dowolf

Well then I have some good news for you: The birthday scripts aren't nearly as long as the proper routes, meaning it's already time to vote again!

http://strawpoll.me/4591328

(I wound up doing the Staff Room, too [they're in the same block of text in the game's script], if you're wondering what happened to that.)

If the game is only out for Windows, then that's fine.
 
勝 手 indeed has a negative connotation, but you're sort of overdoing it. C.f. "He did it without asking" vs. "He did it with complete disregard for the consequences." Both are negative, but the former is more like 勝手 while the latter goes too far.

As for the last thing, umm... You're definitely understanding the context right--if there were no pressure, obviously it would be easy for them to support the fan-made patch--but...

Heh. Now you're starting to make me doubt myself >_> Not that that's a bad thing, but it does mean I'm staring at this line far longer than I should

But let's break it down:
そういう会社としての判断にならざるを得ないし

Let's get rid of the そういう and the double negative construction at the end to simplify things a bit without massively changing the meaning:

会社としての判断になる

I think this simplified version is pretty easy to parse: "[it would] become our judgement as a company."

Now, let's start adding things back in:

会社としての判断にならざるを得ない

That double negative there is an idiomatic expression (as you can probably tell with the unusual -zaru negation [c.f. ならず]) meaning "have no choice but to." So, adding that on to our previous translation, we would get "It would have to be our judgement as a company."

Now, on to そういう. You interpreted it as pointing at 会社, which would give you "It would have to be our judgement as that sort of company," which sounds kind of weird. I interpreted it as pointing at the entire phrase 会社としての判断, giving us "It would have to be that sort of judgment as a company." (I then stripped the "that sort" out of my translation because I felt that made it sound best in English.) I can't really give a good reason as to why I prefer my interpretation to yours, other than that it makes more sense, but... Blech. Maybe someone else can do better (or point out how I'm being an idiot >_>).

Though I will conclude by saying that, if I were to write out what you translated the sentence as in Japanese, I might go with そういう会社として認められざるを得ない.

--You specify Windows; the original tweets simply say "OS." Your assumption is probably correct, but there's no way to know this for sure. While when translating e.g. fiction, such things aren't terribly important (and saying "Windows" might actually be better), for official things like this I'd stick with the more literal translation..
 
This is an extremely... loose reading of 勝手, where it feels like you're letting your own feelings on the subject leak over and impact the translation. A simple "bought up [...] on their own" would be both more diplomatic and accurate.
 
More literally, it's "If this is a request from overseas for support for foreign OS's"

 
More literally, "Should we answer the wishes of users who shouldn't have been able to buy the product, who purchased it by means that have the potential to cause another incident, and support them? Is this right? That's... Hmm."

 
Should be "That would have to be our decision as a company"

 
Should be "To be honest, we could leave things in a gray area, where we let the users act with good will in the shadows while we say nothing positive or negative on the subject."

 
Should be "To be blunt, when we received the reports right after release from users we believed to be Chinese, our user support team felt they were really skirting the line with regards to the JP ONLY clause, thinking 'I hope these people are playing within the country.' They puzzled over how to handle the issue."

 
He's just saying that he's answering his own rhetorical question. Perhaps "Well, no, there isn't." would fit.

(Finally, from a technical standpoint, you're jumping back and forth between "I" and "we." Pick one!)

--You specify Windows; the original tweets simply say "OS." Your assumption is probably correct, but there's no way to know this for sure. While when translating e.g. fiction, such things aren't terribly important (and saying "Windows" might actually be better), for official things like this I'd stick with the more literal translation..
 
This is an extremely... loose reading of 勝手, where it feels like you're letting your own feelings on the subject leak over and impact the translation. A simple "bought up [...] on their own" would be both more diplomatic and accurate.
 
More literally, it's "If this is a request from overseas for support for foreign OS's"

 
More literally, "Should we answer the wishes of users who shouldn't have been able to buy the product, who purchased it by means that have the potential to cause another incident, and support them? Is this right? That's... Hmm."

 
Should be "That would have to be our decision as a company"

 
Should be "To be honest, we could leave things in a gray area, where we let the users act with good will in the shadows while we say nothing positive or negative on the subject."

 
Should be "To be blunt, when we received the reports right after release from users we believed to be Chinese, our user support team felt they were really skirting the line with regards to the JP ONLY clause, thinking 'I hope these people are playing within the country.' They puzzled over how to handle the issue."

 
He's just saying that he's answering his own rhetorical question. Perhaps "Well, no, there isn't." would fit.

(Finally, from a technical standpoint, you're jumping back and forth between "I" and "we." Pick one!)

yes chaina good land wen workin in schadow, but wen work kontradikts wif kommunist ideologie & lowering reputation off cuntrie itselff, then zackzack you sent too exikution truck. not wery appealing. Naivity is wat killed de panda!

Well then I have some good news for you: The birthday scripts aren't nearly as long as the proper routes, meaning it's already time to vote again!

http://strawpoll.me/4591328

(I wound up doing the Staff Room, too [they're in the same block of text in the game's script], if you're wondering what happened to that.)

Well then I have some good news for you: The birthday scripts aren't nearly as long as the proper routes, meaning it's already time to vote again!

http://strawpoll.me/4591328

(I wound up doing the Staff Room, too [they're in the same block of text in the game's script], if you're wondering what happened to that.)

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'
 

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'
 

Eventually™.

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

Eventually™.

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

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.

Dowolf has been posting links to them here when he has finished the route he was working on.

I meant Kelebek, not you >_>

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'm obviously not gonna dive in as TL-er here, too, but I can probably do TLC without murdering myself.

It was a close race, but Agave has won the poll for the next route.
 
Better luck next time, Yukie and Koyuki fans.
 
(It's okay, Happy Birthday. I still love you)

Names is basically the line, yeah... But I dunno. Making up names for people on AAI2 was so much fun; I kinda miss it >_>
 
As for the Momoyo line, it became: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peaches and placed them perniciously in my purview."

There's a really interesting balance there. This game is chock-full of puns and references that, if translated literally, basically demand fluency in Japanese to understand: "Wanko" being an punny reading of 一子 (Kazuko), where "wan" also means "woof"; puns based on Momo meaning "peach" (ももよもももももものうち, "momoyo mo momo mo momo no uchi" is a fun line that just sort of keels over and dies if I translate it literally as "Momoyo and peaches are both members of the peach family"); Takuya becomes Takuyo when he's crossdressing because "ya" is a masculine name-ending while "yo" is a feminine one, which is especially confusing to Western ears because we're used to hearing -a endings as feminine; "Until you cry I wait / Oh cuckoo" in English sounds more like the words of a crazy person than the literary allusion it is; the phrase "a punch with the intensity of a rising dragon" is going to lack a certain oomph if you don't know that's the literal translation of "shouryuuken." Determining which ones to change and which ones you're stuck with is... fun.
 
 
I generally side with changing more things because I feel that makes the final project more enjoyable. But I digress.

I'm obviously not gonna dive in as TL-er here, too, but I can probably do TLC without murdering myself.

I'm obviously not gonna dive in as TL-er here, too, but I can probably do TLC without murdering myself.

It was a close race, but Agave has won the poll for the next route.
 
Better luck next time, Yukie and Koyuki fans.
 
(It's okay, Happy Birthday. I still love you)

It was a close race, but Agave has won the poll for the next route.
 
Better luck next time, Yukie and Koyuki fans.
 
(It's okay, Happy Birthday. I still love you)

It was a close race, but Agave has won the poll for the next route.
 
Better luck next time, Yukie and Koyuki fans.
 
(It's okay, Happy Birthday. I still love you)