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sanahtlig

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Everything posted by sanahtlig

  1. What sort of publicity has Sol Press done outside of Kickstarter? Have they made any attempt to reach out to users who weren't already following them and this project?
  2. Don't use Google Translate or similar statistically-driven translation algorithms to play visual novels. You want to use a rules-based translator that translates predictably (even if it's wrong), not a guesslation. Meta-knowledge--knowing what you know, and what you don't--is important when faced with unreliable information. Statistical translations often remove the metadata--the messy grammar and such--that cue you in when the machine translator is messing up. If you know the translation is wrong, you can use context to fill in the gaps. If not, you'll just end up more confused. Also, rules-based translators have predictable quirks that you'll eventually learn. As for context, you're going to need it whether you're reading the Japanese or a machine translation. The machine translation doesn't need to incorporate the context necessarily because there's always a human reading it. What's important is that it doesn't assume the wrong context, or that the human can identify when the context is wrong and fill it in appropriately.
  3. I don't snack between meals. Every time I eat or drink something that isn't water, I have to brush my teeth. Though even without that restriction, I always preferred a regimented eating routine.
  4. Screenshots 3,4,7 read like nonsense. A large part of this may be lack of context (they chose the screenshots, not me), but the Japanese in screenshot 3 contains no mention of sighing, 4 refers to herself and not the listener, and I have no idea where "side effect of intense aggression" came from in 7. Could be censorship of a reading of 盛り, which is sexual. The English in 7 in particular is an incoherent mess of sentence fragments. I'll leave it to people who've played the Japanese version to untangle the mess of puns and fill in what these lines are actually supposed to mean.
  5. The marketing materials could have been translated by a different team, been held to a more relaxed time schedule, or received more review. As far as evidence hierarchy goes: Random scenes from the main game > demo > screenshots > other marketing materials If the screenshots are poorly translated, that's more likely to be representative of the game's translation than character profiles and such. At least they're selling the game in Japanese so you can ignore the English translation completely if you want.
  6. Even with the original Japanese I can't decipher multiple screenshots. The translations are definitely not right, but without context I can only guess what they're supposed to mean. It's similar to the bewilderment of walking into a casual conversation at a random point, where the subject matter is cloaked by ambiguous pronouns and references known only to them. The lines I can decipher are superficial and tell us nothing about the characters or setting. Screenshots are supposed to be carefully chosen to highlight selling points and themes--not randomly chosen. It makes you wonder if they even played the game they're selling.
  7. Last I heard, the rights for the franchise were sold to the writer since the new game was announced, and the project is very likely dead.
  8. If your main goal is to widen the selection of visual novels you have access to, buying a new platform is a poor way of going about it. Instead, you should be text-hooking PC VNs and playing them in Japanese. There's a handful of PS Vita-only VNs in English, whereas there's literally thousands of PC VNs that are available in Japanese but not English. More generally, if you can't think of at least 5 games you'd buy right now if you had a given platform, it's not worth investing in. Multiply that by at least 2 if the platform is at the end of life.
  9. But the first Ikusa Megami was released in 1999, while the first Venus Blood came out in 2007.
  10. Power over what? What? If you can't "control your fanbase" you're not all that powerful, are you?
  11. Sorry, all we have are the vague memories of those who participated, as far as i know.
  12. Choices are usually in a different text thread. Sometimes tooltips (e.g., in gameplay titles) are too. If not, you can typically look up the text for both of these in a JP walkthrough. Buttons themselves will usually be graphics, and thus are unhookable, but typically you can find out what they do by trial and error or by reading tutorials.
  13. The most advanced neural network known to science is the human brain, and it can reconstruct images nearly instantly using the power of imagination.
  14. Sterilizing content for consoles will just push people towards PC. This segmentation of content targeted at adults vs. a general audience already exists in the Japanese market. Sucks if you own a console, but for PC gamers this just makes it more likely that the games you want to play will be available on Steam. Given that PC games are usually cheaper than console games, are more likely to get deep discounts, and don't require investment in fixed-function hardware, that's a net positive. If Sony wants to shift away from adult gaming, then my response is, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
  15. Could've mitigated this problem by routing the funds through JAST. I complained about the the transactions being in yen when I saw the first draft of the Kickstarter page. My bank also flagged the transaction but sent me a notice rather than automatically rejecting it.
  16. Staggered by fan backlash over its censorship of President Yukino, Kagura Games has partnered with JAST and MangaGamer to provide uncensored releases. Kagura Games commits to uncensored releases after fan backlash
  17. I know some users get very upset when a translated line doesn't match the voices. Others don't really care as long as it makes sense and the conversations are coherent and consistent. Still others fixate on how terminology is translated and get very passionate about it, even begging their boss on their hands and knees to let them translate a term a given way.
  18. If I wanted to study the issue systematically, I'd probably break down the issue into its components and individually assess these. For example: Literal accuracy (Is that what this line means?) Contextual accuracy (Was the context correctly conveyed? Did the translator understand the source material, inspiration, or cultural references?) Flow (Do sentences read well to an English native? Do the words and ideas trip over each other, confusing the reader or encouraging the reader to skim rather than read? Does the writing avoid useless repetition?) Style (Does the writing style match the setting? Are character quirks captured well? Are honorifics deployed in accordance with the user's expectations?) Spelling/grammar You'll probably find that readers have different tolerances for shortcomings in each component. In some cases, users may actually have opposing ideas on what is even "best".
  19. The localization of Saya's Song was impressive. If the game didn't have Japanese voices, you could easily believe it was originally written in English.
  20. Your poll is fine for what it is, but I would take caution in the interpretation of the results. Your descriptions pigeonhole users in very obvious ways into the current top-ranked choice. You're not actually gauging what people think, but what YOU think (which is also interesting, to be fair). Also, I know this didn't take you 5 min because it took longer than that to read it.
  21. I don't see an option for an excellent writer (great editing?) with an elementary/intermediate understanding of Japanese. Mastery of the target language is more important for translation than command of the source language. The worst manual translations are often made by Japanese natives. The translations are correct but aren't something anyone except the diehard fans would want to read.
  22. The trial released with the KS was lightly edited. Some problematic lines were changed while others were not changed at all. Ryechu even admitted that he did an additional pass later and this didn't make it into the demo.
  23. At the risk of committing myself to reviewing the demo TL, I would say TL accuracy is not necessarily the main concern, based on what I've seen of Fateburn's writing. As an editor, would I want access to the original JP? Absolutely, and I typically did ask for this when consulted.
  24. I think it's worth considering the various reasons why people translate VNs, and the reasons why people read translations. Strife tends to arise when one group feels threatened by another group's differing prerogatives.
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