Funnerific

Since the old thread appears to be gone, I decided to restart it. Please merge it with the old one if you find it.
 
Just finished my first big untranslated visual novel, Astraythem! With my vocabulary of ~2000 kanji and ~3000 words it took me about 6 days of focused reading. What is this feeling of accomplishment?




Loved it while playing, but grew to hate some parts of it more and more towards the end (see spoiler rant).  If you've played it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game.

Since the old thread appears to be gone, I decided to restart it. Please merge it with the old one if you find it.
 
Just finished my first big untranslated visual novel, Astraythem! With my vocabulary of ~2000 kanji and ~3000 words it took me about 6 days of focused reading. What is this feeling of accomplishment?




Loved it while playing, but grew to hate some parts of it more and more towards the end (see spoiler rant).  If you've played it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game.

Since the old thread appears to be gone, I decided to restart it. Please merge it with the old one if you find it.
 
Just finished my first big untranslated visual novel, Astraythem! With my vocabulary of ~2000 kanji and ~3000 words it took me about 6 days of focused reading. What is this feeling of accomplishment?




Loved it while playing, but grew to hate some parts of it more and more towards the end (see spoiler rant).  If you've played it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game.

Since the old thread appears to be gone, I decided to restart it. Please merge it with the old one if you find it.
 
Just finished my first big untranslated visual novel, Astraythem! With my vocabulary of ~2000 kanji and ~3000 words it took me about 6 days of focused reading. What is this feeling of accomplishment?




Loved it while playing, but grew to hate some parts of it more and more towards the end (see spoiler rant).  If you've played it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game.

Yeah, those sentences Chronopolis pointed out bothered me a little as well.
 
To nitpick a little bit further; it's easy to overuse weak/vague words like was/go or things/that when tling from Japanese, and sometimes you have like five sentences in a row that keep repeating "was", sometimes even twice in the very same line:
 

This seems strangely familiar...
 
Anywho, once again, this is a translation of the first part of Oretsuba I've been working on for a while and decided I'd share what I've got, rather than continue to tinker indefinitely without telling anyone. I distinctly remember having more sentences here before, but I'm too lazy to spend the time rewriting them. So let's cut to the chase and repost the link:
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6k92cnbt59po2bs/Oretachi%20ni%20Tsubasa%20wa%20Nai%20part%201%2020150810.docx?dl=0

 

Next up, it's time for me to be thankful for the first (and probably only) time in my life that I usually select the "flood my inbox with notification" options whenever possible:
 

Sorry for not responding to this earlier. (And in hindsight, good thing I didn't!) I didn't have the time to give this the attention it needed before leaving for work this morning, and typing on a phone is for people with nothing more to say than can fit in a tweet.

Anyways, if you could give concrete examples of what you're looking at when you say that, I would highly appreciate it. I definitely agree that it could use some light editing before really being in a "publishable" state, so to speak (this is the first time I've ever showed anyone else more than snippets of this >_>), but I don't feel my translation is as disastrous as your post makes it sound.

To some extent, due to the limitations of the VN format, there's no getting around the "sounds-like-a-translation" problem. For instance, take this excerpt:

"Takashi: Uh, I didn’t mean it like that… But then, why would you—

Asuka: I felt bad for you.

She looked back up and answered bluntly. The relaxed yet annoyed tones of her voice caused me to flinch."

Obviously, there's a bit of weirdness here. For instance, the ellipse in the middle of Takashi's line would really like to be replaced with some prose, and separating the dialogue and the prose describing how the line was spoken isn't something that happens in a regular English-language novel. The line describing Asuka's action really wants to occur before she speaks; however, I can't move it there in the translation because I can't insert additional text boxes. Moving it inside the dialogue box (She looked up and bluntly answered, "I felt bad for you.") is an option (and obviously what this sentence really should look like), but a problematic one.

First, you have to remember this sentence is voiced. If there's one thing I learned translating Majikoi, it's that people really don't like it when what they're hearing doesn't match what they're reading, even if they can only understand one word in a hundred (why hello there "Kuri"). Adding unvoiced prose is therefore going to sound jarring to a lot of those people.

Secondly, Oretsuba has one of the smallest textboxes I've ever seen while also boasting one of the highest characters/line ratio in any VN. Where most VN authors write in sentences, Jackson writes in paragraph. And don't get me wrong--I love that. But it also means that getting the translation to fit inside the text box is a challenge in and of itself. The longest line from what I've posted is about 70 words/400 characters, while the text box fits a paltry 108 characters. I assume this is "fixable" (though I admittedly don't have the technical know-how to "fix" it myself), but if I went this route? I'd be asking my hacker to give me boxes that can fit 100 words/550 characters, which seems beyond the realm of possibility. Subdividing lines into multiple boxes would help here, of course; but personally, I don't want to do that. If the goal is to make the phrase "whole," for want of a better term, I feel like adding a break point elsewhere would ruin the point.

This does, admittedly, cause additional problems. The last sentence in the excerpt above really wants to be "She spoke in a relaxed yet annoyed tone, which caused me to flinch," but then I have three sentences in a row that all start out the same way. I feel this would be a worse stylistic error than what I have at present.

And if I can go on a bit of a digression (and this is my topic, so just try and stop me! ), there's been a passage floating around VN circles over the past week or two from Coμ with two competing translations, one by Ixroc and one by Moogy. Ixroc's is highly literal, while Moogy chooses to be extremely loose. But personally, I think both translations are bad; I wouldn't want to replicate either style. Ignoring the mistakes in each, let's look at their stylistic failings. The problem in Ixroc's is obvious: he is so literal that it loses both the original text's clarity and its beauty. Yet on the other hand, so does Moogy's. He makes every sentence so roundabout that reading his text feels more taxing on my brain than reading the original--and my native language is English. This should not happen. Furthermore, when you change every metaphor to the extent he does, you wind up changing the meaning of the underlying lines. Even if the resultant work were as beautiful as the original (a debatable point), I would argue that, at that point, it's not a translation anymore.

I'd rather aim for a middle ground: to write something that is clear and eloquent in the English (which is why I characterized the "sauce" line earlier as a mistake, rather than merely a line in need of editing); but at the same time, it should still feel recognizable to someone who's read the original Japanese. Moogy's fails utterly in this last regard.

Now, with all that said, if you have a better solution to this sort of problem, believe you me--I'm all ears. It's not like I posted this expecting everyone to say it was the best thing ever >_> But constructive criticisms are much nicer than blanket ones.

The first rule of the tautology club is the first rule of the tautology club. If this is your first time visiting, you've never been here before.

Because English names look like hieroglyphics to them, so they probably wanted gaijins to understand their pain

Nope. 5pb. has nothing whatsoever to do with Root Double. Developer is Regista, publisher is Yeti.

I think it's time I shed some light on the situation, shall I?
 
First of all, I want to apologize for my lack of updating, let lone actually logging into the site.
 
For those wanting an explanation as to why I have not updated even once since the project's annoucement, it's due to a situation and several changes that happened within the past month or so. When I initally announced the project, I had just completed college and I was all set to continue on with my education. I had taken the summer off from my previous job and was ready and willing to commit to the project as a full-time commitment. I had reached out to several people and even gotten some replys from some of them who were interested in working on it. To me, everything was going to proceed along smoothly and I had high hopes that it would be translated rather quickly.
 
That being said, literally the Friday I had announced the project, I got a call from one of my friends asking me to apply to a compnay he was working at in order to work in a new department that was being developed. I interviewed the following Monday and was hired the day after. When the project was announced I had a clear cut plan on where my life was going as well as a good 3+ months to work on the project. This plan was destroyed not even a week after I had planned everything out and was ready to get started.
 
In the couple of weeks before I started, I tried to do what I could with the work, but after reviewing the scripts and seeing how much time and effort that was needed to do it the right way, I determined that I had a responsibility to a company that was generous enough to give me an opprotunity I simply could not refuse. I wanted to make sure I was focused on preforming at my job, and not letting anything distract me for the time being. It's my first time working at a big company, so I wanted to make sure I was prepared everyday with a mind focused on nothing but my work. 
 
Additionally, I gave it a little bit of time to see if I could have enough energy on the weekends to work on the project, as I'm sure that is the case with a lot of people in the translation community, as I know I'm not the only one who has to work for a living. Working 10 hour days every day has left me extremely exausted come Friday night. I've never worked 50+ hour work weeks before, so it's still something I have to get used to, so I feel quality translation and team cooridination is something I cannot do effeciantly.
 
I've looked through the replys in this thread, and I apologize to those voicing their concern. In fact your posts didn't invoke any negative reaction out of me, as you had every right to be skeptical, especially due to my lack of input in the thread. I was overjoyed that this project even got the attention of some of the Fuwa staff, which gave my motivation to make this a reality, but sadly, I have to focus on getting used to this new lifestyle I'm living.
 
I apologize to the community for suddenly backing out of it, but I assure you all that I had full intentions of completing it, but as I'm sure you all know, life has a funny way of changing completeltly on you in such a small time frame. It seems someone else is activly working on the Visual Novel, and I say good luck to you my friend, I look forward to seeing your completed work.
 
With that little novlet written, I don't intend to simply dissapear from the website. Visual Novels are still an interest of mine, and in the future, when I have some stability again, I'd love to contribute to anything in anyway that I can.
 
Thanks everyone. I do appreciate your words of encouragment and any support that you have offered to me. I hope I can offer the same in the near future.
 

User Control Panel
 
Avatars
Avatars are like your forum identity. Choose whoever and whatever you want! Curious about the types of avatar users that exist? Visit my blog entry, Avatar: The Last FuwaBender!
To change your avatar, visit "My Profile" and then mouse over your current avatar and click "Change", OR visit "My Settings" -> Profile Settings tab -> Change my Photo This will open the Photo Editor where you can choose to upload your own avatar using the "Upload from file" option, link one from an image hosting site such as IMGUR using the "Import a photo from a URL" option, and finally, crop your avatar using the "Adjust Crop" option.  

TIP: You have a maximum size of 150 KB for your avatars. Typically this means you will have to use JPEG filetype for large images or really small images for other filetypes such as PNG. You can also use GIFs if they are < 150 KB, though that requires some massive shrinking and quality nerfing. TIP: Avatars are optimized for the portrait shape, so if you want a big smokin' hawt avatar to rampage the forums with, choose an avatar with a height size that is greater than its width (ie. taller than it is wider) Tall (left) vs. Wide (right). Das' some Goliath vs. David right there:
     
 
 
 
Signatures
A signature is a user-defined message which is attached to all of said user's posts. Usually includes an image with their username on it. In the case of Fuwanovel, expect to see hot 2D females   (and males. and anything else people like...)
To change your signature, visit "My Profile" -> Signature tab This will open the Edit Signature where you can input your desired contents: Up to 1 image, 800x150 pixels, any number of URLs, and up to 3 lines (note: an image takes up 1 line). TIP: Careful! If you attempt to save your signature when it violates a rule (ie. contains more than 3 lines, size is bigger than 800x150, etc.) you will get an error and will lose all of what you typed up and will have to type it up again. Copy paste your content before attempting to save! TIP: You can artificially have more than 3 lines by using Spoiler tags(see my signature: 1) Image, 2) Currently reading, 3) Signature by Kurukosari, and then voila 4) Spoiler tag (Love Live Event SR List)  
Attempting to save a Signature that violates a rule...

 
...Results in...
 

 
 
...And so when you go back and refresh the previous page you'll be greeted to a nice ol' empty text box (or whatever your signature was pre-attempting-to-change-it-to-your-desired-new-one). So be careful!
 
 
 
Adding a VNDB, MAL, and Steam
VNDB is the #1 local Visual Novel database. Make an account there if you haven't already so you can log all of the VNs you read. Same thing with MAL for anime (and manga / LNs), and finally Steam for your gaming needs.

To link your VNDB, MAL, or Steam, visit "My Settings" -> Profile Settings tab -> Scroll down to Profile Information from there just type in your VNDB ID number (without the u) for VNDB, your MAL username for MAL, and your Steam username for Steam. You can also add your various contact information (Skype, AIM, etc.).  
Scroll down to Profile Information at bottom of Profile Settings tab from My Settings and type in your information:
 

 
 
Now you look legit whenever you post B)

 
 
 
Blocking users, signatures
Fuwanovel is widely hailed by many of its current users to be a wonderful little friendly community that may or may not have its share of trolls. But everybodys' their own person, and sometimes you just can't mix well with certain individuals, or maybe they have a certain obnoxious signature. That's where the block feature comes in where you'll be able to ignore (it will be hidden) a users' posts, their signature, and even their PMs towards you!
To block a user, visit "My Settings" -> Ignore Preferences to bring up Users I'm Ignoring. Type in the desired username in the "Add new user to my list" and tick what you want to ignore (Post, Signatures, Messages) and then hit Save Changes. Afterwards you can toggle a users' Hide / Allow by clicking on the bubbles or Remove them from your ignore list if they have achieved redemption. TIP: By ticking the "Ignore all signatures when reading topics and personal messages" you can get rid of Signatures once and for all!
 
 
Yay! User is blocked!! One day you'll become old and grumpy enough that you'll block everybody. That'll be fun~

 
 
 
Managing notifications
Notifications are love, notifications are life. Notifications help keep you informed of everything happening in your daily Fuwa life that may interest or pertain to you, so it's a good idea to be able to filter out which notifications you want and which ones you don't want.
Visit "My Settings" -> Notification Preferences tab to bring up a list of the various notifications you may receive from Fuwa. The left column of ticks applies to in-Fuwa notifcation system, whereas the right column of ticks apply to your personal email. Should be self explanatory from there.  
TIP: My favorite notification option is probably the "Show inline pop-up when I have new personal messages (latest will be shown)" option under Private Messages; check that and you'll get a popup whenver someone PMs you:

So this past week I was kind of bored and decided to dedicate a lot of my free time to this one level ROM hack I did about the Fuwanovel community. Basically I just hacked into one of my favorite video games (Fire Emblem 7 for the gba) and completely customized the text, events, characters, etc. It's just a parody of the VN community with a particular focus on Fuwanovel and with Tay as the main character. Here is the entire Intro and first chapter: 
 
Part 1:

Our Kickstarter is now live! Please, check it out! The Kickstarter has ended, thanks for your support!
 
The Demo for our game is released! We hope you'll enjoy it~
 
 
Hi everyone! I'm one of the members of an English VN project that's been going on for a while, and with our demo coming out hoooopefully next week, I wanted to go ahead and post about it here! (You might also recognize me from the other project I work on, the yuri VN Starlight Vega).
 
My team is called AlienWorks, and our game is called The Human Reignition Project, and it's a bishoujo VN with some sci-fi elements. You play as a guy called Ken, who attends a lecture on "The impacts of technology on society," which is just what it sounds like. See, in our setting, communication between people is almost entirely digital. Text messages, instant messaging, or even phone calls; the element of face-to-face interaction is  mostly gone. A lot of jobs have vanished, too, being replaced by more efficient robots that don't need a salary.
 

 
Kojo, the guy organizing the lecture, comes from an older generation, and while he knows his little group isn't going to change the world, he'd at least like to try to change a couple lives.
 
So far it all sounds pretty slice-of-life, I know, but there are some action-y, thriller-y elements that come into play later on. Can't spoil those quite yet though.
 
What we wanted to do was create a bishoujo game with the romance focus that we all love without setting our game in a school. Yeah, there are a couple similar elements to, say, Grisaia or what have you, but for the most part we've tried to steer clear of a lot of the plot and character tropes native to the genre. That said, the game will still include 18+ content in the form of H-scenes.
 
Real quick, I just wanted to mention a couple quick notes about the game. First off, like I said, our demo for the game should be out soon. Like, very soon. It's probably 90% done right now. The demo is all of our Act 1, which is about 30 scenes and I think somewhere around 40,000 words? We're going to launch it at the same time as a Kickstarter for our game. I know, I know, another VN on Kickstarter. Because we work with such talented artists though, we need the funding (we're talking a few hundred dollars per CG). Of course, you'll be able to play the demo without pledging money to the KS.
 

 
Once the demo's done, we'll be putting in on Steam Greenlight. We're published and also somewhat funded by Sekai Project, so you'll see it under their name, not ours. Same for the Kickstarter. At the moment, I'm not entirely sure what the final price of the game will be, but I do know that if you pledge for a digital copy on KS, it'll be cheaper than buying the game off Steam. No other pre-order bonuses though; sorry CoD fans.
 

 
Finally, most of us are gonna be at Anime Expo. I'll be at Sekai Project's table in the vendor hall for a lot of the time, and I might be at their panel, too. We're going to be selling a few prints done by our artists, as well as one guest piece by Doomfest. Here are previews for a couple of those:
 
 
 
If you're interested in following along more with the game, you can follow me on twitter @Raithfyre or the team @AlienworksDev (though I also run that, heh). Also, our website is reignitionproject.com, and we post major news to blogs there.
 
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy our game~ Just below, you can check out the character cards for our six heroines, and get an idea of what they're like. Yukino best girl, though.
 

When you become friends with someone on Fuwanovel, your accounts become linked with an invisible "affection bar," which increases based on your interaction with them. There are also various quests you can do to increase your affection. The affection gauge starts at level 0, but once you gather enough points to max it out, you can increase your affection levels. I still have to play around to test what sorts of effects each level grants you, but this is what I have discovered so far:
 
- When your affection with another member is at level 2, the success rate of favors increases by 60%.
- When your affection with another member is at level 3, you gain a skill point, which you can allocate towards one of two skills: "Add Skype [Passive]," "Game Together [Active, 80 mana],"
- When your affection with another member is at level 8, you unlock the ability to ask for sexual favors (still testing this)
 
There is another functionality that revolves around the affection bar. If you and a group of other people all share a high affection mutually, then you can form a party and participate in what is known to be "circlejerking." However, be warned! Circlejerking has a chance to decrease your affection with members who are not a member of your party. If you are looking to try to maximize your affection levels with a certain member, then I advise you to include him or her in your circlejerk adventures.

#NSFW

Too lazy to correct everything, but the things that bugged me most: