Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 I confess myself a little worried, because everything I've seen from Eustia's original TL pointed it to being a hyper literal mess. (this is a video from a chase scene in ch1 using the old yandere patch, IIRC) If that's the baseline, I'm not sure how excited people should be. Whoa, that was quite bad... and now I'm worried. Hmm, I'm in 2 minds over this. On the one hand Aiyoku looks really good, on the other I don't really like dark stories. I think I might make an exception here, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlankTranslations Posted May 14, 2014 Author Share Posted May 14, 2014 I just finished watching that chase scene video and I can promise our translation will be better than that. If that is actually a part of Yandere's translation, then I guess we'll have to edit it. I could have sworn that they did a better job translating Fione's chapter though. At the very least, we can guarantee a coherent and interesting story. I'm pretty bad at Japanese to be quite frank, but we have really good editors. You can expect for this translation to be incredibly polished, far more than the Engrish in the sloppily translated chase scene above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Well the thing with Yandere, is that their lead translator TakaJun is a native Japanese speaker, so his translations are generally really accurate but really dry. Super dry, sometimes. For editors, I imagine it's quite difficult when the text you're given is like that. There's only so much you can do if you're afraid of losing the original meaning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlankTranslations Posted May 14, 2014 Author Share Posted May 14, 2014 Yeah, I guess that's an advantage of our translations. While the Japanese may be translated imprecisely, the resulting English translation is smooth and reads really well. I'll be giving a lot of liberties to our editors so that the translation sounds good. I'm not too stringent in my QC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Well the thing with Yandere, is that their lead translator TakaJun is a native Japanese speaker, so his translations are generally really accurate but really dry. Super dry, sometimes. For editors, I imagine it's quite difficult when the text you're given is like that. There's only so much you can do if you're afraid of losing the original meaning. Sentences like "I run my glance across the roofs of each house" is just sloppy work by the editors, it has nothing to do with being inhibited by the need to keep things accurate. Just lazy, sloppy work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 I just finished watching that chase scene video and I can promise our translation will be better than that. If that is actually a part of Yandere's translation, then I guess we'll have to edit it. I could have sworn that they did a better job translating Fione's chapter though. At the very least, we can guarantee a coherent and interesting story. I'm pretty bad at Japanese to be quite frank, but we have really good editors. You can expect for this translation to be incredibly polished, far more than the Engrish in the sloppily translated chase scene above. So wait, the original translation was technically accurate, but awfully written and edited. Your solution to this is a person who is bad at Japanese writing a grammatically sound and well written version that won't even be accurately translated because of the translator's lack of knowledge in the language? People don't want a coherent and interesting story, people want THE coherent and interesting story that was originally written, but translated to English. How can somebody seriously say that they are bad at the language they're translating from and expect to be taken seriously as a translator? Yeah, I guess that's an advantage of our translations. While the Japanese may be translated imprecisely, the resulting English translation is smooth and reads really well. I'll be giving a lot of liberties to our editors so that the translation sounds good. I'm not too stringent in my QC. the Japanese may be translated imprecisely Seriously, nobody wants a fanfic with a roughly similar plot. People want to enjoy the literature as faithfully as possible, and even though the best way would be to learn Japanese and read it in its native language, that's no excuse to make a half-baked translation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wahfuu Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 I just finished watching that chase scene video and I can promise our translation will be better than that. If that is actually a part of Yandere's translation, then I guess we'll have to edit it. I could have sworn that they did a better job translating Fione's chapter though. At the very least, we can guarantee a coherent and interesting story. I'm pretty bad at Japanese to be quite frank, but we have really good editors. You can expect for this translation to be incredibly polished, far more than the Engrish in the sloppily translated chase scene above. I was happy, and then I got worried again. Well, I won't comment until I actually see the lines/scripts, but.. gotta say, not brimming with confidence about this. I'm not sure why you're signing up to translate ~2mb's of text when you're shaky on your japanese. I mean, it's nice if it reads well, but it being littered with translation errors is another issue in entirety. Well, guess we'll see. Whoa, that was quite bad... and now I'm worried. Hmm, I'm in 2 minds over this. On the one hand Aiyoku looks really good, on the other I don't really like dark stories. I think I might make an exception here, though. Eustia isn't :too: dark, the Gaol setting is a huge pile of misery but that's not the only thing to the city. I'd make an exception if it turns out to be good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mephisto Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 I didn't feel like the japanese required to read Aiyoku and understand it was particularly high, but since this is a huge title, it might be a rough first project. I do definitely feel that the hardest part of the translation would be finding the proper english words that fit the dialogue, rather than actually understanding the dialogue though, so I wouldn't bash their efforts yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 I didn't feel like the japanese required to read Aiyoku and understand it was particularly high, but since this is a huge title, it might be a rough first project. I do definitely feel that the hardest part of the translation would be finding the proper english words that fit the dialogue, rather than actually understanding the dialogue though, so I wouldn't bash their efforts yet. Let's try an analogy. I have a meal that I wish to cook. Perfecting the cooking time is difficult, but measuring out the ingredient proportions is quite easy. If I am bad at measuring and end up making imprecise measurements, then it doesn't matter that I've focused on being very good at perfecting the cooking time. It's the same thing here, even if the editors are good and the Japanese in Eustia isn't very advanced, it doesn't make the following acceptable at all: Japanese may be translated imprecisely Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Hmmm, that was an imprecise statement made by BlankTranslations. I can't tell if he meant 'the translations will have a lot of errors, but that doesn't matter cause it will flow well', or 'we've made a conscious decision to sacrifice a some accuracy to aid flow.' The first situation may be problematic, the second is something that's done quite regularly and is a preference thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chronopolis Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 ＠Hometown and Life Thanks for elucidating the situation. I think I can put my thoughts into words now. I just finished watching that chase scene video and I can promise our translation will be better than that. If that is actually a part of Yandere's translation, then I guess we'll have to edit it. I could have sworn that they did a better job translating Fione's chapter though. At the very least, we can guarantee a coherent and interesting story. I'm pretty bad at Japanese to be quite frank, but we have really good editors. You can expect for this translation to be incredibly polished, far more than the Engrish in the sloppily translated chase scene above. While Eustia, having many lines of background and setting description, may be more suitable for that approach than most other visual novels, it is not acceptable to, for example, mistake the intention of a character when they are thinking/speaking, or the topic/object they are referring to (The characters are the strongest part of Eustia). With a weak TL and strong editors, your going to end up with effective descriptions and flowing text, but with spectacular errors every so often. It's not like the editor's job is trivial. Why make them pour their work into lines which might not be translated correctly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 He's looking for 2 more translators, and I assume there'll be tlc's as well. I don't think imagining the final product based on his knowledge of Japanese alone is accurate, there's too many other factors that could affect the quality one way or the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 ＠Hometown and Life Thanks for elucidating the situation. While Eustia, having many lines of background and setting description, may be more suitable for that approach than most other visual novels, it is not acceptable to, for example, mistake the intention of a character when they are thinking/speaking, or the topic/object they are referring to (The characters are the strongest part of Eustia). With a weak TL and strong editors, your going to end up with effective descriptions and flowing text, but with spectacular errors every so often. It's not like the editor's job is trivial. Why make them pour their work into lines which might not be translated correctly? Whoa, I wasn't downplaying the importance of the editors at all. The original translation was awful despite the very technically accurate translations. My point is that there's two levels to a translation here: 1)Accuracy 2)Legibility in the second language Having an imprecise translation is no better than the awful English of the previous translation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 He's looking for 2 more translators, and I assume there'll be tlc's as well. I don't think imagining the final product based on his knowledge of Japanese alone is accurate, there's too many other factors that could affect the quality one way or the other. Having more than one translator is already a hilarious red flag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chronopolis Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Whoa, I wasn't downplaying the importance of the editors at all. The original translation was awful despite the very technically accurate translations. My point is that there's two levels to a translation here: 1)Accuracy 2)Legibility in the second language Having an imprecise translation is no better than the awful English of the previous translation. Ah my bad, I wasn't saying you were. The rest of my post was just speaking in general, or actually in response to one of Blank's posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Having more than one translator is already a hilarious red flag. Most fan-tls have more than one translator. Unlike professionals, these people can't spend all day on these things, and there's many hundreds of thousands of words to translate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Ah my bad, I wasn't saying you were. The rest of my post was just speaking in general. Oh yeah, I totally agree with you then, sorry for misunderstanding. I can get a bit negative and uppity with things like this, but it's out of a love and respect for people's literature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Most fan-tls have more than one translator. Unlike professionals, these people can't spend all day on these things, and there's many hundreds of thousands of words to translate. Most high quality fan-TL's have a single translator, you might be thinking of having multiple editors or having another translator come in for a very limited role in some weird situations. "Spending all day," isn't unheard of, and knowing that is part of why I have so much respect for fan translators, and why I'm so wary of something like this sprouting up. Really now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wahfuu Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Another friend of mine is expressing concern over that, he asked me to put this here. As a fan of Eustia, I find it inconceivable that a translator has put this on his or her website: "While this is my first translation, you can expect it to be quality." Do you think we can trust someone who blatantly says, "Yeah, my translation is going to be kinda terrible"? There is no denying that Eustia is one of the easier visual novels to translate compared to behemoths like Asairo or Albatross. But one mustn't forget why Yandere Translations translated like that in the first place: the prose in Eustia is terse and doesn't transfer well into English. That's why there are sentence fragments everywhere. The translator will have to fill in the blanks. "I chase after the intermittently…" won't work this time. You need to be liberal. And the Black Wing and other terminology are literally translated; you would need to find a fantastic-like terminology to fit those terms. Literally translating them won't do. Does one want to see "I am chasing after the Black Wing" in a rather serious work? Someone also mentioned TakaJun in the thread, but this project isn't actually by him. It has his brand name, but that's it. I wouldn't mind if he worked on it since, as someone mentioned, he actually speaks Japanese. With some good editors and a lot of time, TakaJun can whip up a nice translation theoretically. The people in the Yandere translation team aren't TakaJun. So it makes me wonder why you picked this translation up and decided to continue it. If you haven't noticed the strangely literal translations, should we have the right to suspect your translations? It is also unorthodox that you continued Yandere's translation too. I can't help but be a skeptic. In most cases, translations are forever inferior to the original work. But it doesn't mean we can ignore the actual work! Be faithful to the work, not attempt to. Translators have to reach for that ideal no matter what it takes. May I have the right to infer that you're translating for fun? Because all fan translators are, more or less. And I am not prejudiced to see that. No, what's different between your group, it seems, from the hardworking fan translators is simply a lack of awareness of your skills. To give your crummy work to the editors and let them fix it is bad practice, don't you think? Editors should polish, not suture the wounds. A fan translator, I feel, knows the limits of his or her skills. As much as he or she desires to translate something, the translator stops in his/her tracks. Is he or she good enough to translate it? To faithfully adapt it? The translator is responsible for the reception of the work in the world they live in. If the work is being misinterpreted, then the translator is in the wrong. It is this epistemological limit that bars me from translating Eustia, a work I genuinely enjoy and am a fan of. While I was happy to see that someone had picked up the project again, I became rather annoyed. I began nitpicking and questioned the nuances of each line the translation team posted. And my diagnosis is "they don't seem qualified to translate Eustia for a while". A real fan translator, I feel, is one who respects the work. It confuses me why a person who doubts his Japanese skills is translating a visual novel. It is not respectful to the work. Such attitudes sicken me. Hometown and Life 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 @Hometown-and-life: There are no high-quality fan-tl's in my opinion (if there are I haven't read them), but you're right, the better ones do have a single translator. That being said these teams are doing stuff for free and RL and earning money does come first. So I'm not going to lambaste the dude for having multiple translators on something he's not getting paid for. Yes it means the quality will most likely be inconsistent, but time's precious and a lot of people don't have boatloads to spend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 @Hometown-and-life: There are no high-quality fan-tl's in my opinion (if there are I haven't read them), but you're right, the better ones do have a single translator. That being said these teams are doing stuff for free and RL and earning money does come first. So I'm not going to lambaste the dude for having multiple translators on something he's not getting paid for. Yes it means the quality will most likely be inconsistent, but time's precious and a lot of people don't have boatloads to spend. I'm going to lambaste him for his lack of respect for the original author, and the fact that this will kill the translation if he finishes it. They are people out there who can do a much better job, but if a translation gets put out then that's over. Visual novels don't get re-translated by fans. If this was something like anime subtitles where subbing groups are quite often translating the same thing, then I would have no problem with this. However, seeing some person go in way over his head and basically destroy any chance of a quality Eustia translation short of an official, paid re-translation is an issue, whether he's getting paid or not. I don't think this person is a bad human being or anything for what he's doing. It's just a lack of understanding of what he's doing, and I'm being harsh about it because I really want to make him understand. This project bleeds nothing but good will to me, but unfortunately it's misguided. If you don't have the time and money to do a big project like this, then just don't. Simple as that. Instead of giving people excuses to put out sub-par work we should instead be appreciating the time and money being put in by the serious and hardworking translators that already exist. Those fan translators are also doing the official translation work you seem to think is so much better than fan translations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 I'm going to lambaste him for his lack of respect for the original author, and the fact that this will kill the translation if he finishes it. *Grimaces* I'm not comfortable talking about 'disrespecting the original authors' while sitting in a community where most of the members pirate the game for free. As much as I sympathise with you regarding the possibility that this translation will be bad, I think it's something you'll have to get used to in the fan-tl field. The field is plagued by poor translations, with the occasional exception. Even if you stop this translation from going ahead there's no guarantee that the next one will be any better (the previous one by Yandere looked pretty bad as well, for example.) "Spending all day," isn't unheard of, and knowing that is part of why I have so much respect for fan translators, and why I'm so wary of something like this sprouting up. If you're young and don't have a job, sure. Those fan translators are also doing the official translation work you seem to think is so much better than fan translations I what now? When did I say that? MangaGamer's translations are mostly poor speckled with mediocre, for example. I don't think JAST's is anything to write home about either. Cyrillej1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 *Grimaces* I'm not comfortable talking about 'disrespecting the original authors' while sitting in a community where most of the members pirate the game for free. As much as I sympathise with you regarding the possibility that this translation will be bad, I think it's something you'll have to get used to in the fan-tl field. The field is plagued by poor translations, with the occasional exception. Even if you stop this translation from going ahead there's no guarantee that the next one will be any better (the previous one by Yandere looked pretty bad as well, for example.) 1)I'm respecting the literature that the author put out. This is not a debate about intellectual property rights, it's a debate about respect for the arts. 2)I'm not "green" to fan translations. Grisaia no Kajitsu is an amazing recent fan translation that showed why a translator should be both knowledgeable in Japanese literature and in English literature. In the end this project doesn't need my permission to happen, just like any other one that shows up. That doesn't mean that as a community everybody should start welcoming bad translations with open arms. Why would anybody want to read garbage? It's a pointless waste of time for everybody involved. I'd rather see a product untranslated than see it translated badly, and then released to the masses to tear apart. I'm not going to just stop being upset that authors (and the visual novel medium as a whole) are getting a bad name in the English speaking community because everything is so badly written and/or mistranslated by translators. tl;dr: "I've been swimming in trash and people keep wanting to give me trash, so I should accept the trash!" is not a good argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Okami Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Whoa, I wasn't downplaying the importance of the editors at all. The original translation was awful despite the very technically accurate translations. My point is that there's two levels to a translation here: 1)Accuracy 2)Legibility in the second language Having an imprecise translation is no better than the awful English of the previous translation. If you think you can do a better job than take on a project and do it, if not then stop complaining, shut up and be grateful. Cyrillej1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hometown and Life Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 If you think you can do a better job than take on a project and do it, if not then stop complaining, shut up and be grateful. Why would I be grateful about somebody stamping out the possibility of a more competent translator picking up the project? I've got a lot of respect for the work translators do, and the fruits of their labor, which is exactly why this is pissing me off. If an official translator does an awful job localizing something, am I supposed to just be grateful and purchase it knowing that it's awful, and now there can never be a fan translation of it? Look at this message Wahfuu relayed to the thread from his translator friend: In most cases, translations are forever inferior to the original work. But it doesn't mean we can ignore the actual work! Be faithful to the work, not attempt to. Translators have to reach for that ideal no matter what it takes. A fan translator, I feel, knows the limits of his or her skills. As much as he or she desires to translate something, the translator stops in his/her tracks. Is he or she good enough to translate it? To faithfully adapt it? The translator is responsible for the reception of the work in the world they live in. If the work is being misinterpreted, then the translator is in the wrong. It is this epistemological limit that bars me from translating Eustia, a work I genuinely enjoy and am a fan of. While I was happy to see that someone had picked up the project again, I became rather annoyed. I began nitpicking and questioned the nuances of each line the translation team posted. And my diagnosis is "they don't seem qualified to translate Eustia for a while". A real fan translator, I feel, is one who respects the work. It confuses me why a person who doubts his Japanese skills is translating a visual novel. It is not respectful to the work. Such attitudes sicken me. Translators themselves are sickened by this. This isn't just a harmless addition to the community, it's a toxin in the pool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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