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Chronopolis

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Posts posted by Chronopolis

  1. Have you ever been playing a VN with a heroine that just made you go 'eh?!' and shiver in fear at the thought of her being real?  A heroine who just scares the bejeezus out of you?  Or maybe a heroine who just made you kind of shiver and go, 'It really would be best not to anger her.' 

     

    Bring us your yanderes, yangires, manipulative bitches, and cold-blooded manipulators!

     

    My scariest heroine is Kamio Ami (also one of my top heroines of all time) from Semiramis no Tenbin. 

     

    tn_gallery_24901_7_28083.jpg

    I knew you would say Ami, hehe. Yea, she is the scariest. So much potential you don't want to awaken.

     

    To be honest, I'm not sure what would make a herione scary...nothing comes to mind. Saya from Saya no Uta, maybe.

    yanderes, yangires, manipulative bitches, and cold-blooded manipulators!

    Oh no wonder, I usually stay away from yandere. I don't like it if the character was concieved as a yandere (as opposed to having other factors lead to essentially yandere behaviour).

     

    Yuka from GSS is up there. The actual scenes didn't get as much of a reaction from me, but the more I thought about "wtf is she thinking about?" the more shivers I get.

    Probably the girl from Atlach Nacha counts.

     

    I might find a herione scary if they they are a convincing character but one who I can't understand.

  2. Okay, I think we are mixing up different standards here.

    All this talk about style, prose and whatnot, is only relevant to "great translations". Absolutely the best ones out there. I think only the most delusional JP-readers would seriously expect such level from an average Fan-TL.

    That kind of quality would be nice of course, but it isn't really all that vital. People who seriously care about writing style, or those who simply prefer to experience everything the way it was written originally (like I do), will read most stuff in JP anyway. When you can read in JP, there's just no point in touching translations (other that saving time if your reading pace in ENG is noticeably faster).

     

    Now, most current Fan-TL are what I'd call a "good enough translations". They accurately represent the original story and are written in readable English. Nothing more. They don't represent the original prose or writing style, just plot, characters, setting, etc.. And that's all the Fan-TL really needs to do. Of course, the more it does, the better, but that's the acceptable minimum. This really should work just fine for almost anyone who isn't dedicated enough to learn Japanese.

    If a TL fails to deliver that (due to overly literal writing or some minor inaccuracies), but it doesn't fail horribly, it's what I'd call a "sub-par translation" (Rewrite is a good example here). It doesn't represent the original very accurately, but it's still perfectly readable, and all important details are preserved. Those can be a little annoying sometimes (as Clephas mentioned), but they still work. People who aren't familiar with the original, probably won't notice any errors.

     

    Then, there are "bad translations". The main problem with those isn't prose, writing and all that fancy stuff you guys are talking about (though those usually suck, too). The biggest issue here, is that they don't represent the original at all, because they are filled with mistranslations. They alter characters' personalities, completely ruin the atmosphere, or even mix up the events and plot-points. In short, they utterly butcher the original story. Good editor could make them readable (you could probably even reforge a machine translation like this), but they still would be far too inaccurate to actually work. But, I don't think a good editor would touch obvious crap to begin with, so all you get is utterly unreadable garbage in the end.

     

    Nobody sane really demands great translations, and nobody sane really complains about good enough ones. Some 4chan trolls, maybe.

    And you can only really discuss prose and other literary aspects on the "great" vs "good enough" translations level.

     

    Bad translations - those that do get bashed (and quite rightly so) - are on a completely different level. The prose, writing and stuff aren't the biggest issues here (those can always be fixed by editors). The main problem is that the TL is completely wrong and butchers the original. Like in Eustia or Monobeno cases.

    Now, when clearly incompetent people are attempting to rewrite a VN somebody likes into a borderline-unreadable fanfic, it's only natural that some fans get pissed and start pointing out errors. Often in a not-so-civilized manner.

     

    JP-readers will always have slightly different experiences than ENG-readers. But in case of "good enough" and even "sub-par" translations, those differences shouldn't be significant. "Bad" translations however, turn VNs into something completely different than their original versions, and are well capable of degrading a nice, enjoyable title (like KonoSora) into something worse than Shuffle or Katawa Shoujo.

    Yes, mixing up different standards is the cause of lots and lots of pain. All these four levels of translations exist and should be treated like that.

    This, this, and this. This post objectively explains how things are, much more concisely they I could put it.

  3. A primary reason JAST and Mangagamer don't use crowdfunding is because Japanese developers won't let them.  They regard crowdfunding as unprofessional, and for good reason, and they don't want their name sullied by shameless cash grabs.  Note that most of Sekai Project's Kickstarter campaigns are for doujin projects, as doujin groups don't have a professional reputation to maintain.  I'm a bit surprised Frontwing and Key let Sekai Project go through with the crowdfunding projects for Grisaia and Clannad, but don't expect Japanese professional companies to keep supporting an endless deluge of Kickstarter campaigns.  By establishing themselves as perpetually reliant on crowdfunding, Sekai Project may be locking themselves into the role of doujin publisher, a role they may find difficult to escape once they're spurned by most or all professional developers.  Japanese companies have long memories when it comes to social matters such as public image and professionalism.

    Yeah this is an important point. Also, with Kickstarters, if you fail, you'll have a large amount of pissed off fans, which is hard to recover from. It's even worse than releasing a bad game because of all the waits, promises and frustrations. I suppose that's why many people call it an unsustainable business model, because it depends on people not waking up to how lopsided it is.

  4.  

    As long as they keep delivering quality content, working along with devs and building a network of trust and possibilities, the fact they use KS in way that allows them to expand rapidly makes any ethics involved completely irrelevant, as it doesn't impact anyone else. After all, they've been doing good job, they made a lot of people happy and don't plan to stop. It might be their strategy to build up their title base with small indie releases, while they're preparing for bigger business deals. After all, they managed to do something both Jast and MG haven't been able to do for years. Don't expect them to sleep on money, though; they're simply smart and know how to use everything internet has to offer in order to fulfill their plans. As long as everyone's content, I couldn't care less if a bunch of people thinks what they do is unethical, simply because they learned to use KS to the fullest potential.

    Yeah this. I'd prefer they not use that model, but as long as there are people who are willing to continue paying, even if it's mostly due to advertisement, than that's fine.

     

    I'm pretty sure at this point Sekai Project would use its own capital to protect its name (ie. help get titles released that would have flopped normally).

     

    The issue is pretty complex (in exactly what ways are Sekai Project exploiting/shifting the risk to/misleading the consumers compared to the normal model), but if they retain their happy customers, I see no problem with it. If anything, you could praise Sekai's Project's PR and presentation for making this model seem a matter of course to their consumers. People forget the security you get when you purchase a product that already exists (and that the maker took risk in making).

     

    ----

     

    Most of the titles they've adapated are doujin titles. One of them that I was really sketchy about was WAS –The Hourglass of Lepidoptera because it's the first of a trilogy, and the makers have no prior history of good titles. But it all comes down to whether they can keep their customer base. Not sure how that will go though.

  5. Hello, Lady's biggest difficulty is Narita Shinri, whose speech patterns are so roundabout they have me giggling hysterically at times.  I'd say that it varies between 5.5-7 through most of its length.

    So roundabout around and going round and round round boobs.

  6. Yes, for professionals this is a reasonably attainable feat; but expecting every or even most fan-translations to accomplish high quality I think is a bit unrealistic. When it comes to fan translation the question of quality over quantity comes up. And unfortunately, since English fans are kind of starved of VNs in English, I think many people have consequently lowered their standards (as Pabloc was criticizing). I think there is a sizable amount of people who would rather have a sub-par translation than no translation at all; and I don't think we can particularly blame these people (not everybody has the time or commitment to learn Japanese).

    Huh, now that you mention that, I guess I do have a higher bar than most (Group 1, but one of the point of my above posts was that even Group 1 has gradients). The difference between satisfying those two sub-groups is: the TL being proficient in Japanese, and being proficient in Japanese and capable of *writing*.

     

    Anyways, I accept people's rights to translate whatever and enjoy w/e the hell they want. I also agree that there's that large pool of people in group 2 that would be more than happy with a readable translation and that its fine for people to translate for them. So I don't disagree with you there.

     

    I agree. And as you mentioned even bad translations can capture the ideas and themes of what is written. But I feel that most people who criticize translations usually care about way more than just that; the people Pabloc labeled as group 1. I think these people care a lot about subtly in writing, which is much harder to translate. And yes, I do agree that I think they would be better off in Japanese forums. 

    I kind of agree...but I kind of don't.

     

    And as you mentioned even bad translations can capture the ideas and themes of what is written. But I feel that most people who criticize translations usually care about way more than just that;

    Don't agree with this. A bad translation can capture some of the ideas and themes of what is written. Among the people who criticize translations, a vocal part of them come from group 1A (see below), and care about the the quality of the prose. But if it's ideas and themes you are talking about, I think you are missing a group of people when you say (most) people who critize fan translations care about "way more than just that".

     

    TL'er understanding the meaning -> Preservation of the Meaning  -> preservation of close to all ideas and themes and other story elements. (which sanahtlig and I state are completely translatable, the barring factor is TL knowledge in japanese and attention to detail)

     

    Consider an adapted version of Palas's grouping.

     

    Groups and what they want.

    Group 1:

    Group 1A: A decent replication of the prose in English, plus the stuff 1B people care about.

    Group 1B: Preservation of close to all ideas and themes and other story elements.

     

    Group 2:

    There's a scale here, from people who want a patch without obvious errors, to people who will take anything readable.

    2A: English patch is presentable and doesn't have major mistakes

    2B: English Translation is readable and comprehensible 

     

    Most people who become proficient in Japanese automatically rise up to group 1B. Unless they have thought about and accept/tolerate/support translation for group 2, you are likely to see them grumble when a sub-par translation thread comes up.

     

    I think with that we've discussed most of the points...At least I've expressed everything I want to say.

     

     

    And yes, I do agree that I think they would be better off in Japanese forums.

    If you want to discuss the prose specifically, this and similar forums are a bad place, but I don't know if there are even Japanese forums (it's pretty scattered, sadly).

  7. What I imagine is frustrating for anybody who is competently Japanese literate in the Western VN community is knowing that they can't discuss what they read (in Japanese) with somebody who doesn't know Japanese (even if they read the same story with a translation). This is where I think hate, or at least anger at translations comes into play. Because a translation will only satisfy the need for somebody who wants to experience a new VN; read it in there language (and yes, it will be at best only slightly different from the original). But people who read the original will still feel isolated.

     

    I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that a competent translation (especially so if the TL, Editor are skilled, experienced, careful, and/or communicate well) is going to map out the original work into English such that, the experience (other than the nuance of the words) is the same, and any topic you could discuss from the original and translation refer to the same thing.

     

    Edit:

    Some, like me, are more interested in the ideas, plot points, and overall themes.  Such things are perfectly translatable.

    Yes precisely this.

     

    The one thing that is left behind is the prose. Which frankly doesn't matter, since literary or distinctive prose only appears in a small fraction of VN's. Appeals to emotions and dramatism can be suitable done in English by the average editor without much trouble. For discussing the story and experience (which come from presentation and story structure more often than pure prose) I don't feel a perceptible divide from a competent TL.

     

    So to me, a competent TL is an achievable, realistic goal that lets the community and me have our cake.

    A bad translation ... beyond leaving a bad taste in my month, raises a number of secondary issues.

     

    Edit2:

     

    Obviously if you're into visual novels for literary reasons, nothing but the original text will satisfy.  But why the hell are you even here then?  Go play games in Japanese and discuss them on Japanese forums.

    In case someone was actually interested in that, FYI you could try #TLWiki, I can unsarcastically say you might find good company. On average Japanese readers don't care about prose any more than English readers. On the flip side there are English readers who do enjoy Japanese prose to varying extents. For Japanese things, it's regrettable there isn't really a common community location besides 2ch. However if you search the reviews of games with literary text, then you'll encounter more of that crowd.

  8. Well, if you feel like the paper method there's always leaving password hints instead of just writing the actual passwords down. Obviously this depends on you having a memorable password in the first place, which in this case tends to be pass phrases. If anyone actually gets to the passwords I legit care about (since I started getting important passwords as part of muh fuwa position, this includes my Fuwa account), they would have to be fairly clever and have studied me for a while... or the site would have gotten broken into, rip in weaklinkeroni. I do split passwords into weak and strong tier ones depending on how much I care though, so $randomsite isn't going to get that much attention.

    Yea I think with a bit of effort you can make passwords phrases such that you'll never forget it with the hint or set of hints you write down, nor will anyone be able to guess it.

  9. Furthermore what eludes me, is why the elitists care in the first place about translations. They know Japanese, they don't need translations. Chronopolis answered this a bit in his post, but I honestly still don't completely understand why they get so butt hurt by translations when it doesn't affect them personally. Bad translations can only damage the experience for people who need a translation.   
  10. そういう会社としての判断にならざるを得ないし

    Oh man. I also read that wrong the first five times. I think I get why this line is so easy to get wrong. そういう会社. when you see this it immediately sounds like "the sort of company" in the negative sense, as in "the sort of company who supports those kinds of things". And the grammar parts in the area don't obviously conflict with that assumption so it's easy to overlook.

     

    To show how close and confusing they are, here's what some of the wrong interpretations would look like if you wrote them out.

    (世間、もしくは消費者から)そういう会社だという判断(評判?評価?)になりかねない。 

    そいう会社とて評価されることになりかねない。

     

    However, 会社としてのX unambigiously means "the action X done as a company" or "X (position, obligation) as a company".

    The other hint is ざるを得ない is only used cases which the subject is forced to take some action. Even if the verb is なる the action will originate from the subject: 好きにならざるを得ない、強くならざるを得ない. It is not used to describe a situation which  forcibly leads to a bad outcome.

  11. 勝手に tends to have a negative connotation, which is why I phrased it like that.  I feel like there was implied disapproval.

    It's true that there's a negative connotation there with a mild criticism, but I don't like adding a whole other phrase, because it makes it sound like "he said *that*". Personally, if I needed to clarify I would just do so in square brackets.

     

    Try "unauthorizedly" instead of "with no regard for the wishes of Japanese developers or potential consequences"

    In the past, certain distributors bought up Japanese eroge and sold them overseas, with no regard for the wishes of Japanese developers or potential consequences. This led to an international scandal where a title was confiscated, causing considerable turmoil within Japan as well. Since then, we've been obligated to display warnings like "For sale in Japan only" during game start-up and on the packaging.

     

    過去に日本のエロゲーは、一部卸業者に勝手に国外に持ち出されて、販売されて、それが取り上げられて国際問題になって、相当国内でもいろいろあって・・・ それから わざわざ日本国内販売only JPonly と書くことが義務付けられたのだけど・・・

     

    In the past, some eroge were unauthorizedly brought out of Japan and sold. That ended up receiving attention and ended up turning into an international issue. In Japan too, there were a quite of lot of things that happened. Since then, we've been obliged to put "For sale in Japan only/ Japan only" on our products.

     

    Edit: I also use "issue" because "scandal" is quite a strong and specific word, which isn't the same as the words he used afaict.

    Personally, I'd probably go with something like "without approval" there.

    That sounds good. On the mark, and doesn't have any stray implications.

  12. Sorry for not responding to the post directly, but I've seen this complaint come up among VN readers towards JP readers, who visibly tend to be more sensitive to TL quality than others. I want to say something about it because I haven't seen anyone else address this. (Note: I'm not angry at all about it at all, since we are partially to blame.)

     

    These days the only time I notice people complain about translation quality. They usually either know Japanese, or they are Rooke. And in the case of the former; I feel like those people fall into the category Aaeru was criticizing as being elitist. They seem to be flaunting their ability to read Japanese, and are looking down on the people who have to read a fan translation. Or at least that's the impression I usually get from them.

    Particularly this. Yes there are times where it looks like we are flaunting, and we actually are flaunting (shame on us!).

    But although it is possible for one to complain about translation quality because of their ego (to indirectly draw attention to the fact that they can read), in general the complaint they are making comes from a valid point of view, one which doesn't have anything to do with flaunting.

    I agree with what Aaeru said in the second thread you linked to, particularly this part:

     

    First of all, I think Aaeru completely succeeded in doing this; and I wish she could see the community now. Regarding Fan translation quality, only elitists really care. Obviously if a translation is noticeably bad, then even regular people will complain. But most fan translators who manage to finish a project; generally had their skills tested enough. If they can complete the project, the translation is probably good enough for most people (especially for those who don't know Japanese).

     

    These days the only time I notice people complain about translation quality. They usually either know Japanese, or they are Rooke. And in the case of the former; I feel like those people fall into the category Aaeru was criticizing as being elitist. They seem to be flaunting their ability to read Japanese, and are looking down on the people who have to read a fan translation. Or at least that's the impression I usually get from them.  

    Hmm...I agree that some of the crowd from TLwiki will bash everything but the best translations. The reason is because they have read enough in Japanese to notice all the fine details of narration, and how good an ideal translation can be. The thing is, the ability to put that kind of translation out is really rare, and only relevant for titles which are originally more prosy to begin with. You need a translator with a great deal of Japanese experience, being well-read in English with some writing experience, and have the patience and artistic quality to as Clephas says "craft" something in parallel to the original. Obviously, translators who also know how to *write* is rare.

    Regarding Fan translation quality, only elitists really care.

     

    Here's where I disagree. I, and think a fair amount of other Japanese-read people, don't expect the translator need need to know how to *write*. If the translator can understand 99% of the text and 99% of the story and put it together into not-horrendous English, it's a go for me.

     

    Well, if you look at it this way, the only difference between me and the people at TLWiki, is that I value the meaning enough to say don't translate this if you aren't getting 99% of the meaning through, while some TLwiki folk also value the prose, enough to say "don't translate prosy works unless you know how to write as well, and btw, people who translate who don't even understand all the meaning, haha, look at those losers".

     

    That's my stance. Maybe you don't really need 99% of the meaning to get through in a translation. If it's a plot-light story, I'm more likely to agree "if it's enough for the reader to have fun, then sure."

    The reason why I choose this as the general "bar" is that I think it's a reasonable one, after considering the supply and skill distribution of translators and how useful a translation is of varying qualities (meaning ok/bad? naturalness ok/bad? prose-skill ok/non-existent?). In the time it takes to translate one VN or co-translate two, you could read about 7 VN's and study about a hundred more hours of grammar, which would make you qualified. As stated before, TL'ing is a pretty ineffective way of improving your Japanese skills.

     

    If they can complete the project, the translation is probably good enough for most people (especially for those who don't know Japanese).

    Two of the key sliding scales here is: how much does the questionable translation negatively affect the reader's experience, and how much does the it affect the reader's understanding/perception of the novel's contents (like when they go to discuss the novel).

     

    1. The experience varies more on the person reading (some people might not be able to stand slightly awkward translation, while others might not mind). I can see the argument that "if there are people who can enjoy the experience, then the translation should be done. People who can't stand the translation won't read it all the way through, and so there's no loss there".
    2. The understanding of the contents is more objective. All readers would be consistently affected by this.

     

    Trying to describe the reason for not wanting sub-par translations (=not wanting people to read sub-par translations)

    Just say you have a copy of some book you like, but the book is really old. Words are faded and bloched out everywhere, small parts of pages are torn off. Worse, there are confusing notes about the story written on the side of the pages, some correct and some misleading. You might be able to search for a copy given a year or two, but your friend wants to read the book now. Hesitation comes from:

    You want your friend to experience the same book you did. You don't want them to read the "book" the first time haltingly, and then have to reread the good copy a year later. Maybe your friend won't have the patience to read the book again. You don't want you friends and others to think they have read the book, and discuss things from it knowing that the impression they've received is likely flawed.

    Anyways. Some of the points (reasons for not wanting people to read a sub-par translation) that I've described in metaphor here, can be found stated plainly in an older post.
     

    When it comes to voicing dissent, I still believe in the right to politely state one's disapproval and try and persuade the group to stop, but should allow the group to proceed if they decide to. There should be no harassment. In private circles people can ridicule anything they want I suppose, but since means those people don't respect the fact that other people can do whatever they want for fun, I must disapprove of it.

     

    I think the opinion of so called "elitists" on what standards a VN should be translated to is a valid one and I can see what they are valuing, even though I think it's unrealistic and disagree. It's just their actions which I disapprove of.

  13. I hardly know anything on the topic from the creator's viewpoint, but Gurenka had a lot of direction (more specifically sprite animations and sounds) which did a lot of work in the VN.

     

    Motions I noticed:

    A character (with super-human powers) jumping away: the sprite (goes down a little, then up while fading (forget if it was box fading) while a woosh sound plays.

    A character touches down after having been scouting the area: the sprite transitions in with a small downward motion, there's a clear "step" sound.

    A character jumps away from the MC: the character sprite zooms to the right off the screen, there's a woosh sound.

     

    There are ways to represent being the MC being knocked down, particularly, it's good to have the jar to the screen be similarly jarring compared to what the MC is receiving. Combine with a blunt muffled impact sound.

     

    As for when to include sounds...my snap gut response is whenever the sound would help the person strongly be aware of the action and you actually want their focus to snap to that action for a moment.

     

    During fights, I get the feeling it's important for sprite zoom to change to represent different distances the MC and foe. (Source: Gurenka, Eustia, many others)

    For moments in which the foe is difficult for the MC's eyes to follow manipulating focus and not in focus, combined with a certain kind of wave up and down motion on the sprite seems good. (Source: Muramasa, maybe others).

     

    Himanatsu had sprites for each character, but of their back. By quickly flashing the back sprite, they animated a character turning around quickly and leaving. It was quite captivating.

  14. 書くのは無理だ(わ = very feminine marker lol)

    Well, I know the main use and intonation is very feminine, but...

    Isn't it used in natural speech from time to time by young guys without being overly feminine? I see it occasionally in youtube vods.

    Well, this isn't the first time I've been lol'd at for (half-jokingly) using that. 散々笑われてました。

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