Wahfuu

Except that painting is making something original, and this is taking someone elses work and giving another fanbase a mangled copy of it. Apples and oranges.

You would be amazed at the amount of translations people do (mostly attempt to do) while openly admitting that they haven't even read the game before, or people that pick up something while not even breaking the year mark in studying just because they are bored and 'want practice'. It's far from the minority of fan TL's.

I agree that blindly bashing TL's isn't constructive nor productive, that's true. But people will defend any TL to the absolute maximum even if the writing style is stilted and isn't the same (this applying to people who play the game in japanese and talk bad about a translation) or the english is horrendous. That's silly. People should absolutely be allowed to criticize it regardless if it's a Fan TL. It promotes better quality. This fanbase doesn't allow for that because every translation is some sort of holy relic that we should all just deal with because people put time into it.

People who criticize TL's aren't always just people who ride the hate train, they are also people who've read the original and are sad to see a subpar translation come out of it. And only in EXTREMELY rare cases are people going to ever retranslate something, way more often than not that bad translation will always be the one people go with, and the name is forever tarnished.

If people TL'd scripts, showed them around, got some criticism/experience and grew from that, that's fine. I don't think thats faultable. This is a 20+ hour commitment of reading that you are giving to THOUSANDS of people. That needs quality control. That's not in the same scale of drawing sketches and showing it to friends.
 

For one, people may not know Japanese, but they do know english, and most people who read regularly outside of VN's can easily see when something reads terribly and doesn't flow. If a piece of writing doesn't read well, then it's just as much a cause for a complaint as straight TL-errors, imo.

It's one of the things that bother me the most about this fanbase, they accept every single translation like it's the holy grail, even if the translator will outright say they don't know much japanese. They don't care about it's readability or it's accuracy, despite people claiming they do. They only care about its existence. Nobody is willing to call any translator out on their bullshit because they feel unqualified to criticize something because everyone else will ruthlessly defend it's simple existence over it's content.

People who don't learn Japanese shouldn't be scrutinized or looked down upon and be given garbage just because they don't learn Japanese and be told to 'deal with it.' That's absurd.

There is alot more to Dies than prose, and alot of fans of Dies aren't going to walk in and expect a masterpiece of an adaptation. To alot of people I've talked to, they're just interested in both A: The idea of Masada being at the helm of an anime and B: Seeing some of the cooler scenes of the game animated. Thats it. Nobody i've talked to wants nor cares about a proper adaptation of dies because its too unreasonable. Thats what i mean: Fanservice. Just for people who have played the game, like how the Oretsuba anime is incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't played it (it's apparently filled with injokes that only people who followed the game really 'got'). I'm not really sure how masada plans on bringing his touch to anime, but I have alot of trust in the guy, so at the very least I'll probably be entertained.

And another thing: Light had already been asked awhile ago about an english translation of Dies and they refused, so thats not happening unless via fan translation, and Dies is above anything most fantranslators can handle. The idea of that is even more incomprehensible than a dies adaptation.

 

People who say who can skip learning Kanji by using machine-assisted stuff like Jparser are utterly insane.

Alot of Jparser entries have tons and tons of fluff that only adds to confusion when you're trying to figure out what a words means in the context of a sentence, and apart from the fact that you're learning the word as some arbitrary brief translation into english (which is bad itself), alot of entries in edict are badly explained and poorly worded.
 
Of course, jparser (and edict itself) is pretty unavoidable when you start out, but the more you learn the more you quickly realize it should only be used as a reference, not a gospel. When you learn enough you REALLY want to switch into J-J dictionaries so you can learn the real nuance of a word. I see way more mistakes by japanese learner not because of poor fundamentals with grammar, but because edicts terrible method of explaining words just leads people astray and harms them more in the long run.

People who say who can skip learning Kanji by using machine-assisted stuff like Jparser are utterly insane.

Alot of Jparser entries have tons and tons of fluff that only adds to confusion when you're trying to figure out what a words means in the context of a sentence, and apart from the fact that you're learning the word as some arbitrary brief translation into english (which is bad itself), alot of entries in edict are badly explained and poorly worded.
 
Of course, jparser (and edict itself) is pretty unavoidable when you start out, but the more you learn the more you quickly realize it should only be used as a reference, not a gospel. When you learn enough you REALLY want to switch into J-J dictionaries so you can learn the real nuance of a word. I see way more mistakes by japanese learner not because of poor fundamentals with grammar, but because edicts terrible method of explaining words just leads people astray and harms them more in the long run.

Not a sentence, but..

"What." - Serial Experiments Lain

This is mostly simply because of how all ages/18+ is looked at in Japan. They are totally seperate products, so I guess Frontwing wants to make it absolutely clear as such.

as Koestl said https://twitter.com/koestl/status/541856002950582272 here, 1 month release delays compared to all-ages, but who knows, it's all still pretty vague.

Now, I don't really care that much since I was probably going to get the all-ages stuff anyways (as long as the stuff in Angelic Howl remained uncensored, anyway, because that's kind of important) but the western fanbase does have this obsession with porn. I immagine koestl/sekai must be pretty frustrated at this aswell.

To add: The whole "no porn" rule applies to live-action and photo's. Drawn/comic seems to be fine.

For one, people may not know Japanese, but they do know english, and most people who read regularly outside of VN's can easily see when something reads terribly and doesn't flow. If a piece of writing doesn't read well, then it's just as much a cause for a complaint as straight TL-errors, imo.

It's one of the things that bother me the most about this fanbase, they accept every single translation like it's the holy grail, even if the translator will outright say they don't know much japanese. They don't care about it's readability or it's accuracy, despite people claiming they do. They only care about its existence. Nobody is willing to call any translator out on their bullshit because they feel unqualified to criticize something because everyone else will ruthlessly defend it's simple existence over it's content.

People who don't learn Japanese shouldn't be scrutinized or looked down upon and be given garbage just because they don't learn Japanese and be told to 'deal with it.' That's absurd.

For one, people may not know Japanese, but they do know english, and most people who read regularly outside of VN's can easily see when something reads terribly and doesn't flow. If a piece of writing doesn't read well, then it's just as much a cause for a complaint as straight TL-errors, imo.

It's one of the things that bother me the most about this fanbase, they accept every single translation like it's the holy grail, even if the translator will outright say they don't know much japanese. They don't care about it's readability or it's accuracy, despite people claiming they do. They only care about its existence. Nobody is willing to call any translator out on their bullshit because they feel unqualified to criticize something because everyone else will ruthlessly defend it's simple existence over it's content.

People who don't learn Japanese shouldn't be scrutinized or looked down upon and be given garbage just because they don't learn Japanese and be told to 'deal with it.' That's absurd.

Not a sentence, but..

"What." - Serial Experiments Lain

GAREJ

GAAAAREJ

WHERE YOU AT

ITS HAPPENING

GAREJ

GAAAAREJ

WHERE YOU AT

ITS HAPPENING

This is ridiculous, I'm sorry to say.

It's not just style that gets lost; numerous and numerous plot details are hilariously ruined and outright wrong. I've seen people try, I tried waayyy years ago when I was only reading things in english and was desperate, and sorry, most of it is garbled nonsense. Hell, look at Hoshimemo's TL. It's plot is completely fucked in the translation to the point where most people who've read it in english don't really understand it at all, and it's...well, pretty bad, but it at least has structure. MTL's often misgive, mistranslate, and are just so laughably bad for japanese that I honestly don't know how people get through whole games like it.

Not only that, you can probably tell when something is inspired and are giving information, but you can't see the cleverness in the text or really get any of the emotion/intended effect in long passages like in Hino's stuff (Ruitomo, Hello Lady) that actually carry messages and pretty deep themes. Any text that has any sort of identity to it is going to get butchered. Of course, this isn't even mentioning wordplay and comedy that frequents eroge, though I guess you already said you don't care for that.

Sorry, but I don't really consider reading the barebones of a plot so heavily mangled and garbled by MTL's counts as really reading the authors work.

 

Well, I finished Dies Irae. Rea's route was so nuts, I have no idea what happened there. Im definitely gonna need to reread that later down the line, preferably when my japanese is better.

Anyways, the game was as great as I'd expected, I loved how much characterization it did at pretty much all points. I don't really regret doing Kasumi's route either, as it gave the game a nice feeling of ramping up (the final boss order and how Ren slowly advances ranks) so. I need to level up a bit more before I do KKK.

Yeah, uh, from what I can understand/have been told it's selling a hilarious amount on steam, so... well, not much to say.
 
You should make a Briah/Atziluth (whichever you prefer) style chant with the 渇望 of "I wish all the world to know of Sakura Spirit" in honor of Dies being delayed by your shenanigans.

People want a reason to not buy the release when it comes out, it's pretty easy to just blindly yell censorship I guess.

Congratulations on speaking about a 'watered down' version of a game you've never even played. Firstly:



Name me one game where you could patch it to have full frontal 10 minute, multiple porn scenes. There is absolutely nothing like that on Steam. Are you seriously going to try and tell me that putting Grisaia on the biggest digital distrubution gaming software in the world won't increase sales at all? Grisaia isn't supposed to sell 100k, but it'll sell more on steam than anywhere else. That isn't something that can be argued. It has a better chance on steam than anywhere else. I hope you have some sort of history/sales records per time dedicated for the games on steam, because if you don't all you are doing is sprouting ignorance and bullshit.

Secondly, 'core community?' Are you the fucking core community now? If anything I've seen a 50/50~ ish split for people who are for all ages and against it, most of the time because people think that the game is just getting its H-scene's hacked off ala kono-sora. Which isn't true at all.

Grisaia's status as a game isn't harmed by the removal of H-scenes, and being on steam if anything only opens the avaliability of it. There is no harm done to Grisaia or to it's future sales if it goes on steam. So what is your argument here?

Congratulations on speaking about a 'watered down' version of a game you've never even played. Firstly:



Name me one game where you could patch it to have full frontal 10 minute, multiple porn scenes. There is absolutely nothing like that on Steam. Are you seriously going to try and tell me that putting Grisaia on the biggest digital distrubution gaming software in the world won't increase sales at all? Grisaia isn't supposed to sell 100k, but it'll sell more on steam than anywhere else. That isn't something that can be argued. It has a better chance on steam than anywhere else. I hope you have some sort of history/sales records per time dedicated for the games on steam, because if you don't all you are doing is sprouting ignorance and bullshit.

Secondly, 'core community?' Are you the fucking core community now? If anything I've seen a 50/50~ ish split for people who are for all ages and against it, most of the time because people think that the game is just getting its H-scene's hacked off ala kono-sora. Which isn't true at all.

Grisaia's status as a game isn't harmed by the removal of H-scenes, and being on steam if anything only opens the avaliability of it. There is no harm done to Grisaia or to it's future sales if it goes on steam. So what is your argument here?

dying

help

that face

Welp. Finally figured out what I'm playing next.





It's time.

What, you didn't like watching Yuuji grind mooks so that he could defeat the plane boss?

Ugh, this thread is bananas... -.-'
 
A few points in no particular order:
1) A translation is converting the story written in one language into another, staying as close as possible to the original meaning. Period. It doesn't have to be literal (actually, it shouldn't), but it must include all scenes present in the original. Those can be rewritten to some extent if necessary, to make the whole story work well in a different language. However, cutting or severely twisting the original content as one sees fit is not an option here.
 
2) What Babiker brought up, when the original is altered to be more suited for the target audience, avoid possibly offensive stuff, etc. is NOT a translation. It's a localization (as already mentioned). That's a completely different form of art, that indeed allows, or rather - requires - a lot more adjustments to the source material. That includes even such liberties as changing the setting to the different country, replacing original names of characters or places to preserve their hidden meaning, changing references to existing people, pop-culture, folklore etc., rewriting potentially offensive scenes, and so on. This requires much greater effort from the localization team, and can easily result in a total trainwreck. Gyakuten Saiban -> Phoenix Wright is a good example of such approach (even kinda passable quality-wise). Both translating and localizing are valid forms of bringing foreign works to a different language/culture. Translation is obviously more faithful, while localization, being only one step away from the actual remake, is further from the source material, but can be easier to understand for an average reader, and if done right, may be just as good as the original (but that requires a huge load of effort and incredible writing skills). As far as the current VN fan-TL scene is concerned, an actually decent localization is simply unrealistic, so just forget about it.
 
3) Fan-translators can do whatever they want. That's a fact. If they think erotica is Satan's creation or something, they can always stick to all-ages titles. That's obviously the best idea.
If they do want to translate eroge though, the ideal approach would be making a full translation, and allowing people to disable H-scenes if they want. That's the only really fair option, and it satisfies everyone. And that's how all serious groups dealt with this issue so far.
Making a partial translation, by leaving the H-content intact, but untranslated, is also a valid option. It's quite similar to releasing only a few routes - simply an incomplete patch. The difference is that in the former case, groups usually plan to do the whole translation at first, but quit halfway because of reasons. Shit happens, I won't blame them for that. Planning to release unfinished patch from the start (that's not limited to H-scenes, patch for Hozuki's route from Sharin no Kuni FD also counts for example), is what I would generally consider a tiny little bit half-assed. Even if the translated part covers 99,5% of the VN, it's STILL incomplete. Of course, fantranslators can release unfinished patches, nothing wrong with that - if people care, they can translate the rest.
As for actually removing the H-scenes entirely, whether the reader likes it or not... Well, of course fantranslators can do this too. But at this point it's not a translation anymore. And if they didn't make a huge effort to convert the entire story to fit their target audience, it's not exactly worthy to be called a localization either. It's pretty much a fanfic (or a revision if you want ). Again, nothing wrong with that, it still can be a good fanfic. Just be honest with your readers.
 
4) Companies release all-ages ports of their games mainly for a single reason - to target wider audience and sell more copies. I don't see them removing 18+ versions as soon as the all-ages remake hits the market though, and while they cut the sex-scenes, they frequently add something to the console ports make up for it. Translators who pick all-ages releases over 18+ ones, usually do so with that additional content in mind, not because they don't want ero.
 
5) MoeNovel is indeed related with Pulltop. Still, completely screwed up Engrish release isn't that surprising - Japanese companies generally don't give a damn about the Western market, and even if they try to release something overseas, they have absolutely no idea how to do it right. Nobody from Pulltop would bat an eye even if MoeNovel released a blatant machine translation or something. They probably just made up a quick remake of Ageha's route for the sake of censorship, most likely without any consultations with the original writer (or with any writers actually). We'll see how they deal with this issue in the console port.
Oh, and the fact MN is related with original creators obviously doesn't make their version of KonoSora any more acceptable. And yeah, it's "their version" not a "translation" (much less "English translation").
 
To sum things up - yeah, translators can do whatever they want. And considering all that H-censorship and other TL-quality issues that are getting more and more frequent lately, anyone who is even slightly serious about reading VNs, should screw translations and start learning Japanese right about now.
And now excuse me, there's some completely unreadable garbage (also known as "If My Heart Had Wings"), that's waiting to be salvaged for far too long already.

Just finished Ruitomo and am totally fucking dumbstruck by Akaneko's route. Listening to the OP forever for hours.