Will someone ever translate Kono Oozora ni Tsubasa wo Hirogete FLIGHT DIARY?

[Yuki-tan]

Will there be anyone working on this? I really wanna play this game in english. :/

[shcboomer]

Hard to say, but it will run into problems due to MoeNovel.

[RusAnon]

I doubt MoeNovel would care about fapdisk fan-tl, it has zero perspectives with their censorship policy. Anyway, fapdisk translations are rare thing, so its much easier to learn enough japanese and read it yourself than wait for someone to pick it up.

[shcboomer]

I'm just saying it is one of the reasons for people not wanting to TL it, on top of many others.

[REtransInternational]

How about you? If you really want to see an English version then translate it. If you don't know how, start learning... It's not going to just translate itself!

[zoom909]

How about you? If you really want to see an English version then translate it. If you don't know how, start learning... It's not going to just translate itself!

 

Think about this...you can't just up and tell someone to start learning something that it could take years of their life to finish... (how long did it take you to learn how to do your reverse engineering work?)

[RusAnon]

Think about this...you can't just up and tell someone to start learning something that it could take years of their life to finish... (how long did it take you to learn how to do your reverse engineering work?)

To read KonoSora-grade japanese, you don't need years, you can learn enough vocab and grammar in about 6 months studying for hour every day.

Considering the fact that most of VNs (including best ones) will never be translated, its pretty much only sensible option available to anyone who is passionate about medium.

[zoom909]

Yahoo Answers disagrees with you though:

 

"I am currently 19 years how long would it take to be able to learn how to read japanese"

 

Answers:

 

"If you only want to read japanese just for that reason, I would suggest you just wait for the translations instead of learning the whole language. It will definitely take much much longer for you to learn enough to read the mangas properly, than it would to simply wait for the translations."

 

"I majored in Japanese at university (3 years) then I spent 5 years living and studying Japanese in Japan and I was pretty happy with my level at that point."

 

"Short answer:3-4years or more depending on how much you study.
Real answer:
I've been studying a bit over a year,Hiragana and katakana took about 2 weeks each.I'm still learning kanji but I believe in manga depending on how adult it is uses 500-1.5k+,then while learning those you'll be learning Verb forms,counters,particles,more grammar to be able to make Sense of it.
So if I really had to guess 3-4 years.."

[RusAnon]

Yeah, some people do it very wrong way, like grinding RTK or some other useless "kanji cards" or taking school on "learning japanese" rather than "learning to read VNs".

I know its possible because I started learning JP (focusing specifically on VNs) in the beginning of the year myself, and I could read simple VNs in ~3 months already.

Manga language is very trivial btw, and most manga even has furigana for each damn kanji.

[REtransInternational]

"learning japanese" rather than "learning to read VNs".

This is the main difference, there is a lot more involved with the former as the goal there is to "become like a Japanese person" speaking, hearing, reading, writing while the latter is just reading... Also with VNs you can use applications like AGTH + TA + VNR etc. to extract the text "live", parse it, put it through MT or dictionary lookup. There is no real need to explicitly memorise vocabulary when your computer will very easily do that for you, and your goal here is only to read and not write (although you will probably start associating EnglishJapanese anyway, just out of exposure - the more the better) - more important to learn the grammar; there are a ton of Japanese Learning Resource posts in the forums here for that, go read them and put it into practice. Hook the text, try to parse it into appropriate grammatical structure, look up what the words mean, see if you can figure out what it's saying. If you are so interested in this VN then what better than to make it your goal to understand it! Good luck, have fun.

@zoom909: In a few months of (intensive) training you can probably start to extract the text from VNs, if you have some prior programming/computer fundamentals knowledge. Just like a language or other skill, it is something you can never stop learning about.

[Pabloc]

@Yahoo Answers

Those were either about "knowing Japanese" (which is irrelevant) or about manga, that has unhookable text, so requires somewhat better grasp of vocab, if not some Kanji knowledge as well. Still, 3-4 years is an exaggeration, you should be able to read manga sooner (unless you really have little to no time to study JP).

 

When it comes to VNs, ITH and MeCab makes learning Kanji completely optional (or rather, the best way to learn them is by actual reading). Vocabulary knowledge seriously affects your reading speed, but if you don't mind very slow start, you can skip it too. MeCab allows instant lookup in the dictionary after all.

So all you really need to know is Hiragana, Katakana and grammar (and that you have to learn very well). But compared to Kanji, those are relatively easy. So no, it's not "years", it's "months". Much faster than waiting for a translation at least. So yeah, this is the most sensible option for anyone who is seriously interested in VNs.

[garejei]

Yeah I don't think there's a fix answer for the "how long does it take" question. It depends on motivation, effort, talent, prior exposure to the language (more important than you'd think), quality of your teacher (if you have one), intensity of your learning, your own learning methods/strategies and so on.

 

You can get to VN-reading level faster than most VNs will be translated. Seriously. I mean, I did, so surely others can as well. Don't get me wrong, if you have other priorities in your life that don't allow you to study that intensively, that's perfectly fine, but I'm just saying that it's possible with enough effort. I don't think it's a matter of time, really, but rather RL priorities and motivation for most people.

 

It also depends on how much of a challenge you give yourself. If you start reading more difficult stuff even at a lower level, you'll be faced with sort of a decision: get better or break down. Some people break down while others overcome it and become better in the process.

[zoom909]

After a few months of beginning study, I tried reading a VN...failed miserably.  I mean, I could understand a sentence or two every twenty but that's it.  No, for me it took 2 years.  And then another year of reading practice before I went from "I can barely do this but it feels like an astrophysics exam" to "I can enjoy this."  I would say that my studying time was about average for a person with daily responsibilities (school/work/etc.)

 

You can get to VN-reading level faster than most VNs will be translated.

Then there is no need for translations anymore except for very rare very difficult novels.  The time to do the TL exceeds the time to learn, so that would be a waste of time.

[Yuki-tan]

I am learning japanese but my level at it is currently initial, so, I though that the the translators of Kono Oozora restoration patch would translate Kono Oozora fandisc but I guess this is an no...

[garejei]

After a few months of beginning study, I tried reading a VN...failed miserably.  I mean, I could understand a sentence or two every twenty but that's it.  No, for me it took 2 years.  And then another year of reading practice before I went from "I can barely do this but it feels like an astrophysics exam" to "I can enjoy this."  I would say that my studying time was about average for a person with daily responsibilities (school/work/etc.)

 

Then there is no need for translations anymore except for very rare very difficult novels.  The time to do the TL exceeds the time to learn, so that would be a waste of time.

 

By few months I'm assuming 6 or less. In that case, absolutely, it's gonna be tough. But 1 year + ITH is possible I'd say. People are gonna have a variety of different experiences and capabilities, some will be more talented than others, so yeah.

 

And of course there is a need for TLs, for those that do not wish to/ cannot study. I pointed out in my post that it was merely possible; not necessarily the norm for everyone.

[zoom909]

There you go!  Finally, at least I can agree with Garejei.  Yes, the norm.  That's the key here.  And we cannot say for certain what the norm is, but for that very reason, it's irresponsible for ReTrans to say "why don't YOU translate it" (implication:  anyone can do it) or Rusanon to say that there's no other "sensible option" for the serious fan other than to learn Japanese (implication:  everyone learns it in a few months).

[RusAnon]

I though that the the translators of Kono Oozora restoration patch would translate Kono Oozora fandisc but I guess this is an no...

Cannot speak for everyone, but personally I just didn't like KonoSora. Some routes in FD are worth reading (Ageha's sister, Kanako), but I have much more important and fun project going already (Ikusa Megami Zero), which is light-years ahead in terms of story.

Plus KonoSora project itself isn't over yet, there's Sweet Love remaining to tl.

or Rusanon to say that there's no other "sensible option" for the serious fan other than to learn Japanese (implication:  everyone learns it in a few months).

No, implication here is that you will never be able to read some of best VNs otherwise and will be doomed to never see what some other brilliant VN authors writing is like, suffering through random someone's "reinterpretation".

Not everyone learns japanese, but serious VN fans do.

As for "in few months" vs "3 years and still can't read VN". As I said, "learning to read VNs" is different from learning language. My approach, which was quite successful for me, was to extract text from 30 VNs, and then build frequency dictionaries based on these texts. I was learning only vocab used in VNs and in order of popularity. On average, I am doing 20 new cards (10 new words, since I use 2 cards per note) per day in anki, thats 1800 words in 6 months.

Natural languages have interesting property that while vocab is quite big, only very small fraction of words are used often. For example, KonoSora uses 14943 words, but 1800 words you could learn in 6 months constitute 75% of text. FD is much easier, since there's not so much aviation terminology.

For very simple games like Hanahira, even 1000 words is about 80% of text.

Edit: corrected numbers, used wrong file first time which also contained n-grams.

Also, just executed little experiment. If you select 1800 random words instead most frequent ones, you get only 8%+-1.5% (I've did 100 runs) of text covered with them. So learning vocab w/out focus on VNs (and better particular VN you want to read) is pretty much useless in short term, you will see results only in 2-3 years (about 60% at 3 years of random study, still worse than 6 months of focused study).

[REtransInternational]

"why don't YOU translate it" (implication: anyone can do it)

That's one of the themes of Fuwanovel... promote that it's really not that hard after all. If you already know one language the concepts of another will not be exactly the same, but close enough that you can reuse a lot of knowledge. The main thing is the motivation to keep going, the feel of accomplishment.

I am learning japanese but my level at it is currently initial

Good, try reading the first few lines of the VN. If the VN is what your motivation is (and as it seems this is what made you ask the question) then leverage it to boost your study. Don't think "I don't understand any of this - I give up"; your attitude should be more like "I will figure it out!"

[Yuki-tan]

 Don't think "I don't understand any of this - I give up"; your attitude should be more like "I will figure it out!"

OK, I will do that :3 But there is an chance that the translators of the restoration patch would translate Kono Sora FD?

[Pabloc]

^ After I'm done with TLC, I may consider TL-ing Sweet Love (only if it's short), but not the whole FD.

 

If you already know one language the concepts of another will not be exactly the same, but close enough that you can reuse a lot of knowledge.

Err, no. Japanese is pretty exotic, so unless you know another similar Asian language (Chinese?), your knowledge will be pretty useless. Actually, trying to reuse it will only make things confusing, so throwing it out of the window would be a much better choice. One of the common mistakes when learning Japanese (repeated in many textbooks), is trying to learn it from the English language perspective. Learning it from scratch, with it's own logic is much easier.

Also, there's a huge gap between "I can read and understand a VN" and "I can translate a VN". Understanding Japanese is one thing, but being able to (relatively) faithfully write the same text in English is on a completely different level.

[Yuki-tan]

^ After I'm done with TLC, I may consider TL-ing Sweet Love (only if it's short), but not the whole FD.

I just need Kanako and Hotaru routes translated T---T

[RusAnon]

^ After I'm done with TLC, I may consider TL-ing Sweet Love (only if it's short), but not the whole FD.

Sweet Love has nothing to do with FD, its append to original game and contains short afterstories for original routes.

Also, there's a huge gap between "I can read and understand a VN" and "I can translate a VN". Understanding Japanese is one thing, but being able to (relatively) faithfully write the same text in English is on a completely different level.

Very true, especially for those of us who aren't native English speakers. Quite often I know how to properly translate something in Russian, but formulating same thing in English is troublesome.

[GOWhadsteen]

Will there be anyone working on this? I really wanna play this game in english. :/

Yeah, Moenovel hasn't confirmed to made a FansTL. I think, there's no If my heart had wings FLIGHT DIARY.

[Yume]

Will there be anyone working on this? I really wanna play this game in english. :/

Pray / Learn Japanese .

that's all you can do for now~

[ZeromusFFXII]

The only reason I want to read this is because I want to see the Double Dating that Aoi mentioned in the short after-story in Amane's route (it seems that event was included in this Fandisk). I bet this would only concentrate on sex scenes though... Sorry for lame English, still new here