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Heizei_koukousei

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Posts posted by Heizei_koukousei

    VN reading club - June 2015 (Yume Miru Kusuri)

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Just dropped Nekoko's route to go onto Aeka's route.

     

    I'm not having a good run with this vn. 

    You definitely are not alone. This visual novel is filled with sex, has poor artistic design, not to mention pacing problems.

     

    Oh and you could definitely tell JAST was getting sloppy with Aeka's route towards the end.

     

    Despite all the things I have pointed out, and contrary to how I may have come across in an earlier post, I do not completely dislike this visual novel. It does have its redeeming qualities. Aeka's ending, I mean come on, how you could you not enjoy it even a little bit? I think the order I chose to read the routes (Mizuki->Nekoko->Aeka) was actually a good choice considering each route has it's own very distinct flavor, which I really enjoyed despite wanting Nekoko's route to just be over. 

    VN reading club - June 2015 (Yume Miru Kusuri)

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    One things that really got on my nerves is that whenever something amusing happened, the exact same track, Attached to Maturity, would play, and my God, did I start to hate that track.  I wasn't particularly interested in it in the first place, so hearing it so often made me actually hate it.  The only track I really liked (so far) was Goodbye to the World.  Still watch the opening cinematic just to hear it, as a matter of fact.  Dunno why exactly, but I love that song.

     

    I find the art style to be pretty hit or miss.  Most of the CGs in the opening cinematic use the art style the best, with exaggerated facial expressions and only slight amounts of turning involved, so we can see most, if not all, of the heroines' faces.  I don't really like the sprites so far, but I can't exactly put my finger on why.  They just look strange to me, especially when they look forward, like you said.  And yes, Mizuki's wistful smile is godawful.

    I thought that the soundtrack was poorly balanced and overused songs until it just made me turn the BGM off.

     

    In the review I'm writing for YmK, I actually noted some issues with the heroines faces looking a bit off. I also found that the background CGs also lacked consistency in style. Some were toned down while others more crisp.

     

    I'm sad to say it, but I'm finding myself to be apart of the "hate" group for this title. I had known about it for a while, and always wanted to play it. But now that I have I'm pretty disappointed overall. 

    VN reading club - June 2015 (Yume Miru Kusuri)

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    aeka's was the most believable route of all of them imo and the best one so maybe you will like it.

    Haven't played Aeka's route yet but I'm looking forward to it. Mizuki's route wasn't totally out there, but Nekoko's route wasn't something I would try to classify as believable lol

     

    The majority of Nekoko's route was hellishly boring, there's no way something like that could be believable in any sense of word.

    What Makes a Bad Fan Translation?

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    Guess Cross Channel is always a good example.  It's not the worst translation, but according to people that read the Japanese version, the writer's prose was replaced with ixrec's, the translator's, prose instead, which, of course, changes the way you read things, even if the general meaning is still the same.

     

    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.  

    Aaeru was mentioning that Ixrec was, in her opinion, an elitist. 

     

    It always confuses me when translators look down on the community that they are trying to produce a product for. I understand that a lot of translators work for their own gratification, but they must be aware that a lot of people are going to read their work, and a majority of these people know little or no Japanese (or whatever the original language was)

     

    I have been subtly promoting a tagline for Skyspear as "We will continue to bring quality fan translations for the community to enjoy" And that ties back into Nosebleed's comments on the audience. I just think that a majority of people who can't read the original language are just happy to see any sort of translation, especially with visual novels. Vibrant language seems like it would be an added bonus at that point.

    What Makes a Bad Fan Translation?

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    A translation that doesn't flow nicely in the language you're translating to would be an example of a bad translation.

    Being overly literal with translations can be your fall from the start and I often nowadays find myself reading other people's translations and cringing at the poor word wrapping choices.

    This is a big problem particularly if you translate manga like I do and more often than not I've had to delete entire sections or glomp 2 speech bubbles together because there was just no way to cut the sentence in half like they often do.

    When I translate something I think of the audience that's going to read it first and foremost, then I think about how I could transcribe what the author said into the language, making sure that the result is a coherent sentence that flows nicely when you read it and contains the same amount of significance, or as much as possible, as the original sentence did.

    If I have to, I will, and have before, discard the original sentence entirely, because it can easily mess up the English syntax if I were to preserve it.

    I'm a firm believer that the quality of the translated prose should come first to being as literal as possible with a translation. Because I'm not making a weeb product.

    As for vocabulary, it needs to remain natural and not look like you just looked up complicated words on a thesaurus. Especially in dialogues you shouldn't over complicate it because most of the time the characters are using everyday speech so you shouldn't attempt to make them sound like 80 year old wizards.

    Thank you for the insight, this is exactly what I was looking for.

     

    I agree that the target audience is the most important, I mean its the reason for the translation in the first place. I think that promoting audience pleasure should come before producing a direct translation. A translation cannot be equated with the original product. We cannot always expect to receive the same impact because readers of translations have different mannerisms than the original culture where the text was written 

    What Makes a Bad Fan Translation?

    in Visual Novel Talk

    Posted

    This is a classic question, which has been discussed many times over the centuries. I thought I would again pose this question in order to supplement the opinions I have already read.

     

    Well, aside from the obvious reasons 

    • Machine translations
    • Incoherent sentences that distract from the story
    • Poor word choice
    • Lack of knowledge of the language(s)

    Do you prefer complex word choice? For example I have heard complaints about the translation of Sharin no Kuni, which I thought used a pretty wide vocabulary. I can admit that the comedy was impacted by the colorless language, but I still enjoyed the story overall. 

     

    Here are a few quotes to get you thinking

     

    "Regarding rating translations, I'm not sure. On the one hand, it would definitely help people looking to play vn make decisions about what to play, and how to interpret what they are playing. On the other hand, I fear it could lead to a sense of elitism, which is exactly what Fuwa tries to avoid. Maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic, but I can see it becoming a kind of hierarchy, which would push out the 'not as good' translators and not give them the chance to improve" (meru).

     

    "When you’re translating (especially if you’re fairly new to the activity), you’re likely to spend too much time hanging out in the part of your brain that learns foreign languages, makes rational decisions and does math. ... It’s really hard to make simultaneous use of the writerly and rational parts of your brain, as brilliant translation requires" (http://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2014/11/17/the-tiff-what-makes-a-bad-translation/).

     

    A few threads from the early days of Fuwanovel covered the same concepts.

    http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/233-shit-translators—youre-trashing-my-favourite-stories/

    http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/225-propercorrect-fan-translation/

    If you haven't read these topics, you might want to. They are worth a good read.

     

    And don't even get me started on Moenovel 

    Clannad anime or VN?

    in Anime/Manga Talk

    Posted

    Yeah the visual novel is pretty long winded. It really draws events out, so you really want to get emotionally connected to each heroine then that would be a better choice. 

     

    In my opinion, the anime does a good job of combining elements from each of the routes into a coherent story that only focuses on romance between Tomoya and Nagisa. If you want to fall in love with more than one girl, the VN will again be more pleasing 

     

    Both are equally funny, so don't let the prospect of comedy sway your decision. 

    Majikoi A-1 - (Possible) Translation Project

    in Fan Translation Discussion

    Posted

    Hi.

    I posted on the blogs, as well, but if I, say, translated Azumi's route during my free time, would you pick up translations from said random passerby?

    Here's a sample translation from the first bit:

    http://www.pastebin.ca/3024630

    I'm aware I have some awkwardness going on with Western/Eastern honorifics.

    I'll probably go back and change any reference to "Miss Mon" or similar to just Mon-sama unless you have preference.

    And I'm terrible at spelling cloak.

    Yes, I saw your comment on the site and I would like to talk. Shoot us an email at [email protected]
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