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(COMPLETE) World End Economica Ep. 1 Retranslation Project


LUSEX

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Quote

"I stand on the other side of an orange-tinted sky,
Can't stop the moving clock, all the time that's passing by..."

 

Important Notice:

This retranslation patch is only applicable to the Ren'py version of the game (i.e. Steam/Humble Bundle) and will not work with the KiriKiri version. It affects only the English text of the game and should not change the Japanese script in any way. For more information on applying the patch, check the Patch Instructions section.

 

Project Introduction - WEE:1 Retranslation:

In brief, the WEE:1 Retranslation is a patch that fixes a multitude of mistranslations, formatting, grammatical and punctuation errors and flow-of-text problems with the English script in the Ren'py release of World End Economica Episode 1. It also restores a number of lines that were accidentally omitted from the Ren'py version that were present in the original KiriKiri release.

The retranslated script was based off the original English translation from the KiriKiri version and, of course, the Japanese from the same.

Original Game: WORLD END ECONOMiCA episode.01
VNDB: https://vndb.org/v7184
Project Team: LUSEX Team

 

Background to World End Economica:

The original World End Economica (WEE) project was started sometime around 2011 by Spicy Tails, a Japanese indie/doujin group and was marketed largely around the fact the main scenario writer for the VN was Isana Hasekura of Spice & Wolf fame.

WEE's first English release occurred in 2013, shortly before the release of the third and final episode of the series in Japan. According to VNDB, this translation was done by a team of three - YukkuriS, zalas and Agilis - commissioned by Spicy Tails themself. This initial release (the 'KiriKiri release'), like the Japanese releases, ran on the KiriKiri engine and was only available on MangaGamer and DLsite.

A year later, Sekai Project obtained the license to the series and, after a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign, promised to deliver an English release of the remaining two episode.

In order to drum up the marketing hype, Episode 1 was ported to Ren'py and released on other platforms such as Steam. This 'Ren'py release' contained both the original Japanese script as well as a "fixed" version of the English script from the KiriKiri release, which itself had received a patch containing the same "fixes" at the beginning of the year.

 

Background to the Retranslation Project:

Although few may have noticed without having played both the KiriKiri and Ren'py versions, it happens that the supposedly-fixed Ren'py version actually introduces additional bugs in the form of glitched nameboxes, formatting errors and even more egregiously, omitting portions of text including an extremely plot-critical line near the end of the game, which was present and translated in the KiriKiri version. Note that some of these missing lines (including the aforementioned) are in fact missing from both Ren'py's Japanese text and English text - however, this patch addresses only the English script in the game.

As with the KiriKiri version, there are a multitude of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and outright mistranslations that persist from before - whatever fixes may have been made for the re-release, it appears that little of it had to do with the quality of the script*.

A picture is worth a thousand words and  below we provide a montage of some of the more attention-worthy examples that we have addressed (warning - the section may contain spoilers).

* NB: There ARE some, but not many, changes to the script and at least one introduces additional inaccuracies, as is visible in the screenshot regarding the autolock door (Scenario 2, third image). The KiriKiri English version describes the autolock as in the Japanese, but this was cut in the Ren'py English version, ostensibly to "fix" the logical inconsistency (which was in fact caused by a mistranslation of 鍵 which can mean both "lock" and "key").

 

Screenshots (The Differences):

The game is divided into 8 "Scenarios". We have chosen a number of examples from the beginning, middle and end to showcase the types of existing issues and our means of addressing them. Bear in mind that these are only a FEW of the issues that exist, chosen simply to demonstrate of the variety and number of issues present in the existing Ren'py version (most of the punctuation errors were too common to merit screenshotting).

These examples were taken from four scenarios (1, 2, 8 and 5) and but similar issues exist in every single Scenario and sub-Scenario in the game and there are also many more issues in the four selected Scenarios than have been shown in the screenshots.

For each set of images, the original Japanese is on the top, the original translation in the middle and the Retranslation on the bottom. Descriptions of the images are in order from left to right "Scenario X (Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, ect)".

Scenario 1 (Grammar Error, Logical Error, Inconsistent Translation, Missing Text, Mistranslation) :

Spoiler

yHBk  nS8B  2c-9  L5D4  rrN1

Scenario 2 (Namebox Error, Formatting Error, Mistranslated Fix, Inconsistent Translation):

Spoiler

Og4s  iGJX  ygDp  jDNB

Scenario 5 (Mistranslation, Contextual Error, Missing Text, Contextual Error, Mistranslation):

Spoiler

vlb1  mDAG  1U5D  t39g  WvXl

Scenario 8 (Missing Text, Contextual Error, Contextual Error, Mistranslation, Missing Text, Missing Text):

Spoiler

o6Te  9w18  wrcd  OCIf  8FIf  TyEF

 

Why not wait for Sekai?

We recognise that Sekai Project has promised an overhaul of Episode 1, scheduled for late-2017 after their overhaul of Episode 2 and completion of their translation of Episode 3. Despite this, we are still releasing this patch for a simple reason:

Sekai Project's promised overhauls of Episode 1 and 2 are taking place in tandem with their port of the trilogy to the Unity engine, initially decided upon to facilitate its release on PSVita (and more recently, PS4). This is will likely mean that a separate version - a Unity-engine version - of the game will need to be purchased for fans to see the updated script.

This will leave those who have already purchased the Steam/non-Steam Ren'py versions with an arguably inferior product. While we do not assert that our patch will be superior to Sekai's impending overhaul, we hope that this will go some way towards easing the expected frustration. As such (and considering this patch requires a purchased version of the game to be used anyway) we feel there is little moral downside to releasing it now, particularly with nearly a year to go before Sekai is scheduled to complete their overhaul of Episode 1.  

 

Progress:

Complete.

This project was originally started in mid-2015 and finished by late December 2016.

 

Patch Instructions:

1. Download the "scripts.rpa" file.
2. Locate the folder in which the World End Economica executable (the file "wee.exe") is in. For Steam users, this should be somewhere inside "Steam/steamapps/common". Within the WEE folder, there should be another folder labeled "game" inside, containing a roughly half-gigabyte-sized file named Archiva.rpa.
3. Paste "scripts.rpa" into this "game" folder. You are ready to play.

Get the patch here.

 

Project Staff:

LUSEX Team

 

Quote

"Atomic clocks can't measure all the feelings I have failed to send
Along my path towards the World's End."
~ "World End Economica", Kishida Kyoudan & The Akeboshi Rockets

 

Edited by LUSEX
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Acknowledged. The thumbnails appear to be breaking sporadically. However, I believe you can still view the full-sized image if you follow the link (that is, by right-clicking and opening the link).

Edited by LUSEX
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You based this off of the original translation, but didn't the updated Ren'py/Steam version already make fixes to the translation? Why didn't you base it on the most up to date version of the translation?

edit:

2 hours ago, LUSEX said:

Sekai Project's promised overhauls of Episode 1 and 2 are taking place in tandem with their port of the trilogy to the Unity engine, initially decided upon to facilitate its release on PSVita (and more recently, PS4). This is will likely mean that a separate version - a Unity-engine version - of the game will need to be purchased for fans to see the updated script.

Also, I'm afraid that this huge assumption you're making may not be very accurate. It would honestly totally shock me if they didn't outright replace the current ren'py version with the newer Unity version for free for everyone who has it on Steam.

Edited by Decay
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I can see what you're going for and I respect that but there are some issues your translation added.

f5ffa9085f0a8349aabeed69e0fe1d41.png

This right here is one of them. "but that officer staring fixedly at me" is a fragment that doesn't fit in with the rest of the sentence. The only way to fix your sentence is to write it like "I had the impression that the officer staring fixedly at me was about to...(etc)". The way you have it now feels like you're just trying to follow the Japanese sentence order without rewording the sentence to accommodate that structure, which really makes for awkward writing at best. While the Sekai version in your example does follow the same sentence structure, it words it in a way that flows from one part to the next without an abrupt fragment in the middle of the sentence.

You're also using a heavily outdated script if you're not using the most up-to-date version from the Steam release since they've released numerous translation, grammar, and error fixes since WEE1 was released.

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You based this off of the original translation, but didn't the updated Ren'py/Steam version already make fixes to the translation? Why didn't you base it on the most up to date version of the translation?

To clarify, the KK version also had a patch that "fixed" a number of issues - it is this patched KK version that this retranslation is based on. As for why, this would be because the KK version simply has less missing text than the Ren'py version. This is not just text that was intentionally redacted, but text that is missing in a way that you can see the following sentences do not make sense without.

Quote

It would honestly totally shock me if they didn't outright replace the current ren'py version with the newer Unity version for free for everyone who has it on Steam.

This may well be the case and we do hope that will indeed occur, in which case this patch will become redundant at no expense to anybody and Sekai's free overhaul will be to the benefit of all.

Quote

While the Sekai version in your example does follow the same sentence structure, it words it in a way that flows from one part to the next without an abrupt fragment in the middle of the sentence.

We do not claim that our work is particularly perfect (or even professional, for obvious reasons). However, the Sekai version also tends to have a problem of following not just Japanese phrasing, but also Japanese tense in a way that is simply ungrammatical in English. You might notice the tense in that particular instance is all over the place and anybody who has played the game would be aware that it is far from the only instance of such problems.

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I don't know what you mean by the tense being all over the place. The whole sentence itself is in past tense, and what seems like tense problems are not.

"I'd like to do that if possible" this part of the sentence does not have a tense inflection and thus does not contradict the tense because "would" from "I'd" is a modal auxiliary verb. This could be changed to "I would have liked to...(etc)" though.

"but that officer staring at me seemed" the staring is staring because it's a continuous action, not because it's present tense.

The sentence has some wording issues, but it's not the tense that's the issue.

Edit: and as far as I know, the KiriKiri translation update does not include any of the updates in between when the Ren'py version was released on steam and now, only the initial changes made between the KRKR and Ren'py translations.

Edited by zander1995
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On 1/3/2017 at 2:09 AM, zander1995 said:

"I'd like to do that if possible" this part of the sentence does not have a tense inflection and thus does not contradict the tense because "would" from "I'd" is a modal auxiliary verb. This could be changed to "I would have liked to...(etc)" though.

Sorry, but this is incorrect.  The tenses do conflict.  "I'd like to do that if possible" is present tense.  Its past tense form would be "I'd've liked to do that if possible", or even better "I'd've liked to have done that if possible".

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On 1/4/2017 at 7:12 PM, Nandemonai said:

Sorry, but this is incorrect.  The tenses do conflict.  "I'd like to do that if possible" is present tense.  Its past tense form would be "I'd've liked to do that if possible", or even better "I'd've liked to have done that if possible".

You're wrong. "would" is a modular verb thus has no specific tense to it and works in both past, present, future, whatever. "I would like to do that if possible", in this case, has no tense inflection and is neither specifically past nor present tense.

Edited by zander1995
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