Jump to content

My experiences using JPN TL software and web translators to TL JPN VNs


phantomJS

Recommended Posts

Recently TL software pipped my curiosity (for whatever reasons). Decided to try them this past Monday:

Firstly, I did some research and found out about these:

Visual Novel Reader - A software which automatically and translates Jpn text in VNs. However, after digging for more info on VNR, I found out that it seems to be full of bugs (judging from the amount of problems users are having), and it's TL does not seems to be any better than other Jpn sentences TL methods or websites. According to comments online, it also seems to be a bloated software. Decided to explore other options.

ITHVNR + web broswer addon translators + Clipboard Inserter- ITHVNR is a text hooker which attach itself to software such as visual novels and copies the text onto Windows's clipboard (take note that you need to be in Jpn locale in order for ITHVNR to work). Also, basic info on how to get ITHVNR to work. Rikaisama and other similar addons are simply web broswer translators. Clipboard Inserter takes the text from Window's clipboard and insert it into firefox (automatically requires blank HTML sheets w/ line counter to be opened in firefox) I actually found out about this method in another webpage. Not showing it here as there are copyrighted links in that webpage and I am not sure whether linking it violates Fuwa's rules or not.

Anyway, since I'm using firefox quantum, and am lazy to backup my stuff inside or try other browsers such as waterfox (I do not like chrome btw), I read through the aforementioned webpage, installed ITHVNR and Yomichan and it's relevant dictionaries (since I can't use Rikaisama anymore unless I use an older version of firefox). Did so this past Monday evening and the process went smoothly until I tried to get the hooked text to be displayed in firefox quantum. Continued trying for a while but gave up and read KoiChoco for the rest of the night (anyway I got too annoyed by Yomichan's auto startup message in firefox to continue).

The following night I found out that I have to open a blank HTML sheet to get the text to be displayed in firefox. So I opened ITHVNR, hooked it onto Majikoi A-5 (which is the VN I am testing these MTL methods on), opened the blank HTML sheet, switch on the clipboard inserter and Tomichan. and successfully got them to be displayed in the blank HTML sheet. Ran into another issue; I couldn't get Yomichan to translate any text. No matter what activation keyboard key I used, Yomichan would not translate any Jpn text I hovered on top off. I tried Rikichamp and it's the same situation (although I must say I didn't try very hard at all to resolve this problem). Was doing research on this and only then did I realise Yomichan and Rikichamp are Jpn words translators and not Jpn sentences translators, which is not what I wanted. Decided to abandon this method.

Chiitrans Lite - Like Yomichan and Rikichamp, seems to be another Jpn word translator (although this one can be used in game, which is infinitely better). Anyway doesn't seems to work on modern computer and Windows. Passed.

 

Got frustrated after my Yomichan / Rikichamp experience and tried to used online translators:

RomajiDesu

Etranslator

Excite

Google Translate

Personally, i think google translate is the best overall if all you want is to understand the Jpn text as much in English as possible. Got tired of constantly ctrl+V into google translate though and began searching for another method:

ITHVNR+ Translation Aggregator - Firstly, see this for information on how to set up Jpaser.

Translation Aggregator is a software which takes Jpn text in clipboards and runs them though various dictionaries and online translation services (including google translate) to translate the text into English.

This method is the easiest method to use by far; all you need to do is to start ITHVNR, start TA, start your VN, and hook ITHVNR to both TA and the VN.

Reading through Takae's route currently. I must say overall the TL is not too bad. You can definitely understand the overall situation and what the characters are trying to convey most of the time, which is more than what I expected from MTL.

 

Hope this post helps anyone looking for methods to read Japanese VNs :)

Edited by phantomJS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

1st please stop using the word Jap

What's wrong with that? It's merely an abbreviation, like how I call my pals from Germany Germs.

27 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

2nd please stop using MTL

There's nothing wrong with MTL. Learning Japanese is a time-consuming, arduous task with minuscule payoff and little to no professional or vocational benefits. Not everybody wants to invest so great a portion of their life into learning a language solely for the consumption of visual novels.

28 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

3rd please stop helping people to MTL

There's also nothing wrong with that. As long as nobody attempts to disseminate their MTL or pass it off as a translation project, there is no issue whatsoever. Please take your Japanese fetishism and elitism elsewhere, Kiriririri.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tried to read Little Busters ME in the past using ITH and TA (did VNR even exist back then? It was in 2013-2014, I think) I finished one route that way, and never tried to use a machine translator to read VNs ever since. The text was basically unreadable, I didn't get any enjoyment from it, and the funniest part was when different machine translators gave me almost opposite results. :makina: Like, I remember there was one sentence where the subject and the object of some action were literally replaced in different versions. Yeah, I know the technologies got better with time, but it's still far from perfect, from what I've seen.

Jp parser, one the other hand, is pretty cool.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, phantomJS said:

Ran into another issue; I couldn't get Yomichan to translate any text. No matter what activation keyboard key I used, Yomichan would not translate any Jap text I hovered on top off.

FYI there are settings in Yomichan which allow you to make the translation appear by just hovering over it, I think the default key is shift (?). 

Also Yomichan is sometimes bad at detecting the word hovered over, making no translation appear, but if you stick to it long enough I have found that just trying to detect it over and over again works (or looking at a word on a website to activate (?) it). 

 

Yeah I wouldn't call it ideal, especially if you have no interest in learning JP grammar or vocab, but it works, especially if you on the other hand know your grammar fairly ok and have some decent vocab, then you can start to see the process speeding up (due to you having to look at the translation less and less). If all you need it for is to look up some one-off word it is particularly good, I've found. 


I don't know about Translation Aggregator, but if you have found it good, it might be the best option out there for those who are just looking to enjoy a VN without perhaps doing the whole learning JP thing. Like you said Chiitrans is outdated (and most likely gone forever, since there doesn't seem to be any signs of it being updated) and VNR a mess. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Zander said:

What's wrong with that? It's merely an abbreviation, like how I call my pals from Germany Germs.

It's a derogatory term.  If you're using it as an abbreviation, you should either be using all caps (JAP) or a period (Jap.), and should only be doing that in cases where condensing the text is important (like Twitter).  When you are writing full sentences, as here, you should strive to avoid using abbreviations, especially when those abbreviations are also epithets.

 

32 minutes ago, Zander said:

There's nothing wrong with MTL. Learning Japanese is a time-consuming, arduous task with minuscule payoff and little to no professional or vocational benefits. Not everybody wants to invest so great a portion of their life into learning a language solely for the consumption of visual novels.

There is a great deal wrong with machine translation, starting with the translation.  You may end up with a rough understanding of what you are 'reading', but little to no understanding of detail, subtext, or (in many cases) context.  You might as well ask for someone on the forum to give you a one page summary of the visual novel; it'll be more accurate, and better written as well.

Learning Japanese is time consuming, but not difficult.  I suggest you try it.  But if you don't want to take the time to learn the language, that's fine.  But please do not pretend that random words strung together by a machine trained on 2ch posts is representative of the actual source material.

 

32 minutes ago, Zander said:

There's also nothing wrong with that. As long as nobody attempts to disseminate their MTL or pass it off as a translation project, there is no issue whatsoever. Please take your Japanese fetishism and elitism elsewhere, Kiriririri.

Half humor, but "Friends don't let friends read Machine Translations".  Machine translated products are universally crap.  Many of us who like visual novels would prefer that crap not be held out as representative of the genre.  Not to mention, the only thing that is more of a waste of time than trying to discuss a visual novel with someone that read a machine translation is trying to discuss it with someone who hasn't read it at all.

His comment it isn't "Japanese fetishism" or "elitism" or any other insult you can hurl.  It's a sense of humor, combined with the basic understanding that what you are doing is not going to produce the best results, or even good ones.  If all you want is crap, that's up to you.  But don't go around making false claims like "there is nothing wrong with machine translations", and trying to spread that crap to others.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, Zander said:

There's nothing wrong with MTL. Learning Japanese is a time-consuming, arduous task with minuscule payoff and little to no professional or vocational benefits. Not everybody wants to invest so great a portion of their life into learning a language solely for the consumption of visual novels.

Here is the thing. Setting up MT is not instant. There are multiple options and then you have to learn how to read the result, which in itself is a learning process. To get good quality (and here I use good in very relative terms), the word on the net is to use Atlas. You then have to make one dictionary for each VN. You add the names as names, apply gender and stuff like that. You are also supposed to add words often used in VNs, but not present in Atlas by default (mainly H scene words). Next you need to configure some line changing stuff to make the lines more readable for Atlas.

By the time you reached what is supposedly claimed to be acceptable MT level, if you had spent the same amount of time on ITH+TA+jparser and studied Japanese grammar, you would likely have ended up with the ability to read Japanese on a level where you have a decent chance of beating MT on quality and unlike MT, you have a chance to improve by just reading more.

If you claim you don't have the time to study Japanese to even reach this level, then apparently you don't have the time to set up MT or even read VNs either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

1st please stop using the word Jap

 

1 hour ago, Toranth said:

It's a derogatory term.  If you're using it as an abbreviation, you should either be using all caps (JAP) or a period (Jap.), and should only be doing that in cases where condensing the text is important (like Twitter).  When you are writing full sentences, as here, you should strive to avoid using abbreviations, especially when those abbreviations are also epithets.

Sorry, didn't know this beforehand at all. A quick quick google search came up with results such as this this, so it's subjectively true (although I personally disagree and find the entire 'Jap' situation a bit ridiculous). Changed the topic and the offending words accordingly.

Thanks for informing! :) 

1 hour ago, Toranth said:

There is a great deal wrong with machine translation, starting with the translation.  You may end up with a rough understanding of what you are 'reading', but little to no understanding of detail, subtext, or (in many cases) context.  You might as well ask for someone on the forum to give you a one page summary of the visual novel; it'll be more accurate, and better written as well.

I disagree with this strongly. A summary gives you a idea of what the VN is about but not what transpired, and you most certainly don't get to feel or empathise the story.

Google translate, although still far from ideal, is far better than this. You can definitely understand the story and emotions of the characters to some degree. Not everyone is trying to understand the entire story pertaining to the original Jpn text accurately or fully appreciate it. Whether or not it accurately captures the meaning of the jpn text does not matter too much to me; I'm sure I'm getting a decent experience as it's not as if google translate is a horrible TL service (it's actually pretty good relatively speaking) and I'm not striving for the authentic experience as well, just a decent one (and I'm sure a lot of people feels the same way)

1 hour ago, Toranth said:

Learning Japanese is time consuming, but not difficult.  I suggest you try it.  But if you don't want to take the time to learn the language, that's fine.  But please do not pretend that random words strung together by a machine trained on 2ch posts is representative of the actual source material.

It's your own opinion. I am trying it recently. Hiragana and Katarana are relatively ok difficulty wise, but the grammar and especially the kranji are extremely numerous. I categorise 'a lot of things to remember' = 'difficult to learn', not the mention the most effective way to remember is to use it constantly and over a very long period of time (I'm pretty sure it takes years). Maybe these doesn't classify as difficult to you, but I'm pretty sure it does to a lot of people

50 minutes ago, tymmur said:

Here is the thing. Setting up MT is not instant. There are multiple options and then you have to learn how to read the result, which in itself is a learning process. To get good quality (and here I use good in very relative terms), the word on the net is to use Atlas. You then have to make one dictionary for each VN. You add the names as names, apply gender and stuff like that. You are also supposed to add words often used in VNs, but not present in Atlas by default (mainly H scene words). Next you need to configure some line changing stuff to make the lines more readable for Atlas.

By the time you reached what is supposedly claimed to be acceptable MT level, if you had spent the same amount of time on ITH+TA+jparser and studied Japanese grammar, you would likely have ended up with the ability to read Japanese on a level where you have a decent chance of beating MT on quality and unlike MT, you have a chance to improve by just reading more.

If you claim you don't have the time to study Japanese to even reach this level, then apparently you don't have the time to set up MT or even read VNs either.

I had it set up in TA now and ATLAS V14 TL sucks (or maybe I didn't know how to use/ set it up properly:P). I use google translate and (I think) it's gives a decent idea of what does the original jpn text mean (doesn't matter too much if I'm wrong. Like I said, i'm not trying to get an exact replicate of the original text's meaning).

Seriously, I don't understand how you can compare the time needed to learn Japanese to setting up TL software (which is what I inferred from your post) as they are not even close to each other in that aspect.

Perhaps your mindset is similar to @Toranth. Then my answer is the same; not everyone (in fact, I dare say most people) are trying get an accurate TL of a particular VN. Most likely they are just trying to get a decent idea of what's going on and what the characters are thinking and feeling in the VN.

Also, can i just point out that setting up Translation Aggregator is one of the best ways to learn Japanese because of mecab / jparser?

2 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

2nd please stop using MTL
3rd please stop helping people to MTL

*points middle finger :OneTrueRen: *points middle finger

 

Edited by phantomJS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, phantomJS said:

but the grammar and especially the kranji are extremely numerous.

Tip 1: learn how to spell "kanji"

Tip 2: Tae Kim states you should not study kanji. Instead when you learn new words, learn the kanji for it too and you will not be overwhelmed by the burden of kanji learning.

Tip 3: if you find the grammar to be too complex, how can you expect the computer to do better? It's usually much worse than the human mind at tasks like that.

2 hours ago, phantomJS said:

I had it set up in TA now and ATLAS V14 TL sucks (or maybe I didn't know how to use/ set it up properly:P). I use google translate and (I think) it's gives a decent idea of what does the original jpn text mean (doesn't matter too much if I'm wrong. Like I said, i'm not trying to get an exact replicate of the original text's meaning).

Seriously, I don't understand how you can compare the time needed to learn Japanese to setting up TL software (which is what I inferred from your post) as they are not even close to each other in that aspect.

As I wrote, Atlas is supposed to be the best option, but it requires tweaking. I actually tried MT to see what all the talk is about and I managed to get Atlas to work better than Google. The problem is that I still had a long way to go in order to reach what is supposedly the goal for those who claim MT are useful. If you settle for Google Translate, you aim for poor quality even by MT standards.

2 hours ago, phantomJS said:

Also, can i just point out that setting up Translation Aggregator is one of the best ways to learn Japanese because of mecab / jparser?

Yeah and it's pretty much what I wrote you should use, though I worded it differently, like:

2 hours ago, tymmur said:

if you had spent the same amount of time on ITH+TA+jparser [...]

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, tymmur said:

Tip 1: learn how to spell "kanji"

Thank you for correcting my English, Professor :sleep:

3 hours ago, tymmur said:

Yeah and it's pretty much what I wrote you should use, though I worded it differently, like:

Made a mistake on this. Sorry :)

3 hours ago, tymmur said:

Tip 2: Tae Kim states you should not study kanji. Instead when you learn new words, learn the kanji for it too and you will not be overwhelmed by the burden of kanji learning.

Tip 3: if you find the grammar to be too complex, how can you expect the computer to do better? It's usually much worse than the human mind at tasks like that.

As I wrote, Atlas is supposed to be the best option, but it requires tweaking. I actually tried MT to see what all the talk is about and I managed to get Atlas to work better than Google. The problem is that I still had a long way to go in order to reach what is supposedly the goal for those who claim MT are useful. If you settle for Google Translate, you aim for poor quality even by MT standards.

Firstly, I never said I expect the computer to do a good or better job than myself at TL-ing / understand Japanese text. My aim is to see if TL software can provide a decent reading Japanese VN reading experience. I reiterate that I am not looking for the full and genuine VN experience. 

I also didn't say I find the Japanese grammar to be so complex that I gave up and resorted to MTL. My response is directed to @Toranth who claimed learning Japanese is not difficult and my personal opinion (but one which I think represents a lot of people) is that it's anything but 'not difficult'. This whole thing is simply done out of curiosity. In fact, I am using Tae Kim's android guide now and plan to return to it soon.

For ATLAS, the translation is worse than google translate when TA parsed Japanese text through both of them.

For your google translate comment, are you referring to professional MTL services / softwares? (high quality MTL supposedly exist according to the little google research I did beforehand). I find google translate to be pretty good when compared to similar online translators

Since you claimed google translate TL is poor even by MTL standards, mind letting us know which services, online translators, or software are better? (I'm interested to know as well out of curiosity)

Thanks in advance! :)

Edited by phantomJS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, phantomJS said:

Since you claimed google translate TL is poor even by MTL standards, mind letting us know which services, online translators, or software are better? (I'm interested to know as well out of curiosity) Thanks in advance! :)

As I wrote, it's supposed to be Atlas, which gets the job done the best. I have managed to get it to work better than google, but still being broken because I never did figure out how to control all the settings correctly (and I suspect it would be broken even if I did). Mind you it was a few years back and unlike Atlas, google will try to improve.

What would be really interesting would be a test where it's the different approaches at MT against a human translation. One thing MT (particularly Google) is surprisingly good at is to make something, which looks fine, but is actually horribly translated and is changing the meaning. I consider this to be a bigger problem than the plain odd translations since it will be undetectable to anybody who would consider using MT.

Promoting MT and refusing to talk about translation accuracy seems weird to me. You might as well get some random person (not a writer) to write new text in English to match the CGs. If you object, then you do care about translation accuracy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, tymmur said:

As I wrote, it's supposed to be Atlas, which gets the job done the best. I have managed to get it to work better than google, but still being broken because I never did figure out how to control all the settings correctly (and I suspect it would be broken even if I did). Mind you it was a few years back and unlike Atlas, google will try to improve.

The one I set up now in TA sucks when compared to parsing through google translate, although I must say I did not mess around with the settings at all. If anyone got it to work well, kindly share the experience with us. Thanks in advanced! :)

2 hours ago, tymmur said:

What would be really interesting would be a test where it's the different approaches at MT against a human translation. One thing MT (particularly Google) is surprisingly good at is to make something, which looks fine, but is actually horribly translated and is changing the meaning. I consider this to be a bigger problem than the plain odd translations since it will be undetectable to anybody who would consider using MT.

My assessment that google translate comes from comparing it to other alternatives and my (very) limited Japanese grammar knowledge. Could very well be that google translate twisted the meaning of the original text for all I know. But based on my circumstantial evidence, I believe google translate is the best option so far. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong :) (I would like to know better-than-google translate options as well :) )

2 hours ago, tymmur said:

Promoting MT and refusing to talk about translation accuracy seems weird to me.

I do care about translation accuracy, but am, again, am not looking for a great experience. I know this thread is promoting MT, but I am not doing so directly. One of my purposes of posting this to help people who are looking to MTL VNs as not everyone thinking and opinion are the same as ours.

2 hours ago, tymmur said:

You might as well get some random person (not a writer) to write new text in English to match the CGs. If you object, then you do care about translation accuracy.

What's the meaning of this?

If I get a random, VN hater to write rubbish to match the CGs, it's the same as reading a MTL-ed VN?

To me, seems like to you, caring about translation accuracy in a VN = getting the best possible translation you can in absolute terms (in this case, means learning Japanese) to read the VN and no compromises are accepted. You (and a lot of others) also seems to think MTL is (still) not humanly-comprehensible (or something similar).

If so, we will just have to agree to disagree :sleep:

Edited by phantomJS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The point is that GT, while sometimes correct for simple sentences, is wrong most of the time. So if you're fine with that, that means you don't care about the VN in itself, you just want to know the story. And in that case, like they said, might as well read a summary from someone.

 

Also, yes, Japanese isn't difficult. It just takes time to learn like other languages. And if kanji are your only problem, know that in a few months (or even less if you're diligent) you can just read with chiitrans or Yomichan thanks to the grammar you learnt.

Edited by Riku
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Riku said:

The point is that GT, while sometimes correct for simple sentences, is wrong most of the time. So if you're fine with that, that means you don't care about the VN in itself, you just want to know the story. And in that case, like they said, might as well read a summary from someone.

This is only true if the MTL is so humanely incomprehensible that you cannot understand and empathise at all what the characters inside the VN are trying to convey.

Opinions on this matter (and the difficulty of learning jpn) is quite subjective and pretty much answered in all of the above posts(including yours).

Suggest to anyone interested in this topic to see the above answers, do more research, and decide for yourself on what's the correct answer for you :)

Edited by phantomJS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Japanese has a relatively simple grammar (compared to other languages) and also the structure of the phrase is very clear thanks to particles. If you learn the meaning of the various particles and a few grammar forms (we're talking about a couple of weeks of studying, more or less) you can then use software to translate the single words, rather than the phrases. You'll then use the particles to assemble the phrases together. As time goes on, you'll recognize words without using the translator (or just by hearing characters speak) and the process will speed up.

Granted, it's still much slower than reading a translated VN, but it worked for me. In less than a couple of months from starting to self-study Japanese, I was reading a long and story-focused VN like Gore Screaming Show with no problems, and more importantly, complete understanding of the text.

I could not have done it without translation software.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Toranth said:

There is a great deal wrong with machine translation, starting with the translation.  You may end up with a rough understanding of what you are 'reading', but little to no understanding of detail, subtext, or (in many cases) context.  You might as well ask for someone on the forum to give you a one page summary of the visual novel; it'll be more accurate, and better written as well.

Learning Japanese is time consuming, but not difficult.  I suggest you try it.  But if you don't want to take the time to learn the language, that's fine.  But please do not pretend that random words strung together by a machine trained on 2ch posts is representative of the actual source material.

Nowhere did I say or imply that MTL is accurate or representative of the actual source material; please do not put words in my mouth or make assumptions. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that it isn't. My point was simply that if somebody wants to read it, and is happy with the result, then it's perfectly fine. Do you intend to bash me if I want to read a machine translation of  Relaxation Yuka En ~Hitozuma Therapist ni Yoru Sentai~ (NSFW) because I can't fully immerse myself in the accurate source material or understand the deep, philosophical subtext and undertones? 

I personally don't have any intention of learning Japanese, as I do not have an interest in it or the culture of Japan or Japanese products, etc; but neither do I read machine translations, for reference.

10 hours ago, Toranth said:

Half humor, but "Friends don't let friends read Machine Translations".  Machine translated products are universally crap.  Many of us who like visual novels would prefer that crap not be held out as representative of the genre.  Not to mention, the only thing that is more of a waste of time than trying to discuss a visual novel with someone that read a machine translation is trying to discuss it with someone who hasn't read it at all.

His comment it isn't "Japanese fetishism" or "elitism" or any other insult you can hurl.  It's a sense of humor, combined with the basic understanding that what you are doing is not going to produce the best results, or even good ones.  If all you want is crap, that's up to you.  But don't go around making false claims like "there is nothing wrong with machine translations", and trying to spread that crap to others.

Yes, machine translated products are universally crap. I completely agree with you, and I would not want them to held as representative of the genre either. Which is why I specifically said...

 

10 hours ago, Zander said:

As long as nobody attempts to disseminate their MTL or pass it off as a translation project

You seem to be misinterpreting my statements, or otherwise inventing positions I do not hold. There is no way for a MTL to be held as representative of the genre, as you were insisting I supported, if it is purely for personal use and is not disseminated nor used it as a "translation project". I specifically said that MTLs should not be spread to others, and you proceed to lambaste me for encouraging MTL "crap" to be spread and making false claims that it is quality. ???

With all that aside, localisation companies often produce crap and it ends up as representative of the genre regardless. I wouldn't be surprised if an edited MTL ended up better than the professional result of Hoshimeme. 

9 hours ago, tymmur said:

Here is the thing. Setting up MT is not instant. There are multiple options and then you have to learn how to read the result, which in itself is a learning process. To get good quality (and here I use good in very relative terms), the word on the net is to use Atlas. You then have to make one dictionary for each VN. You add the names as names, apply gender and stuff like that. You are also supposed to add words often used in VNs, but not present in Atlas by default (mainly H scene words). Next you need to configure some line changing stuff to make the lines more readable for Atlas.

By the time you reached what is supposedly claimed to be acceptable MT level, if you had spent the same amount of time on ITH+TA+jparser and studied Japanese grammar, you would likely have ended up with the ability to read Japanese on a level where you have a decent chance of beating MT on quality and unlike MT, you have a chance to improve by just reading more.

If you claim you don't have the time to study Japanese to even reach this level, then apparently you don't have the time to set up MT or even read VNs either.

I have great respect for you, Tymmur, so I will concede to you here as I am sure you are correct. I apologise for my hastiness. 

I don't personally claim I don't have the time to study Japanese. I do, as do most people; I just have no desire to do so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, phantomJS said:

If I get a random, VN hater to write rubbish to match the CGs, it's the same as reading a MTL-ed VN?

To me, seems like to you, caring about translation accuracy in a VN = getting the best possible translation you can in absolute terms (in this case, means learning Japanese) to read the VN and no compromises are accepted. You (and a lot of others) also seems to think MTL is (still) not humanly-comprehensible (or something similar).

I didn't say anything about VN haters. My main point is that there are people in the VN community, which praises MT and assume it can do stuff it can't. My point is that MT has a tendency to not only has a tendency to skip details, but also make up stuff. In other words using MT on a VN will result in a rewritten story, one where no human has looked at it for continuity or anything. If it's a new story made up based on CGs and written by somebody who cares, then there is a chance it will have a continuing story between the lines and scenes.

The main reason for my reaction here is not that I want to ban you from using MT if you really want to. I would not recommend it, but I won't try to convince you or ban you from doing so. The issue I have with this is encouraging other people to use MT. There are claims that you can get decent quality if you do it right and you will never suffer from titles not being translated and stuff like that. Claims like that are completely false and they serve mainly to trick people into thinking they start doing the right thing when they start to figure out how to use MT. Many people who believe it will start using MT and eventually regret it, calling it a complete waste of time. In other words praise of MT can arguably be called a scam, which end up wasting time for people.

I think it comes down to something else as well, which is editing. I read text before and after editing and here I made an important realization. The content was the same (more or less), but the edited script had become way more interesting to read. It's not just what it says, but particularly how it says it, which results in the reading pleasure. In other words even if the MT gets the translation down sort of ok, the editing will be awful, which will hurt the reading pleasure. MT can do a decent job if your task is to figure out say a manual for some software you try to figure out. It will not work well if you want anything with reading pleasure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Zander said:

Nowhere did I say or imply that MTL is accurate or representative of the actual source material; please do not put words in my mouth or make assumptions. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that it isn't. My point was simply that if somebody wants to read it, and is happy with the result, then it's perfectly fine.

You said "There is nothing wrong with machine translation".  If there was nothing wrong with it, it would be accurate and representative of the source material. 

 

4 hours ago, Zander said:

You seem to be misinterpreting my statements, or otherwise inventing positions I do not hold. There is no way for a MTL to be held as representative of the genre, as you were insisting I supported, if it is purely for personal use and is not disseminated nor used it as a "translation project". I specifically said that MTLs should not be spread to others, and you proceed to lambaste me for encouraging MTL "crap" to be spread and making false claims that it is quality. ???

You are encouraging other people to use machine translation, which produces crap translations.  To quote: "There's also nothing wrong with that [encouraging other people to use machine translation]"
.  That's encouraging other people to get a crappy, mixed-up view of the games - which is exactly the thing that many of us who like visual novels would prefer to avoid.

 

You seem to be confused over what your own views are.  Perhaps you should try to state your opinion clearly, in simple statements bereft of insults or other ad hominems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Toranth said:

You seem to be confused over what your own views are.  Perhaps you should try to state your opinion clearly, in simple statements bereft of insults or other ad hominems.

I'm sorry but Zander has dissociative identity disorder

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did try to play AIR back at 2010 using ATLAS. Saw the translation for MC's name was Inin while it should be Yukito, I immediately gave up on reading VN using ATLAS and probably never will to do that, especially when we must use window mode to do that. As for VNR, I prefer to be able play VN offline while VNR require us to be online, so I decided to not use VNR either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Toranth said:

You said "There is nothing wrong with machine translation".  If there was nothing wrong with it, it would be accurate and representative of the source material. 

That's fair. I should have said something to the effect of "There is no reason anyone should put you down for reading a machine translation if you choose to" or something of the sort? There are clearly problems with it in general, but I figured those were self-evident. I never had any intent to comment on the quality of MTL itself, and I can definitely see how my phrasing did, so I apologise.

3 hours ago, Toranth said:

are encouraging other people to use machine translation, which produces crap translations.  To quote: "There's also nothing wrong with that [encouraging other people to use machine translation]"
.  That's encouraging other people to get a crappy, mixed-up view of the games - which is exactly the thing that many of us who like visual novels would prefer to avoid.

I said there's nothing with helping other people to MTL, quoting from Kiri's post, not encouraging them to do so. There is indeed a distinction. If someone choose on their own that they want to read a MTL of something, a guide is all well and good. If they wrote up a blog post called "Why MTL is great and why you should use it", I'm sure we'd hold the same thoughts on it. And so you still think that I'll get a crappy mixed up view of  Relaxation Yuka En ~Hitozuma Therapist ni Yoru Sentai~ (NSFW)? MTL is perfect to use for something where the actual written content is not the primary appeal, which is the majority of untranslated VNs (atleast according to VNDB). And why would you prefer to avoid someone doing something that they ultimately enjoy? It doesn't harm anyone as long as it is is not disseminated, as I stated, and there is no overbearing need to discuss visual novels. 

 

3 hours ago, Toranth said:

You seem to be confused over what your own views are.  Perhaps you should try to state your opinion clearly, in simple statements bereft of insults or other ad hominems.

I would be very amused to hear you state where I insulted you. I don't believe I did. Please calm down.

 

3 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

I'm sorry but Zander has dissociative identity disorder

That may be true, but it has no bearing on this case.

Edited by Zander
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Toranth said:

You said "There is nothing wrong with machine translation".  If there was nothing wrong with it, it would be accurate and representative of the source material.

You are encouraging other people to use machine translation, which produces crap translations.  To quote: "There's also nothing wrong with that [encouraging other people to use machine translation]"

.  That's encouraging other people to get a crappy, mixed-up view of the games - which is exactly the thing that many of us who like visual novels would prefer to avoid.

You seem to be confused over what your own views are.  Perhaps you should try to state your opinion clearly, in simple statements bereft of insults or other ad hominems.

I believe he was replying to the earlier post by Kiri:

20 hours ago, Kiriririri said:

2nd please stop using MTL
3rd please stop helping people to MTL

Viewing it from this context, It's not his intention (nor mine) to directly promote MTL, but rather to express the fact that usage of MTL is not inherently wrong. Anyone replying otherwise implies that MTL and usage of it is wrong in absolute terms; if so, who are they to judge?

Only after posting this thread did I realise fuwanovel's extremely strong antipathy towards MTL. While you, like all other MTL-haters at fuwa, may have your reasons for feeling so, try to express it in a way similar to what tymmur did (btw @tymmur I didn't manage to find any 'MTL scams' sources and you could had explained your reasons of your antipathy towards MTL at the start instead of leaving it to the very last post -_-). Replying like you did can't make us see your points and feelings. Calm down bro :)

Edited by phantomJS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

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