Erogamer

the same reason they use ks for just about all their tl projects. they dont actually want to invest their own money into funding it.

I will make no effort in grandstanding by trying to defend my position by conjuring up some elaborate excuse, I simply like h-scenes because I'm a horny bastard. 
I've recently gotten allot of shit for rating some eroge higher than story centric visual novels on vndb. No, I don't think Funbag Fantasy has a better story than Kara no Shoujo, but they weren't aiming for the same goals. You can't rate a comedy on the same grounds as a action film, just as you can't yell at Stephen Hawking for being shit at baseball. I know that isn't what this topic is about, but I wanted to preemptively explain that before getting to the meat of the matter. 
The real question is how to feel about sex scenes in story focused visual novels. Well personally I like them, I'm the type of person that after becoming a fan of characters in fiction I look up fanfiction and doujin about them fucking. Having the porn in the source material beforehand is something I find incredibly convenient and a major time saver. Do I expect people to be fine with this? Absolutely not and I completely understand why people would dislike these elements in visual novels. Not everyone has a masturbation addiction to help deal with the condition known as "living", some people drink alcohol instead...... or they just like a great story to distract them from life. 
I find the question of whether "sex" can be used effectively as a narrative tool to be an interesting one. It's pretty common for people to cry out that an H-scene is "unrealistic", which always baffled me. We don't cry fowl when a FPS doesn't include a 40+ hour rehabilitation simulator after the player character is shot and no one complains that half of rom-coms don't end with a sloppy divorce. Fiction will always contradict reality on some level. I have never believed that a sex scene in any medium was "realistic" aside from Harry Turtledove books and quite frankly it kinda sucks. Realistic depictions of sex without dramatic flourishes are no different from depicting eating a meal or getting over a cold, it's just another boring part of life. 
Would I like more story centric visual novels with sex scenes integrated better in their plots? Absolutely, but as I stated before it's not that easy. Sex is a relatively boring act as a plot device, without going into FSN territory and inviting contrived reasons sex is required, it can only be used as a plot device in stories of youthful indiscretion, Romeo/Juliet rip-offs, and stories of jealously. In all three instances sex isn't even necessarily required and could be substituted with something else. Sex isn't as big as a deal as society makes it. Oddly enough I think the horrible act of rape is a much better plot device and something that society needs to be better and handling. This act of abject evil opens the door to a menagerie of storytelling opportunities, however if the writer isn't incredibly skilled and knowledgeable it will come across as a cheap shock tactic that is "trying too hard". 
 

I will be the sole defender of H-scenes for fap purposes if necessary.

I'm really tolerant if it comes to translations and barely complain about them, but even I think the translation of Chrono Clock was a mess, or at least certain parts of it.
The top offender is D.D's translation. She's a supposedly British girl who constantly throws English words in when she speaks Japanese. The translator therefore thought it would be a great idea to give the English readers the same 'feeling' by inverting the whole language and let her constantly throw in Japanese words when she speaks English. Too bad that an English speaking girl that constantly uses Japanese words will appear JAPANESE and not British!!! And since its clear from the whole context that she's British her whole dialog doesn't make sense anymore. It's beyond me how a translator could loose his complete common sense in such a way and come up with such a dumb idea.
Besides that, I disliked the crude translation of the protagonists narrative. He used the F-word so often that you could almost got the idea that the protagonist did grow up in the slums. Granted, I can't prove that the original Japanese text wasn't that way either, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I highly doubt it since he was more of a spoiled rich-kid.
The rest was okay though, it's just the protagonist and D.D. that really got on my nerves.

To me it seems like you just have very different ideas of what a good translation is, no real need to bite people.

Though maybe I'm even on your side, I didn't play SakuSaku or ChCl but I did get annoyed at times when Himawari's translation straight up added literal wordy interpretations of the simple japanese phrases that I didn't even agree with when I looked at the immediate context.

You're welcome - that was Fred telling you how to do what I suggested

The way you would do that would be:
open Task Manger click the "Details" tab Find TOHEART2.exe Right-click it, and select "Set affinity" uncheck all boxes except one and click "Ok" Not saying it'll necessarily help either, but worth a try.
Edit: Also, I don't think you need any kind of compatibility mode, so I'd try turning that off. I've always run the game on Win10 without any compatibility mode on, and not had the problem described.

Da Capo 3 was not that great at all. I was expecting something far superior in story, drama, and humor compared to DC 2. Boy, was a let down. I am curious if this will be better.

Well, no problem there in regard of your curiousity there. As for Marriage, the setting was still focused in school so better don't expect too much there.
Anyway, apparently Sekai was announced many thing while I was sleeping here lol. My comment for now is that only two of those were interesting to me, because the rest was either still in development or already did had translation available. In fact, I wasn't as surprised as last year when I did read that Dracu Riot was announced (Granted, last year I watch the announcement but still) because it already had translation available, if only the way to got that was a little bit controversial. Well, if I may comment here is that it's Decay's team right to do partnership with Sekai imo. As for Senren Banka and Nanairo, I was quite interested with those two especially Senren in which it had good number of CG so much that it exceed Gin'iro Haruka CG number. As for the rest, well no interested for now although Rewrite+ might be good though.
I'll keep my eyes on both of Denpasoft and JAST later.

Where's a choice for neither?

For Mangagamer I hope they will announce that their new partner is Sprite,August,or Saga Planets .I also would like an update on Bokuten .
For Sekai Project info on Baldr Sky and Clockwork trilogy and maybe announce Secret Game .
For Frontwing update on Island or maybe a surprise title.
For Degica Muv-Luv Alternative and Rumbling Hearts news and more Age titles would be nice.

As seen in the title, I'm planning to translate Golden Marriage, a VN by Ensemble. However, due to my lack of knowledge and experience, I'm looking for any advice for TLs. I've read https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/2254-how-to-translate-a-vn/ before, but I would like to see a detailed step-by-step explanation. Golden Marriage uses .arc files(Like If My Heart Had Wings) and I have successfully extracted the files(I think). Extracting Rio.arc gave me what I think is the script. But, I can't comprehend it.
Example:・ 往  }MA9 1eI}=II 往
 I would greatly appreciate it if anyone can explain.
https://vndb.org/v14264
 

This one works, I'm almost done with 2 routes already

No. As I also mentioned in the review, there's nothing per se wrong with it, but that doesn't keep it from annoying me. I literally didn't understand quite a bit of the slang used in the translation, and that got in the way of my enjoying reading it at times. To be clear, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if it was just using British spellings for words common to both dialects, but when it's frequently throwing in phrases like "taking the Mickey out of [x]" which I have to deduce the meaning of from context, it hurts the reading experience.
For the most part, it's a small annoyance compared to the actual problem of crappy writing which we had in pretty much every VN TL until a few years ago, and still have rampant in fan translations, so I'm mostly willing to take that trade, but I'd still much rather have something without all the British slang. In some ways, it's exactly the same problem as an unnaturally stilted translation: it doesn't sound like the way people actually talk, in the language I see everywhere, hear everywhere, and speak, and which I've come to expect as the standard for stuff I'm reading. It's arguably not as bad ideologically as a stilted translation, in that literally nobody actually talks the way a stilted translation reads, but from the perspective of somebody who's reading occasional bouts of near-nonsense, it's not practically that different. I've read a lot of world literature, a lot of genre fiction, and a lot of VNs; none of the rest of them have had characters periodically taking the Mickey out of each other.

Characters other than DD use British slang fairly frequently, especially Rei and Shuji. I mentioned it in my review as something I didn't like and considered to be a questionable decision. I don't have examples handy and don't really feel like cracking the game open to find them, but it's there, for sure.

I could not stand the dialogue. Too many British words and slang even for the non British characters.

I could not stand the dialogue. Too many British words and slang even for the non British characters.

Sorry, but they aren't entitled to my gratitude, and I'm not going to suck them off for presenting us with a pile of garbage I would not enjoy reading. 
>When you look at VNs that have tens of thousands of lines of text, and you pick maybe 10 out that are bad, isn't that a bit much?
What do you want out of me? I told you the entire VN is like that, and it is. How am I supposed to criticize their work? Do I have to comb over their entire translation and present you with 10,000 reasons it's bad? I COULD do that, but I don't feel like wasting the several hundred hours of my life it would take.
If you enjoy bad translations, then more power to you I guess. But they have done nothing to deserve any sort of appreciation from those of us who do not enjoy bad translations.

It is our right as consumers of visual novels to discuss and point out the level of quality of the product. I personally don't have the mentality that, "hey at least i can buy a VN even if the quality isn't up to par". That's not right for me, I mean if the translation isn't smooth and reading it may prove to be annoying, i appreciate it when people point it out with examples. I can then choose not to buy it and buy something else instead. 
I don't need to learn Japanese just because I'm not satisfied with the translation quality done by companies that are supposed to specialise in translation. Its a new time for Vns in the west now, there are many available for people to pick and choose. I've got over 30 vns in my backlog that i may read when i have the time. Honestly i'm not interested in learning Japanese right now and am fine with just picking up the Vns already available or will be coming soon.
I mean, mikandi had like a year to translate the game and polish it up. They aren't creating the game, they're translating it. I think a year is ample time to get it to the best possible quality by apparent professionals. If this was a fan translation, hey take years if you want. You're doing it on your own time, you didn't ask for anyone's money to do it. But if you're a professional then people are going to have high expectations for quality. 
I've read hundreds of books in my time and I don't think i've ever had issues with books not being proofread properly. It really shocked me when i first starting reading visual novels, how official translations done by professionals can have so many errors that have been pointed out and never addressed or edited. Like its just an accepted fact that just because there aren't many Vns out there, they can just cut corners with releases and people will just go "oh well, it can't be helped, we don't have much of a choice anyway...". Its a sad thing to see. 
Visual novel companies should endeavour to release products of the highest quality and translations that are honest and accurate to the meaning of the original scripts. It is their duty as professionals and it is also their responsibility to consumers and the creators of those games.  

As someone who is learning Japanese, and intends on becoming a professional translator, I don't like this mentality. It is the job of the translator to produce a good translation that pleases the readers, and not a poor translation that is hard to understand, (or worse, one that is straight up incorrect.) People being okay with bad translations means the people who translated said work gets away with it, and more bad translations could surface in the future. If no one speaks up about someone's work being bad, then the translator and the localization company won't learn.
It's okay to criticise translators if their work is sub-par. I know for a fact that my first work wasn't the best, and I use the feedback I got from that as motivation to get better in the future. This should be what all translators tries to do.
So, I think it's important that the community speaks up about something if there is actual issues in a localization. Based on the lines Decay has posted in this thread so far, the translation looks very awkward. I hope the lines are at the very least accurate, (I'll be checking this later when the game comes out,) but even if they are, we should definitely let Mikandi Japan know that their work is in need of some serious editing. If they aren't made aware of the fact that their work isn't that good, they could just keep making sub-par translations for the foreseeable future, which would suck for them and their fans.
With the amount of good localizations that has been released in the past few years, this community should be allowed to have high standards when it comes to translations.

I wonder if the cost difference is really that much in this day and age? If it's something that can be mass produced overseas then the greatest cost is probably just designing the thing. Certainly there would be a difference but I'm thinking it's not in the 10's of dollars range? Dunno. Though the problem might ultimately be the volume. If they aren't making enough to fill a few shipping containers the cost per unit might go up significantly.
Not that I know. Just my gut feeling after seeing some of the needlessly complex packaging PC parts sometimes come in. Either there really isn't much cost in such things or they're really desperate to differentiate themselves from the competition. Which seems kinda silly since most people buy parts online these days and I doubt the packaging even enters into their consideration.

Da Capo has a pretty jealous heroine. 11 eyes also has one. Perhaps Shuffle counts too?

As for that, I think the walkthrough from Tsurezure should be sufficient for get all routes (Yes, including both of Maya's and Yukino's). Just look at the walkthrough here, and hope it'll be help.

Common route:
SAVE
Yukino route --> Childhood friend ero-DVD (don't feel like translating her other choices yet)
Runa route:
Kyou route:
Midori route:
Maya route --> Special effects(?) ero-DVD (don't feel like translating her other choices yet)
 
http://seiya-saiga.com/game/toneworks/hatsukoi.html