Hometown and Life

Yes, that's incredibly inclusive and encouraging to people to purposely let them fall flat on their face and never want to try doing a translation again after wasting two years of their life. Stop moving the goalpost, your problem was that my stance was too "elitist," and now Pabloc puts it in a much more eloquent way than I could and you decide to go all hardball. If anybody has gotten angry and gone over the line at all in this thread it would be me, and if a person I'm trying to debate with got banned (or if I got banned myself for that matter), I'd lose any respect at all for FuwaNovel's forum as a forum of discussion.

Oh come on now, Boob Wars sold truckloads (for some reason) and Go Go Nippon! has been making Steam's meters spin in circles. Virtue's Last Reward was hugely popular, Dangonronpa has exploded to the point of having a dub, and Phoenix Wright sold just fine. Just because people keep localizing moeges that nobody wants doesn't mean VN's can't sell. Okay, we'll leave it right there then. I'll retract my overreaching to "respect for the author," and instead push for the respect of the work itself. This does not change my argument whatsoever, other than some semantics at the end because of my wording. The community here also has a majority that does not care about bad translations that disrespect the literature. Hm, pirates don't worry about disrespecting the literature? What a surprise. If I live in a community of criminals, am I not allowed to make arguments from a lawful standpoint when I am not of the majority? Or do I have to shut up because I'm "one of them," despite not acting in the same way. Ha, actually, a lot of translation deals go sour in negotiation because the original publisher doesn't think the English audience will get it right. Stein's;Gate still isn't on Steam simply because they think it's demeaning. The kinds of great works I don't think should be butchered are not written by struggling moege developers. Uh, the previous translator quote that I was using wasn't mad that somebody got to it "before him." He was a huge fan that read it years ago and decided not to translate it because he decided it was outside his capabilities. He waited to see somebody that was capable pick it up, and seeing somebody pick it up that's disrespecting is what was upsetting. Translators don't get mad about somebody getting to a project before they do, that's horribly immature. The closest thing to that is official companies sending out a C&D letter if they plan to localize your project officially already. Well, Stein's;Gate will have to be one of those things that hopefully proves the Western market exists. By the way, the entire official release was done by fan translators. That would be the same crowd that gets called "elitist," despite being responsible for holding up the entire chance of Japan releasing visual novels to the West. We're getting a bit off-topic with that, though, since a Eustia fan translation probably isn't going to have that kind of far-reaching effect. Back on topic with this translation in particular, I understand that there are going to be bad translations. Professionals mistranslate things. The problem here is this person is going in saying that they're both bad at Japanese and will have imprecise translations. It's the attitude going in that is the worst part for me. Screw-ups happen, but you should always be going in believing you are doing a good job that is faithful to the original literature. I'm not going to go send some guy angry e-mails after he releases a bad translation that he believed he had done very good on. I would of course criticize it to hell and back in open discussions, but only because that's fair criticism of a released product.

Official localized stuff sells plenty to stay afloat. Pirating a work that is impossible to obtain without heavy import fees is a completely different situation altogether. It is also not hypocritical to respect an author's work as art even if you have different feelings about the monetary gain one should have from intellectual property. Besides, the writer was already paid and any purchases are chiefly going towards the publisher, not the author, at that point. You are also saying I am a hypocrite for pirating when you don't know if I even mostly pirate what I read. If you'd like I can take a picture of my closet to show you the VN's I had to spend ridiculous import fees in order to support their publishers after reading fan translations, but you probably wouldn't care. I really wish that was the case myself. Things like anime subtitles compete with each other and it weeds people out in a more natural way. Unfortunately, visual novels can take years to translate, so putting years into a work people already have is really a long shot for most. I'd worry about my stuff not getting read too after spending two years on it. Weren't you the one trying to go on about how much work free translators have to put it in at the cost of precious time and money? Fact is, with so many visual novels to translate, they're going to go for ones that are: 1)Not already translated (except for extremely awful cases) 2)Ones they feel they can handle and be faithful to 3)Ones that they, of course, enjoy reading How is it selfish to not want to do free work for years that will be completely ignored when you can do free work that people will get to enjoy? You don't get anything out of your work being read, all you did was serve a bunch of people for nothing. How is that selfish to want to serve a bunch of people with your time instead of a very small number of readers?

It was more of becoming a debate about the inclusion of sub-par translations for more seriously written pieces of work. I already understand that this work hasn't come out yet, which is exactly why if you read the earlier posts nobody is talking about this project specifically, but more of "if this project goes badly, is that okay?" I wasn't trying to construe that the translation was already an automatic failure. It started as concern, but then people didn't tell me, "let's wait for the final product." They instead a bad product is fine. That's why the argument blew up. It ended up being a discussion as if this new translation was bad and what that would mean to both sides. It was a hypothetical where I felt it is extremely disrespectful to the author and harmful to the community to do a bad translation while others did not feel the same. In terms of this actual project, I of course cannot say that the work is already bad. I can however say that the attitude lacks respect as an author (yes, when you translate you are definitely an author, writing well is part of your job, your editors just do the cleaning). To go into a piece of writing and be shaky about your skills in the language and say that you'll just patch it up with editors is blatantly disrespectful and the sort of thing that scares off official localizations. Who wants their writing to go across the seas and get turned into something completely different? That's just horrifying. Did he already make anything bad and will he make anything bad? No, and we'll have to wait to see. Has he said bad things? A thousand times yes.

I personally got pretty heated, but there was the same concerns from a person who was being much more polite than I was, but that was ignored because nobody seemed to want to address that. Then that same person forwarded an amazingly detailed post from another translator who is just disgusted at the idea that somebody is disrespecting a work that they're trying to translate. Of course, that would again be ignored. I've yet to see a single retort to the actual points I tried to make (in between all the angry flailing I did), other than Chronopolis's great exhaustive post that dealt with both sides of the argument and tried to keep us off bad points. To say it's elitist to not want unskilled people to work on difficult works is just confusing to me. It'd be one thing if they worked on translating it for their own enjoyment and then that was that (which is basically reading it, I suppose), but why would you put your stamp on a project so it can never be done by anybody better? What is the point of that? What did that up-and-coming translator gain exactly by translating that work? That's what I want to understand. People talk about it being unfair and elitist, but I want to know what is being taken away from that new translator, exactly.

I'm not saying they have to start translating h-scenes so the big boys don't have to deal with it (H-scenes are so awful and tedious to sift through). I'm saying they should develop their skills in a meaningful way instead of killing an entire VN that's way over their head for their own entertainment. Reading it for yourself is one thing, but announcing a project, claiming the entire visual novel to yourself, and then butchering it because you're not skilled is way more unfair than leaving it to somebody who can make a quality product for the entire community enjoy. There's a lot of fandiscs for fairly popular (and quality) visual novels that are way more simply written and need translators. Doing fan translations is a passion that can be very self-fulfilling, but any translator worth their salt thinks of respecting the original writer and the readers they are giving their product to.

Saying you're not good at Japanese, that you're not going to have a completely accurate translation, and that there's a possibility the story may turn out completely different from the original is pretty damn bad. It's just such a serious lack of respect. Before that it was more of people getting a really bad feeling about the entire thing, but reserving judgement otherwise. No, but luckily I'm neither a "bagger" nor a beggar, since I'm a human being capable of seeking out translations done by trusted people, learning Japanese for myself, and finding other forms of entertainment.

Or I can continue reading all the good fan translations you moron. You know, the ones done by the very same people who are telling this guy not to ruin Eustia if he doesn't know what he's doing. I don't go around complaining when something isn't being translated. I complain when somebody wastes their own time and the entire community's time. Showing that visual novels can be well written brings interest to the medium, which in turn shows Japan that we have an audience in the West that will buy their products, and then allows for official translations to be brought out for everybody to enjoy. I'm not demanding something good for free, I'm demanding this guy doesn't kill Eustia in the West for free.

I'm not trying to tell him he's an awful individual and needs to leave. I'm saying he should not go take a good work of literature and butcher it to get into the community. He should brush up on his Japanese, work on translating something he can actually handle, and learn to respect the works. Going into a project already saying "there may be imprecise translations," is the most disrespectful way I have ever seen somebody treat a work of literature ever. I wouldn't dare join a construction crew and start operating heavy machinery immediately and endanger all my coworkers with my inexperience. I should also mention these talented translators also tend to have full time jobs to support themselves. This work often isn't even translation work, but that's beside the point. Being hired as a professional translator does not exclude one from putting out fan translations, and it quite often doesn't. Official visual novel translations of well-written works don't come around very often.

Uh, actually those professional translators don't stop making fan translations. You're sorely mistaken if you think each time a good work comes out they just disappear forever into the abyss of paid work and never release free products ever again. Grisaia's translator just got some official work, but already said he's coming back to finish up Grisaia right after. Just like nearly every professional translator. They're not just providing a product. When you release a fan translation in the visual novel community, you have basically marked that product as done for good. Unless an official translator redoes it (which is EXTREMELY rare,the last thing was Stein's;Gate) then that visual novel will never be worked on by another translator. That's why translators are expected to treat their work with great respect and only pick up a project they know they can do very well. When you release a poor quality translation, you have just murdered every hope of a high quality translation. Quite often when an already fan-translated work gets an official release, the company just buys the original fan-translation. This can't happen when the fan translation is of poor quality, and it's much more costly and less appealing to commission an entirely new translation. When you release garbage into the visual novel community, you harm it and everybody has to suffer for it.

Why would I be grateful about somebody stamping out the possibility of a more competent translator picking up the project? I've got a lot of respect for the work translators do, and the fruits of their labor, which is exactly why this is pissing me off. If an official translator does an awful job localizing something, am I supposed to just be grateful and purchase it knowing that it's awful, and now there can never be a fan translation of it? Look at this message Wahfuu relayed to the thread from his translator friend: Translators themselves are sickened by this. This isn't just a harmless addition to the community, it's a toxin in the pool.

1)I'm respecting the literature that the author put out. This is not a debate about intellectual property rights, it's a debate about respect for the arts. 2)I'm not "green" to fan translations. Grisaia no Kajitsu is an amazing recent fan translation that showed why a translator should be both knowledgeable in Japanese literature and in English literature. In the end this project doesn't need my permission to happen, just like any other one that shows up. That doesn't mean that as a community everybody should start welcoming bad translations with open arms. Why would anybody want to read garbage? It's a pointless waste of time for everybody involved. I'd rather see a product untranslated than see it translated badly, and then released to the masses to tear apart. I'm not going to just stop being upset that authors (and the visual novel medium as a whole) are getting a bad name in the English speaking community because everything is so badly written and/or mistranslated by translators. tl;dr: "I've been swimming in trash and people keep wanting to give me trash, so I should accept the trash!" is not a good argument.

I'm going to lambaste him for his lack of respect for the original author, and the fact that this will kill the translation if he finishes it. They are people out there who can do a much better job, but if a translation gets put out then that's over. Visual novels don't get re-translated by fans. If this was something like anime subtitles where subbing groups are quite often translating the same thing, then I would have no problem with this. However, seeing some person go in way over his head and basically destroy any chance of a quality Eustia translation short of an official, paid re-translation is an issue, whether he's getting paid or not. I don't think this person is a bad human being or anything for what he's doing. It's just a lack of understanding of what he's doing, and I'm being harsh about it because I really want to make him understand. This project bleeds nothing but good will to me, but unfortunately it's misguided. If you don't have the time and money to do a big project like this, then just don't. Simple as that. Instead of giving people excuses to put out sub-par work we should instead be appreciating the time and money being put in by the serious and hardworking translators that already exist. Those fan translators are also doing the official translation work you seem to think is so much better than fan translations.

Most high quality fan-TL's have a single translator, you might be thinking of having multiple editors or having another translator come in for a very limited role in some weird situations. "Spending all day," isn't unheard of, and knowing that is part of why I have so much respect for fan translators, and why I'm so wary of something like this sprouting up. Really now?

Oh yeah, I totally agree with you then, sorry for misunderstanding. I can get a bit negative and uppity with things like this, but it's out of a love and respect for people's literature.