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onomatope*'s lastest title - Kyuuketsuki no Libra - is coming to Steam


Satsuki

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I give a +1 to footnotes, but only if they are not intrusive. I've read Cross + Channel these days and I hated how the notes appeared in the middle of the text, breaking the flow of my reading.

Like someone said before, it would be good to have the words in a different color, and when you click it [or move the mouse over], you get the meaning. But it would be also nice, if possible, if we could turn this option on/off. This way, nobody would get harmed. However, I don't know how hard would be to do that xD

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In Makina's case, pretty much her whole sentence is "corrupted", so yeah, of course you have to try to work around with it.

In this case, it's different. You can't just rewrite the whole thing differently just because of the "desu". If they could even throw "adios" (?) and stuff like that in, then desu should be fine too (yup, I don't know French. Or Spanish. Actually, I'm not even sure what language is that.). And yeah, if necessary, just make some kind of footnote/glossary to explain the meaning, just like some games did to explain the honorific.

Btw, I don't know about you, but I knew about "desu" before I knew about honorific (since most Vietnamese translation groups throw honorific out of the window).

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In Makina's case, pretty much her whole sentence is "corrupted", so yeah, of course you have to try to work around with it.

In this case, it's different. You can't just rewrite the whole thing differently just because of the "desu". If they could even throw "adios" (?) and stuff like that in, then desu should be fine too (yup, I don't know French. Or Spanish. Actually, I'm not even sure what language is that.). And yeah, if necessary, just make some kind of footnote/glossary to explain the meaning, just like some games did to explain the honorific.

Btw, I don't know about you, but I knew about "desu" before I knew about honorific (since most Vietnamese translation groups throw honorific out of the window).

It is spanish, and means "good bye" :D

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Before anybody gets funny ideas, like say trying to connect the usage of 'adios' with the usage of 'desu', and concluding that 'adios' is a foreign word which needs no explanation and so neither should 'desu', allow me to point out that while the word 'adios' descends from Spanish it has a very long history of being used in the English speaking world. It is used frequently in everyday English conversations, so much so that I can walk to my trusty American Merriam Webster dictionary and find adios defined inside. If I flip to 'D'... nope, no 'Desu', and that's because it has never been used in the English language. Which is why it needs to be explained or localised.

Edited by Rooke
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While "desu" can indicate a more formal speech or a peculiar character trait (versus those who don't use "desu"), the fact of the matter is that "desu" is typically just indicating state of being, so I feel as though keeping it in English, more often than not, just ruins the sentence for no good reason.

This is on a whole different level than honorific usage since it doesn't particularly indicate anything relevant in English if you were to keep it. In Japanese the word "desu" has a proper grammatical function and that grammatical function has an English equivalent so there is no reason to keep it in a translation, as much as you see it as a character trait.

As much of a weeb as I am, I don't feel like keeping end particles is a good decision no matter how frequent they are in the original script.

You'd have to give me a really good explanation to keep desu in an English script other than "it's a character trait", because plenty of characteres have plenty of different ways to end their sentences in Japanese. If we were to keep all these different particles, the finished product would be a mess.

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While "desu" can indicate a more formal speech or a peculiar character trait (versus those who don't use "desu"), the fact of the matter is that "desu" is typically just indicating state of being, so I feel as though keeping it in English, more often than not, just ruins the sentence for no good reason.

Well, they did differentiate between sentences where it's used normally and ones where you wouldn't attach desu in normal speech. If a character has a habit of using grammar in a non-standard way, that should be reflected in the translation - but yeah, not by just leaving the particle as is.

Now that I've actually watched the video, I've noticed びく wasn't translated and a TL note directly attached instead. I don't think that's a good idea. Keeping onomatopoeia untranslated is something you certainly can do, but I don't think you should for ones that an English speaker wouldn't understand. And definitely not with a translation note following it.

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makina verbal tick is not translated, the " なのよさ" that she adds at the end of every single sentence is not translated because it cannot be translated, even if you want to it would look bad. What they did manage to add was the way of her speaking, doing things like "th'" "excellen''" etc but that is not related at all with the "nanoyosa" that she constantly keeps adding. Again that was lost in the translation.

 

This is just a silly idea but when she says "hai desu" maybe translate it as something like "yes, ciertamente"(certainly) "yes sir, desu" to " yes sir, enseguida!(at once)" it gets trickier when you have in the same sentences the desu twice like with "了解なのです" and  ".....だったのです" but by doing this it seems like you are repeating the same mistake so i dont know, I will try to spot something while reading a vn.

This makes her sound really subservient which is probably not what you want. 

that's the idea, she is a subordinated and again it was just a silly idea.

 

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While "desu" can indicate a more formal speech or a peculiar character trait (versus those who don't use "desu"), the fact of the matter is that "desu" is typically just indicating state of being, so I feel as though keeping it in English, more often than not, just ruins the sentence for no good reason.

This is on a whole different level than honorific usage since it doesn't particularly indicate anything relevant in English if you were to keep it. In Japanese the word "desu" has a proper grammatical function and that grammatical function has an English equivalent so there is no reason to keep it in a translation, as much as you see it as a character trait.

As much of a weeb as I am, I don't feel like keeping end particles is a good decision no matter how frequent they are in the original script.

You'd have to give me a really good explanation to keep desu in an English script other than "it's a character trait", because plenty of characteres have plenty of different ways to end their sentences in Japanese. If we were to keep all these different particles, the finished product would be a mess.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

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Before anybody gets funny ideas, like say trying to connect the usage of 'adios' with the usage of 'desu', and concluding that 'adios' is a foreign word which needs no explanation and so neither should 'desu', allow me to point out that while the word 'adios' descends from Spanish it has a very long history of being used in the English speaking world. It is used frequently in everyday English conversations, so much so that I can walk to my trusty American Merriam Webster dictionary and find adios defined inside. If I flip to 'D'... nope, no 'Desu', and that's because it has never been used in the English language. Which is why it needs to be explained or localised.

The reason why Spanish words are okay is because major English speaking countries also have many Spanish speakers from surroundings countries which causes  their culture to sift in. As a result, almost every English speaker in say the US will now a few Spanish words like say Uno, Adios, Amigo, etc. It's basically the same thing as how Japanese has a shitload of English words in the language that people know and use all the time, but to a lesser degree. The same thing doesn't really hold true in English for Japanese save a few cultural words like Samurai, Ninja, Sushi, you get the idea. Putting in desu in a translation isn't a smart idea because the vast majority of English speakers, yes even in the anime community, aren't going to understand what it means even if they know of the word. 

 

makina verbal tick is not translated, the " なのよさ" that she adds at the end of every single sentence is not translated because it cannot be translated, even if you want to it would look bad. What they did manage to add was the way of her speaking, doing things like "th'" "excellen''" etc but that is not related at all with the "nanoyosa" that she constantly keeps adding. Again that was lost in the translation.

 

That's what translating is. Speech quirks typically don't have much meaning on their own beyond being a part of certain speech habits. Even if the "nanoyosa" wasn't directly translated, that doesn't mean meaning was lost in the transition. 

 

Also just translate desu as yes most of the time, be creative when you can't, there problem fixed. 

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While I don't have much to contribute, I am incredibly happy to see some constructive discussion on translation and localisation of speech patterns, quirks, and untranslatable things in general. I'm very much a fan of creative solutions, no matter how unorthodox or, well, plainly bad it turns out to be. It's certainly a welcome effort to try and be unique.

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Before anybody gets funny ideas, like say trying to connect the usage of 'adios' with the usage of 'desu', and concluding that 'adios' is a foreign word which needs no explanation and so neither should 'desu', allow me to point out that while the word 'adios' descends from Spanish it has a very long history of being used in the English speaking world. It is used frequently in everyday English conversations, so much so that I can walk to my trusty American Merriam Webster dictionary and find adios defined inside. If I flip to 'D'... nope, no 'Desu', and that's because it has never been used in the English language. Which is why it needs to be explained or localised.

The reason why Spanish words are okay is because major English speaking countries also have many Spanish speakers from surroundings countries which causes  their culture to sift in. As a result, almost every English speaker in say the US will now a few Spanish words like say Uno, Adios, Amigo, etc. It's basically the same thing as how Japanese has a shitload of English words in the language that people know and use all the time, but to a lesser degree. The same thing doesn't really hold true in English for Japanese save a few cultural words like Samurai, Ninja, Sushi, you get the idea. Putting in desu in a translation isn't a smart idea because the vast majority of English speakers, yes even in the anime community, aren't going to understand what it means even if they know of the word. 

If they want to translate the game only for US audiences, then fine, throw as much Spanish in as you can. Yes, I know the fact that you guys in US UK learn Spanish at school. But most other countries don't teach Spanish but English at school, so putting a bunch of "only-US-and-Spanish-people-can-understand"'s words is just dumb.

And if you want to translate it, make it "please", like Izuna

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Who cares about this desu nonsense? Do we buy vns with cute moe girls because of how sexy they yelp "desu"? Of course not. 

If you can make a character that can say a catchy word and make it their signature word for the rest of the vn while making us laugh, I'm all for it. Speech patterns can give characters personality like that one guy in Jojo that says "ora ora ora" all the time.

Like, it would just be freaking hilarious if someone says "adios" every sentence. 

Edited by CeruleanGamer
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 If they want to translate the game only for US audiences, then fine, throw as much Spanish in as you can. Yes, I know the fact that you guys in US UK learn Spanish at school. But most other countries don't teach Spanish but English at school, so putting a bunch of "only-US-and-Spanish-people-can-understand"'s words is just dumb.

Australian here, and I hear it all the time. 'Adios' is a word that has been incorporated into the English language throughout the world, probably because Spanish and American culture spreads (but I have no knowledge here.) You may not hear about it where you are, but you're able to pick up any English dictionary and look up the word, which is something you can't do with 'Desu'.

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You may not hear about it where you are, but you're able to pick up any English dictionary and look up the word, which is something you can't do with 'Desu'.

That's a slippery slope.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help in most cases.  です (desu) frequently doesn't translate directly into an English word.  Instead, it is usually an indicator of a speech mode, in this case the 敬体 (keitai) (formal) mode, also referred to as 敬語 (keigo) or ですます (desumasu) style because of the syllables it uses.  A sentence written in ですます is no different in literal meaning than one written in 常体 (joutai) (casual) mode.  However, it is usually considered a more polite and formal style of speech.  You can consider it the difference between responding to a request by saying "Yeah, sure" (casual) or "I shall." (formal).  Same meaning, but you get a different impression of the speaker by how it is said.  It would be used when speaking to someone of higher rank, for example.

 

Even more unfortunately, what we have here is *misuse* of the speech mode, in a way that suggests a low intelligence speaker.  E.g., normally 'desu' would be correct to use at the end of some of her sentences, but she uses even when she shouldn't, as if she doesn't understand the actual grammatical rules for her mode of speech.  It's hard to come up with an English equivalent 'quirk' that carries both the implication of respect and formally combined with stupidity.

But however hard it is, or inaccurate, almost anything is better than tossing in a Japanese word that is a grammatical concept rather than an English word.

 

(The actual discussion of different speech modes and keigo vs teineigo vs bikago could take forever, and produce shouting matches between professorial experts, so it is best not to think much about it here)

 

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You may not hear about it where you are, but you're able to pick up any English dictionary and look up the word, which is something you can't do with 'Desu'.

That's a slippery slope.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help in most cases.  です (desu) frequently doesn't translate directly into an English word.  Instead, it is usually an indicator of a speech mode, in this case the 敬体 (keitai) (formal) mode, also referred to as 敬語 (keigo) or ですます (desumasu) style because of the syllables it uses.  A sentence written in ですます is no different in literal meaning than one written in 常体 (joutai) (casual) mode.  However, it is usually considered a more polite and formal style of speech.  You can consider it the difference between responding to a request by saying "Yeah, sure" (casual) or "I shall." (formal).  Same meaning, but you get a different impression of the speaker by how it is said.  It would be used when speaking to someone of higher rank, for example.

 

Even more unfortunately, what we have here is *misuse* of the speech mode, in a way that suggests a low intelligence speaker.  E.g., normally 'desu' would be correct to use at the end of some of her sentences, but she uses even when she shouldn't, as if she doesn't understand the actual grammatical rules for her mode of speech.  It's hard to come up with an English equivalent 'quirk' that carries both the implication of respect and formally combined with stupidity.

But however hard it is, or inaccurate, almost anything is better than tossing in a Japanese word that is a grammatical concept rather than an English word.

 

(The actual discussion of different speech modes and keigo vs teineigo vs bikago could take forever, and produce shouting matches between professorial experts, so it is best not to think much about it here)

 

Um, I'm pretty sure it's not that complicated.  Why do anime girls often have a protruding tooth or a strand of hair that sticks up?  Because it's cute.  It's just a distinguishing trait.  That's all you really need to know...

The desu doesn't need to be included in the text, nor does it necessarily need to be translated.  If you listen to the voice, you'll hear it, and it's still distinctive even to a foreign ear.  Nothing lost in translation here.

Edited by sanahtlig
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desu no te vayas sin decirme a dónde vaaaaaaaas

Leave the です just add a footnote saying "desu doesn't mean shit on itself is just there to make the character look more adorable,ですね*"

*yes add that "desune" at the end just to create conflict and controversy:Teeku:

Edited by Deep Blue
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roflmao. I can't believe you guys are arguing about nothing. People actually lose sleep over this desu nonsense? <_< I treat it basically like a speech mannerism like Makina talking like a country hillbilly or an ojousama needing to say "hohoho" every time she says something clever and nothing else. It can make characters cute or incredibly annoying. I've seen desu used in different contexts  like agreeing with someone and wanting something while sometimes it is said just for the sake of saying it even if it's pointless to add it in the conversation. 

Edited by CeruleanGamer
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The vn seems really interesting and I definitely wish that it's kickstarter is successful.

 

As for the 'desu' argument going on, I'd say that there isn't a need to go so deep and overthink things.

The only thing that needs to be seen is that will adding a desu be more annoying to people who don't know about it or will the people who already know about it be angry at it's absence.
The people who don't know about it will definitely be annoyed at a word they don't know and even some people who do know might get irritated reading 'desu' at the end of every sentence. The people who do know about it, I'm sure are also able to listen to the japanese voice playing and figure out the 'desu' and will not be in the dark. I'd say that capitalizing on the fact that there is voicing which exists to better express the speaking-mannerisms, would be the best move.

So yeah I would say that not having 'desu' is the better choice. Though even if it remains, it won't be game-breaking and be dismissed as a minor-inconvenience by most.
 

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