A fan translation of Dies Irae battle scene 3

[Conjueror]

Hello guys.
 

I had a bit of extra time on my hands before Otakon so I decided to put it to good use and practiced my skills on translating an excerpt from Dies Irae yet again. It's the final installment to the battle I've been doing for like half a year now.

 

I had Rooke help me with editing this time, and I dare say he actually managed to capture Masada's grandiose style. I will probably re-post my old videos with vastly improved writing (of Rooke) eventually as a definitive version of this scene.

The scene has spoilers, obviously, but most of them are so cryptic you'll likely have no idea what's up if you haven't read the work already anyway.

 

Text-based TL on my blog:

https://vnrw.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/translation-dies-irae-beatrice-vs-eleonore-part-iii/

Subbed YT video:

 

[dowolf]

(quick note: i'm trying to focus on stylistic stuff, not nitpicky or TLC stuff, since I figure that's what you need help with more. Though it probably could use the latter, too)

I guess my biggest critique is that I feel like you're being wordy for wordiness's sake a lot of the time. A number of your sentences feel like they could be written with half as many words without losing any meaning (or that the extra words actually take you away from the original meaning), which is not a good thing. One of the most egregious examples is at 0:57, where 激痛の罰 winds up mapping to both "a deserved punishment" and "a fitting consequence." Sort of. I digress; the point is, the redundancy hurts the line. (also it should be "her" and not "their" there but now I'm being nitpicky >_>). There's also 1:13, where 噴き出る紅の鮮血は彼女ら二人に降りかかり同時に熱で蒸発していく becomes about thirty-five words. Simply "The crimson blood spurted from the wound and rained down upon the two ladies, only to immediately evaporate in the blazing heat." manages to be more concise and, I would argue, more accurate. The negative hypothetical you added doesn't really serve any purpose except to make explicit the mental image of the scene you had in your head.

Similarly, at 1:29, we have 骨までは届かない, which maps to both "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." Both translations are fine (though fwiw I'd just go with "yet the bone was beyond her reach"), but there is no need to have both. At 3:19, "the vigor and enthusiasm for combat drained from Eleonore" is pretty much entirely added. And so on.

This becomes even more problematic in the fight scenes proper, since it has a slowing effect on the narrative--the exact opposite of what you want from combat. E.g., 思わず gets needlessly doubled to "An instinctive action, one born from reflex." "Drenched in the blood of her exsanguinating former commander, Beatrice adorned a smile bitter in nature" gains nothing from using the word "exsanguinate," and that word is technically being misused to boot. (Also, the last phrase needs to be one of "A bitter smile adorned Beatrice," "Beatrice's expression was adorned with a bitter smile," "Beatrice smiled bitterly," etc., but there I go nitpicking away~)

 

[Conjueror]

(quick note: i'm trying to focus on stylistic stuff, not nitpicky or TLC stuff, since I figure that's what you need help with more. Though it probably could use the latter, too)

I guess my biggest critique is that I feel like you're being wordy for wordiness's sake a lot of the time. A number of your sentences feel like they could be written with half as many words without losing any meaning (or that the extra words actually take you away from the original meaning), which is not a good thing. One of the most egregious examples is at 0:57, where 激痛の罰 winds up mapping to both "a deserved punishment" and "a fitting consequence." Sort of. I digress; the point is, the redundancy hurts the line. (also it should be "her" and not "their" there but now I'm being nitpicky >_>). There's also 1:13, where 噴き出る紅の鮮血は彼女ら二人に降りかかり同時に熱で蒸発していく becomes about thirty-five words. Simply "The crimson blood spurted from the wound and rained down upon the two ladies, only to immediately evaporate in the blazing heat." manages to be more concise and, I would argue, more accurate. The negative hypothetical you added doesn't really serve any purpose except to make explicit the mental image of the scene you had in your head.

Similarly, at 1:29, we have 骨までは届かない, which maps to both "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." Both translations are fine (though fwiw I'd just go with "yet the bone was beyond her reach"), but there is no need to have both. At 3:19, "the vigor and enthusiasm for combat drained from Eleonore" is pretty much entirely added. And so on.

This becomes even more problematic in the fight scenes proper, since it has a slowing effect on the narrative--the exact opposite of what you want from combat. E.g., 思わず gets needlessly doubled to "An instinctive action, one born from reflex." "Drenched in the blood of her exsanguinating former commander, Beatrice adorned a smile bitter in nature" gains nothing from using the word "exsanguinate," and that word is technically being misused to boot. (Also, the last phrase needs to be one of "A bitter smile adorned Beatrice," "Beatrice's expression was adorned with a bitter smile," "Beatrice smiled bitterly," etc., but there I go nitpicking away~)

 

Yeah, in this case we were trying to emulate the overall feel of Dies Irae being grandiose, and somewhat wordy as opposed to being faithful to individual lines. But yeah, now that I look at it, we went a bit overboard -- it's gotten unnecessarily cumbersome to read.

 

These lines were edited so many times I actually forgot what the original JP even was by the time we were finished. xD

[sanahtlig]

I tentatively agree with dowolf.  The dialogue is quite good, but the narrative is excessively wordy in places to the point it's distracting and hard to parse.  The mental gymnastics required are reminiscent of trying to read Japanese... in which case, why am I reading a translation?

[Darklord Rooke]

Simply "The crimson blood spurted from the wound and rained down upon the two ladies, only to immediately evaporate in the blazing heat." manages to be more concise and, I would argue, more accurate. 

 

Need to clarify that the blood evaporated before raining down on the two ladies, because your suggestion means “the blood splattered both ladies, but evaporated immediately afterward,” (which has problems) whereas I thought the meaning was “the blood evaporated immediately before splattering the two ladies.” And then you got to clarify that in a manner befitting Masaka.

 

"Drenched in the blood of her exsanguinating former commander, Beatrice adorned a smile bitter in nature" gains nothing from using the word "exsanguinate," and that word is technically being misused to boot. (Also, the last phrase needs to be one of "A bitter smile adorned Beatrice," "Beatrice's expression was adorned with a bitter smile," "Beatrice smiled bitterly," etc., but there I go nitpicking away~)

 

I separated “bitter” and “smile” because too many modifiers, in the hands of a person who isn’t a literary genius, sounds very childish. But adorned was probably a poor choice of words. I like exsanguinating

 

The problem is your suggestions, while simple and technically accurate, are to the point where most of the style is lost. Which is what happens when you slap on adjectives like "bitter smile". I would also argue against removing all redundancy, because if you're going for a grandiose and literary style than redundancy has its uses (Mervyn Peakes' prose has been described as too elaborate or too complicated, Tolstoy similarly.) The problem is this, if you want sentences which convey things as simply and accurately as possible you lose any sense of grandiosity the writing had. We tried to keep the feel of the writing, but we probably we went overboard, it's hard to know where to draw the line (don't usually write in this way  )

 

However, just because you CAN write something in half the words doesn’t mean you SHOULD. And it's quite often the case that it isn't, because very often, in most cases, the shortest way of writing something is also the most boring

 

Also, regarding slowing down fight scenes, they're having a big conversation in the middle of the fight. The pace is already slow, as is usually the case in VNs and anime, it's only a question of how slow you want it. We might have slowed it down too much, but the fight scenes in VNs and anime don't tend to be fast-paced events. 

 

I tentatively agree with dowolf.  The dialogue is quite good, but the narrative is excessively wordy in places to the point it's distracting and hard to parse.  The mental gymnastics required are reminiscent of trying to read Japanese... in which case, why am I reading a translation?

 

My thoughts are like this - Masaka is apparently very hard to read in Japanese, so why should the English be any different

[sanahtlig]

My thoughts are like this - Masaka is apparently very hard to read in Japanese, so why should the English be any different

I think you might be confusing translation of literary style with satire of said style.

[Darklord Rooke]

I think you might be confusing translation of literary style with satire of said style.

 

See, that's piece of satire definitely emphasises why you don't use modifiers until you know what you're doing.

 

"That but few of the Professors had ever tasted the heady mead of youth in no way dulled the contours of their self-portraits which they were now painting of themselves. And it all happened so rapidly, this resurgence; this hark-back. It was as though some bell had been struck, some mountain-bell to which their guts responded. They had for so long a time made their evening way to their sacred, musty, airless quadrangle, that to be, for a whole evening in a new atmosphere was sunrise. True, there was only Irma on the female side, but she was a symbol of all femininity, she was Eve, she was Medusa, she was terrible and she was peerless; she was hideous and she was the lily of the prairies; she was that alien thing from another world - that thing called woman."

 

As you can see, grandiose, literary writing has redundancies and is difficult to read. They aren't written in the simplest and most concise ways possible (even though you shouldn't copy Peaves' adjective use until you know what you're doing.)

[Conjueror]

I tentatively agree with dowolf.  The dialogue is quite good, but the narrative is excessively wordy in places to the point it's distracting and hard to parse.  The mental gymnastics required are reminiscent of trying to read Japanese... in which case, why am I reading a translation?

Having a dictionary in hand, and staring at sentences without quite grasping their meaning for a while is a genuine Masada reading experience even for native Japanese that we've tried to emulate. It's extremely hard to pull off and be consistent in that grandiose theatrical style without relying on tagging on extra words and becoming too wordy in English, while all Masada needs to keep the mood consistent in Japanese is use a couple of fancy kanji when he's not feeling like being long-winded.

 

Well, either way, this was sort of an experiment, and I personally think this take is so far the closest in style (and my favorite) of the ones I tried on Dies, but I do feel there should be a better compromise between grandiose theatrics and excessive wordiness that I still fail to grasp.

[dowolf]

Need to clarify that the blood evaporated before raining down on the two ladies, because your suggestion means “the blood splattered both ladies, but evaporated immediately afterward,” (which has problems) whereas I thought the meaning was “the blood evaporated immediately before splattering the two ladies.” And then you got to clarify that in a manner befitting Masaka.

The original Japanese says the two events happen at the same time. *le shrug*

 

 

I separated “bitter” and “smile” because too many modifiers, in the hands of a person who isn’t a literary genius, sounds very childish. But adorned was probably a poor choice of words. I like exsanguinating

"Adorned" is a fine choice of words; you're simply using it incorrectly. The object of the verb must be the thing being beautified. Ditto with "exsanguinating"--used here, the term means "dying of blood loss," which is not correct. Always make sure you know the meaning of the words you use

 

 

 

The problem is your suggestions, while simple and technically accurate, are to the point where most of the style is lost. Which is what happens when you slap on adjectives like "bitter smile". I would also argue against removing all redundancy, because if you're going for a grandiose and literary style than redundancy has its uses (Mervyn Peakes' prose has been described as too elaborate or too complicated, Tolstoy similarly.) The problem is this, if you want sentences which convey things as simply and accurately as possible you lose any sense of grandiosity the writing had. We tried to keep the feel of the writing, but we probably we went overboard, it's hard to know where to draw the line (don't usually write in this way  )

 

However, just because you CAN write something in half the words doesn’t mean you SHOULD. And it's quite often the case that it isn't, because very often, in most cases, the shortest way of writing something is also the most boring

"Brevity is the soul of wit." You are confusing grandiosity with verbosity, wonderful diction with a strange love for the sesquipidalian.

I am not speaking of removing redundancy; I am saying that you are adding redundancy and complexity not present in the original, seemingly in the belief that this evokes the tone of the original. It does not. In fact, the original phrase here (苦笑した) is extremely simple.

 

 

However, just because you CAN write something in half the words doesn’t mean you SHOULD. And it's quite often the case that it isn't, because very often, in most cases, the shortest way of writing something is also the most boring

And when you can write the same sentence with the same connotation, the same tone, with half the words? You always should. If you find your translations regularly have more words than the original lines had characters, something has gone horribly wrong. And while certainly the shortest way can be the most boring, it is often the most powerful. You are misunderstanding your problem: It is not that you should make concise what was not concise; it is that you should not make verbose what was concise, and not double-down on verbosity. For instance, consider the line at 0:57: We can make this "In the height of battle, Eleanor's concentration faltered from her foe for a fraction of a second, a fault Beatrice punished with pain." This removes the needless and annoying duplication while still maintaining the tone you claim to seek.

The quote you reference is extremely easy to read, by the way. You will also notice that it evinces sentence variety and is willing to use short words when those are the correct ones. It is not wordy, it is not verbose--it is well written. The repetition expands, rather than being a mere duplication. Eve and Medusa, terrible and peerless, hideous and a lily--while the sentence structure repeats, the meaning does not. Each pair evokes something different. Compare this with "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." The second sentence is simply the first sentence restated with different words--and both mean something subtly different from 骨まで届かない.

[Darklord Rooke]

The original Japanese says the two events happen at the same time. *le shrug*

 

Which solves one of the initial problems with your suggestion -  “Immediately evaporating in the blazing heat,” which descriptor is “immediately” modifying? Does it modify the act of the blood contacting the surrounding heat, contacting the ladies, or emerging from the wound? The line obfuscates this point. And in fact, I needed clarification from you to solve this.

 

Which brings me to one of the problems, one of the characteristics of formal and grandiose language is the precision of that language. They tend to use images which are crystal clear, and words which fulfil this goal. Weak words tend to be eliminated in favour of stronger and more descriptive words, points reinforced and sometimes described many ways. Which is one of the reasons why this line isn’t grandiose at all, if you aren’t being 100% precise and descriptive, forming a solid and thorough image, chances are you’ve missed the tone. I’m not really happy with a lot of the lines I produced (8 drafts and I still want to rewrite half the thing,) but I’m not happy with yours either. I think Masada doesn’t come off the same because of it. Sorry

 

"Adorned" is a fine choice of words; you're simply using it incorrectly. The object of the verb must be the thing being beautified. Ditto with "exsanguinating"--used here, the term means "dying of blood loss," which is not correct. Always make sure you know the meaning of the words you use

 

I know :’(

 

"Brevity is the soul of wit." You are confusing grandiosity with verbosity, wonderful diction with a strange love for the sesquipidalian.

I am not speaking of removing redundancy; I am saying that you are adding redundancy and complexity not present in the original, seemingly in the belief that this evokes the tone of the original. It does not. In fact, the original phrase here (苦笑した) is extremely simple.

 

Nah, you’re confusing grandiose and wit, they’re too different things. Masada is chuuni, grandiose, but comes off cool because of it, Pratchett is witty but not at all grandiose. Two separate styles.

 

Grandiose is complexity in english, you don’t get grandiose without adding this stuff. Grandiose writing in Japanese is extremely different to grandiose writing in English, they’re achieved in 2 very different ways. The difference between the languages is one of the reasons why a literal translation can’t be achieved with someone like Masada, and retain much of that style. 

 

And when you can write the same sentence with the same connotation, the same tone, with half the words? You always should. If you find your translations regularly have more words than the original lines had characters, something has gone horribly wrong. And while certainly the shortest way can be the most boring, it is often the most powerful. You are misunderstanding your problem: It is not that you should make concise what was not concise; it is that you should not make verbose what was concise, and not double-down on verbosity. For instance, consider the line at 0:57: We can make this "In the height of battle, Eleanor's concentration faltered from her foe for a fraction of a second, a fault Beatrice punished with pain." This removes the needless and annoying duplication while still maintaining the tone you claim to seek.

 

Where you can write with the same tone in half the words, go for it. But the tone of your suggestions are pretty conversational. And while I realise we’ve been too wordy, trying to match the length of the english to the length of the Japanese is not a good way to go about things.

 

The shortest way tends to be very powerful when interspersed with a lot of long sentences. Otherwise pages and pages of short text can very easily lose the power because “short” is relative.

 

Being concise is a language technique, not a style, it’s employed to achieve a certain style and can mean very different things in Japan than English. The way to make things most concise in English is to litter the work with modifiers, which are looked down upon in English because it gives off a very… undesirable air, just an example.

 

“Faltered from you foe” isn’t really used in English, and “a fraction of a second” is the type of description usually found in high school writing assignments – accurate, colloquial, conversational, plain, not the sort of thing to do Masada justice and not the sort which requires much skill in the language.

 

The quote you reference is extremely easy to read, by the way. You will also notice that it evinces sentence variety and is willing to use short words when those are the correct ones. It is not wordy, it is not verbose--it is well written. The repetition expands, rather than being a mere duplication. Eve and Medusa, terrible and peerless, hideous and a lily--while the sentence structure repeats, the meaning does not. Each pair evokes something different. Compare this with "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." The second sentence is simply the first sentence restated with different words--and both mean something subtly different from 骨まで届かない.

 

The passage I made reference to actually contained a few redundancies (terrible and hideous is not needed, and notice his description of self-portraits they were painting themselves,) and is from a work sometimes criticised as overwrought.  

 

Repetition for emphasis.

[Conjueror]

The original Japanese says the two events happen at the same time. *le shrug*

 

"Adorned" is a fine choice of words; you're simply using it incorrectly. The object of the verb must be the thing being beautified. Ditto with "exsanguinating"--used here, the term means "dying of blood loss," which is not correct. Always make sure you know the meaning of the words you use

 

"Brevity is the soul of wit." You are confusing grandiosity with verbosity, wonderful diction with a strange love for the sesquipidalian.

I am not speaking of removing redundancy; I am saying that you are adding redundancy and complexity not present in the original, seemingly in the belief that this evokes the tone of the original. It does not. In fact, the original phrase here (苦笑した) is extremely simple.

 

And when you can write the same sentence with the same connotation, the same tone, with half the words? You always should. If you find your translations regularly have more words than the original lines had characters, something has gone horribly wrong. And while certainly the shortest way can be the most boring, it is often the most powerful. You are misunderstanding your problem: It is not that you should make concise what was not concise; it is that you should not make verbose what was concise, and not double-down on verbosity. For instance, consider the line at 0:57: We can make this "In the height of battle, Eleanor's concentration faltered from her foe for a fraction of a second, a fault Beatrice punished with pain." This removes the needless and annoying duplication while still maintaining the tone you claim to seek.

The quote you reference is extremely easy to read, by the way. You will also notice that it evinces sentence variety and is willing to use short words when those are the correct ones. It is not wordy, it is not verbose--it is well written. The repetition expands, rather than being a mere duplication. Eve and Medusa, terrible and peerless, hideous and a lily--while the sentence structure repeats, the meaning does not. Each pair evokes something different. Compare this with "yet bone proved too great an obstacle" and "to her, the vertebrae was an impenetrable barrier." The second sentence is simply the first sentence restated with different words--and both mean something subtly different from 骨まで届かない.

噴き出る紅の鮮血は彼女ら二人に降りかかり、同時に熱で蒸発していく。

 

My interpretation of this line is that the blood evaporates as soon as it touches their clothes, but I can see how you could interpret it evaporating mid-flight as well. There is nothing in the Japanese text to definitively say it's one or the other (降りかかり can both mean it's raining down on, or that it had already rained down on), though I'd argue that my interpretation paints a more evocative image (not that it really matters which version you go with context-wise, anyway).

 

骨まで届かない again can literally mean that she couldn't "reach" the bone which I find contradictory given the line explicitly tells she rend the flesh, but it can also be used in the same fashion as 力が及ばない in that "her strength" can't "reach" the level where it could cut through bone. And again, this line is only used to demonstrate how indeed robust/menacing Eleonore is, and as long as you can catch the grandiosity / menacing mood in your line I don't think it really matters if the sword stopped a mm from bone or at the bone itself.

 

I did notice that we might have gone a bit overboard with verbosity when I was subtitling the vid, and agree that we should probably cut down on a few overly excessive takes. It's just that I'm of the opinion that when you treat the whole thing line per line, you will unavoidably meet with grandiose JP lines that due to the limits of English language will not sound as grandiose as the original, and if you don't embellish others in return (where English has more opportunity for grandiosity than JP) you'll end up only chipping away at the overall style. Well, it's entirely possible it's just my lackluster understanding of English language that makes me think this way, though.

 

P.S. Regarding translated sentence being longer than the original I'd like to quote Jay Rubin from his book on literary J->E translating, where he points out that the correct translation of 私は行きました is usually not "I went" but "I don't know about those other guys, but I, at least, went." A lone 行きました would be most commonly used for something as simple as "I went". Hence, JP language being inherently full of implied context can achieve grandiose tone with short sentences a lot more easily, and a translation that tries to achieve that will unavoidably be affected by the translator's own interpretations. If a perfect/correct translation was a thing we wouldn't have a dozen versions of Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's works (and they wrote in a language much more similar to English than Japanese!). Not that I'm trying to say "adorned a bitter smile" was a good idea, or anything.

[dowolf]

...Rooke, I feel like you're getting argumentative, which serves little point. If you don't like the exact wording of something I wrote, then fine. "From her foe" should definitely be axed from that line, looking back at it a few hours later. But I am identifying a key area where your translation differs from the original in tone, in style, and in readability. When I say "concise," I am using it to say that you are making additions I feel take away from the text.

 

 

My interpretation of this line is that the blood evaporates as soon as it touches their clothes, but I can see how you could interpret it evaporating mid-flight as well. There is nothing in the Japanese text to definitively say it's one or the other (降りかかり can both mean it's raining down on, or that it had already rained down on), though I'd argue that my interpretation paints a more evocative image (not that it really matters which version you go with context-wise, anyway).

That was the same impression I had, which is why I used "only to immediately" (which implies it happened after the blood touched their clothes) instead of the more literal and ambiguous "simultaneously." But as you noted, there is no decisive answer to that question--which is why I answered Rooke's original one like I did.

 

 

骨まで届かない again can literally mean that she couldn't "reach" the bone which I find contradictory given the line explicitly tells she rend the flesh,

If she hit the bone, Eleonore would be dead. It's saying it was only a flesh wound. Your wording sort've implies to me that her vertebrate are made out of steel or something, which strikes me as a little odd. Personally, I like the feel of "Her blade sundered flesh and rent muscle, yet could not reach the bone."

But again, like I said, I'm fine with your translation there.
 

 

P.S. Regarding translated sentence being longer than the original I'd like to quote Jay Rubin from his book on literary J->E translating, where he points out that the correct translation of 私は行きました is usually not "I went" but "I don't know about those other guys, but I, at least, went." A lone 行きました would be most commonly used for something as simple as "I went". Hence, JP language being inherently full of implied context can achieve grandiose tone with short sentences a lot more easily, and a translation that tries to achieve that will unavoidably be affected by the translator's own interpretations. If a perfect/correct translation was a thing we wouldn't have a dozen versions of Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's works (and they wrote in a language much more similar to English than Japanese!). Not that I'm trying to say "adorned a bitter smile" was a good idea, or anything.

Agreed, definitely. Which is why I said "regularly" >_> But I digress: I feel like my examples highlighted places where the additions were either a "duplicate" translation, for want of a better term, or where the addition was wholly invented.

When push comes to shove, adding lots of lines to try to make things sound grandiose simply doesn't work. But that's just my two cents.

[Conjueror]

When push comes to shove, adding lots of lines to try to make things sound grandiose simply doesn't work. But that's just my two cents.

 

Yeah, I agree with you, more or less, and admit we should tone down what we're doing a bit (though I do think a few liberal additions are warranted here and there).

Anyway, I really appreciate your comments -- it helps us broaden our perspective. Input like this is precisely why I'm posting these translations publicly.

 

P.S. Eleonore's bone is actually way harder than steel (that implication was deliberate), but that's chuuni for you -- Dies Irae doesn't exactly follow the physical laws of our world.

[Darklord Rooke]

Well, Dies Irae is Impossible tier for a reason. The problem is this, Masada tends to be grandiose, grandiose is pomposity, pomposity is almost never brevity in English, so you’ll always have to add stuff in the English – the only question in where and how much. Masada is sometimes concise, but that tends to indicate a different air in English. But yeah, we did go overboard in places, on the other hand I feel you’re advocating the other extreme. We tried to emphasise Masada’s style on account of most VNs reading the same in English.

 

There are some places where our additions can be lost, where I say additions should be included is to clarify bits which are unclear in the Japanese. Not because we want to improve the text, but because being unclear doesn’t lend well to the style Masada is purported to employ.

[dowolf]

Yeah, I agree with you, more or less, and admit we should tone down what we're doing a bit (though I do think a few liberal additions are warranted here and there).

Anyway, I really appreciate your comments -- it helps us broaden our perspective. Input like this is precisely why I'm posting these translations publicly.

 

P.S. Eleonore's bone is actually way harder than steel (that implication was deliberate), but that's chuuni for you -- Dies Irae doesn't exactly follow the physical laws of our world.

...Huh.

"Well then" >_>

 

[sanahtlig]

I don't think exaggeration necessarily has to add grammatical complexity.  It's simply the art of taking a mundane action and making it seem anything but.  The key here is driving home the point that these are humans who cross human limits because that's what awesome people do.  They could be standing still in a room, yet an aura of awesomeness would emanate from them informing everyone in the room that they are, indeed, awesome.

 

I think part of my issue was that grammatical complexity seemed to increase needlessly.  Try making the sentences simpler.  I think that would help.

 

Also, I'm rather distraught that my example of literary genius was erased from this thread by the Powers that Be.  Otherwise, this entire argument could've been averted.

[Clephas]

The translation isn't perfect, but a simplified localization will never work with anything Masada, Sanahtlig.  To be blunt, a lot of his style is based on that very wordiness.  Take it away and it isn't a Masada work.  Learn how to enjoy writing for writing's sake... simplified translation  is fine with anime, but it isn't always a good idea for VNs.