Getsuya Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 Text If a TLC can take something from the level of Bad to 'a few minor errors' I'd say that's just fine. And unless someone is translating an entire game by themself different writing styles are expected. That's why you have one or two editors to clean it up and give it a uniform style. So you haven't exactly convinced me of the uselessness of TLC in this situation. Your dying person analogy again demonstrates a black-or-white attitude about translations, failing again to realize that they are ongoing processes that can be redone and reworked over and over until the desiered result is acheived. I guess the analogy would work if the sick person was immortal, and yeah if the Nice Person was the only person anywhere who even lifted a finger to help the dying guy I guess I would cheer them on and try to help them do what they needed to do to actually cure the poor guy. Since he's immortal, y'see? Doesn't matter if they fail a few times as long as the end result is him getting better. All I see are excuses why nobody should try to help out or contribute. 'If the bad translation completes no one else will translate it' correct, as I said this could be our one shot so why waste it? 'If they drop it some other competent group will pick it up', so you're gambling on A. some other group picking it from among the hundreds of untranslated VNs out there, with more coming out all the time and B. the other group that picks it up being 'competent'. I'm sorry to throw some realism on your one-in-a-million hopes there friend but I sincerely doubt that will ever happen. In your analogy let's say the dying person is just lying there, dying, and we're here standing back saying 'I'm sure the right medicine will fall from the sky right into his mouth, it'll be fine'. That's about the odds we're discussing here. Me? I'd help them network. Talk to my translator friends. 'Hey this project really needs someone to go over their Japanese'. 'Hey you write really good English, would you be interested in helping out with a project, making all the text flow smoothly?' It's easy, and it's actually helping something happen instead of kicking it down, shrugging and saying 'I'm sure if we wait long enough someone better will do it' definitely not possible, when the editor isnt also the tlc & i guess in that case he wont do the job. no matter how good an editor may be, the utmost he´s able to do if the translation turns out to be garbage, is turning it into something which sounds well & smooth - but the result wont be satisfying at all, when all you get is some arkward stuff, that happens by chance to sound pleasent - basically a (completely) different story! You're confusing Editing with Translation Check. Both are necessary. When you've got a project with a translator that isn't very confident in their skills (or who you aren't confident of) the process should go: 1. Translator translates 2. TLC who has more experience with Japanese goes through the translation and fixes any obvious errors 3. Editor who is better at English goes over the whole project to make sure it is all in the same style and to make sure all of the word choice and such is uniform. A good translation should have multiple translators who not only translate their own stuff but also check each others' work (even a good translator messes up when we're talking about thousands of lines of text, but then only one or two editors (and if there's 2 they need to make sure they are in perfect agreement about style and word choice). Which is why, as I said from the beginning, a Bad Translation is one that does not have the proper members or the proper support from the community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted June 20, 2015 Share Posted June 20, 2015 nah gesuya thats an utopian way of thinking - when you believe tlcs are willing to improve a bad tl to good/rather good level, because that would basically mean to completely retranslate everything & i heavily doubt a tlc would be willing to go through that much work - if he would, then he had applied as one of their translators from start. just imagine a game, lets say about 80k lines beeing translated for about 3years & then after its translation is finished, when they realize the translator totally screwed up, do you realllllllyyyyy think they would spend another 2-3 years tlc/retranslating it? i bet my dick on it, that over half of their team would quit right then & there... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Getsuya Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 Well, yes, a team that would translate an entire game before even checking the quality of the translation would indeed be doomed to failure and we should probably just write them off. The proper way to do it would be to have the translator work in chunks of a few hundred lines and kick it over for TLC/editing once he's done, that way the work is spread out among the team and they move at a decent pace. That said I think I'm beginning to see where you're coming from here. There is a level of crappiness in translating at which even a TLC would shake their head and say 'There's nothing salvadgeable here'. I've seen it myself, though not in the VN world (I had to 'fix' an actual legit paid translation someone in our town ordered from some Tokyo translation company that I'm pretty sure just fed it to Google Translate and then tried to pass it off as professional). I think the problem is the way projects are set up. The project lead is often either A. the guy who ripped the scripts or B. the guy who wants to translate it. In situation A usually they don't know Japanese so they have no ability to screen translators and will accept any guy who can show them words on a paper that look maybe possibly correct. B can also be dangerous because seldom to Japanese translators know their own limits or failings. I think a step that any project lead should add on when they're starting a project is to get a translator they can trust and tell them 'Listen I know you're busy but I just want to make sure I'm getting good people on this team, can you glance over their translation and tell me if it's competent?' And then sticking to their suggestions. Yeah a few amateur translators will get their feathers ruffled, but they can always polish up their skills and try again when they're more competent. The reason I'm sticking up for Monobeno so much is that, from what I understand, the guy who did the video is doing a much better job now, and my buddy is also helping out quite a lot. Plus they have at least one editor now who knows what they're doing. If it works, it will be a good example of exactly what I'm trying to describe here. Taking a project that looks like crap at first and bringing in people to help out and make it better. I want to be clear here. My position is not 'Bad translations are fine' or 'Let's blindly cheer on bad translations'. I don't like Bad translations. I don't want them to exist. However I also recognize the slim odds of a game getting more than one chance at translation, so I'd rather do everything I can to help make that Bad translation Good than just write it off as hopeless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 The reason I'm sticking up for Monobeno so much is that, from what I understand, the guy who did the video is doing a much better job now, and my buddy is also helping out quite a lot. Plus they have at least one editor now who knows what they're doing. regarding that...as far as i know he´s been the reason chuee had to re-translate everything he did in astral air, so yeah thats been only ~half a year ago & either he´s the embodiment of awesomeness, whos able to learns japanese in goodspeed, or he´s still the same dude dooming another projects success. & noone says that he´s to drop out of their project, just that´s too early for him further continuing as its leadtranslator. for the rest i mostly agree, though some points are abit unpractical to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Getsuya Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 Nah man the guy who did the video uses the handle Zakudono. Astral Air was apparenty done by someone named SupremeTentacle and in the thread for that people said it was just some Hongfire machine translation, so I don't think you're thinking of the same guy. And I realize that it's unrealistic of me to expect everyone to be able to find translators, TLCs and editors with free time on their hands to throw at a bad project, but I think at least trying to aim for that is better than doing nothing at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 supreme tentacle is the new translator & its former one has been indeed zakudono. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Getsuya Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 I can't find any source for this so I guess I'll take your word for it. Well, hopefully he has someone looking over his shoulder for this translation. Edit: Sure you aren't thinking of Zakamutt? The person who actually posted 'our translator is just using machine translation' in the Astral Air thread? As far as I can tell Zakudono has only ever done the Monobeno video and then he works at some random scanlation group. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 in the home section of their site its been mentioned somewhere on the february update.https://whiteeternity.wordpress.com/ also on the monobeno thread, page 4, top by chuee & same page near the bottom also if that isnt enough just pm him directly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Getsuya Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 Ah, my bad. He wasn't mentioned by name in any of those places so I couldn't find them just by searching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuee Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 Uh. He did the prologue segment and then got busy. From what I had after he looked over it and what I have now, there's a lot of lines that are completely different in meaning. Granted a lot of the errors were lines he didn't touch, so you could maybe pass it off as just skimming over it without paying that great of detail to it, but there were a few lines that he gave an alternative translation that ended up being flat out wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pabloc Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 @Getsuya Your way of thinking is very utopian. But reality just doesn't work that way. Considering that we get 0 or 1 translations, the patient isn't immortal. Once the treatment (TL) is finished, that's it. If it's decent, patient lives, if it's bad - patient is dead. The end. Every translation project needs a competent main translator. Period. Less skilled people can do the proofreading or something. If they don't have the necessary JP knowledge and bare minimum ENG writing skills, they will NOT help with the TL, will NOT create anything that can be TLC-ed and will NOT get better - unless they quit and study for a while. Mistranslating stuff doesn't not improve TL-skills even the slightest bit. And even if you actually managed to get competent people to check the TL from the very beginning, they simply won't cooperate with an incompetent team. Unless they kicked out all incompetent people from the team (who would effectively take credit for nothing, since everything they do needs to be re-translated from scratch anyway...). I know full well that the chances a VN getting a competent TL are slim, but crappy translation projects decrease those chances even further. Competent translators (or even editors) won't join such projects. I think a step that any project lead should add on when they're starting a project is to get a translator they can trust and tell them 'Listen I know you're busy but I just want to make sure I'm getting good people on this team, can you glance over their translation and tell me if it's competent?' And then sticking to their suggestions. Yeah a few amateur translators will get their feathers ruffled, but they can always polish up their skills and try again when they're more competent. That's kinda what happens in those TL threads when the team gets bashed for their crappy work, only it's usually not that civilized. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ittaku Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 I think the answer to the opening question is converging on a single theme, and I tend to agree - any translation where the first pass is so bad that it cannot be translate checked and/or edited into a reasonable representation of the original text. That is (or at least should be considered) a bad fan translation by pretty much anyone's standards. Anything above that and you have a range of acceptability proportional to the fussiness of the audience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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