Zenophilious Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 What's the highest quality English translation of a VN you've ever read? Be sure to say what VN it was for, and who did the translation. I gotta say, so far G-senjou no Maou had one of the best I've ever seen. They put in a bunch of adjectives that most people wouldn't necessarily get right off the bat (I think that's a plus, it shows that they have a good knowledge of both Japanese and English), there was only a couple times I had to reread sentences to fully understand what they meant, and there were less than a handful of errors that I noticed, and I'm pretty picky about grammar and spelling. It was done by Aegis and TLWiki. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funnerific Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 http://vndb.org/v103 Translation by "Insani". It's hard to believe the original isn't English here. Actually somewhat difficult to read because of the high level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisa_Fawkes Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I think it would have to be Grisaia no Kajitsu. It was incredible how descriptive the lines were, mainly Yuuji's thoughts. I hear it's one of the hardest VNs out there to read raw, and I gotta congratulate the team who did Grisaia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nerathim Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Grisaia obviously. But I don't know if Grisaia is originally well written when other VN aren't or just if Grisaia's translation is so good that it is one of the very few english trads that transcribes well the original text ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CLuBLioN Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Grisaia no Kajitsu has the best translation it was not hard to read at all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madvanced Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I would go with Grisaia, Fate/Stay Night is pretty good too considering that Nasu likes to put difficult to read japanese, in english it wasn't that noticeable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Meogii Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I would go with Grisaia, Fate/Stay Night is pretty good too considering that Nasu likes to put difficult to read japanese, in english it wasn't that noticeable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katatsumuri Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Moenovel's translation of Konosora, without a doubt... Kaguya, Silvz, Zenophilious and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asterisk Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Grisaia for perfectly capturing Yuuji's snark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Poltroon Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Clearly there aren't enough people claiming Grisaia is the best, so add me to the list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funyarinpa Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, never let slip that they were originally Japanese. (Hasn't read Grisaia yet) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvz Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I thought Umineko's translation was very good, they even adapted the terms to get everything understandable Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Umineko's translation has a lot of errors that I've seen. Typos, accidentally repeated lines, poor grammar here and there, inconsistent with the naming conventions and honorifics, and so on. It still seems very good, but it could have used another editing pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madvanced Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, never let slip that they were originally Japanese. (Hasn't read Grisaia yet) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funyarinpa Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I thought Umineko's translation was very good, they even adapted the terms to get everything understandable Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvz Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Umineko's translation has a lot of errors that I've seen. Typos, accidentally repeated lines, poor grammar here and there, inconsistent with the naming conventions and honorifics, and so on. It still seems very good, but it could have used another editing pass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 I'm playing with the umitweak version right now actually. Maybe I'm more picky of that stuff or notice it more. Stuff like how sometimes they swap the names, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they say Uncle Rudolf, sometimes they say Rudolf oji-san. As well as occasional typos and other errors. edit: Since I haven't actually gave my vote yet, I'll definitely say that Grisaia's is the best that I've read. Some things it does better than most include perfectly toeing the line between over and under-translation, not making things too literal for better flow while maintaining the original meaning. And the biggest thing that comes to mind is that each character's individual personality comes out so much better than any other translation I've read. A lot of translators seem to fall into a trap where most of the characters are written in the same way even when they're written differently in Japanese. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zakamutt Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 Grisaia, of course. True Remembrance might be good, but do remember that using many fancy words doesn't necessarily make you a better writer or translator. I like it in my VNs personally, but it's hardly a requirement. Also, only a few errors in a VN that you can read in like two hours isn't all that impressive. 999 might be one of the best when it comes to tricky localization work, though - all dem fakenames, man. They didn't manage to fix up Santa all that well though, it was prolly too hard (I know someone talking about localization mentioned it, might have been the editor himself). The Fate/Stay Night translation is not really good according to several sources. Depends on whether you consider preserving the original writer's style of writing in some way is important or not, most likely. I also liked G-sen's translation. Thing is though, whether you like it or not judging how good a translation of something is kind of requires knowing both of the languages in question, and is of course subject to the usual liberal/literal divide besides the writing quality. Tl;dr: none of what I said above has any true meaning and is merely guesswork. Doesn't mean you can't judge the quality of writing in what you're reading though, and there's generally a correlation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 Insani has a reputation for using needlessly complicated or uncommon words to describe mundane things in his translations. It's not really a good thing, but I don't hate it either. It feels like he translates with a thesaurus out and tries to make the script appear more intellectual than it really is. Sometimes the most effective way to describe something is the simplest, and this gets forgotten. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosakyun Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 I guess for a good translation... It has to be G-Senjou no Maou for me. It got me thinking about what some statements meant. Or maybe it's because I haven't read Grisaia no Kajitsu yet. P D P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Meogii Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 Moenovel's translation of Konosora, without a doubt... A lot of people are saying moenovel butchered the translation. But I also think that vn was a special one. #amane Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Funnerific Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 True Remembrance might be good, but do remember that using many fancy words doesn't necessarily make you a better writer or translator. I like it in my VNs personally, but it's hardly a requirement. Also, only a few errors in a VN that you can read in like two hours isn't all that impressive. You're absolutely right, but I felt that it fit the atmosphere of the game rather nicely. Might be just my imagination. Just wanted to throw it out there before everyone starts praising Grisaia, which is indeed also an excellent translation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 Regarding True Rememberance, Insani collaborated with the VN's creator during the translation process. This is the way translations are supposed to be done, and his style of writing and the translation decisions made on the project were fully ratified. I also disagree that he uses complicated language, I have never found that to be the case. However a lot of fan-translations are written in notoriously simple english so I suppose if you made a comparison... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pabloc Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 Moenovel's translation of Konosora, without a doubt... Nice troll, but still... @Topic That's kinda hard to judge. Before I have learned Japanese, I simply couldn't fully evaluate translations, so titles I have read earlier automatically seem better because of that. But still, Insani's stuff is definitely high quality, especially True Remembrance (I didn't notice any particularly complicated English there either). Narcissu was well done too. Other than that, I think all TLWiki projects that I have read were also very solid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosakyun Posted September 14, 2014 Share Posted September 14, 2014 Nice troll, but still... @Topic That's kinda hard to judge. Before I have learned Japanese, I simply couldn't fully evaluate translations, so titles I have read earlier automatically seem better because of that. But still, Insani's stuff is definitely high quality, especially True Remembrance (I didn't notice any particularly complicated English there either). Narcissu was well done too. Other than that, I think all TLWiki projects that I have read were also very solid. If we do take into consideration Moogy-sama and his Sharin no Kuni, he isn't quite satisfied with the translation done. That's why he doesn't like associating himself with the project... Anyway, can you guys encourage me to read Sharin no Kuni once more? I got discouraged by Moogy-sama's blatant disappointment about the project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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