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Muv Luv: A Pretty Sweet Visual Novel Series Kickstarter [MILLION DOLLAR BABY]


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Nope, never found the appeal to it, much like Star Wars, Harry Potter, & Game of Thrones which I also fit into the "what's the big deal?" category.

 

I mean, is it neat that you get data specs from the Integral Works on all the different 1st thru 3rd/4th Gen TSF's and some character info? yeah, but not worth an extra $80 for it.

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The codex is a 400-500 A4 book with elements from Integral Works and Lunatic Dawn 1 to 3. It contains tons and tons of content, with art, setting information (world history, technology, physics, robots specs, character info...), interviews, design sketches, and even small side stories. It's basically any nerd's wet dream, it's definitely worth the 70$. It wouldn't be much less expensive to get these from Japan, and artbooks being translated is extremely rare, you won't get that every day.

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Refresh my memory, what bullshit are they exactly bringing to the West? After the hard earned work from the fan translations, this rip-offs step in to take the helm.

How about taking on the big dog and translating Schwarzesmarken (https://vndb.org/v14910) to the west? OH YEAH. It's not translated by the fans yet.

What a waste ... and how dull can people get for backing those rip-offs.

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Apparently they're going to be using the Alternative Project fantl for the side-stories, from what I've seen of their translations they manage to make ixrec's look good in comparison... Kind of sad how little tl-quality seems to matter to the people in charge honestly, I million dollars and yet they don't even want to bother with creating an actually good translation. Considering how little most VN-translators are paid they should be able to afford it without trouble. Though I guess I'm actually part of the problem since I ended up pledging in the end, since I didn't pay for it the last time I played it it felt kinda rude not to, hopefully they'll be able to implement dual language at least.

Uh, what's wrong with the current Muv Luv translation? I saw nothing wrong with it, it wasn't Mirror Moon level perhaps, but it was above average for a fan translation.

 

 

I however do agree, that 1.2M+ for a game that is already translated is crazy. They're definitely making some serious bank on this KS< and anyone who thinks they aren't and that the 1.2M is to "cover costs" is fooling themselves. It's great to see an Official release...but I hope the fan translators get some money for this. They spent a lot of time and hard work translating, never getting anything and happy with that, then the original guys come along and make a nice profit off it, I hope they get something...I dunno, free merchandise? Lol.  Maybe like "All future Age games" ? I've seen some devs do that before to committed fans. This KS was basically just selling pre-orders.  Still, for it to be on Steam is great...the idea that I could own an actual official copy of VNs is so outlandish to me.  It's never been an idea before because importing some 80-100$ game + shipping, and not having it normally translated? Now I can wait for a Steam sale and grab it for 4.99 sometime.

Edited by Mkilbride
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Apparently they're going to be using the Alternative Project fantl for the side-stories, from what I've seen of their translations they manage to make ixrec's look good in comparison... Kind of sad how little tl-quality seems to matter to the people in charge honestly, I million dollars and yet they don't even want to bother with creating an actually good translation. Considering how little most VN-translators are paid they should be able to afford it without trouble. Though I guess I'm actually part of the problem since I ended up pledging in the end, since I didn't pay for it the last time I played it it felt kinda rude not to, hopefully they'll be able to implement dual language at least.

Uh, what's wrong with the current Muv Luv translation? I saw nothing wrong with it, it wasn't Mirror Moon level perhaps, but it was above average for a fan translation.

I haven't read Muv-Luv in Japanese but Ixrec simply isn't a very good translator. His translations are overly stiff and full of bad writing and weird phrasing. Muv-Luv isn't exactly known for its beautiful prose so it probably doesn't suffer as much in that regard as for example his translations of Comyu, Inganock or Rewrite but bad prose isn't the only issue with his work. It is often overly literal which gives me the impression that he doesn't know Japanese very well (at least not well enough to be translating), a lot of his translations basically seem like he looked up the words or kanji in a dictionary and just inserted the first definition that appeared. Like he apparently translated 紐 as shoestring in Rewrite for example which is an incredibly amateurish mistake.

A lot of people have impressions like "Ixrec's translations might be a bit stiff but otherwise they're correct" or something like that but this isn't true. When he translated Muv-Luv there wasn't a lot criticism as the state of VN translations back then were pretty bad in general. If you've look up stuff from Rewrite and Comyu though which he did later you'll find tons of tons of examples that are just flat out wrong. Some examples from Rewrite:

瑚太朗「でも俺、実際に木人倒したんだよ。最後にでかいボスが来てやられたけど…」

Ixrec: Kotarou 「But a real treeman knocked me out. It was the biggest one, the boss of the others...」

ネタ『31歳人妻です。浮気相手を探しています』を削除した!

Ixrec: You deleted Info: "I'm a 31 year-old housewife and my spouse is cheating on me"!

「学生が固定資産税や維持費を捻出できるわけないでしょう。ここは金ロレね」

Ixrec: 「There's no way a student could pay the maintenance fees or the capital gains tax. They can barely afford a gold Rolex.」

Japanese: ゴルフとかのスポーツで、若いやつが活躍するとお茶の間の人気者になる、あの感じだ。

Ixrec: It's kinda like how a young guy playing golf is automatically popular when everyone has tea afterwards.

All of these are wrong. They're not just badly phrased. They are wrong. Yet without seeing the Japanese you wouldn't know as they all make sense and are grammatically correct. The first two sentences are also incredibly easy, they're on the level that someone like me who has known enough Japanese to be able to read VNs in less than a year could translate them correctly. And if his Rewrite translation is full of mistakes like these that certainly doesn't imply good things about his earlier muv-luv translation.

He has also said that he doesn't think the prose matters and that the only thing that makes a visual novel well written is the plot and the twists and whatever, which really isn't encouraging to hear from someone who constantly picks works that are renowned for their prose to translate. If you've read some of his reviews he pretty much only cares about most works at a very superficial level which is a fine way to approach something as a reader (though you're definitly missing out) but completely unacceptable for a translator. If you have no affection for language you really don't have any business translating anything other than stuff like manuals. And yeah MLA's translation might be above avergae for a fan translation but that says more about the state of fan translations than anything else. While MLA isn't my favourite or anything it is one of the most well-regarded and influential VNs of all time it absolutely deserves the best translation possible.

But what I'm really worried about isn't even the translation for the main trilogy but the side stories. The muv-luv team has stated several times that they are going to work with Alternative Projects on the side stories. From what I've seen their translations are so beyond the pale that they make Ixrec's look good. Their works include wonderful translations like:

九割六分の仲間が死んだ

"Ninety percent of my comrades were dead within six minutes."

ああ

"Ah" (in all situations)

私達が付いてますから

It's us, after all.

反応してた癖に

It was just by reflex.

Some people from Alternative Projects have said that they have improved and if that's true I'm glad though I still have my doubts that their current level is anywhere near professional quality. But the problems in their earlier translations certainly can't be fixed with editing or proofreading, it needs a complete re-translation and that Degica doesn't seem to intend to do that is very worrying.

Edited by Beato
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I hope with that 1,25 millions we will get all the age games (as anyway they do not have much) available along with all possible merchandise. As it is really crazy sum for just 2 already translated games. Hope Degica is less greedy than dovac with Sekai and will hire professional translator for this project, as in this case quality of ixrec translation is really... should be much better for 1,2Millions.

And I hope this time would be at least h-scenes without mosaic (e.g I hope having more than 1 million you can afford to have a physical uncensored copy for fans?? right??)

Edited by Scorp
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as far as translation quality goes - people believing those (additional) fundings beeing used to cover most of the translation costs (main games + xtra content) are more than fooling themselves into actually backing inferior crap, simply because they (degica) COULD actually hire professionals only for handling said task by now without having any problems financially in doing so and the fact they WONT is undoubtably a sign of non prioritizing quality first before everything else. no matter how good the actual quality of a fanpatch is, it stays work done by amateurs, which a company clamining professionality shouldnt rely on as a basis for their future product thats costing people alot of money by them getting inavitably an inferior result presented, despite what could have been possible otherwise when non focusing on maximized profit only...:/

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I don't know what everyone's barking about but you aren't entitled to anything more than what the kickstarter promised; regardless of how filthy rich they come off from this.
Everyone knew exactly what they were promised when they backed, how many people and how much money was backed is entirely irrelevant to the equation.

Still, it's certainly nice to wish aloud. They don't seem like they're all that evil, if not better the translation they probably plan on doing something with the extra money.

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wow, all the bashing about this comes in on the closing day huh?
They already have said that they'll be cleaning up the lyrics, and updating the graphics, but really if it's similar to Altered Fable "updated" it's not much at all. While I'm still on the fence about it, Muv Luv is what started it all for me.

Edited by MFrost
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Still, it's certainly nice to wish aloud. They don't seem like they're all that evil, if not better the translation they probably plan on doing something with the extra money.

I can't remember exactly where I read it, but it was a recent post from the Muv Luv team. I think it was that they always wanted to create an anime (which they were close to releasing once before), but before that happens I think they wanted to continue with the VN. Or something like that.

I actually think they were very generous with all they offered to the backers. Especially since we hit all the goals they are giving away a figurine and the physical codex for nothing extra for the higher tier backers.

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as far as translation quality goes - people believing those (additional) fundings beeing used to cover most of the translation costs (main games + xtra content) are more than fooling themselves into actually backing inferior crap, simply because they (degica) COULD actually hire professionals only for handling said task by now without having any problems financially in doing so and the fact they WONT is undoubtably a sign of non prioritizing quality first before everything else. no matter how good the actual quality of a fanpatch is, it stays work done by amateurs, which a company clamining professionality shouldnt rely on as a basis for their future product thats costing people alot of money by them getting inavitably an inferior result presented, despite what could have been possible otherwise when non focusing on maximized profit only...:/

This would be an immense waste of time.

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as far as translation quality goes - people believing those (additional) fundings beeing used to cover most of the translation costs (main games + xtra content) are more than fooling themselves into actually backing inferior crap, simply because they (degica) COULD actually hire professionals only for handling said task by now without having any problems financially in doing so and the fact they WONT is undoubtably a sign of non prioritizing quality first before everything else. no matter how good the actual quality of a fanpatch is, it stays work done by amateurs, which a company clamining professionality shouldnt rely on as a basis for their future product thats costing people alot of money by them getting inavitably an inferior result presented, despite what could have been possible otherwise when non focusing on maximized profit only...:/

This would be an immense waste of time.

And anti-profit oriented on part of the profit oriented companies in question.

Truly, you're expecting far too much from a mere company.

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as far as translation quality goes - people believing those (additional) fundings beeing used to cover most of the translation costs (main games + xtra content) are more than fooling themselves into actually backing inferior crap, simply because they (degica) COULD actually hire professionals only for handling said task by now without having any problems financially in doing so and the fact they WONT is undoubtably a sign of non prioritizing quality first before everything else. no matter how good the actual quality of a fanpatch is, it stays work done by amateurs, which a company clamining professionality shouldnt rely on as a basis for their future product thats costing people alot of money by them getting inavitably an inferior result presented, despite what could have been possible otherwise when non focusing on maximized profit only...:/

This would be an immense waste of time.

Maybe, but honestly getting Ixrec's translation up to good quality would take a long time too. You'd need to run a thorough translation check on everything, then have a highly skilled editor look over the whole thing. Nobody really knows what Degica is doing with it because they've only given us vague statements, but it appears they're having a bunch of people work on it like Clannad was, so that's not very reassuring. 

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Apparently they're going to be using the Alternative Project fantl for the side-stories, from what I've seen of their translations they manage to make ixrec's look good in comparison... Kind of sad how little tl-quality seems to matter to the people in charge honestly, I million dollars and yet they don't even want to bother with creating an actually good translation. Considering how little most VN-translators are paid they should be able to afford it without trouble. Though I guess I'm actually part of the problem since I ended up pledging in the end, since I didn't pay for it the last time I played it it felt kinda rude not to, hopefully they'll be able to implement dual language at least.

Uh, what's wrong with the current Muv Luv translation? I saw nothing wrong with it, it wasn't Mirror Moon level perhaps, but it was above average for a fan translation.

I haven't read Muv-Luv in Japanese but Ixrec simply isn't a very good translator. His translations are overly stiff and full of bad writing and weird phrasing. Muv-Luv isn't exactly known for its beautiful prose so it probably doesn't suffer as much in that regard as for example his translations of Comyu, Inganock or Rewrite but bad prose isn't the only issue with his work. It is often overly literal which gives me the impression that he doesn't know Japanese very well (at least not well enough to be translating), a lot of his translations basically seem like he looked up the words or kanji in a dictionary and just inserted the first definition that appeared. Like he apparently translated 紐 as shoestring in Rewrite for example which is an incredibly amateurish mistake.

A lot of people have impressions like "Ixrec's translations might be a bit stiff but otherwise they're correct" or something like that but this isn't true. When he translated Muv-Luv there wasn't a lot criticism as the state of VN translations back then were pretty bad in general. If you've look up stuff from Rewrite and Comyu though which he did later you'll find tons of tons of examples that are just flat out wrong. Some examples from Rewrite:

瑚太朗「でも俺、実際に木人倒したんだよ。最後にでかいボスが来てやられたけど…」

Ixrec: Kotarou 「But a real treeman knocked me out. It was the biggest one, the boss of the others...」

ネタ『31歳人妻です。浮気相手を探しています』を削除した!

Ixrec: You deleted Info: "I'm a 31 year-old housewife and my spouse is cheating on me"!

「学生が固定資産税や維持費を捻出できるわけないでしょう。ここは金ロレね」

Ixrec: 「There's no way a student could pay the maintenance fees or the capital gains tax. They can barely afford a gold Rolex.」

Japanese: ゴルフとかのスポーツで、若いやつが活躍するとお茶の間の人気者になる、あの感じだ。

Ixrec: It's kinda like how a young guy playing golf is automatically popular when everyone has tea afterwards.

All of these are wrong. They're not just badly phrased. They are wrong. Yet without seeing the Japanese you wouldn't know as they all make sense and are grammatically correct. The first two sentences are also incredibly easy, they're on the level that someone like me who has known enough Japanese to be able to read VNs in less than a year could translate them correctly. And if his Rewrite translation is full of mistakes like these that certainly doesn't imply good things about his earlier muv-luv translation.

He has also said that he doesn't think the prose matters and that the only thing that makes a visual novel well written is the plot and the twists and whatever, which really isn't encouraging to hear from someone who constantly picks works that are renowned for their prose to translate. If you've read some of his reviews he pretty much only cares about most works at a very superficial level which is a fine way to approach something as a reader (though you're definitly missing out) but completely unacceptable for a translator. If you have no affection for language you really don't have any business translating anything other than stuff like manuals. And yeah MLA's translation might be above avergae for a fan translation but that says more about the state of fan translations than anything else. While MLA isn't my favourite or anything it is one of the most well-regarded and influential VNs of all time it absolutely deserves the best translation possible.

But what I'm really worried about isn't even the translation for the main trilogy but the side stories. The muv-luv team has stated several times that they are going to work with Alternative Projects on the side stories. From what I've seen their translations are so beyond the pale that they make Ixrec's look good. Their works include wonderful translations like:

九割六分の仲間が死んだ

"Ninety percent of my comrades were dead within six minutes."

ああ

"Ah" (in all situations)

私達が付いてますから

It's us, after all.

反応してた癖に

It was just by reflex.

Some people from Alternative Projects have said that they have improved and if that's true I'm glad though I still have my doubts that their current level is anywhere near professional quality. But the problems in their earlier translations certainly can't be fixed with editing or proofreading, it needs a complete re-translation and that Degica doesn't seem to intend to do that is very worrying.

I've read both Comyu and Ingaock. I  saw absolutely nothing wrong or stiff about their translations. They come across to me as very well done VNs.  I dunno where you have this myth that "in 2010, VN Translations weren't known for their quality" So when did they become known for their quality? He didn't machine translate. 

 

The story all flowed very naturally, nothing confused me, and I understood all the characters personalities.  If he's so shitty at it, you should translate them then.

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Apparently they're going to be using the Alternative Project fantl for the side-stories, from what I've seen of their translations they manage to make ixrec's look good in comparison... Kind of sad how little tl-quality seems to matter to the people in charge honestly, I million dollars and yet they don't even want to bother with creating an actually good translation. Considering how little most VN-translators are paid they should be able to afford it without trouble. Though I guess I'm actually part of the problem since I ended up pledging in the end, since I didn't pay for it the last time I played it it felt kinda rude not to, hopefully they'll be able to implement dual language at least.

Uh, what's wrong with the current Muv Luv translation? I saw nothing wrong with it, it wasn't Mirror Moon level perhaps, but it was above average for a fan translation.

I haven't read Muv-Luv in Japanese but Ixrec simply isn't a very good translator. His translations are overly stiff and full of bad writing and weird phrasing. Muv-Luv isn't exactly known for its beautiful prose so it probably doesn't suffer as much in that regard as for example his translations of Comyu, Inganock or Rewrite but bad prose isn't the only issue with his work. It is often overly literal which gives me the impression that he doesn't know Japanese very well (at least not well enough to be translating), a lot of his translations basically seem like he looked up the words or kanji in a dictionary and just inserted the first definition that appeared. Like he apparently translated 紐 as shoestring in Rewrite for example which is an incredibly amateurish mistake.

A lot of people have impressions like "Ixrec's translations might be a bit stiff but otherwise they're correct" or something like that but this isn't true. When he translated Muv-Luv there wasn't a lot criticism as the state of VN translations back then were pretty bad in general. If you've look up stuff from Rewrite and Comyu though which he did later you'll find tons of tons of examples that are just flat out wrong. Some examples from Rewrite:

瑚太朗「でも俺、実際に木人倒したんだよ。最後にでかいボスが来てやられたけど…」

Ixrec: Kotarou 「But a real treeman knocked me out. It was the biggest one, the boss of the others...」

ネタ『31歳人妻です。浮気相手を探しています』を削除した!

Ixrec: You deleted Info: "I'm a 31 year-old housewife and my spouse is cheating on me"!

「学生が固定資産税や維持費を捻出できるわけないでしょう。ここは金ロレね」

Ixrec: 「There's no way a student could pay the maintenance fees or the capital gains tax. They can barely afford a gold Rolex.」

Japanese: ゴルフとかのスポーツで、若いやつが活躍するとお茶の間の人気者になる、あの感じだ。

Ixrec: It's kinda like how a young guy playing golf is automatically popular when everyone has tea afterwards.

All of these are wrong. They're not just badly phrased. They are wrong. Yet without seeing the Japanese you wouldn't know as they all make sense and are grammatically correct. The first two sentences are also incredibly easy, they're on the level that someone like me who has known enough Japanese to be able to read VNs in less than a year could translate them correctly. And if his Rewrite translation is full of mistakes like these that certainly doesn't imply good things about his earlier muv-luv translation.

I've read both Comyu and Ingaock. I  saw absolutely nothing wrong or stiff about their translations. They come across to me as very well done VNs.  I dunno where you have this myth that "in 2010, VN Translations weren't known for their quality" So when did they become known for their quality? He didn't machine translate. 

 

The story all flowed very naturally, nothing confused me, and I understood all the characters personalities.  If he's so shitty at it, you should translate them then.

You should understand that your argument is sort of pointless when one of the core arguments Beato made is that someone who can't read Japanese wouldn't notice any errors.

Of course, I'm jumping the gun and presuming you don't know Japanese. If you do indeed, (why did you read the TL?) it's sort of weird Beato thinks they are wrong and you think they are right. :shrug:

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After a certain point, you can't tell how well translated something is unless you know Japanese.  Just because it reads well in English doesn't mean that it was translated that well, that's just part of the job.  Unless you know Japanese at a proficient level, I don't think you're qualified to say whether or not it's a good or bad translation.  That's not a bad thing, lots of us here don't know any Japanese and are in the same boat.

Now, that's just dumb.  You don't have to go out and make a better version of a product to be able to point out said product's shortcomings.  I can, without a doubt, say that Twilight is utter shit without 1) being a writer myself, or 2) writing a better vampire book.  There's no need to be an expert in order to be critical of something.

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Dude, when was the last time you read a book in english? Ixrec's prose is really not very good. Of course by VN translation standards it's not that bad, because at least he's a native speaker that can put together a sentence that seems coherent (...most of the time, not alway) without doing three grammatical mistakes.

But even ignoring that it still doesn't change anything to the fact that his translations are riddled with errors. Literally anyone that knows japanese and has ever looked at his scripts will tell you the same thing. It's not a secret, people have looked at Cross+Channel, Rewrite and Comyu quite a lot and it's all there.

And while I'm at it, you cited Mirror Moon as an exemple earlier: TakaJun doesn't really write that well either and, more importantly, he also made lots and lots of mistakes in his scripts - contrary to Ixrec I think he even fully acknowledges that.

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