What do you look for in a Translation Project?

[Chronopolis]

 

Would you mind if I added this to the main topic, as a quote? 

Any information that may start a discussion or promote agreement or consensus should be added to the OP in my opinion.

[havoc]

damm it, why can i only pick one translation......

 

personally i dont mind couple of typos so long as sentences make sense and not structured backwards.

[Pabloc]

The people who translate Visual novels, especially the VNs in this site, are working out of love for the medium, with nothing in return. Now, you can't possibly go to one of them and start criticizing the way they do a job they do for love, that's equal to going up to someone who likes doing a hobby, like painting for example, yet he isn't a pro at it, and criticizing the hell out of him for his not-so-great work. This isn't a company making quality work, this is a group of fans who just want more people to enjoy what they enjoy. If you don't like the way they do it, then I suggest you either learn how to translate it better, or hire a localization/translation team to do the job.

[Mr Poltroon]

- Translating "I dislike cats" as "I abhor those 4-legged fur-balls" can be quite harmful - the original sounds neutral, while the latter has rather distinct style that can be completely out of character and inconsistent (unless said character speaks like that all the time). Generally, alterations that don't serve any specific purpose should be avoided.

[Pabloc]

^ As long as converting character's speech in such manner doesn't completely screw up characterization and such conversion is consistent, then yes it's not bad per se. That's beyond unlikely though - using peculiar speech patterns most of the time will affect how readers perceive a character, and that in turn will lead to inconsistencies (because the character wasn't written as someone eccentric, so his actions won't fit his new image). Besides, it's absolutely pointless in translations (localizations are a different story).

[Wahfuu]

Well that's the thing, they're translating for free. The people who translate Visual novels, especially the VNs in this site, are working out of love for the medium, with nothing in return. Now, you can't possibly go to one of them and start criticizing the way they do a job they do for love, that's equal to going up to someone who likes doing a hobby, like painting for example, yet he isn't a pro at it, and criticizing the hell out of him for his not-so-great work. This isn't a company making quality work, this is a group of fans who just want more people to enjoy what they enjoy. If you don't like the way they do it, then I suggest you either learn how to translate it better, or hire a localization/translation team to do the job. 

 

Except that painting is making something original, and this is taking someone elses work and giving another fanbase a mangled copy of it. Apples and oranges.

You would be amazed at the amount of translations people do (mostly attempt to do) while openly admitting that they haven't even read the game before, or people that pick up something while not even breaking the year mark in studying just because they are bored and 'want practice'. It's far from the minority of fan TL's.

I agree that blindly bashing TL's isn't constructive nor productive, that's true. But people will defend any TL to the absolute maximum even if the writing style is stilted and isn't the same (this applying to people who play the game in japanese and talk bad about a translation) or the english is horrendous. That's silly. People should absolutely be allowed to criticize it regardless if it's a Fan TL. It promotes better quality. This fanbase doesn't allow for that because every translation is some sort of holy relic that we should all just deal with because people put time into it.

People who criticize TL's aren't always just people who ride the hate train, they are also people who've read the original and are sad to see a subpar translation come out of it. And only in EXTREMELY rare cases are people going to ever retranslate something, way more often than not that bad translation will always be the one people go with, and the name is forever tarnished.

If people TL'd scripts, showed them around, got some criticism/experience and grew from that, that's fine. I don't think thats faultable. This is a 20+ hour commitment of reading that you are giving to THOUSANDS of people. That needs quality control. That's not in the same scale of drawing sketches and showing it to friends.

 

[zoom909]

Except that painting is making something original, and this is taking someone elses work and giving another fanbase a mangled copy of it. Apples and oranges.

You would be amazed at the amount of translations people do (mostly attempt to do) while openly admitting that they haven't even read the game before, or people that pick up something while not even breaking the year mark in studying just because they are bored and 'want practice'. It's far from the minority of fan TL's.

I agree that blindly bashing TL's isn't constructive nor productive, that's true. But people will defend any TL to the absolute maximum even if the writing style is stilted and isn't the same (this applying to people who play the game in japanese and talk bad about a translation) or the english is horrendous. That's silly. People should absolutely be allowed to criticize it regardless if it's a Fan TL. It promotes better quality. This fanbase doesn't allow for that because every translation is some sort of holy relic that we should all just deal with because people put time into it.

People who criticize TL's aren't always just people who ride the hate train, they are also people who've read the original and are sad to see a subpar translation come out of it. And only in EXTREMELY rare cases are people going to ever retranslate something, way more often than not that bad translation will always be the one people go with, and the name is forever tarnished.

If people TL'd scripts, showed them around, got some criticism/experience and grew from that, that's fine. I don't think thats faultable. This is a 20+ hour commitment of reading that you are giving to THOUSANDS of people. That needs quality control. That's not in the same scale of drawing sketches and showing it to friends.

 

 

I've watched the progress of those beginner translations (the ones that start way too early that you were talking about) and most of them never make it out of the common route so it's self-eliminating.

 

As far as the name being forever tarnished--the thing is, it's (1) the kind who are motivated by reading their (presumed) favorite title who will suffer through pretty much anything as long as they can somehow make out what's going on, VS. (2) people who have read the original and are motivated by not wanting to see their favorite title tarnished.  People in group 1 want to see the mediocre translations completed rather than nothing, people in group 2 would rather have something good or nothing at all.

I was never in group 1, because I happen to be very sensitive to bad English, it ruins the experience for me, in the same way that out-of-tune instruments can ruin a song for me.

I was in group 2 for a short while, but then I realized that ignorance is bliss.  I haven't read anything in English in years.  I don't want to know what's going on--I don't want to know if my favorite waifu's dialogue is butchered or anything.  I'm happier not knowing.  That is my advice to people in group 2.

[Mephisto]

Chronopolis pretty much mentioned everything that needs to be mentioned. Something that may be useful to note is that getting a "perfect" translation is more or less impossible, or at the very least not worth it, since that means that it'll never get done. 

 

If you go over it 100s of times to make sure there isn't a single thing wrong, then you'll never finish it. 

 

If you don't go over it 100s of times, someone is going to pick out a small part of the script and say the translation sucks. 

[Supah Kawaii Weeaboo]

My questions with visual novel translations are...

 

* Does it work the first time with little effort? Most recent professional translations work on computers and consolves without having to make any modifications.

* Are there technical problems? I wanted to like the first patch for Toradora Portable, but unfortunately it crashed when I tried to play it on my PSP. That was discouraging.

* Is it distracting? I don't mind some typos and jokes. However, if the story has quite a few spelling/grammar errors, I'll get annoyed. If the translation is full of pop culture references or out-of-character swearing, I'll get annoyed.

 

And only in EXTREMELY rare cases are people going to ever retranslate something, way more often than not that bad translation will always be the one people go with, and the name is forever tarnished.

 

There are not many examples in anime/manga/translated game fandom where a single work gets more than one translation. Sometimes you can compare a fansub or a manga scan with the official English version. Every now and then, you can compare versions from different companies or regions. This is discussed in the Dueling Dubs article, if you're interested. But more often than not, only one translation exists.

[Decay]

The main translator for the Ace Attorney franchise recently wrote a good article about translation versus localization (or in other words, literal translation versus liberal translation): http://www.capcom-unity.com/zeroobjections/blog/2014/11/21/localization-and-ace-attorney

 

I found it to be highly interesting and relevant to this thread's topic. Even if you don't agree with everything said, it's good food for thought for anyone on a translation team.

[Darklord Rooke]

A fascinating read and establishes the argument for total localisation fairly well.