Mephisto

VN Name: Robotics;Notes VNDB link: http://vndb.org/v5883 Is there already a translation project for this? Haven't heard of one Hack/no hack: Not entirely sure what hacks are used for Why do you want it to be TLed: It's from the same producers of Steins;gate and Chaos;head, the former of which is undisputed awesomeness, and the second of which had an interesting concept. Although most reviews claim Robotics;Notes was a let down, I think it'd still be an interesting read. It'll likely take a long time before it gets translated though. (Although there's an anime for it that apparently sucks)

Thanks for the explanations, they really help even if I don't completely understand yet. In chinese these words would've been pronounced 学校 - xue xiao (School) 方 - fang (direction, method) which is nowhere near the japanese pronunciations. It looks like the meanings are similar though, which makes me happy.

Hi everyone, I've been a lurker of this website for a little over a month or so, enjoying the content offered here. I'm not sure why I enjoy visual novels so much, although it is probably related to how much I like reading in general. As most people likely did, I started out watching anime before I drifted over to where I am now. I found it rather disappointing that although my friends in real life can enjoy anime, most of them shy away from visual novels. That's part of the reason this community interested me so much, since it made me really happy to find people who liked reading visual novels. I'm always open to suggestions on good things to read (normal book or VN) and here's a rough list of what I've read/played already Eien no Aselia - (2/7 routes done) G-Senjou no Maou - Complete (One of the best) Chaos Head - Complete Clannad - (Watched the anime, never really got into the VN, although i love the music) Fate Stay Night - Complete Steins;Gate - Complete (One of my favorites) Utawarerumono - Complete Princess Waltz - Complete Kamidori Alchemy Meister - one play through Sengoku Rance - Complete ef~ - Finished the first two sections, really enjoyed them, but haven't had a chance to finish it up yet. Daibanchou - Finished Kunagi's route Little Busters - Due to how highly regarded it is, I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't even finish the first route I was on.(Rin) I simply wasn't particularly fond of Riki as a protagonist. I probably would've enjoyed it more if he was a girl. And that's more or less the haul. For a little more about myself, I like to pretend I'm older, but I'm actually only an eighteen year old kid living in California. I'll be heading off to college next year (no idea where yet, but my SAT scores are high and my grades aren't bad) and plan to study computer engineering. As for skills, I can speak conversational chinese (although my reading and writing is awful) and can play the piano (If I have sheet music I can probably play it, although more complicated pieces will obviously need more time. My sight-reading is excellent, but my musicality needs a bit of work. The more familiar I am with it, the better it'll sound.) Right now (today actually) I've started the epic journey of learning how to read/write Japanese. Although it will likely take longer than predicted, I hope to be proficient enough at it within two months to be of use in any translating venture. (I can speed through most of the Kanji due to it being written similarly to Chinese, but I'm slightly worried about the Hiragana/katakana. Those un-uniform squiggles make my head hurt.) Anyway, thats the end of this long introduction. I hope to get to know more of you here in the future

Thanks for the comments. I've no doubt that Chinese will be invaluable in learning the language itself, but I was wondering if I should try a different method than the one in J. Heisigs book, since his does not teach the pronunciations with the way it's written. To put forth some examples of what I mean, 一 - yi 二 - er 三 - san 四 - si 五 - wu 六 - liu 七 - qi 八 - ba 九 - jiu 十 - shi 月 - yue 日 - ri 口 - kou 田 - tian 目 - mu Those are the chinese pronunciations of the first fifteen words in his book, but I'm sure the Japanese ones are completely different. I was worried it'd make it harder for me to learn pronunciations later on if I learned it the way Heisig presents it, which is all the writing first, and then learn the reading later. (This is ignoring the fact that the meanings of the words are slightly different and I may confuse myself if there isn't a clear way to differentiate between the Chinese and Japanese styles)

Alright awesome. I intend to be starting today, although I doubt I'll be able to get a copy of the book so quickly. I have pretty much no background in learning Japanese itself, but I come from a Chinese family that is currently living in America. I had some basic schooling in Chinese when I was young, but I gradually stopped learning it due to laziness. I do recall some characters and stuff, and I can still speak it with relative fluency (enough to hold a conversation). I'm not sure if any of that will be helpful in learning Japanese, but if anyone else comes from a similar background and has tips to offer, I would be happy to receive them. Edit: I'm looking at a PDF of a 4th edition of his book. I notice that the book teaches the kanji solely by the way the kanji looks, and not how its read. I actually recognize all of the early kanji in the book since its exactly the same in chinese, and I find myself calling them by their chinese pronunciations. Will this cause problems in the future in learning their Japanese sounds?

I noticed that the sign up date already passed by a little more than a week ago. Is it still possible to take part in this and try to play catch up?

Keep in mind that a visual novel is a book, and a "bad ending" is simply an ending or route that the book does not cover. It does not mean the choice itself is a bad choice or wrong choice, it just means that it isn't the choice the protagonist in the book chose, and therefore is not written about. A good example of this is in Fate Stay Night, which has a ton of bad endings. There are times you have to make an idiotic choice to progress, since that's how the book is written. That idiotic choice is no less idiotic simply since it was the correct one to choose, and the other choices are no less valid. It's simply how it's supposed to happen, I suppose you could say by "fate". I think you get the gist of what I'm trying to say, so I'll stop now before I confuse myself.