dowolf

For formality, you... well, you go more formal or more casual. For the two sentences you gave, you could potentially go: 1. You were responsible for that? 2: You did that? As for pronouns: if the plot doesn't particularly care, don't worry about it. If it sort of matters (like, if a girl's insulted for saying 僕), work around it (generic tomboy insult GO). If there is actual information being conveyed through the pronoun (e.g., if there's a crossdresser who gives away their actual gender by using the wrong pronoun), cry for a little bit and then make something up. It is... very rare for the plot to care about second-person pronouns (was going to say never, but then I thought of an example so >_>), so you don't have to worry about those as much.

...You throw water on yourself? I never knew I was committing sudowoodo every morning.

Those are Sudowoodo commits, but I don't think that's quite the same thing as committing sudowoodo.

... You know, I am really curious to find out what "committing sudowoodo" entails...

i wonder if the fuwa rules would allow me to make a bot whose sole purpose is to handle "what about A" questions...

Yeah, that is far too chuu2 for Haneda. As for reflect: So the original Japanese is an idiom for "visible," but I sort've got the impression that the specs of light weren't actually there, that it was all in Haneda's head. So... *shrug*

I mean, it's fine. All of this is helping me a lot.

Hmm. Those are ideas, but I really don't want to lose the "reflected in none of the eyes around the room" bit. Merely "unseen" feels so dry in comparison. Maybe I could just tack it in front and use "though" instead of "ones"?

Yeah, definitely. I know I made a concentrated effort at one point or another to wipe out a lot of those sentences; I guess I have to go even further. As for deleting information outright: Every single instinct I have screams "nooooooooooooooooooooo" at the thought of doing this, which means you're probably right (at least in the hand-raising case). I dunno. Food for thought. Mm, yeah, I can definitely see the confusion now that you bring it up. That's an easy one to miss, since I know what I mean >_> (The chair line, incidentally, is on a list of lines I've never been happy with, as is the bad-taste metaphor. Though you are definitely write about replacing "sat down" with "plopped.") As for the eyebrow line, I changed it to "He knit his feminine eyebrows, which he had groomed into thin hooks," by the way. I think that strikes a nice balance between avoiding adjective overload and not falling into wordiness (Haneda can't get too wordy because... well, because that's someone else's job ). I brought up the Ixrec/Moogy thing because I thought it interesting how other well-known translators handled this sort of issue, and why I didn't want to do things their way. But since you enjoyed Moogy's take on things, perhaps that helps explain why you view mine the way you do. I can basically conjure the japanese in my head. It just reads and feels like a translation. And that is something much worse for a game like Oretsuba. The game is 100% based on its text, it has no real plot or anything. I just have to question if you currently have the english writing ability that brings Jacksons writing ability to life. Really? I like that line myself, if I'm being perfectly honest. I'd be curious to know how you'd word it.

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.

Miyako appears, yes.

Personally, I prefer to think of the first half of Agave After being Koyuki's real route. *shrug*

...Huh. "Well then" >_>

...Rooke, I feel like you're getting argumentative, which serves little point. If you don't like the exact wording of something I wrote, then fine. "From her foe" should definitely be axed from that line, looking back at it a few hours later. But I am identifying a key area where your translation differs from the original in tone, in style, and in readability. When I say "concise," I am using it to say that you are making additions I feel take away from the text. That was the same impression I had, which is why I used "only to immediately" (which implies it happened after the blood touched their clothes) instead of the more literal and ambiguous "simultaneously." But as you noted, there is no decisive answer to that question--which is why I answered Rooke's original one like I did. If she hit the bone, Eleonore would be dead. It's saying it was only a flesh wound. Your wording sort've implies to me that her vertebrate are made out of steel or something, which strikes me as a little odd. Personally, I like the feel of "Her blade sundered flesh and rent muscle, yet could not reach the bone." But again, like I said, I'm fine with your translation there. Agreed, definitely. Which is why I said "regularly" >_> But I digress: I feel like my examples highlighted places where the additions were either a "duplicate" translation, for want of a better term, or where the addition was wholly invented. When push comes to shove, adding lots of lines to try to make things sound grandiose simply doesn't work. But that's just my two cents.

The original Japanese says the two events happen at the same time. *le shrug* "Adorned" is a fine choice of words; you're simply using it incorrectly. The object of the verb must be the thing being beautified. Ditto with "exsanguinating"--used here, the term means "dying of blood loss," which is not correct. Always make sure you know the meaning of the words you use "Brevity is the soul of wit." You are confusing grandiosity with verbosity, wonderful diction with a strange love for the sesquipidalian. I am not speaking of removing redundancy; I am saying that you are adding redundancy and complexity not present in the original, seemingly in the belief that this evokes the tone of the original. It does not. In fact, the original phrase here (苦笑した) is extremely simple. And when you can write the same sentence with the same connotation, the same tone, with half the words? You always should. If you find your translations regularly have more words than the original lines had characters, something has gone horribly wrong. And while certainly the shortest way can be the most boring, it is often the most powerful. You are misunderstanding your problem: It is not that you should make concise what was not concise; it is that you should not make verbose what was concise, and not double-down on verbosity. For instance, consider the line at 0:57: We can make this "In the height of battle, Eleanor's concentration faltered from her foe for a fraction of a second, a fault Beatrice punished with pain." This removes the needless and annoying duplication while still maintaining the tone you claim to seek. The quote you reference is extremely easy to read, by the way. You will also notice that it evinces sentence variety and is willing to use short words when those are the correct ones. It is not wordy, it is not verbose--it is well written. The repetition expands, rather than being a mere duplication. Eve and Medusa, terrible and peerless, hideous and a lily--while the sentence structure repeats, the meaning does not. Each pair evokes something different. Compare this with "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." The second sentence is simply the first sentence restated with different words--and both mean something subtly different from 骨まで届かない.

(quick note: i'm trying to focus on stylistic stuff, not nitpicky or TLC stuff, since I figure that's what you need help with more. Though it probably could use the latter, too) I guess my biggest critique is that I feel like you're being wordy for wordiness's sake a lot of the time. A number of your sentences feel like they could be written with half as many words without losing any meaning (or that the extra words actually take you away from the original meaning), which is not a good thing. One of the most egregious examples is at 0:57, where 激痛の罰 winds up mapping to both "a deserved punishment" and "a fitting consequence." Sort of. I digress; the point is, the redundancy hurts the line. (also it should be "her" and not "their" there but now I'm being nitpicky >_>). There's also 1:13, where 噴き出る紅の鮮血は彼女ら二人に降りかかり同時に熱で蒸発していく becomes about thirty-five words. Simply "The crimson blood spurted from the wound and rained down upon the two ladies, only to immediately evaporate in the blazing heat." manages to be more concise and, I would argue, more accurate. The negative hypothetical you added doesn't really serve any purpose except to make explicit the mental image of the scene you had in your head. Similarly, at 1:29, we have 骨までは届かない, which maps to both "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." Both translations are fine (though fwiw I'd just go with "yet the bone was beyond her reach"), but there is no need to have both. At 3:19, "the vigor and enthusiasm for combat drained from Eleonore" is pretty much entirely added. And so on. This becomes even more problematic in the fight scenes proper, since it has a slowing effect on the narrative--the exact opposite of what you want from combat. E.g., 思わず gets needlessly doubled to "An instinctive action, one born from reflex." "Drenched in the blood of her exsanguinating former commander, Beatrice adorned a smile bitter in nature" gains nothing from using the word "exsanguinate," and that word is technically being misused to boot. (Also, the last phrase needs to be one of "A bitter smile adorned Beatrice," "Beatrice's expression was adorned with a bitter smile," "Beatrice smiled bitterly," etc., but there I go nitpicking away~)

that is correct. (Chosokabe was either a typo or Wairu being weirdly inconsistent with how they handled elongated vowels. *shrug*)

The simple answer is "use simple words." However, it's hard to do that with such short examples. (Also, while this is personal preference, I generally try to avoid using "onii-chan" in English when the person is not literally the speaker's brother--most of your audience will know that it means "brother," but few will know that it also means "mister.") also what Ittaku said re: the first two lines.

"this upcoming March" and "come March" are synonymous. (There's a slight difference in connotation, but I digress.) As for Kansai and Southern: you mean in terms of accents, or location? Kansai is the southern part of Honshu (Japan's main island) (thought it literally means the western side, don't ask), and for God-knows-what-reason is frequently translated using a Southern accent.

He uses a slang term for "I'm sorry," which is what "My b" is. ...A lot of the complaints I've been hearing is about the use of slang, which seems strange to me. Like, when you're chatting with your friends, do you speak in perfect literary English (or whatever your native tongue is)? The idea of doing so strikes me as bizarre. But I dunno. If people are that bothered by it, it can certainly be toned down.