Maya

About a month later, and now another arc is complete, this time with Airi. That brings the current total to about 45% complete for the entire script. Although there's still about 20,000 lines to go, it always feels better once I get over the 50% mark, which I should hit sometime next week in Nagisa's arc. Funnily enough, Nagisa's arc is almost exactly the same size as Airi's, even down to the amount of text itself, with only 482 characters separating them. Both arcs were written by the same author, Saitou Kenji, so that may have had something to do with it. So I'll get back to working on it and have another update next month.

For Astral Air, even without info from Discord it's still easy to figure out that Nekonyan still have the translated script, moreso if we follow them ever since they have the name Shinku Translation way back in 2015 to 2016 (Or just search VNDB). So yeah, unless they're very careless so much they lost the script, obviously they should still have Astral Air script. That said, to turned Astral Air translated script into English release took a lot of effort and patience, one of which is definitely can't be helped if they get a random reviewer in the review process who then randomly decide to ban the VN. Another thing to note is the programming, in which they also need to wait because Favorite engine force the user to change the language to Japan (On date and time display) just to play their VN properly, in which its also happen with Sakuramoyu here.

I was the editor on Houkago Cinderella when the project was dropped, joining a few months before it was dropped due to the takedown notice. At the time, I was tasked with focusing on editing Youka's route and was about half-way finished with the route, but due to the takedown, nothing I worked on was released in the partial patches that came out. I was not in the conversation when the takedown was requested, but based on statements, the translator was messaged to stop the project from someone at NekoNyan since they are partners with Hooksoft and the image editor made a statement along those same lines(saying it was NekoNyan) in the Discord server when announcing the project was dropped. Though when news spread and when it was announced it was worded like it came from Hooksoft(the AfterschoolTL's blog post stating "HOOKSOFT representative") themselves since NekoNyan was acting as Hooksoft's representatives due to the partnership. Part of the reason why things shifted to not announce what future projects, if any, are. The translator was honestly surprised they weren't hit sooner by a takedown notice or something, and so was I. 

Most likely they'll have to finish the Iroseka trilogy first, then maybe Sakura Moyu after

Well, ...how should I say this? Perhaps I shouldn't update the VNDB entry when it was released so that VNTS person from 4chan didn't caught it and then inevitably spread the news that caught up one of Nekonyan's staff attention considering Sakuramoyu is from their FAVORITE company (Sorry for the intentional pun).
That aside, I understand very much that this is neccesary evil seeing that they'll face huge risk if a fan released the patch of the VN from their partner companies, especially if the company caught the wind of it. Personally speaking though, I didn't exactly like on how it's going after all even if I understand the situation.
in the end, sorry for the rambling and what was done is already done. So, let's just move on from this complex matter.
PS - Forgot to say congratulation for the common route patch release, and good luck on whatever you'll do next.

Just created this account for the sole purpose of writing a comment here 
I heard about Sakura Moyu a while back and as I kept digging for opinions and review, I found nothing but praise for it. As such, I'm really happy you decided to undertake this giant project for the sake of sharing a story you love with the rest of the English speaking world. And for me, that is is key point, that you love what you are translating. Now, I apologize if this is a bit cheesy, but when I hear about any big localization company picking up a VN, I'm usually really skeptical about the quality of whatever they plan to release. Hearing you say that you absolutely adore this game, and that is even your reason to learn the language, I immediately went "yup, that's it, I feel pretty good about this one". The skills needed for this can be learned and improved along the way, but someone's devotion for a piece of fiction can't. If you're willing to commit and pour everything you have into this, iterating over and over until you are satisfied, I wholeheartedly believe it's in good hands. No one will be more demanding than a true fan, after all. Heck,  for me, even the fact that some things ended up being translated a bit too literally is a good sign. Sure, there might be inexperience, but also extreme care being put into not altering the original message.
Ok, cheesy remarks over. I'd love to contribute to the project somehow, but I can't even offer my help as a proofreader, what with English not being my native language and being unable to pick up on odd-sounding stuff. Regardless, you have all my support and appreciation for what is worth. Keep it up man!

Only read a bit to check the quality of the translation (already finished the game long ago) and yeah, I agree that the translation is fine, but way too direct so lots of them just sounded either awkward or textbook-ish. Definitely requires some serious editing.
Just a bit of advice from me, but rather than keeping the translation at point-blank range from the original, try to think about how you would say a sentence like that irl instead. Worked quite well for me before.

Amazing. One of my most awaited fan TLs. Can't wait to see this come to fruition eventually.

I think "from now on" instead of "next" would look better in that top image. It looks like you made a lot of progress tho. Looking forward to it.

honestly cheers to eplip. i expected cursing and a tantrum when the leak happened. if anything the leak was probably a good thing. now instead of people constantly making jokes about the eternal translation project, they can just play the leak. for those that want full quality  they can wait in peace. for now ill go play the leak. i lack self control.

Hey guys, just hopping in here quickly to say that no, the project has not died. It'll still be officially released by us regardless as that leaked version is based off an older version anyway.
And sorry that this has been taking so long, but we will get to the finish line. Cheers

She is almost universally considered best girl, and the main reason people come read YnS. So this is a big milestone. This means 4 routes (5 including Common) have reached their final form, between YnS and HnS. What remains is Kozue TL( Almost done). Nao and Akira both still need a Translation Check (TLC). Akira is a WIP, and Nao has no one working on her, Applications open for Nao if you are N2ish, pls help! And finally Sora's Route in HnS needs to be edited (just started).

Can find out more details here: https://trjr.wordpress.com/

I have an intrusive thought that there is no translation and this is all some prank that got out of hand.

The green column by the Eustia Route TLC grew from 17 cells to 18 cells! Surely this means something!!?
Edit: 19! (Oct 18 2023)

just saying if u dont care about quality and want to read it now then get textractor and buy a deepl subscription.

At this point maybe just release what you have? It's okay if it's not perfect.

you might as well MTL it

Two more bar is now in green, so at least there's more progress (If the green bar really meant it).
As for the other routes, I may as well assume that the translator already done with QC (Or rather inserting the edited and QC-ed text into the in-game files) seeing that the Discord chat screenshot from NowItsAngeTime Youtube shorts that has the translator said he already inserting the text for Licia's chapter with the chat is from April 11th. There's also one of the user in Youtube did ask the Eustia guy, and the guy mention that he'll try to release it soon and sometimes in this year, although looking from how it currently going I may as well expect early 2024 release at best, because real life business can't be predicted easily. Of course though if we can see it somehow released in this year (Possibly as the Christmas prize), then good for the translator.

Finally after 5 months, the editing phase is complete! It's been a long time coming, since I first thought about creating a patch for this game around a year ago. Now that the QC phase is about to begin, it's a relief to know it's 90% complete, and for all intents and purposes, is a complete (beta) patch for the first time. Based on my experience with doing the Imaimo patch previously, that game had about 2.5-3% of the text changed from before and after the QC phase, but about half of that had to do with formatting, so it was closer to 1.5% that was altered (fixing typos, rewriting lines, etc.). That might not seem like a lot, but it makes a big difference when the game is actually played, and obviously results in a better patch.
So the QC phase will be starting as soon as I recompile the game files, which is much easier this time around since there's only about 1/3 as many scenario files, and the other files are even quicker to deal with. So I'll get to work on that and go from there.
PS: The game is once again 50% off on DMM until August 17.

Okay, so it's been 3 months since I've been editing the script, and it's currently done up through Hinata's arc, bringing the total to 56.7% complete. With around 30K lines left to edit, I'm going to try to get done with it sometime around either late June or early July, so hopefully less than 2 months from now. Then I can finally start the QC phase, which should last about 2 months. What that means is that I'm currently shooting for a release of the patch sometime in September, which I'm very much looking forward to, and I hope you are, too. So with that, back to editing.

I could wait 3 more years 🤣 Anyways, we're just ironing out some images and it'll be scheduled soon for releasing. *fingers crossed*

Just a quick update, since it's been almost 2 months since the last one (and I didn't want to do it yesterday for obvious reasons). The editing of the script has been going at a slow, but steady pace over the past 50 days, with now both the common route and Hayami's route fully edited, bringing the total up to 38%. I'm still not sure how much longer the editing phase will continue, but I'm hoping to get it done by June if I can so I can start the final, QC phase (which itself will probably take at least a couple of months). I still fully expect the patch to be released sometime later this year, but I won't know a more definite release window until I'm at least partially through the QC phase.
The whole process has been daunting from the start, but it's been a lot less demanding once the translation was completed. There's not much else to say, other than that work on the videos is still ongoing, but otherwise all the image editing is done, at least preliminarily. I'll probably post another update sometime next month.
PS: The game is still 50% off on DMM until May 8. so please purchase the game if you can so as to support the original creators.

I'm back for another update, this time to announce that all the in-game images (and at least a portion of the UI) have now been completed. The vast majority of the images were pretty simple in terms of typesetting and editing, although there were a certain amount (around 25-30 or so) that required extensive editing, but I'm very pleased with the end result. Even the more challenging ones were fun to go through, if not a bit tedious at times, but there was nothing too difficult, at least.
On the video side of things, all the lyrics for the 7 songs have now been translated (a shout out goes to Shinyyyjoke#1112 from the Moekko Company discord for providing the lyrics for 2 of the songs that I couldn't find anywhere online), and that was the last thing I had left to do before moving on to the text editing phase.
Speaking of which, that's what I'll be doing now for a while. There was a certain amount of self-editing I was conducting on my translation as I went through the script just as a general side-effect of the translation process itself, but there still requires a fair amount of editing the script now that the entire thing is translated. I'm not really sure how long this process is going to take, but I'm not going to rush it by any means. Preliminarily, it might take me anywhere from 2 to 3 months, but I really don't know. As I've commented on previously, this game is wordier than the previous project, Imaimo, not only in terms of its sheer length, but the lines themselves and the overall writing style lends itself to be more verbose than what I encountered in general when I had worked on Imaimo last year. As such, I can already anticipate the editing phase for this game to take longer, but how much longer exactly I probably won't know until I'm around 50% through the script.
So thank you for your support, and your patience in this long process. I want to put out the best quality patch I can, and 90% of that has to do with the script, so that's why the editing and QC phases are so important to ensuring the quality of the overall product and experience when playing the game. So until the next update.
PS: The game is once again 50% off on DMM until March 7. Now would be a great time to buy the game in anticipation of the patch, if you are able to do so.

Now the update many of you have been eagerly awaiting: the translation is now 100% complete with the completion of Otoha's arc. The translation took just under 6 months to complete from August 10 to January 28, a period of 171 days. To put this in perspective, that's around 400 lines per day on average. I say around, because a certain amount of the 73,547 lines were repeated across various arcs, and in two instances, there were scenario files that had identical content (one shared between Hayami's and Hinata's arcs, and another shared between Hinata's and Otoha's arcs). In addition to this, large sections of other scenario files were duplicates of lines already translated, and although I don't have an exact number, it's at least 3,000 lines, but it's probably closer to 4,000 or perhaps upwards of 5,000 lines.
But let's just say we can estimate that about 70,000 lines of the game were not duplicated elsewhere. That would bring the average number of lines translated per day to about 410. On average, I usually could translate about 80-100 lines per hour, meaning that it would come out to be around 4-5 hours per day as an average. Obviously, some days I did more when I had more time, and some days I did less when I had less time, but I'm giving the average to give you an idea of just how many hours it took to translate this game over the past 6 months. I translated at least some of the content nearly every single day during that time, mainly because I was eager to get the patch complete and out as soon as humanly possible. That said, it will still take a long time before the patch is released, although if all goes well, I still assume it will be out sometime later this year, but I won't know an exact time frame until at least the editing phase begins, which probably won't be for several weeks.
In the meantime, work on the game's images will now be the main focus. This process is being shared between me and nReus, same as with Imaimo previously. There are around 110 UI images (not counting some duplicate CG thumbnails) and roughly 335 other game images, almost all of which deal with the SD images that pop up throughout the story. Many of those 335 images are themselves duplicates, or at least are otherwise minor variations on each other, meaning the exact number of unique images is much less than that. Plus, most of the images require relatively little image editing, so I don't really anticipate this process taking that long, although could still stretch into several weeks or more, at least for my part. As it is, I won't be starting on the editing phase of the text until the images are finished, and this process will give me some time to take a break from the script for a little while.
But with the translation now complete, the project can now finally move forward with the rest of the work. I'm looking forward to getting the patch complete, and I hope you're also looking forward to finally playing H2O after all these years, this being the 17th year since its initial release back in 2006 (although the Complete Story Edition didn't actually come out until 2009, so it's been 14 years since that release). So thanks for the support the project has received thus far and I'll see you at the next update.

For now, I'm focused on getting this patch done, so I'm not really thinking about the "next" project beyond musing what I would do if/when there is a next project. I'll have to make that decision once I get closer to the completion of this patch.