Decay Posted November 5, 2016 Author Share Posted November 5, 2016 The strange part is that there is evidence that it wasn't machine translated. It is very highly likely that IMHHW was translated by multiple actual human beings of varying skill levels, ranging from "bad" to "absolutely godawful." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EastCoastDrifter Posted November 5, 2016 Share Posted November 5, 2016 4 minutes ago, Dergonu said: I'm afraid that was most likely google translate-san, and seeing as he is a machine and all, I don't think he feels pride. I like how the editor was just like, "yup, this is fine. I won't question this at all." and just let it stay in the TL. Word of advice: do not use Google translate to translate full Japanese into English period. I've found that out the hard way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted November 5, 2016 Share Posted November 5, 2016 Just now, Decay said: The strange part is that there is evidence that it wasn't machine translated. It is very highly likely that IMHHW was translated by multiple actual human beings of varying skill levels, ranging from "bad" to "absolutely godawful." Yeah, that is the confusing part. Some lines are completely fine, and others are... well, that. I can't possibly imagine a way for a human being to actually produce something like that line though. It clearly has machine TL written all over it. Maybe they had a bunch of TLers, and one was quite simply not sure how he was going to TL his lines and he just chucked them into google translate and called it a day? That then raises the question, why was it not corrected by one of the better translators later on? ... I really want to know what went on during the translation of this game lol. Must have been one hell of a mess. 2 minutes ago, KonpekiUmi said: Word of advice: do not use Google translate to translate full Japanese into English period. I've found that out the hard way. Words to live by. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetpack003 Posted November 5, 2016 Share Posted November 5, 2016 3 hours ago, Decay said: Reveal hidden contents To this day I still don't know what was going on with that line. I literally thought there was a dead body in this game and that the game started to turn into a murder mystery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nandemonai Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 10 hours ago, KonpekiUmi said: Word of advice: do not use Google translate to translate full Japanese into English period. I've found that out the hard way. It can be done. But you need to already know enough Japanese to decompose complex sentences into simple ones. And you have to be able to pick out peoples' names yourself. Google Translate really loses its shit if there are names in the sentence, because it doesn't recognize them as names, so it tries to translate the kanji as if they were meaningful words. Generally this results in gibberish. Basically, Google Translate can be used to romanize unfamiliar vocabulary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 40 minutes ago, Nandemonai said: It can be done. But you need to already know enough Japanese to decompose complex sentences into simple ones. And you have to be able to pick out peoples' names yourself. Google Translate really loses its shit if there are names in the sentence, because it doesn't recognize them as names, so it tries to translate the kanji as if they were meaningful words. Generally this results in gibberish. Basically, Google Translate can be used to romanize unfamiliar vocabulary. But I mean, why would someone who knows Japanese do this?... If you run into some vocabulary you don't fully understand, you are better off looking it up on a Japanese grammar site that can explain the definition and usage of the grammar to fully understand it. I don't see how using a machine TL to romanize it would help. (Not to mention that the parsing done by machine TLers like google translate is terrible, so a lot of the time you'll probably just get the incorrect result anyways.) I really don't think using google translate for anything but absolute basic stuff like "hello" is at all worth it in any language tbh. EastCoastDrifter 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nandemonai Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 In my case, I have a decent grasp of Japanese grammar but a rather small vocabulary (I just am not good at memorizing giant lists of stuff). Google Translate is convenient because it is a hell of a lot faster than pasting 80% of the words in every paragraph into a dictionary one at a time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pabloc Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 Hahahaha... Spoiler I'll say this right here - forget about any re-translations. I'm not touching anything by MoeNovel ever again, and I highly doubt you would find anyone else who is stupidly stubborn enough to stick with a project like that. IMHHW is the one and only title that has a realistic chance for getting a fan re-translation, otherwise that's just not gonna happen. If you don't want to see LOLcalization companies hiring the cheapest (and worst) "translators" available and feeding you censored, barely intelligible gibberish, vote with your wallet. Instead of buying crap targeted at the most illiterate people among the Steam crowd, support companies that actually give a damn about overall release quality. 15 hours ago, Decay said: The strange part is that there is evidence that it wasn't machine translated. It is very highly likely that IMHHW was translated by multiple actual human beings of varying skill levels, ranging from "bad" to "absolutely godawful." True. I'm almost certain it was """translated""" by multiple humans, MTs make different mistakes. 4 hours ago, Nandemonai said: Basically, Google Translate can be used to romanize unfamiliar vocabulary. But why would you do that, when you have Rikaichan/kun, MeCab and JParser? Fred the Barber, Narcosis, Soulless Watcher and 8 others 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted November 6, 2016 Author Share Posted November 6, 2016 The only way you can expect a retranslation of whatever these guys release next is if it's something they would have translated already anyway. Nobody should expect some noble hero swooping in to save the day. That's just not going to happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenophilious Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 Groups like MoeNovel are why I hate the mindset of "any official translation at all is good, no matter the quality. We should support them to show that there's a market for visual novels in the west", because then we get steaming piles of crap like IMHHW, and then other companies like Debonosu and Co. see that people are willing to buy anything with cute anniemay grills no matter how shitty the translation is and how ham handed the censorship job, and want in on the mad rush to reach the bottom. I mean, Jesus, look at what MangaGamer and SP alone have announced this year. We don't need to give every random company our money in the hopes that the industry will grow and we'll get more translated VNs. If anything, we should be pickier about who we give money to now, if only so that we can prevent more Konosoras from happening. Accepting and rewarding garbage in the hopes that we'll eventually get something better is moronic and counterproductive. finiteHP, XReaper, Soulless Watcher and 2 others 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 47 minutes ago, Zenophilious said: Groups like MoeNovel are why I hate the mindset of "any official translation at all is good, no matter the quality. We should support them to show that there's a market for visual novels in the west", because then we get steaming piles of crap like IMHHW, and then other companies like Debonosu and Co. see that people are willing to buy anything with cute anniemay grills no matter how shitty the translation is and how ham handed the censorship job, and want in on the mad rush to reach the bottom. I mean, Jesus, look at what MangaGamer and SP alone have announced this year. We don't need to give every random company our money in the hopes that the industry will grow and we'll get more translated VNs. If anything, we should be pickier about who we give money to now, if only so that we can prevent more Konosoras from happening. Accepting and rewarding garbage in the hopes that we'll eventually get something better is moronic and counterproductive. that´s exactly what i meant in my comment above, as said "choosers can´t be beggards" attitude some peple have is what keeps this pile of crap growing infinitely. this is late 2016, not the 90´s and there´re more than enough good quality works available these days to pick from. deluding oneself that supporting each and every thing which pops up will come to fruition eventually is nothing but detrimental to the industry as a whole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyr Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 On 6.11.2016 at 11:09 AM, Dergonu said: (Not to mention that the parsing done by machine TLers like google translate is terrible, so a lot of the time you'll probably just get the incorrect result anyways.) You are only talking about heuristic guesslations like Google Translate, not the "normal" rule-based parsing most professional machine translators do. Do not confuse these which each other. The results are not comparable. I'm sorry, every time I see someone criticizing machine translators by giving Google Translate as an example, the scientist in me throws a fit. Which happens like every week at least once. Please stop doing this to me. ;_; Dergonu and Dreamysyu 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 7 minutes ago, Tyrosyn said: You are only talking about heuristic guesslations like Google Translate, not the "normal" rule-based parsing most professional machine translators do. Do not confuse these which each other. The results are not comparable. I'm sorry, every time I see someone criticizing machine translators by giving Google Translate as an example, the scientist in me throws a fit. Which happens like every week at least once. Please stop doing this to me. ;_; That is true, though in this case, google translate was the actual topic of conversation, which is why I specifically mentioned that. It has to be said though, that most machine TLs do have many issues with parsing. Even the tiniest amount of slang or unique speech patterns will break them, even the best ones. They simply can't think like people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyr Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 1 minute ago, Dergonu said: It has to be said though, that most machine TLs do have many issues with parsing. Even the tiniest amount of slang or unique speech patterns will break them. That is true, but that is not the fault of the machine translator. Machines don't make mistakes. The problem is that your human-made dictionary does not include these Japanese slang terms and the rules the translation is based on describes "correct" Japanese and not the "incorrect" Japanese these punks speak. ^^ Ironically, due to the nature of how heuristic translations work, Google is actually better with slang and unique speech, but that is another topic, lol. Vorathiel and Dergonu 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 1 hour ago, Tyrosyn said: That is true, but that is not the fault of the machine translator. Machines don't make mistakes. The problem is that your human-made dictionary does not include these Japanese slang terms and the rules the translation is based on describes "correct" Japanese and not the "incorrect" Japanese these punks speak. ^^ Ironically, due to the nature of how heuristic translations work, Google is actually better with slang and unique speech, but that is another topic, lol. Yeah. Sadly, languages are rarely that straight forward and machine like in actual use, so the poor machine TL-san gets a lot more hate than he should, as he does a lot of mistakes with very basic conversational lines most of the time. Maybe some day they will start making these things "smarter", so that they can understand when there is slang / other unique forms used in the sentences they are translating, making them a lot more accurate. (This would of course put translators out of their jobs, so please don't do this scientist-san ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 17 minutes ago, Dergonu said: Maybe some day they will start making these things "smarter", so that they can understand when there is slang / other unique forms used in the sentences they are translating, making them a lot more accurate. (This would of course put translators out of their jobs, so please don't do this scientist-san ) as far as i know google did announce just recently of them plan on releasing a vastly improved version of the translator of theirs, though it´s only in the case of chinese <->english for now (if i remember correctly). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 1 minute ago, XReaper said: as far as i know google did announce just recently of them plan on releasing a vastly improved version of the translator of theirs, though it´s only in the case of chinese <->english for now (if i remember correctly). Guh, if I literally lose my potential translation jobs in the future to a machine, I will riot ChaosRaven 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 3 hours ago, Dergonu said: Guh, if I literally lose my potential translation jobs in the future to a machine, I will riot Writers will lose their jobs before translators lose theirs. It's reached the stage where machines can write short, informative journalistic pieces at a human level. That is, readers are presented two articles, one written by an AI and one written by a human and people can't pick between the two. Take the test http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/08/opinion/sunday/algorithm-human-quiz.html Nandemonai 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dergonu Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 1 minute ago, Darklord Rooke said: Writers will lose their jobs before translators lose theirs. It's reached the stage where machines can write short, informative journalistic pieces at a human level. That is, readers are presented two articles, one written by an AI and one written by a human and people can't pick between the two. Take the test http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/03/08/opinion/sunday/algorithm-human-quiz.html That's some legit matrix shit right there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hayashi Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 On 11/6/2016 at 7:20 AM, jetpack003 said: To this day I still don't know what was going on with that line. I literally thought there was a dead body in this game and that the game started to turn into a murder mystery. I do believe this means, the aircraft body needs checking and inspecting and err, it must be done otherwise it's not kay? Cause, burden. jetpack003 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinterfuryZX Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 On 6/11/2016 at 9:15 PM, Zenophilious said: Debonosu Their latest title seems to have a readable translation, even them improved from their first localization. Give them time and money and maybe we will get some decent MaW and Castle Fantasia localization out of them (no MG an SP won't bring them over, not even a chance). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenophilious Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 19 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said: Their latest title seems to have a readable translation, even them improved from their first localization. Give them time and money and maybe we will get some decent MaW and Castle Fantasia localization out of them (no MG an SP won't bring them over, not even a chance). Uh, no, it really doesn't. It reads like crap if you can understand English well enough to see when a sentence is clunky. Going off of the description of the game's Steam page (since I refuse to buy it), the English looks pretty terrible. Want me to point out a few choice mistakes? By the way, I'm not an English major. I've taken beginning English classes in college, which are mandatory for everyone, and high school English classes before that. I haven't taken any advanced English classes and I don't write that much in my spare time. Quote Adonis has been learning to be a dragon tamer as an apprentice to an ex-dragon tamer Danan. "Training" would be a better word choice to go along with "apprentice", but it's passable. Not much wrong with this sentence, honestly, other than that it lacks detail. It would have been nice if they described Adonis is some form, instead of just plopping him into our laps as (presumably) a male that wants to be a dragon tamer. Quote One day, he meets a dragon girl Mint while he trains alone in forest. Without even noting the lack of a "the" before "forest", this sentence is pretty crappy. A sentence that would read much better would be something like, "One day, while training alone in the forest, he meets a dragon girl named Mint.". While simply stating the dragon girl's name directly after describing what she is works for basic comprehension, it's extremely sloppy. If they really didn't want to use "named", they should have done something like "...meets a dragon girl, Mint, while he...". Overall, not a terrible sentence, but it's not good for readability, and the "trains alone in forest" makes it sound like it was written by someone that has a poor grasp on English. Surprise, surprise. I'd personally use past tense for this whole description, as present is kind of odd for this, IMO, but it's not really that big of a deal and is more about my writing style. Quote The girl calls him Daddy although he never had a single girl friend. This literally makes no sense. Never having a girlfriend wouldn't prevent someone from calling them daddy. It's not normal in everyday life to just call people "daddy", but the second half of this sentence doesn't mention this, does it? Furthermore, "girlfriend" is the word they were looking for, as "girl friend" is one of the ways people will use to prevent people from thinking that they're in a relationship when they're really just friends with a girl. To someone that's fluent in English, this could be taken to mean that he's never had a single friend that was female, and as such, is a poorly constructed sentence. Is it implying that since he's never had a girlfriend, he's never had a chance to reproduce, and that's why being called "daddy" is weird? I don't know, because the sentence doesn't really say that. If the reader has to go out of their way to figure out the meaning of a sentence, then you've done a pretty bad job at writing. Quote He explains her that it must be some mistake but all she remembers is her own name. "He EXPLAINS her...". Dafuq? You can't explain someone. You explain things to people. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt here and just assume that they forgot to add in a "to", and not that they're incompetent and don't understand how to properly use "explain". Missing comma between "but" and "mistake". Some comma placements are optional, but this one is not. It's basic sentence structure. Quote In confusion, he decides to takes her Dannan's home and what he is confessed there is the fact that Mint is the girl who destines him as a dragon tamer. Ugh. This sentence is the worst one so far. Get ready for a quite a few complaints. "In confusion" is a pretty bad way to start a sentence. It's typically used for short moments where the subject is confused, not long periods of time. It makes it sound like he's confused and just wanders over to Dannan's house while having no idea what's happening or why he's there. A more typical usage of "in confusion" would be "In the confusion, Bob ran into Lisa and dropped his candy bar." Not technically incorrect, as far as I can tell, but it sounds pretty stupid. Also, there's yet another missing "to". I'm sensing a pattern here. "...what he is confessed there..." What the actual hell?! Where's the person confessing to him? You need someone doing the confessing to have the subject hear a confession. It's also the wrong word to use there, and no, synonyms can't all be used interchangeably. "Confession" has a negative connotation, usually one of guilt from doing something wrong. You'd "confess" to the cops when they catch you, you'd "confess" to having cheated on your wife, or your parents would "confess" that you were adopted. You wouldn't "confess" to the main character that a girl is destined to be trained by the main character, especially when the girl has only just appeared and the person (Dannan? I don't know, it doesn't say. His name has now also been spelled "Danan" and "Dannan". Pick one, for God's sake.) wasn't specifically intending to deceive him. Something like "learns" or "discovers" makes the sentence a little less stupid. Hell, even "told" makes much more sense the way the sentence is written. "...is the fact that Mint is the girl who destines him as a dragon tamer." Ummm...is she destined to him as a dragon trainer, for him to train? If so, that would be yet another missing "to". Am I to assume that her mere existence shapes his destiny, or does she read his tea leaves to tell him his destiny or some other bullshit? I thought he was already training to be a dragon trainer. This raises so many questions that I really don't care about. Quote Adonis contracts to be a partner of a memory loss dragon girl and they begin their journey to see around the world in order to find out Mint's lost memory. "Memory loss dragon girl"? WTF is this garbage? They've already given Mint a name, so why shouldn't they use it earlier in the sentence, where it would make the most sense? Is this really a good way to refer to a character, by summing up all of their attributes? I guess I can now walk up to my friend and say, "Hey, tall brown-haired college man!", and he'd look up, knowing that I was talking to him, and not think my choice of words was weird in any way. "Makes a contract with" or "agrees to be the partner of" would both be better choices here, without completely re-writing the beginning part of the sentence. "Contract" is a very formal word, usually for legally binding agreements. It doesn't really fit in this sentence all that well. Did they draw up a contract and have both parties sign, or something? Because that's kind of what it sounds like. Is Adonis being employed by Mint to help rediscover her memory? That would be quite odd. "...and they begin their journey to see around the world in order to find out Mint's lost memory." Replace "see" with "travel", it's a terrible word choice unless they're just visually searching the world without leaving a set place. "Rediscover" would be a more apt word than "find out". Trying to "find out" someone's lost memory sounds hilariously stupid, and isn't something most people would choose to say if they had a decent vocabulary. Quote The game is based on a mult-scenario and how you play the game will affect the scenario branching off in 4 different patterns that Mint also varies her appearance and personality. So, yeah, it's quite shitty. I'm sure an English teacher or major could rip even more holes in that tiny description than I did. Also, notice how the official screenshots only have extremely simple sentences that consist of only a couple of words. It's almost like they're trying to hide that they're unable to string together longer sentences without them sounding like broken English. Who'da thunk it This whole description reads like it was written by someone that is learning English as a second language, and is mostly relying on dictionaries and spell-check to make sure what they're saying makes any sense at all. I wouldn't even read it if it was free, which it isn't. VLOCKUP, Narcosis, XReaper and 2 others 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinterfuryZX Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 I confess I didn't read the summary on their steam page (edit: it most probably wasn't written by the same guy who was in charge of the actual translation, anyway). I might purchase the game once I'm finished with code realize. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenophilious Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 2 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said: I confess I didn't read the summary on their steam page. I might purchase the game once I'm finished with code realize. So, what, you just assumed it was good without any sort of evidence? Why? Their previous attempt was laughably bad, and pretty much anyone that read it that had decent English skills made fun of it for being terrible. Why would they suddenly improve? 2 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said: (edit: it most probably wasn't written by the same guy who was in charge of the actual translation, anyway). That's not a safe assumption, as the description for Kagura Douchuuki was utter crap before SP sent them a competently translated description (that's dovac's deleted reddit account, I remember him posting that comment), and the game itself was similarly poorly translated, from what I've seen (gotta find out those missing females!). They actually left the description they were given up even after they released that hack job, even though it refers to the game's release in future tense, and every post they make of the Steam forums looks like it's machine TL'd. So, no, I have absolutely zero faith that they'll ever get their act together and care even slightly about the quality of their translations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nandemonai Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 11 hours ago, XReaper said: as far as i know google did announce just recently of them plan on releasing a vastly improved version of the translator of theirs, though it´s only in the case of chinese <->english for now (if i remember correctly). You apparently remember correctly. It exists, it's been rolled out for Chinese <--> English only: https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for-machine.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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