HonorificsSurvey

I read most of them personally and I checked a sample on youtube for the ones I haven’t. I saw Sensei, Onii-chan and Sen-chan in the short part of SJ I found. You can’t be sure what the original line is based on a vndb screenshot.

I wouldn't say that. Their usage is certainly diminished by the fact that the heroines only very sparsely use MC's name (when they do, 2/4 heroines do use honorifics for him), but we can compare FureRaba's script (3 most common ones): with something like MML. I think MML is longer, but I'm not sure. I just know the script is larger than PE's. Which is something only MG could ever do. And they won't. Which is why I said all the companies and Steam would have to do it together to get a "real" result for all the people who buy VNs. But you know, you still wouldn't get results for the people who read VNs, but never bought any. And these people might potentially buy VNs in the future depending on a number of factors. Anyway, the results are only for the core audience, as I said in the beginning.

A very idealistic (and unrealistic) look on things. No internet poll can be the way you picture it. The only way to randomly sample customers would be if all the localization companies (and Steam) made a poll together. Not that doing it that way wouldn't be "useless" (according to you) as well. Every poll on the internet is completely voluntary. Things don't work like in real life, where you get called out to at a subway station and agree to take part in a poll before you even know what's going on. In that scenario, it is also much harder to walk away from something you already agreed to. That is not the case on the internet. You likely know the contents of a poll before you decide to click on it, and even if you don't, closing the tab if you don't care about the subject is very easy. That is a myth. Let's take a look at this year's releases.

Oh, but you just said that their preferences are unknown. What we do know, however, is how the newcomers to the VN scene who are at the same time a part of the communities feel like. These are people who are very likely also a part of an existing anime/manga community (or used to be), which is why they also decided to join a VN community upon picking up reading VNs as a hobby. They are the group which is the least opposed to honorifics.

First of all, this poll never claimed it represents the whole VN community. However, it still does represent the places it polled - the core VN community. And this core audience is much more important than some would have you think. The number of registered users on VNDB is not a proof of anything when you don't know how many of these accounts are no longer active, how many are duplicate, how many are vote bots. A much better proof of the size of the VN community as a whole are the sales of an average visual novel, which go from several hundred to several thousand at best (You need to make a distinction between regular VNs and VNs which were largely bought by people outside of the community for various reasons like NekoPara). Another thing you should consider is that "we" are much more likely to be the ones who check out a large percentage of new releases, know the reputation of the various companies, and care about translation quality as a whole. A person who buys a VN on sale on Steam on random, or simply because it was very cheap to do so and they wanted the achievements from it, is not someone who can be marketed to, aside from putting up a pretty title picture and adding achievements to the game. There are people who happily buy machine translations, people who don't know which company released which VN. In short, saying that the people who participate (or even lurk) in all the major VN communities are a small minority of the overall market and we don't even matter is a ridiculous notion. The people who would tell you that are acting in a self-deprecating way in order to fool people into thinking that their opinion does not matter. And they do it simply because the disagree with the results.

Bump - I posted the results of the survey in the OP

The survey will be closing in 3 days. Please take it if you haven't done so yet. I will post the results soon after I close it.

Of course I am reading the replies. As of now, there are 691 responses to the survey. Requiring google login is a necessity, because that's the only protection against duplicate replies which google forms offer. There's no IP or cookies check. It's this or everyone being able to reply as many times as they want.

Purpose of the survey: Find out the preference for honorifics in JP->EN translated VNs Target group: People who are interested enough in VNs to be a part of a major VN discussion community Communities approached: 4chan, Fuwanovel, Reddit, VNDB, and various Discord servers Survey duration: July 17 to July 31, 2018 Sample size: 752 people Subsample of Fuwanovel respondents: 62 people Link to the questions, possible answers to each question, and graphs made from raw data by Google: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdC78xb3vobwtZJRHVY9ITMQtED3Xn15kvT2kaOghBoedA8GQ/viewanalytics Link to my excel sheet with the raw data, analyzed data, and all the graphs I made with the analyzed data: https://mega.nz/#!u0kl2C6b!3f_ZD3AG_k9aEW-iElozzleB54-x6UJkUqWNyUPZvic How the analysis was done: The main source for the graphs are the answers people gave in the "What is your reason for picking the last answer the way you did?" question. I fell back to the short answer when things weren't clear. There are several cases when the short and long answers clearly contradicted each other. I put comments to some of them. Setting split: Having been through quite a few of these conversation myself, I know setting is the most common reason why people change their minds on the presence of honorifics in the text. This was confirmed by the results and the respondents' comments. The results: Starting with Chart #1 We can see 75% of the respondents prefer honorifics to be kept in the translated text when the setting of the game is Japan (including current Japan, historical Japan, future Japan, alternative universe Japan, or fantasy land heavily based on Japan). The most commonly stated reasons for this preference include: Ability to see the same nuances and character relations as the Japanese readers; Some honorifics which replace names OR conversations which play with honorifics are untranslatable without heavy re-writing; Simple fondness for honorifics (As part of character moe, fetish, etc.); Desire to see the original writer's vision in the work; Discrepancy between voice and text in names (honorifics being a part of how characters address each other) 5% of the respondents want honorifics kept in the translated text only when certain conditions are met. The most commonly stated examples are: Relevance to the plot (e.g. feudal Japan, used honorifics give some foreshadowing); There is a conversation about honorifics in the VN itself; To preserve the moe factor or sexual appeal of some honorifics which replace the name entirely (Senpai, Onii-chan, etc.) 11% of the respondents have no preference or leave it up to the translator's preference 9% of the respondents want honorifics removed from the translated text, stating the following reasons for their preference: Honorifics are not a part of the English language - leaving them in is the same as leaving any other untranslated text; Desire for the translation to read as if it was originally written in English; Good translators are able to show the nuances through other means than honorifics; No reason to see them in text when readers can hear them Moving on to Chart #2, we can see a significant dip in the "keep" camp when it comes to settings which are not Japan. Examples of those would be: Isekai VNs, fantasy world VNs (which are not based on Japan), VNs set in historical or alternative universe Europe/West. However, the majority of respondents (52%) still want honorifics to be kept in those settings. The reasons for their preference are the same as stated above. 8% of the respondents want honorifics kept in the translated text only when certain conditions are met. All the examples listed above still apply. What should be noted, however, is how some respondents differentiated between isekai, fantasy, and western setting, with some outright stating that honorifics should be always kept in isekai (Such as Koihime Musou or Newton to Ringo no Ki) and others wanting them kept in fantasy (Such as Evenicle or Kamidori Alchemy Meister). Medieval or modern western fiction (like Fata Morgana no Yakata) was not mentioned in these replies, leading me to believe people's desire for honorifics in such titles is smaller. 12% of the respondents have no preference or leave it up to the translator's preference. 28% of the respondents want honorifics removed in a non-Japanese setting. From this, we can see a major move from the "keep" camp to the "remove" camp. A 19 percentage point gain from the people who voted that they want honorifics kept in a Japanese setting, yet they want them removed/replaced in a non-Japanese one. These people have the following reasons for why their opinion is different: Breaking the immersion - Japanese is likely not the "real" language of the world/country they're in, so it makes no sense for them to use honorifics; There are more likely to be English equivalents for honorifics when you have the option of using old English in the translation. (scroll down for comments, open the image for a larger version) Now I will use the other data I collected to show what has and does not have impact on the preference for honorifics. First, here are the preferences for Fuwa only. A lot less people want honorifics kept in all settings (14 and 15 percentage points below average), with a very large group of people wanting them to be always removed in non-Japanese setting. Next up, I split the respondents into several groups based on how long they have been reading visual novels (this is global data, not just Fuwanovel). I initially thought newcomers to VNs would be the biggest opponents to honorifics, due to them not being used to seeing them in text or even not understanding them. However, it is exact opposite. This goes to show that while these people are new to VNs, they are certainly not new to Japanese culture in general. It is very likely that most of the people who read VNs started with other forms of media such as anime or manga. Other than this, there is nothing special to say. All the other groups are pretty close to the average with their replies. I also made groups based on number of completed titles, as the length of reading VNs and number of completed titles don't seem to be connected at all. For example, a large number of people who have been reading VNs for over 5 years have only read 25 or less (translated) VNs. In my opinion, you just need hands-on experience with localized VNs to see the real state of the translation scene, what are the realistic expectations for translators, and what are the common roadblocks in localization of honorifics. Anyway, you can see the charts in the picture. What stands out the most is the 101+ completed VNs chart (I merged 101-200 and 200+ because 200+ was a very small subsample). The number of people who want honorifics kept in Japanese settings is about 8 percentage points above average, but the number of people who want honorifics removed in non-Japanese settings is 10 percentage points above average. (scroll down for comments, open the image for a larger version) And here are the other statistics I got from doing the survey. Left is Fuwa, right is global. People here have been reading VNs for longer than average, are more likely to know Japanese, and read more VNs in general. You also love cute things. Note: Obviously there is an overlap between some of the communities, so these charts based on community might not be completely accurate, but I posted it all over the place at around the same time, which means the place you saw it first is likely the one you frequent the most.