きょうすけ

July 20, 2022

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.

July 19, 2022

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)!

April 17, 2018

^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.

April 17, 2018

14 hours ago, Orakana Newbie said:

Salutations, New member here. Come from Somewhere in Southeast Asia.

I found Fuwa Forum right after I searched keywords "Visual Novel Forum" In google Search a Month ago.

This forum really interesting, I found many expert and they even talking about something that someone like me never can understand .

Well, In the end, I can say this forum really helped me, glad to be one of members here.

I started reading Visual Novel around November last Year. I wasn't choosy reader, I can enjoying a lots of genres. Even, I have personal interest with Yuri and similar stuff.

Like My Username say, I'm a Newbie. I dunno can help you, but I'm sure you can help me someday.

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

April 15, 2018

12 hours ago, HMN said:

don’t mind them, they’re just a bunch of 12 year olds with nothing better to do

Gotcha!

6 hours ago, tymmur said:

That's one way of identifying text as originating from Moogy. He has (had?) connections, speaks with authority (which he likely never had for real) and it seems he wants everybody to feel bad because nobody sane will ever live up to what Moogy wants. According to him, everybody should learn Japanese, but at the same time nobody is allowed to go through the learning process.

I... I'll don't add anything personal to this.

6 hours ago, tymmur said:

VNDB has boards, which is a forum like thing. It's custom made and generally poor from a forum point of view, but it's in the database, meaning it's designed to link to VNs, releases, publishers etc. In fact you look at say Ever17, to the top right there is a tab with discussions. 43 threads has been attached to this title. The benefit of this is if somebody asks about the contents or writes a review, even if left idle for years, it will still pop up for the VN in question and not die many pages back in some subforum. 43 is really high. Most have less than 5, with 0 being the most common for untranslated VNs.

Around 5 years ago, the boards were some sort of wild west. One instance was that Moogy said VNs should be transformed into American culture. One person (A) replied something like "are you saying Americans are so stupid that they can't read a story unless it's changed to match American culture? I don't think that's the case". Next a new person flames for calling all Americans stupid, but aims at A rather than Moogy. Other people joins in and in a short time there was 50+ posts of people calling each other names.

Another example was a recommendation thread. It nearly instantly got replied with something like "OP makes it sound like low resolution is better than high resolution. Can somebody explain the point because I'm it". This got replied with 5-10 posts of harassment and death threats for not liking VNs enough before somebody came with a valid reply and pointed out that OP wasn't good at explaining the thinking behind the request. This made both the request and the question valid.

Oh I see. Never noticed the discussion tab, kinda neat.

6 hours ago, tymmur said:

Eventually VNDB got tired of deleting posts all the time from people acting like that and announced a cleanup, which meant people who wouldn't stop doing that would get banned. That made VNDB a lot nicer, but it also lost more than one translator working on official translations.

So there were people talking about official translations in there? I'm quite surprised.

6 hours ago, tymmur said:

Usually it isn't, at least not the serious boards like this one. This thread got seriously trolled though as it has taken up two pages of replies by now and I just made yet another reply, which is off topic from the threads intended purpose. We should get back on topic.

Yeah I shall do too, thanks.

6 hours ago, Dergonu said:

Indeed, let's. Went ahead and hid most of the trolly posts derailing the thread.

Thanks.

April 15, 2018

22 minutes ago, tymmur said:

Tip of the day: do not act like Moogy is the god he believes he is. He has stated that the goal of a translation is localization, meaning it should be rewritten to get rid of as much Japanese culture as possible and insert American culture instead. After all American readers can't understand Japanese culture. Also if you aren't an American, you apparently have no business reading VNs in English. Moogy is also a firm believer that readers should be punished for not understanding Japanese and the way to do that is to ensure the quality of the localization will not reach the quality of the Japanese original.

Despite his significant influence in the VN community, VNDB had to ban him for always starting fights.

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...

22 minutes ago, tymmur said:

If you want a real answer to the question, Darbury already provided it on his blog.

Poll summary: only one person out of 34 says honorifics should never be included in a translation.

If you ask for my personal opinion, then it depends on the VN. In some titles they make very little difference and removing them will not be a noteworthy loss of information. In other titles, the honorifics carries a lot of information, sometimes more than first meets the eye, in which case keep them. In such a title, trying to include the information without actually using honorifics will not only lose information, it will also result in English sentences, which are less readable than if you would just include the honorifics.

If you use honorifics, make a list of those you include and add a txt file or something to tell the meaning of each. It might not sound important at first glance, but what is the difference between -san and -kun? We can't be 100% sure all readers will know. We can't even be sure everybody on Fuwa is fully aware of this. And what if the VN decides to use some less known ones, such as -waka or -dono? If you always include a list of all honorifics in the VN and an explanation, then you will gain the freedom to use such honorifics/titles.

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!

April 15, 2018

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.

April 15, 2018

On 13/4/2018 at 7:55 AM, Tweek91330 said:

Hi guys,

I'm just dropping here to tell those who don't know yet that Disgaea 5 is planned for May, 7 on Steam.

I'm actually quite happy about this since i don't plan to own a PS4 but i've been a fan of the franchise and played all games in the series since Disagaea 3 release.

Anyways, one less console "exclusivity" is always a good news, if they could do the same for persona 5 (which they probably won't ^^).

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.

April 14, 2018

3 minutes ago, Huang Ling Yin said:

nice!
and good luck with your project...

Thank you!

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

April 14, 2018

26 minutes ago, Huang Ling Yin said:

do you already solve this problem yet?
guess i found new workaround for this...
i tested this game yesterday
try this:

lets assume this is the japanese text
これは日本語テキストです。これは新しい行です。

you want to make it looks like this:
これは日本語テキストです。
これは新しい行です。

so do this:
これは日本語テキストです。[r]
これは新しい行です。 <move this to the new line with Enter
put [r] instead of \n and after that, hit enter so that the text split to the new line

let me know if this works, but if you already solve this problem, just ignore it.

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!

April 13, 2018

6 minutes ago, Huang Ling Yin said:

for me, yes, i keep them... sometimes, i just feel awkward change honorifics like: senpai with senior, or sensei with teacher, or even remove them? i feel like it lose its impact... beside the honorifics, i also keep anything that reader already familiar with, something like: lolicon, ecchi, hentai, or other terms as well, how suppose we translate lolicon in english? p3do is a bit much isnt it?

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)!

April 13, 2018

6 hours ago, Huang Ling Yin said:

depend on how often/much they say the names,
here is an example, i translate a game with english name: Crow, in japanese it says Kurou
some char call him Kuro, while other also call him Kurou, like "Kurooooouuuu-kuuuuun...!" with the obvious visible "u", so i keep the long vowel instead...

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?

April 12, 2018

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!

April 10, 2018

52 minutes ago, tymmur said:

I never heard of anhedonia before, so I had to look it up. It looks to me like something we all have most likely experienced, at least to some degree. The main difference it that for it to be anhedonia, it will not be something which seems to be gone within hours or overnight. I can't really imagine what that is really like, or rather I don't want to try to experience knowing what it's like. It sounds horrible.

One thing puzzles me though. "you feel extremely tired". That's not mentioned anywhere. I suspect it might be due to something else. More or less any physical defect tend to make the person tired.

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).

40 minutes ago, Okarin said:

Conditions like heavy depression or schizoprenia are a "delightful" mix of symptoms. Weariness (even if not elicited by traceable causes) is a common byproduct of depression, it's commonly told how the patient stays in bed during long periods of time, feels drained, and so on.

With schizophrenia you have the "lovely" antipsychotics, which aren't religiously used willingly by patients anyway. Those bring their own problems, but at least you shake off the worst.

Exactly :/

45 minutes ago, tymmur said:

I will not sell myself in order to be together with other people. If people demand something I don't agree with, then screw them. Life is too short to waste it pleasing somebody who aren't even friendly towards you. I will rather have no contact with people than having contact with the wrong people. This has given me problems multiple times, particularly from bully leaders in school when they couldn't control me. However I will have to add that this doesn't mean that I have no contact with the outside world. There are actually some people worth knowing.

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.

Okarin · April 10, 2018

11 minutes ago, Okarin said:

Oh, I have no problem being lonely, if the alternative is people who drive me mad.

Of course, I acknowledge there are people out there like me, and people who aren't so like me but with whom I can spend a good time. I hope to rebuild my social life someday.

All in all, in adult life you are forced into interaction, I can still play the social game and even enjoy it.

I don't know how it is for you. But yeah, there's the need for social inclusion in everyone's life.

In fact, I don't know if I can endure a ravaging life of loneliness. But I'll try.

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.

April 10, 2018

3 minutes ago, Okarin said:

People berated my tastes, saying that Japanese media is stupid and immature.

What did I do?

I stopped going out with people.

If only it were so easy...XD

April 10, 2018

16 minutes ago, Okarin said:

Forgive me, Kyousuke, but I thought there was a blooming comic-book culture in Italy. That should include manga, but then again maybe not. Funny thing is most of the anime first shown during its explosion, here in Spain in the early 90s, came via Italy (often pre-censored and pretty much always adapting places and names to Europe).

I still remember that Dash Kappei moment where the basket team was supposed to be based in Catalonia (Tarragona, I think), with a magnificent view of Mount Fuji in the background... that's a serious leap of faith there.

My point is that I find strange that manga, at least, is so easily handwaved in Italy.

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).

21 minutes ago, Clephas said:

He has set up his 'personal room' at the house he is renting for his otaku stuff. His wife isn't an otaku, but she is understanding of his need to watch anime for ten hours a week in order to remain sane. Also, some of the other staffers at the embassy are light or medium otakus, so he has people to chat with irl, apparently.

I see. Thanks for both explaining and forgiving my curiosity on the matter.

April 10, 2018

8 minutes ago, tymmur said:

I'm not sure it's your location or age, which really matters here. Once you reached a certain age (teens?), watching anime is seen as weird and childish more or less regardless of where you are, including Japan. Not being interested in (insert local sport) is apparently really bad everywhere. I have taken some flaming for that from peers and teachers for that one alone. As I wrote earlier:

This sentence can be applied to everything you mention. In fact it can be applied to more or less everything.

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*

8 minutes ago, tymmur said:

I wonder if stressful is the right word, but I guess it depends on the person and the surroundings. Some are more prone to stress than others and the risk of being discovered varies greatly. If you are the sort of person who wants to be nude in the living room with hentai on the big screen, then it could be stressful if you have to hope no family member will come home earlier than usual. If you can somehow be sure not to be interrupted, then the stress from risk of discovery should be minimal.

To me, stress isn't really an issue. What matters more is that it's annoying not to have anybody to talk to. In a way it's comparable with hikikomori despite the fact that I do have face to face contact with other people, usually for hours each day.

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.

8 minutes ago, tymmur said:

Fuwa helps in this regard, though oddly enough I have a tendency to feel left out here as well. People mention some awesome VNs/animes and it's not uncommon that I have no interest in those. At first I took what I could get, but now I have apparently become quite picky about what contents I spend time on.

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.

tymmur · April 10, 2018

26 minutes ago, Okarin said:

There's a mental condition called "anhedonia", associated with depression and schizophrenia, and boy, is it sinister. It's the inability to feel pleasure, or more generally, satisfaction. This is fucked up, so please consider how lucky we are to enjoy something like Japanese media that brings us joy and entertainment, even if it's considered the stupidest thing under the Sun.

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").

Trickay · April 10, 2018

5 minutes ago, Trickay said:

I completely agree with what you're saying Kyousuke. I'm also of a similar age (32) and there's no way I can discuss with others about my hobbies without being labelled as weird. That said I believe it's all about your environment and the people that surround you. During my first (and only) research assistant position I found that I could talk to colleagues about these things; although many of my colleagues at the time we're Chinese. Since I had to give up my ambition of a lectureship (due to an unplanned pregnancy) and move into the defence industry for a permanent job there's just no way I can discuss these hobbies with anyone anymore; and I find that unbelievably crushing. Like you said if it's football or rugby then there's conversation, everything else just raises eyebrows.

^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.

Trickay · April 10, 2018

On 18/3/2018 at 9:30 AM, Clephas said:

People who follow their hobbies obsessively are often seen as eccentric or childish... but immaturity is relative. One of my best rl friends is a heavy-duty otaku with a family who works in the embassy of a certain African nation (though, because of that I haven't seen him in years). I know plenty of people who are serious and live fulfilled lives around me who also happen to be otakus... and if you don't seem childish while indulging your hobbies, they probably aren't a hobby. That is because a hobby is something you are supposed to take joy in pursuing, as opposed to working at.

That said... in any community, a certain percentage of those involved are going to be immature trolls (trolls being immature by definition). I won't deny that some people, excluding myself of course *bats his eyes innocently* have made decisions others might consider... immature. However, there is no absolute definition of maturity, beyond the ability to rationally make your own decisions based on what you want from life and be capable of rational discussion with people who disagree with you... or at least avoid exploding in their faces.

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.

April 9, 2018

8 hours ago, marcus-beta said:

First of all, you don't give the name of the game, Appetite have too many games.
Second, you don't upload your problematic .ks file, this will we know the reason to who don't wants download the game.
Keep in mind we can't do magic, we need a way to get the games files to test it.

Anyway, about your problem, I think your problem is in your kirkiri extraction tool, to have sure of this, try open a other file like a .png, .tlg or .ogg...
If the file with other extensions don't open too your extractor is the problem here, and if open, your extractor is just a possibility (yes, have games that use diferent encryptions to some extensions)...

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?

April 8, 2018

4 minutes ago, tymmur said:

I just remembered how the signature issue started. When Luna Translations died, I went to my account and instead of deleting, there was this "use signature" button. I figured I could just click that one and sure enough when I checked, my signature was gone. I didn't realize other people could see it and that I only removed it for myself.

Apparently it didn't want to leave you yet

April 8, 2018

25 minutes ago, xGreyHound said:

General Kenobi

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

April 7, 2018

3 hours ago, shcboomer said:

Welcome to Fuwa. Hope you enjoy your time around here.

Thank you!

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