dowolf

I'm not going to go into too much detail, but some general style suggestions: --Semicolons: Learn to use them! They are indispensable, and something like this practically demands them. Yet there was a sad lack of them at times, and a number of times they were misused. For instance, at the very end you have "Yet the victor was certain, as long as a miracle did not occur, the tide of battle was as good as set in stone." That comma at the beginning splices; make it a semicolon! Alternatively, you could make the second comma a semicolon instead--the point is, this sentence is in desperate need of some semicolon loving. A number of the times you did use semicolons, they were paired with incomplete sentences. M dashes work far better here: "Citizens you wish to protect, your beloved friends; there is no better sacrifice than their pure souls." should be "Citizens you wish to protect, your beloved friends--there is no better sacrifice than their pure souls." Also, colons: "Now I can wholeheartedly agree; indeed, it is not scary in the slightest." should have a colon. --Ellipses: You're overusing them. Ellipses are going to feel very languid, very slow; in other words, they engender the exact opposite emotion that you should be going for in a fight scene. Let's examine a sentence from early on in 1-3: 稲妻と化したその身体は、炎も銃弾も透過する, which you rendered as "Taking the shape of lightning itself, she penetrated fires... she pierced bullets." Consider instead "Her body became a bolt lightning, zipping through fire and bullet alike." This sentence feels much more alive. Some other examples of ellipses should be replaced with M dashes, another solid tool you seem to be neglecting, such as Eleonore's statement around the six minute mark in 1-3. --Periodic sentences: Basically, this is a complicated way of saying to write a sentence such that the most important information is at the very end. This causes the sentence to build like a crescendo into something magnificent. To use another example from early in 1-3, "Finally, a hit… finally she caught up to her elusive superior who might as well have been above the clouds to her before." could become "Finally... Though there had once been a greater gap between them than the gap between the land and the clouds, she finally managed to land a hit." This feels triumphant. (I also took the liberty of rewriting the metaphoric bit here, though I still kept it pretty literal because I like the literal metaphor a lot.) --You clearly sought to use past tense for all narration, which makes me love you forever. Just sayin'

And the poll is closed. That was a heck of a lot of votes, but Happy Birthday comes out on top

Eventually™. In other news, http://strawpoll.me/4552134

There are two problems with that method. The first is that the majority of people giving their opinions on those sites are people who don't know Japanese, who are judging the episodes solely based on how well-edited the English is. The second is that, with manga (less so with anime, though this isn't really an issue anymore now that almost all anime is being simulcast), most people don't shop around for the best translation--they'll just read whatever one is posted on their favorite aggregate site. Admittedly, this second complaint wouldn't be as much of an issue with regards to VNs, for obvious reasons. But regardless, I would argue that this is a false comparison because of the difference in commitment a translator must make to a VN as opposed to short-form works (i.e. manga/anime). The average manga chapter takes me an hour or two to translate, which is a very easy investment to make, even if there are low odds your work is widely seen. But when we switch over to VNs--where that commitment becomes hundreds of hours, if not over a thousand--any desire to retranslate something because you found the original effort unsatisfactory suddenly enters the realm of lunacy. Spending all your free time for months and months to do something that very few people will bother to read (since most of the potential audience probably already read the original translation)? No. Even if the original work was bastardized, there's no point.

Yeah. When you're translating tens of thousands of lines in your free time, and you're the only person on the project with any knowledge of Japanese (something that happens far more often than it should, but I digress), there will be lines, here and there, where your brain does something dumb and you mess up. Fuck people who dig through your work looking for a reason to call it crap, then do so because you messed up one line at the very end of the final route. Be happy that you somehow got through the first 30k lines without there being anything you saw fit to complain about! (...Ahem.) But on the other hand, you have works like (going outside of the VN sphere, since I've played more games in multiple languages than I have read VNs) Treasure of the Rudras, where the "translation" is very well-edited and very professionally done and has almost no basis in the original Japanese text. And the odds of it ever getting a proper translation are, quite frankly, zero, because (as others have said) multiple fan translations almost never happen. You also have the scanlation sphere, where the first translation done is the one that gets put up on all the aggregate sites, regardless of quality, strongly discouraging anyone from redoing such work. That, I think, is why people are so vehement about the truly bad translations--because it discourages and even interferes with genuine efforts.

30 votes... So beautiful... *Sniff* But Chris wins the poll.

When you first start playing the game, it asks for your birthday. On your birthday, a hidden menu option opens up. It's basically a bunch of skits where each member of the cast sings "Happy Birthday" to you, and it's friggin' adorable.

Wow. While this was Happy Birthday's best showing yet, Chris's already got half the votes in the poll. I'm pretty tempted to just call it now.

Perhaps, with all this hype, today will be the day Happy Birthday reigns?! http://strawpoll.me/4457299

I'm gonna close the poll, which means Yukie's route gets translated next.

Takae's route is basically a short epilogue to the anime (or so I'm told. Never actually watched the anime >_>). It's short, but it's actually one of my favorite routes in S.

I meant Kelebek, not you >_>

...You guys have gone off the deep end now. That's all I'm gonna say about that. ...I think はらったま、きよったま is a variation on　祓いたまえ清めたまえ, be exorcised and purified. Searching around a bit, 急々如律令 (read きゅうきゅうにょりつりょう) is a phrase used by mediums to exorcise demons (apparently, it was originally a phrase used at the end of official documents in Han China saying "please act posthaste in accordance with the law"? *Shrug*). アメン is just "amen." There's also a couple of references: はらったま、きよったま is a manga, while Eloim Essaim is from Akuma-kun (an old, popular manga and anime that never made it out of Japan in any form AFAIK), which in turn derives it from The Book of Black Magic by Arthur Edward Waite.

Translating it simply as "master" is fine. It's adding "shaolin/kung fu/etc." that perverts the meaning. "Hey. Don't go dodging by a millimeter on purpose! Or I'd think you were some kind of kungfu master!" doesn't make much sense, neither as a thing to say nor given that she said a second ago that she didn't dodge it. And you don't get exasperated when someone reacts with pride to an actual complement.

More "split hairs" in the sense of "to quibble"; the definition "to argue about whether details that are not important are exactly correct" is probably the clearest I've found. The details are petty, but the people are not >_> "Hey. If you're able to judge a millimeter of a distance like that, you'll make me think you've done this enough times to completely master it." That's what I was trying to go for; sorry if that wasn't adequately clear >_> Though I massively prefer Imperial units, mostly because they taste so much better to say.

I don't think you know what the word "petty" means. She is certainly not being petty. ...Lemme explain this one last time. Kanade is saying that Airi's giving the impression that she regularly lets people touch the chest of her uniform in order to pick fights, and that she's mastered this art. The giggle is because Kanade hit the nail on the head, and Airi is proud of that skill. Given that Kanade already knows that Airi is highly skilled in combat, your explanation makes literally zero sense. You have already acknowledged that your translation is divorced from the literal meaning of the words; this is a sign that you're on the wrong track, not that you should try to keep arguing the point. As for the full text: 愛理 「そう、一人一殺、簡単でしょ」 奏　「いや、殺したらマズいだろ！倫理とか道徳的にさ！」 愛理 「そう？じゃあ、ポコポコにして二度と立てなくする、とか」 奏 「可愛く言ったけど、どっちにしても暴力だ！」 愛理 「いいのよ！だって、先に手を出してきたのは向こうだもの」 「なんせ、この私の胸にワンタッチしたんだから！この乙女の可憐な胸によ！」 奏 「ワンタッチって…お前なら避けられただろう」 愛理 「まぁね」 軽く頷く愛理に、俺はため息を落とした。 「なによ…」 奏 「いや、別に…」 しっかし、あの平らな胸にワンタッチか… ＯＮＥ　ＴＯＵＣＨ． 愛理 「…その、ワキワキした手はなんなの」 奏　「気にするな。『あわよくば混乱に乗じて俺も』なんて思ってないから」 愛理「ヘンタイッ！」 奏　「ちょっ、待て待て！　素敵な胸に惹かれるのは、ＤＮＡに記された自然の摂理なんだぞ！」 愛理 「素敵…」　 奏　「あ、素敵さ」 愛理 「えっ、あ…ばっ、バカじゃないの！？」 愛理が声を張り上げた。 「ワンタッチって言ったって、私が触らせてあげたのは制服だけっ」 奏　「そうか…って、おい！ミリ単位で見切るなよ、達人かと思うだろ！」 愛理 「ふふん」 なるほど…あなたが新世界の神ですか、そうですか。 <--this line is clearly in an exasperated tone, which makes no sense if he meant it as a compliment 自慢げな笑顔に、俺はため息交じりに首を振った。 …とその時、俺の肩にチョイチョイと触れるものが。 ケニーケニー「なぁ、そろそろ満足したか？」 奏　「な…」 ケニー「できれば痴話ゲンカはベッドでしてくれ。あいつら同様、俺も飽きてきた」 ...also, poking around, his name should be Sou, I think, not Kanade? But w/e.

...Oh for goodness' sake. I looked up the context. Airi gets into a fight with the judo guy. When questioned, she says they started it because one of them touched her breast. Kanade points out she could've dodged (using the actual word that actually means "dodge"), to which Airi responds "Well, yeah." Kanade proceeds to imagine sexual things and touching her breast, in response to which Airi says "Wh-What are you, stupid? I only let them touch my uniform." Kanade goes on to say "Okay... Wait! Don't split hairs over an eighth of an inch! You'll make me think you've done this a million times!" Airi then giggles mischievously.

...Translating this as "evasion" does not make any sense here considering that, in the previous sentence, the girl just said that she let them touch her uniform. Furthermore, even if that did make sense, in that case the author would've simply said e.g. 避けるな. He wouldn't have used a different word referring to a different action that would require his readers to go through mental hoops to understand what he actually meant. かよ and かと思うだろ are used in similar situations, yes; however, they are not synonymous. With かと思うだろ, the implication is that the girl would not want to be thought of as a master. This does not gel with the translation you proposed. With all due respect, you are ignoring the meaning of the actual words in front of you in order to justify your chosen translation, which I feel is a serious mistake. If the sentence had been, say, ミリ単位で見切るなんて、達人かよ, your argument would hold some water, but that's not what's being said.

This is incorrect. 見切る can be used in martial arts to refer to judging e.g. one's distance from an opponent (or in the same sense as e.g. 相手の攻撃が見えた), but it does not mean to evade (just as 見えた clearly does not). Kanade is clearly referring to her making the distinction between uniform and breast. As for the second half, "Are you a master or something?" would be "達人かよ." The reason why we get "You'll make me think you're a master" (or "People will think you're a master," as you have later in your post) is because the thing she's being implied to be a "master" at is getting her boobs touched.

You see, when someone tells me something is impossible, I take it as a challenge. In other news, http://strawpoll.me/4357955

It's Crit, not Krit >_>

I'd be lying if I said I was remotely satisfied with what they've done, but... It is extremely hard to justify spending so much time and energy on something sure to be licensed.

Whole paragraph, Gizzie. Like, I would delete your post if I had the power to.

Gizzie please put the last paragraph before your spoiler inside the spoiler tag.