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


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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.

You honestly think they're going to fix those few lines? Really man?

You, and everyone else KNOW for a fact they went ahead with a translated novel that's ALREADY DONE AND OVER WITH. We have Schwarzesmarken so please tell me why didn't they offer to translate that? Oh yeah, because the cake is already baked, you just gotta add few strawberries and cream and thinly sliced bananas on top. Right? The cake is already baked, why not just take it off the people who worked their asses off to translate it and make some real money off of it.

Schwarzesmarken is few weeks away from releasing. They didn't offer to translate that. How many times did I repeat myself?

Oh I feel so sorry for those who support those rip offs. Wait until you see Schwarzesmarken getting a fan translation and them hopping on board to take the crown off.

Edited by Tatsujin
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Schwarzesmarken is few weeks away from releasing. They didn't offer to translate that. How many times did I repeat myself?

Schwarzesmarken is getting an anime in a few months. It doesn't make sense to do anything with it before it has gained the huge awareness boost it'll get in the west from that. It's also probably a long novel, so it's out of the scope of a kickstarter like that.

Regardless of the quality, they're also "translating" new material: the codex, photon flowers & photons melodies.

I mean, I'm not saying they're doing everything right but you can't ask for everything and anything to get translated right now just because they're making bucks through the main series.

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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.

You left out 'but that's because (traditionally) the standard for prose in VN translations has been suckitudinous.' 

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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.

Yeah, see, that's what Ixrec thinks too. As long as the story is still understandable it doesn't matter! The problem is if you accept that what he puts out is correct you won't see a problem with it. Most of what I've heard about Comyu from people that have read it in Japanese is that it's really well written. Reading Ixrec's English version of Comyu doesn't give me the impression of something that's very well written. 

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I, 100% agree with you there.

 

Japanese is a complex language, are as many languages. Translating any of them to another one, much is lost. It's like with Type-Moons works. Nasu uses some type of archaic Japanese, I've read, which makes his works -difficult to native Japanese readers-, so translating those into another language is rough.

 

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There are times when the translation can surpass the original, just check Vagrant Story or Final Fantasy XII out.
I also prefer reading Haruki Murakami in English; Jay Rubin and Alfred Birnbaum are amazing.

You can always add English-exclusive things to make up for what's lost from the Japanese to recreate the mood somewhat... if you are as good a writer as the one you're translating. :P
Still, that's probably a bit too much to ask out of VN translators at this point of time, haha.
Doesn't mean that you shouldn't have standards for writing, though. I truly hope Degica has gotten someone good to fix that text up, as it looks pretty bad from the few quotes I've seen on this thread.

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Keep in mind it's easy to pull a few bad translations from visual novels that are very, very long.  Also, Alternative specifically has a lot of technical military jargon that makes translation very tricky.  I'm not excusing bad translation either way - I've seen some extremely bad translations that were pretty much unreadable.  Personally, with translations - especially fan translations - I hope for mediocre to good quality at best.  I personally feel that unless you're willing to put forth the effort to translate the work yourself or, alternatively at least, aid in the translation, you shouldn't complain about those who do.  Especially when fan translators spend weeks of their lives translating works for little to no pay for people who are unwilling or unable to put forth the time to learn another language, so that those people can enjoy the same works they enjoy.  For many of these people it's the first thing they've ever translated - it's highly unlikely you are going to get a professional level translation out of a fan translation.  And even 'professional' level translations can be lackluster.  In all seriousness, no matter who does the translation, there is always going to be someone who is there going "but it should've been translated THIS way".  Especially for a language like Japanese, where word meaning tends to be based on the context of the situation.

Is it frustrating to run into bad translations?  Yes, absolutely.  But if it really bugs you, play it in the native language, translating as you go.  Even if you don't have that much ability in Japanese, you'd be amazed at how far you can get with a basic understanding of hiragana, katakana, and Japanese grammar.  Visual novels provide an excellent way to pick up Japanese - it's a medium where you can read the words being said at the same time they are being said, in the context of the situation.  At translation software so you can puzzle out the meaning of the 25% that you don't immediately understand and you've got the means to learn the language.  You... just don't get that in any other medium.  Books have writing with no sound.  Films have words with no writing.  And neither of those together have easy access to translation software that can be used to aid in translation.

Would I prefer a high quality translation?  Absolutely.  But I'm not going to argue with anything that gets Alternative - a very good visual novel - over here to Western audiences officially, even with a mediocre translation quality.

And for those claiming that the kickstarter is ripping people off... well, first off, remember that they only asked for $250k.  They were surprised as anyone to beat that goal by a million.  What I'm personally hoping for is that yeah, they use a lot of the money to do a decent job of translating Alternative content... but I'd also be fine with seeing some of that money siphoned off for age to develop new games, in or out of the Alternative universe.  They are a game maker that I've always universally enjoyed playing the games.

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  • 2 months later...

The recent update by he muv-luv team definitely has a few interesting possibilities for some of the extra money....likely not all of it.

1. Teito Moyu sidestory will be translated (this is basically a sidestory to Total Eclipse (this is essentially an expanded version of the first two episodes of the anime)

2. Shipping costs were almost double what they thought they would be (a lot more physical extras than they thought all shipping throughout the world...probably did not help that they offered to ship extras also separate of the main release).

3. September is the targeted release and while creating new content while the Schwarzesmarken anime, localization, and game improvements are in process is tricky, they have also agreed to give an english translation of the Schwarzesmarken Visual Novel Demo. (the anime cut a lot of content). This will gauge whether interest is there for the Schwarzesmarken games.

4. One more Project to potentially be announced soon. (they are waiting to confirm all of their upcoming expenses in shipping and production to see if they can push for one full project for the extra amount aside from Teito Moyu). They will be updating the status on that in a few weeks and will potentially be setting up a survey so they can determine which to prioritize first.

 

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I read the latest backer update and I'm concerned.  This was not written by a native English speaker.  If the new content not already translated by Amaterasu ends up like this, we're going to have issues.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/muvluv/muv-luv-a-pretty-sweet-visual-novel-series/posts/1475550?ref=backer_project_update

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It's signed "Muv Luv Team".  As in, speaking for the entire team.  It's perfectly reasonable to expect a professional translation company to correspond professionally in native, fluent English.  Failure to do so could indicate that they've hired non-natives to translate or edit.  They wouldn't be the first "professionals" to do so.

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1 hour ago, Down said:

I'm not sure by what kind of twist of logic you infer one of the dudes doing the PR on the kickstarter page will also be working on the editing of the translation.

Yeah, it makes zero sense, especially at it was probably written by helrouis, a community manager whose writing skills have nothing to do with the quality of any localization.  There are reasons to worry about the quality of the translations, this Kickstarter update is absolutely not one of them.

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18 minutes ago, Basileus777 said:

Yeah, it makes zero sense, especially at it was probably written by helrouis, a community manager whose writing skills have nothing to do with the quality of any localization.  There are reasons to worry about the quality of the translations, this Kickstarter update is absolutely not one of them.

While it sounds obvious that the translation team isnt exactly the same as kickstarter team, as Sanahtlig said, branding themselves as "Muv Luv Team" can be miscommunicated and it is false representation if it doesnt even concern the translation team and just the PR/Kickstarter team.

It's just a marketing error at the worst case and while it looks small, can hurt people's outlook with the translations.

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12 minutes ago, Rooke said:

It's pretty noticeable. Whether it means anything is debatable, though. 

Do we have translation samples of content, not already done by Amaterasu, that shows the MuvLuv team is capable of producing high-quality translations?  If not, I'm going to judge by other data points.  If I submitted a personal statement for a job interview they'd hold typos in my resume against me--for a translation OR a PR position.  These backer updates are essentially "interviews" for backers to judge progress of the project.  These errors aren't just mistakes of carelessness either.  They're sentence construction mistakes that only a non-native speaker would make.

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7 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

Do we have translation samples of content, not already done by Amaterasu, that shows they're capable of producing high-quality translations?  If not, I'm going to judge by other data points.  If I submitted a personal statement for a job interview they'd hold typos in my resume against me--for a translation OR a PR position.  These backer updates are essentially "interviews" for backers to judge progress of the project.  These errors aren't just mistakes of carelessness either.  They're sentence construction mistakes that only a non-native speaker would make.

The guy who wrote it is from the Philippines. And if you want to use his writing skills to judge his ability to do PR, that's one thing, using it to judge translation work done by completely other people is without basis.

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11 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

Do we have translation samples of content, not already done by Amaterasu, that shows they're capable of producing high-quality translations?  If not, I'm going to judge by other data points.  If I submitted a personal statement for a job interview they'd hold typos in my resume against me--for a translation OR a PR position.  These backer updates are essentially "interviews" for backers to judge progress of the project.  These errors aren't just mistakes of carelessness either.  They're sentence construction mistakes that only a non-native speaker would make.

I didn't say it wasn't reasonable, just debatable :P 

Yeah, the 'And One More Project to be Potentially announced soon' section is a pretty big give away. Then you look back up and start noticing all the little things. 

 

6 minutes ago, Basileus777 said:

The guy who wrote it is from the Philippines. And if you want to use his writing skills to judge his ability to do PR, that's one thing, using it to judge work done by completely other people is nonsensical.

The bolded bit is not able to be determined by the actual update.

Also, anything a company releases in its actual name reflects upon the company itself. Something signed by 'The Muv Luv' team reflects upon 'The Muv Luv' team. Anything a PR person writes for the company reflects upon that company, especially if it's an official update *shrugs*. I don't think it's a major concern, not to me anyway, but it's probably a tad unprofessional I suppose.

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19 minutes ago, CeruleanGamer said:

While it sounds obvious that the translation team isnt exactly the same as kickstarter team, as Sanahtlig said, branding themselves as "Muv Luv Team" can be miscommunicated and it is false representation if it doesnt even concern the translation team and just the PR/Kickstarter team.

It's just a marketing error at the worst case and while it looks small, can hurt people's outlook with the translations.

 

14 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

Do we have translation samples of content, not already done by Amaterasu, that shows the MuvLuv team is capable of producing high-quality translations?  If not, I'm going to judge by other data points.  If I submitted a personal statement for a job interview they'd hold typos in my resume against me--for a translation OR a PR position.  These backer updates are essentially "interviews" for backers to judge progress of the project.  These errors aren't just mistakes of carelessness either.  They're sentence construction mistakes that only a non-native speaker would make.

 

3 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Also, anything a company releases in its actual name reflects upon the company itself. Something signed by 'The Muv Luv' team reflects upon 'The Muv Luv' team. Anything a PR person writes for the company reflects upon that company, especially if it's an official update *shrugs*. I don't think it's a major concern, not to me anyway, but it's probably a tad unprofessional I suppose.

Jeebus.

I'll see myself out of here early on, before I lose more time ranting on petty issues.

OfVzSJJ.gif

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