Jump to content

Majo Koi Nikki Translation Project


Hasa

Recommended Posts

Some very nice TL progress this week, thanks to our Hijiri translator (who, by way of explanation, had some major personal stuff come up in the previous week; all good, shit happens, we're back on track now). No progress elsewhere this week, somewhat as expected. I'll resume trying to catch up to the TL now that it's made a good chunk of progress, though I've got a lot going on myself right now, so edit progress will likely move a bit slower than it typically has, for the next few weeks.

Translation: 37080/40208 (92.2%), +875 (2.2%)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Thanks for asking. I kind of lost my rhythm of updating here when the forums were down for a while, and then the truth is there hasn't been much call for an update since. I've been hoping for translation progress to make another update, which always seems right around the corner, but I've been thinking I should just update the thread anyway on current status, so, here goes:

Numbers-wise, we are exactly where we were last time I updated: 92.2% TLed and Edited, and 71.0% TLCed. This belies the fact that I've spent the last few weeks actually going through and incorporating all that TLC into the edits, as well as fixing up a lot of edits along the way. So, the 71% of the script which has been TLCed is in excellent shape and doesn't need any more work other than: a QC pass, finalizing font display and line breaking work on the tech side, and image editing, including a small amount of CG work and a larger amount of easier work on system menus.

For the remaining 7.8% to be translated and 29.0% to be TLCed, the translators and TLC folks on the project and assigned to that work have been overwhelmed with their day jobs, so they simply haven't had time to make progress. That said, our froggy translator, who's translated about 23% of the total script so far, stepped up yesterday to take a  curtain call, volunteering to pick up the remaining translation work, so we actually are likely to start seeing steady translation progress again soon. We'll still need our two other folks to find some time to finish the TLC job after that's done, and then I'll need to incorporate that TLC and we'll have to do the other stuff I mentioned above, but that should be a smaller barrier than finishing off the core translation work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

It's been quite a while since the last update, but happily enough, progress has actually resumed. I don't have all that much progress to report, but the digit on the translated and edited percentage counters bumped up, so I figured it was worth a post here:

Translated and Edited: 37455/40208 (93.2%), +375 (0.9%)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
6 hours ago, Veshurik said:

Are you still alive?.. By any chance?

We have not died in the last three weeks. We just also have not made any progress to speak of in the last three weeks. Hopefully my translators come back from their paid gigs soon so we can wrap this up. Believe me, I'm much, much more anxious than you are about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Veshurik said:

By the way, do you know, maybe...

Is QooBrand closed? They didn't release any new game since 2015 (PS Vita). And their blog last updated in June 2014...

I think the game have good sales? Why so... Thanks!

I don't know much of anything about the developer. The director and main writer for MKN, who is somewhat famous as eroge writers go, hasn't had a director position since MKN, and instead has just been doing scenario writing other people's projects, including the next Key game, Summer Pockets. Seems somewhat telling to me: maybe the game didn't do as well as anyone hoped.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure you should over-analyze the results. QooBrand is owned by Amuse Craft and they publish under 13 names (none of them Amuse Craft). 7 of those have just one VN. Viewing the brand names as one and there is no shortage of recent production and releases. We don't know why they do it like that, but it's likely some financial strategy, either taxes or a failing VN can go bankrupt without risking good titles getting involved with the bankruptcy. There are plenty of possible reasons for a setup like that, which has nothing to do with VN quality or if sales have met expectations. Multiple Japanese publishers develop VNs under multiple brand names.

 

The director was involved in 6 VNs in the first 8 years and he directed 3 of them. Now he has had 3 years of 3 VNs where he didn't direct any. He switched to Key, but it's certainly not the first switch he has made. For all we know he might have wanted to get involved with Key and even turned down directing for Amuse Craft when given the chance to get inside with Key. The VN he did scenario writing on after Majo Koi Nikki happened to be for Us:track, another Amuse Craft brand name. They didn't kick him out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
3 hours ago, Stormwolf said:
  Hide contents

True ending and utsuge.. I really can't stand reading and caring about people for 50+ hours only for it to fall apart at the end. Turmoil and a good resolution is fine. Should i stay away?

 

Spoiler

This game's structure is weird, and doesn't lend itself to descriptions like "true ending". The utsuge label is probably inappropriate as well, though maybe debatable.

There are two "true" endings, in a way. I suspect you'll like the first one, which means playing literally > 98% of the game (I calculated it), and which you can't "miss" (you can't accidentally see the second one). The second final ending is probably not up your alley, though it's pretty cool, IMO.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:
  Reveal hidden contents

This game's structure is weird, and doesn't lend itself to descriptions like "true ending". The utsuge label is probably inappropriate as well, though maybe debatable.

There are two "true" endings, in a way. I suspect you'll like the first one, which means playing literally > 98% of the game (I calculated it), and which you can't "miss" (you can't accidentally see the second one). The second final ending is probably not up your alley, though it's pretty cool, IMO.

 

Spoiler

When they put "true end" in there, then i think the very last ending is the true one. Sounds to me like this is a skip. Well, can't expect that every VN suits everyone, and that's certainly not a bad thing in general.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had lots of progress on the TL side until about a week ago, when the translator had a work commitment come up for a little while, but that should resume in a week or so. As things stand, that probably means the TL will be done in less than a month. Edit is progressing a bit slower, but it's on track to reach 100% in about a month as well.

Translation: 39569/40208 (98.4%)
Edit: 38325/40208 (95.3%)

Given that we're really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, we've started working on the endgame tasks as well (and by "we" I mostly mean our fearless programmer).

  • Linebreaking is solved now, but we're still not happy with the way the text rendering engine looks for English text, so that's looking at a complete overhaul. If we pull that off, that'll also let us do things like full Unicode support, meaning proper naïve cafés and whatnot (seems to be all the rage these days), and also improvements like italics (which I solemnly swear not to overuse; I'll mostly just be replacing the very few places where I've resorted to using all-caps words for emphasis).
  • Image editing has started, which has two areas (one requiring a lot more focus and ability than the other):
    • System menus and UI elements are somewhat done (many of them completed for the trial release ages ago), and are a more manageable project to begin with. Our same fearless programmer is tackling these.
    • We're also translating text in background images and CGs, which is mostly a lot of signs. It should be a pretty sweet experience when we're done, since some of the more prominent backgrounds have text which dovetails with important elements of the plot. For this work, I'd roughly estimate we've translated about 80% of the image text (with millions of thanks to our translator who squinted at itty bitty blurry text and translated it). And for actual image work, with thanks to the Musumaker project sharing their wealth of two image editors, and with thanks to the image editor themself, we've started the work of localizing the background image text, of which we have one background image completed (out of really not that many images overall; I want to say 5 distinct background scenes with text, some of them with extra versions for lighting changes based on time of day, and four CGs with text, each of which is a lot less text than the backgrounds).
  • We've also got another translator on board to read through the script briefly and give it one final check (the same one wrapping up the Hijiri route). I don't expect that additional check work or applying the results of it to add any time to our schedule beyond what we'd need for doing the remaining technical and image work.
  • Once all those changes are applied, images are ready, and the technical elements of the patch are done (remaining work is mostly on text layout), we'll be ready for a final QC pass and then release. I still don't want to speculate on a release time frame, but I will say that the end is finally in sight, and I'm looking forward to sharing all our hard work with you all when we're finally ready.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, I'm pleased to announce that translation and editing have both hit 100% for the project. It's unfortunately still too soon to project release time frames, because there's still so much work to do and it's all volunteer work, so it's hard to ask people to prioritize it. At the end of the day, I just can't say how long TLC and QC will take.

That said, I can at least set some minimum expected times: we won't be able to start QC until TLC is done and applied, and also until image editing and tech work are done. That's all at least a month out, probably closer to two months. After that, I expect QC will take another month, bare minimum, again probably closer to two. The game is still a lot of text. So, don't expect us to be done for a while yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Will you be attempting to sell the translation for an official release? 

Oh, don't get me wrong though, i support fan translators getting paid for their work. Just curious, since i'm always under the assumption that majority of fan translators that update on fuwa will eventual attempt to sell to official publishers if possible. If thats the case, the game may take a year or two for an actual release [i'm fine with that, part of the process]. 

Are translators allow to say that there's a possibility for it, or say something along the lines of "hey qc and tlc are 100% but it may take a year for us to release it" and people will know that it's probably gone official lol, or will that break the contractual agreement somehow? If you can't answer these questions its understandable.

Great job with the steady progress and good luck with completing it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, DharmaFreedom said:

Will you be attempting to sell the translation for an official release? 

Oh, don't get me wrong though, i support fan translators getting paid for their work. Just curious, since i'm always under the assumption that majority of fan translators that update on fuwa will eventual attempt to sell to official publishers if possible. If thats the case, the game may take a year or two for an actual release [i'm fine with that, part of the process]. 

Are translators allow to say that there's a possibility for it, or say something along the lines of "hey qc and tlc are 100% but it may take a year for us to release it" and people will know that it's probably gone official lol, or will that break the contractual agreement somehow? If you can't answer these questions its understandable.

Great job with the steady progress and good luck with completing it!

We're not part of any such agreement at this time, and we're not actively shopping the project around right now, but if the opportunity were to come up we'd probably take it, for a variety of reasons (not least that it would be a non-trivial amount of money in exchange for a non-trivial amount of work, but also a powerful motivation is that it would mean much broader exposure for the work).

At any rate, the current plan is to release a fan translation, but if that plan changed, I almost certainly wouldn't be at liberty to say anything anyway until after the localization publisher made some official announcement; I'd probably have to just say nothing. Or lie, I guess. In general that's a rather awkward question you've asked, since it's only going to put people in an awkward spot if they actually are selling, where they're stuck between a direct question and a contractual agreement not to answer that question.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 16/01/2018 at 4:36 AM, Fred the Barber said:

In general that's a rather awkward question you've asked, since it's only going to put people in an awkward spot if they actually are selling, where they're stuck between a direct question and a contractual agreement not to answer that question.

Yeah i get that, I think in that position, silence itself may be an answer to the question in a way :michiru:.

Anyway, thanks for the rep Fred, cheers!

Edited by DharmaFreedom
typo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...