Dark Blue Intro Scene Translation

[sanahtlig]

I'm not sure how you could miss a major plot point even with a machine translation, unless you're trying to tackle a game that's really, really obtuse that an unskilled translator shouldn't be attempting in the first place.

[Chuee]

I'd be more interested in knowing just what translation that is that fucked up that much and has people using it...

[Decay]

Konosora has thousands of unfortunate buyers on Steam alone...

 

Also: http://store.steampowered.com/app/347620/

 

It uses actual barely-edited machine translation. It is selling a shocking number of copies. It's even outselling Grisaia right now.

 

It's a shame, but the vast majority of VN readers don't actually seem to give a shit about translation quality. The text could be pure gibberish and they'd still lap it up if it had cute girls.

[sanahtlig]

I definitely think we should hold professional translations to high quality standards.  I don't think it's acceptable to sell poor-quality translations like that, and I would discourage anyone from buying them.

[Pabloc]

I'm not sure how you could miss a major plot point even with a machine translation, unless you're trying to tackle a game that's really, really obtuse that an unskilled translator shouldn't be attempting in the first place.

It's very easy. I can bet you would miss them in KonoSora if it wasn't a slice-of-life title without any significant plot points. When the translator mixes up which character is speaking and who is he/she talking to on a regular basis, they can mix up who killed somebody all the same. Someone with a poor grasp of grammar can easily produce "translations" that have exactly the opposite meaning than the original text (MTs do that very often). JP grammar is easy, but when you fail at it, you usually screw up big time.

 

Editing can also cause a lot of damage here - inaccurate and poorly written guesslation gets even worse when an editor tries to reforge it into something readable. The more enthusiastic editor, the worse the result. I can easily imagine that such "translation" could even murder characters that didn't die in the original.

 

And like it was already mentioned, there's a huge difference between anime/manga and such text-heavy medium as VNs. The latter don't get, and will never get multiple translations. So yeah, you can look up ratings and opinions (written by Sakura series fans and people who think KonoSora's TL is okay ) all you want. But if a VN you really wanted to read happened to be butchered by incompetent idiots, you will never be able to read it in English. Like Dowolf said, nobody sane will bother to re-translate crap from scratch.

I'm not exactly sane, but even I would have never touched KonoSora if I knew the actual state of its TL. I joined just to do some TLC after all... >_>

It's the same with current Monobeno project - people who mention that it merely needs TLC should all go to Hell.

[sanahtlig]

It's very easy. I can bet you would miss them in KonoSora if it wasn't a slice-of-life title without any significant plot points. When the translator mixes up which character is speaking and who is he/she talking to on a regular basis, they can mix up who killed somebody all the same. 

I'm not sure how you could mess up who's speaking.  It's right there in the dialogue box.  People at least play through the games while they're translating... right?

 

It's the same with current Monobeno project - people who mention that it merely needs TLC should all go to Hell.

 

I watched the first 5min or so with a friend (whose Japanese is better than mine).  We both agreed that the translation was generally accurate, but the quality of the English was terrible.  What it needs is a good editor (though a translator more skilled in English would obviously be best).  There were mistranslations, but these resulted in inconsistencies that an editor could easily spot.  At that point, the editor could point them out and refer the specific lines for TLC.

[Pabloc]

I'm not sure how you could mess up who's speaking.  It's right there in the dialogue box.  People at least play through the games while they're translating... right?

MoeNovel did that a couple of times. It's not that hard, you just write "Yoru" instead of "Asa". And no, they most certainly didn't play the game.

Leaving retarded cases aside, it's still perfectly possible in unvoiced lines, when the translator doesn't fully grasp the context (who the speaker is addressing is especially easy to mix up).

 

As for Monobeno, you just said that you managed to spot mistranslations that actually resulted in noticeable inconsistencies in a VERY short fragment of a prologue, that is written in a VERY simple way to boot... Oh my, where should I even start?

1) If somebody can screw up a TL in a noticeable way, he can (and will) also screw up stuff that won't be that obvious. Which results in what Astro mentioned.

2) Making ANY noticeable mistranslations in a very basic part, pretty much guarantees that everything will be completely screwed up as soon as the slightest challenge appears. And those will appear, Monobeno features archaic speech, quite a bit of folklore and such.

3) Editors will be fixing messed up writing without knowing what the original line meant. When the writing is bad enough (like in this case), they will end up rewriting everything quite significantly. Since the TL-quality is quite dubious to begin with, this will most likely result in something even more inaccurate than the initial mess. This happened in KonoSora's restoration patch - even though it had only purely cosmetic editing, fixing broken Engrish still occasionally resulted in twisting the original meaning quite a lot. If something like this happens to any details important for the plot... Well, again - what Astro mentioned.

4) Editor doesn't know that characters (like Sumi) speak in a peculiar way. He only sees the crudely written TL. So if the TL misses something, like outdated vocabulary for example, editor has no way to fix that. Compared to the above, this seems like a minor detail though.

5) It's fine when editor refers a few specific lines in a 1000 line-long script for TLC. It's NOT fine when he refers a few lies in every 50-line long fragment. Because any TLC-er will quit in no time. I can almost guarantee that.

 

In short - editors should only work with a decent translation, otherwise they are likely to cause more harm then good. As for TLC - if you make translation-checkers fix multiple mistakes in very simple fragments written in very basic language, they will ragequit.

[Chuee]

It's very easy. I can bet you would miss them in KonoSora if it wasn't a slice-of-life title without any significant plot points. When the translator mixes up which character is speaking and who is he/she talking to on a regular basis, they can mix up who killed somebody all the same. Someone with a poor grasp of grammar can easily produce "translations" that have exactly the opposite meaning than the original text (MTs do that very often). JP grammar is easy, but when you fail at it, you usually screw up big time.

 

Well if the plot point has enough significance then it should come up more than just in one line. If the translator is at least slightly competent then if it's referenced multiple times they should be able to pick up on the very obvious difference (hopefully). Though if the game he was talking about is what I think it might be, then it most likely only was said in one or so line as I can't even remember myself despite playing it less than a year ago. 

[zoom909]

The desire of the people to play particular titles (in their entirety, no less) trumps the quality of the translation, by a wide margin.

(If I put myself in the position of someone who has been waiting for a particular game to be translated for some time, I can see why as long as it isn't utter nonsense they would go ahead and play it anyway--and not worry about how accurate or readable it is)

 

And as long as this remains so, then the successful vn translators will be the ones who chooses something to undertake as a project which satisfies the desires of the people, then translate it as quickly and efficiently as possible.  I'm sure you have read that different translation styles are used with different target audiences.  For our audience, the phrases "quick-and-dirty" or "rough-and-ready" come to mind.

 

Yes, I know there are those translators out there who will strive for the highest quality/no compromises/do everything yourself, heedless of whether people will actually be playing the darn thing or not.  But I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that they'll only feel this way for a couple of short titles.  Then they'll have to face reality like I did.

[Pabloc]

Well if the plot point has enough significance then it should come up more than just in one line. If the translator is at least slightly competent then if it's referenced multiple times they should be able to pick up on the very obvious difference (hopefully). Though if the game he was talking about is what I think it might be, then it most likely only was said in one or so line as I can't even remember myself despite playing it less than a year ago. 

Oh look, I just bumped into a perfect example of this in KonoSora (well, not that those are uncommon...):

JP:

Aoi: 「それはきっと、好きだからじゃないか？」

Yoru: 「……え？」

Aoi: 「ほら、好きだったら、ルールや考えを無視して動いてしまったりすると思うんだ。例外って言うか」

Aoi: 「だからそれは……ああ、えっと、恋も含めて、ね。きっと、好きだから、なんだと思う」

Yoru: 「好き、だから……」

Aoi: 「あ、えっと、あくまでも俺がそう思うってだけだ！本当かどうかは、わからないし」

 

MN:

Aoi: It must be because I like you?

Yoru: ...What?'

Aoi: Look, I think I just ended up ignoring my normal rules and thoughts because I like you. It was really 'exceptional' for me.

Aoi: So, you mean ah... umm that includes the bit about love and everything. I think it's definitely because I like you.

Yoru: Because we like each other...

Aoi: And uh, I'm going to keep on thinking that no matter what! I don't know if it's true or not.

 

You know what's funny here? Obvious mistakes and horrendous writing aside, this whole conversation actually CAN be translated like this - as Aoi speaking about himself. It's a perfectly valid TL. Except that a few lines earlier, Yoru said that she started ignoring her own way of thinking and rules, and was wondering why. Why would Aoi suddenly start explaining how he felt?

With JP grammar, stuff like this can be perfectly ambiguous and depend solely on the context. In ENG you have to be more specific, but it's entirely up to your guess who is the subject of the conversation. That's why "killing" wrong characters or labeling innocent people as murderers isn't that hard. If an important plot-point is written like this, a translator with a poor understanding of the context can screw everything up, and he won't even notice that (what he writes is a possible TL after all). And if the subject will come up in a non-ambiguous way later on, the initial error can be repeated anyway, for consistency (since the "translator" is convinced everything happened the way he wrote it at first, and he relies on guesslations all the time anyway).

Screwing everything up is easier than you think.

 

Also, "slightly competent" translators aren't a subject of this conversation to begin with. We're talking about "highly incompetent" ones. Those are the problem. When the TL is at lest slightly decent, it can be salvaged by TLC and editors. And nobody demands a "perfect" TL anyway (that's just the straw man used by people who defend said highly incompetent TLs, nothing else).

 

Oh yeah, and my raw TL of the mentioned fragment, just for completeness' sake:

Aoi: It must be because you're in love.

Yoru: ...Huh?

Aoi: Look, when you're really fond of something, you can end up acting with disregard for your rules or beliefs. As an exception.

Aoi: And that includes, umm... well, romantic kind of fondness, too. I'm sure it's all because you're in love.

Yoru: Because I'm in love...

Aoi: Ah, err, that's just what I will always think! I don't know if it's true or not.

 

That aside, what Zoom said is true.

That's why people who aren't illiterate and actually care about what they are reading, should discourage shit-quality translations. Otherwise, they will be left with nothing to read, because a horde of attention whores will start spawning machine-TL-level "patches", and everyone who cares will say "Fuck it, I won't waste my time for that shitty community".

But well, that's none of my business. ┐（￣－￣）┌

[Conjueror]

Oh look, I just bumped into a perfect example of this in KonoSora (well, not that those are uncommon...):

JP:

Aoi: 「それはきっと、好きだからじゃないか？」

Yoru: 「……え？」

Aoi: 「ほら、好きだったら、ルールや考えを無視して動いてしまったりすると思うんだ。例外って言うか」

Aoi: 「だからそれは……ああ、えっと、恋も含めて、ね。きっと、好きだから、なんだと思う」

Yoru: 「好き、だから……」

Aoi: 「あ、えっと、あくまでも俺がそう思うってだけだ！本当かどうかは、わからないし」

 

MN:

Aoi: It must be because I like you?

Yoru: ...What?'

Aoi: Look, I think I just ended up ignoring my normal rules and thoughts because I like you. It was really 'exceptional' for me.

Aoi: So, you mean ah... umm that includes the bit about love and everything. I think it's definitely because I like you.

Yoru: Because we like each other...

Aoi: And uh, I'm going to keep on thinking that no matter what! I don't know if it's true or not.

 

You know what's funny here? Obvious mistakes and horrendous writing aside, this whole conversation actually CAN be translated like this - as Aoi speaking about himself. It's a perfectly valid TL. Except that a few lines earlier, Yoru said that she started ignoring her own way of thinking and rules, and was wondering why. Why would Aoi suddenly start explaining how he felt?

With JP grammar, stuff like this can be perfectly ambiguous and depend solely on the context. In ENG you have to be more specific, but it's entirely up to your guess who is the subject of the conversation. That's why "killing" wrong characters or labeling innocent people as murderers isn't that hard. If an important plot-point is written like this, a translator with a poor understanding of the context can screw everything up, and he won't even notice that (what he writes is a possible TL after all). And if the subject will come up in a non-ambiguous way later on, the initial error can be repeated anyway, for consistency (since the "translator" is convinced everything happened the way he wrote it at first, and he relies on guesslations all the time anyway).

Screwing everything up is easier than you think.

 

Also, "slightly competent" translators aren't a subject of this conversation to begin with. We're talking about "highly incompetent" ones. Those are the problem. When the TL is at lest slightly decent, it can be salvaged by TLC and editors. And nobody demands a "perfect" TL anyway (that's just the straw man used by people who defend said highly incompetent TLs, nothing else).

 

Oh yeah, and my raw TL of the mentioned fragment, just for completeness' sake:

Aoi: It must be because you're in love.

Yoru: ...Huh?

Aoi: Look, when you're really fond of something, you can end up acting with disregard for your rules or beliefs. As an exception.

Aoi: And that includes, umm... well, romantic kind of fondness, too. I'm sure it's all because you're in love.

Yoru: Because I'm in love...

Aoi: Ah, err, that's just what I will always think! I don't know if it's true or not.

 

That aside, what Zoom said is true.

That's why people who aren't illiterate and actually care about what they are reading, should discourage shit-quality translations. Otherwise, they will be left with nothing to read, because a horde of attention whores will start spawning machine-TL-level "patches", and everyone who cares will say "Fuck it, I won't waste my time for that shitty community".

But well, that's none of my business. ┐（￣－￣）┌

Wow, that's one good example and one horrendous translation.

Who was he talking about anyway? If I'd wager a guess she was confused by her own behavior, and sought Aoi for guidance, who inadvertently makes her realize she is in love with him (without even knowing that he is the object of that love).

Moenovel should at least make their translators read the VNs they are translating. :/

[dowolf]

 

You know what's funny here? Obvious mistakes and horrendous writing aside, this whole conversation actually CAN be translated like this - as Aoi speaking about himself. It's a perfectly valid TL. Except that a few lines earlier, Yoru said that she started ignoring her own way of thinking and rules, and was wondering why. Why would Aoi suddenly start explaining how he felt?

[sanahtlig]

MT: An eagle falls in a hole and it cowers!

Acc: How dare you make me fall in a hole, you cowards?!

(ten points to whoever can figure out what steered the MT on the wrong track )

"I".  Standard ATLAS mistranslation.  If you know what to look for, easy to fix.  Well, the grammar here is so badly messed up in this case that you kind of have to reconstruct the thought from context--but you do know that the sentence involves a hole and the concept of faintheartedness!

[Pabloc]

Wow, that's one good example and one horrendous translation.

Entire Yoru's route is like this (well, first ~1000 lines at least).

And yeah, it's more or less how you guessed. They are already dating at this point though, so they both know they love each other. Yoru just didn't realize that this is the reason she acts a little differently, casually mentioned it in a conversation, and Aoi provided an explanation. The translator must have read the earlier part, but the context just went over his head (I mean, he even mixed up names a few times, so that Asa ended up saying "That's why Asa and I did sth."). Well, MoeNovel is an extreme example.

 

@Dowolf

Yeah, after I wrote that last line again, in the script, I noticed that something was off. I changed it into "that's what I think at least!" in the end.

Sometimes I get infected by MoeNovel's stupidity and overlook such things. That's why TLC-ing trainwrecks is a bad idea in general. Scrapping the original TL and re-translating everything from scratch is much better for my sanity.