dowolf

I'm pretty darn sure every single character in Majikoi is over 18.
 
no exceptions.
 
also Kawakami Water is non-alcoholic.

It's asking if she looks lonely (i.e. "I should go talk to her!"), or if she gives you the creeps.

It's asking if she looks lonely (i.e. "I should go talk to her!"), or if she gives you the creeps.

i'm only one person dammit.
 
and the biggest other project (well, besides Oretsuba) that I really want to work on right now is Dai Gyakuten Saiban, but I'm hesitant to dive into that when there's still a decent chance Capcom localizes it themselves. Besides, with 3DS emulators not being a thing and Capcom taking down every DGS video they can find, there's not really a good way to release it.

but now i'm getting off-topic >_>

i still have nightmares about that loving.

i still have nightmares about that loving.

i still have nightmares about that loving.

i still have nightmares about that loving.

i still have nightmares about that loving.

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...

...

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...

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.

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.

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.

Yeah. I get lazy during sex scenes and just stop typing the stars sometimes.

in my defense, there's a lot of sex scenes.

ユナが私を愛してることを証明するのはきっと容易いことだわ (I'm sure it's pretty simple for you to tell me you love me.)
Should be "Proving that you love me is surely a simple task."

でもねあなたの愛に一片の偽りも誤魔化しも「無い」ことを証明するのはとても大変なことなの (But you know, if there's even a piece of falsehood in that love of yours and you're trying to deceive me, it would be really troublesome.) Should be "But you know, proving that your love contains not even a shred of falsehood or chicanery is terribly difficult."
 
私はあなたの愛を確かめたいんじゃない
(I need to be sure about your feelings.)
It's fine the way it is no it's not I'm dumb read what Pain posted below, but I like the repetition for emphasis here of 確かめたい that your translation loses.
 
あなたの心にあの男が「居ない」ことを確かめたいのよ (I have to confirm that guy doesn't exist anywhere inside your heart.)
Perhaps more poetically, "that he is gone from your heart," but this is fine.  
例えばサンタクロースが「居る」ことを証明するのは簡単だわ
(For example, it's pretty simple to prove Santa Claus exists.)
 
空飛ぶ本物のサンタクロースをたった一人見つけ出せばいいんだもの
(All it takes is someone seeing a genuine Santa Claus flying in the sky.)
I think you made a minor comprehension error here--the たった一人 refers to Santa Claus, not the viewer; i.e., "You just have to see one real Santa Claus." That said, it doesn't significantly impact the meaning of the sentence, and the literal translation sounds meh in English, so I'm fine with yours--I just thought I'd mention it.
 
一方で宇宙人が「居ない」ことを不可能に近い
(On the other hand, it's almost impossible to prove aliens don't exist.)
 
なぜなら全宇宙のあらゆる星々にほんの少さな宇宙人すら居ない事を確認しんくてはならないのだから
(That's because the universe has millions of celestial bodies and it's impossible to confirm there aren't aliens in some of them.)
Recall that 星 can simply mean "planet." I would simply translate it as such here. Amongst the stars, as Parallel Pain suggested, would work too. Other than that, I agree with Down.
 
 
*some needless talking*
 
話を戻すと…要するに事実の不存在は証明が極めて難しいの
(Going back to what I was saying... The point is, it's more difficult to prove things don't exist than the opposite.)
While fine, consider "It is nearly impossible to prove the nonexistence of something."
 
いわゆる悪魔の証明というやつね
(One would call it "the proof of evil".) (I'm not sure if someone has a better expression for 悪魔の証明)
As noted above "a devil's proof" is the standard translation. While not literal, perhaps consider "That's why it's called a Devil's Proof."
 
かといって不可能というわけでもない
(Alhough I say that, it's not completely impossible to do so.)
Snip out the "I say that" and "to do so" bits. They're unnecessarily verbose.

I agree with Down's translations of the next two lines, but if I may offer something a little more natural-sounding:
 
「在る」とする仮定が矛盾を内包するとさえ証明できたならば If you assume something exists and can show that this produces a contradiction...   それは「無い」ことを裏付けたことになる That supports its nonexistence.

ユナが私を愛してることを証明するのはきっと容易いことだわ (I'm sure it's pretty simple for you to tell me you love me.)
Should be "Proving that you love me is surely a simple task."

でもねあなたの愛に一片の偽りも誤魔化しも「無い」ことを証明するのはとても大変なことなの (But you know, if there's even a piece of falsehood in that love of yours and you're trying to deceive me, it would be really troublesome.) Should be "But you know, proving that your love contains not even a shred of falsehood or chicanery is terribly difficult."
 
私はあなたの愛を確かめたいんじゃない
(I need to be sure about your feelings.)
It's fine the way it is no it's not I'm dumb read what Pain posted below, but I like the repetition for emphasis here of 確かめたい that your translation loses.
 
あなたの心にあの男が「居ない」ことを確かめたいのよ (I have to confirm that guy doesn't exist anywhere inside your heart.)
Perhaps more poetically, "that he is gone from your heart," but this is fine.  
例えばサンタクロースが「居る」ことを証明するのは簡単だわ
(For example, it's pretty simple to prove Santa Claus exists.)
 
空飛ぶ本物のサンタクロースをたった一人見つけ出せばいいんだもの
(All it takes is someone seeing a genuine Santa Claus flying in the sky.)
I think you made a minor comprehension error here--the たった一人 refers to Santa Claus, not the viewer; i.e., "You just have to see one real Santa Claus." That said, it doesn't significantly impact the meaning of the sentence, and the literal translation sounds meh in English, so I'm fine with yours--I just thought I'd mention it.
 
一方で宇宙人が「居ない」ことを不可能に近い
(On the other hand, it's almost impossible to prove aliens don't exist.)
 
なぜなら全宇宙のあらゆる星々にほんの少さな宇宙人すら居ない事を確認しんくてはならないのだから
(That's because the universe has millions of celestial bodies and it's impossible to confirm there aren't aliens in some of them.)
Recall that 星 can simply mean "planet." I would simply translate it as such here. Amongst the stars, as Parallel Pain suggested, would work too. Other than that, I agree with Down.
 
 
*some needless talking*
 
話を戻すと…要するに事実の不存在は証明が極めて難しいの
(Going back to what I was saying... The point is, it's more difficult to prove things don't exist than the opposite.)
While fine, consider "It is nearly impossible to prove the nonexistence of something."
 
いわゆる悪魔の証明というやつね
(One would call it "the proof of evil".) (I'm not sure if someone has a better expression for 悪魔の証明)
As noted above "a devil's proof" is the standard translation. While not literal, perhaps consider "That's why it's called a Devil's Proof."
 
かといって不可能というわけでもない
(Alhough I say that, it's not completely impossible to do so.)
Snip out the "I say that" and "to do so" bits. They're unnecessarily verbose.

I agree with Down's translations of the next two lines, but if I may offer something a little more natural-sounding:
 
「在る」とする仮定が矛盾を内包するとさえ証明できたならば If you assume something exists and can show that this produces a contradiction...   それは「無い」ことを裏付けたことになる That supports its nonexistence.

私はあなたの愛を確かめたいんじゃない

あなたの心にあの男が「居ない」ことを確かめたいのよ

It's actually "I don't". That's what ties into what she's saying.

I don't need to confirm your love for me.
I need to confirm that guy doesn't exist in your heart.

"I know you love me. I need to make sure you love *only* me" sort of thing. A very yandere thing to do.

And you can use the proper term
Probatio diabolica
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probatio_diabolica

Since it's probably supposed to be just as confusing in Japanese.

Depending on context, I have translated はい as "Yes," "Yes, sir/ma'am," "Here," "Present," "Thank you," "I'm sorry?" and, of course, "No." Each of those words is the correct term to use in some situation; blanketly translating the whole bunch as "yes" would have been a disservice (and, in cases where はい means "no," simply incorrect).

Japanese and English are not similar languages. There are very few 1-to-1 mappings from one language to the other, if any. Remember that your target audience is people who don't know Japanese. Demanding they understand the intricacies of how, say, Japanese negative questions work is foolish.

Depending on context, I have translated はい as "Yes," "Yes, sir/ma'am," "Here," "Present," "Thank you," "I'm sorry?" and, of course, "No." Each of those words is the correct term to use in some situation; blanketly translating the whole bunch as "yes" would have been a disservice (and, in cases where はい means "no," simply incorrect).

Japanese and English are not similar languages. There are very few 1-to-1 mappings from one language to the other, if any. Remember that your target audience is people who don't know Japanese. Demanding they understand the intricacies of how, say, Japanese negative questions work is foolish.

That's a bit pompous and wordy; it doesn't really fit the tone of the original IMHO, and changes the meaning a fair bit.

Perhaps "We seek others so we may be ourselves; we consider their happiness that we may find bliss."

So with the -tari form, while it can be used for shyness (for instance, "What did you do last night?" / "I ate, and slept, and..." would be 食べたり寝たりして、そして...), I would argue that's not its primary purpose. Rather, it's used for making incomplete lists of actions (playing back into the 例えば at the start of the sentence you've provided). For more details, see http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=tari+suru+form

So I would render the sentence as "For instance, I yearned for the happiness I've never had." I'm tempted to tack on an "and..." at the end, but whether or not that makes sense depends on the surrounding lines.