice and useful response!

One of the "features" which I couldn't find on the internet despite looking for it was one of my friends' discovery: Near the resistance camp at the start of the game, there are usually 3 or 4 neutral machines walking in circle. If you go with 2B after using self destruction and put her "rear" in front of their faces, they have a chance of blushing and emit smoke from their "ears" (it doesn't seems to happen often though, I'm still wondering if there is a particular trigger for it). It seems the game is full of these "features" but most of them are not documented yet.

I'm really hyped for this, although I hoped to play 3 and 4 before 5 (I have some issues going backward after having tasted the new features from the newer titles). Hope the port will come smooth and without issues, I'm very tempted to buy it day one.

Thank you! Wish you the best of luck for your/yours' too!

Holy cows, it works! I can't thank you enough for helping me in this regard (it also somewhat improved my mood which was crushed earlier...)! I don't know how did you find it, but you made my day, thanks again!

As for the more classic terms such as lolicon, tsundere, senpai and so on I fully agree; I'm a bit puzzled on hentai though, as "pervert" could fit more or less (it mainly depends in which situation is used and if there is a pun words wise). All in all as I thought it boils down to personal preference, which is good, to me. Thanks for the help (and sorry for the trouble)!

Oh I see! Mmmh...I translated about 200 lines and the guy is still called by just his name, but thanks for the tips! Also, your post made me remember another thing I forgot to ask before: should I stick to either stick with or completely remove honorifics, when translating? As for now I think it depends on which kind of VN I'm translating, but I'm kinda dubious about readers' judgment: should i keep them for a more otaku appeal or, should I remove them in order to (hopefully) cater a bit of the casual audience along too?

Hello, I would like to ask something related to names and chōonpu: When translating names and words into english, should i keep the long vowels? Example are: 恭介 Kyousuke/Kyosuke? 良助 Ryousuke/Ryosuke? 幸助 Kousuke/Kosuke? At first I chose to keep the long vowel sound, but after making read a partial translation to a friend, he asked me if it was right to keep it, making then question myself which is the better solution. Thanks to anyone willing to help me!

My bad, I worded it wrongly. What i meant is that other than feeling extremely tired (which is a trait pretty common with depression), you feel all those negative emotions on top, pretty much like the icing on the cake (too bad it's not as tasty). Exactly :/ I kept myself telling that all the times, but ultimately I still feel that sensation of emptiness when you are unable to express or at least share in part some of your enjoyment in what you do, which too could be one of the reasons for which i started to lose interest in my own hobbies.

I'll be honest and say that after what I experienced during all these years, it's only natural for me to seek a more secluded life. Nonetheless a bith of company is always welcome, as long said company respects you for what you are. Wish you a happy life, no matter the direction you'll take.

If only it were so easy...XD

That's the problem. The only famous anime and merchandise related to it are the original ones ranging from late 80 to 90s: Lupin 3rd is one of the most famous here, which is glorified for who knows which reasons; dragon ball is a love letter for my generation along sailor moon for the female counter part, but all the rest is completely misjudged and considered trash. As for the manga, it's a total shame. Only in my city, there is one comic book store left, all the other have closed, and the guy is still keeping it open for the sake of his love for them. Of course, as I said before, south part of italy is in more than a way a few steps back than the north part, but nonetheless, manga is something very niche (God forbid LN, they aren't even translated or sold here anymore). I see. Thanks for both explaining and forgiving my curiosity on the matter.

If I have to guess, it's a mixture of both. Location due to very low knowledge on everything anime/manga related: the 99% of people saying that they are either cartoons or comics, both of them considered only for a "childish audience" (oh but don't you dare to touch everything related to their childhood days, namely dragon ball, sailor moon, or any other media of the past 25+ years, because they are legit, everything else it's just stupid); it's also age related because it seems that you should "adjust" your hobbies to match your age, apperently, in order to be considered a "normal person" (this leads one of my traumas of the past, with videogames being one of my main hobbies, which caused my school teachers to label me "weird", while smoking cannabis was the right thing to do, yeah. *shrugs* I think there's way more than simple stress or a continuous stressful situation, at least to me. When you feel like in a cage, hiding everything you like if you don't want to be left out, discriminated or worse is one of the main causes which, to me, leads to chronic depression. I think I'm on this too, aside the decreased willingness to play vns (i'm losing interest in general, but that holds true for everything I used to like), but I'm pretty sure what you are looking for is a VN which can take your interest wholly, rather than its premise, a heroine, or other bits of it. Those are just my two cents though, so take them with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately I know way too well that mental condition. Once you reach that point, everything lose its value in your eyes, you feel extremely tired, without being able to even fight for your own dreams and aspirations; the only thing you do is "living" by the day (and I was extremely generous by using the word "living").

^Amen to that (feel a bit sorry for you too, since we understand each other that kind of awkward situation, which is sooo unpleasant). You are also right on finding the right environment with the right people, but is very luck based, at least to me, which to this day I wasn't able to find outside of the internet.

I know that I'm going to derail from the main thread (sorry for doing this, Thyndd), but I really would like to ask @Clephas something about his post: How is your friend living out his hobby/coexisting his otaku side with his family and his life in general? The reason for my question is that, frankly speaking, I live in a country not that developed toward otaku stuff in general (the south regions, in which I live, are even more ignorant on this matter). As a result, most of the people here hide the fact of liking anime/manga or any videogame which is not soccer or FPS related (because here, if it's not soccer or a shooter game, everything else is "crap for children"). This holds extremely true for my generation and similar (I'm almost 30), which forced me to hide my hobby till this day. This goes without saying that is very stressful, and unable to show others my tastes without being finger pointed.

The reason for which I didn't say the title yet, was because I tried different ones gut got the same result, hence I thought it was irrelevant. As per the .ks uploading: isn't that copyrighted material, so against the rules? (It's a serious question) Btw I was able to correctly extract and translate the text by using krkrextract (I was using different tools when making this thread). Btw thanks for looking at my post. Since this could be relevant to another issue of mine, I'm facing another one, not major, but something I wold like to find a solution for: Right now I'm translating this one, and while the translation is going pretty much smooth, I can't wrap/start a new line, causing the engine to separate english words wrongly. Do you have any possibile solution for this?

Apparently it didn't want to leave you yet

...Nice to meet you too...XD

Thank you!