My only problem with nekopara.

[Kelebek1]

Third-person self reference in English is so rare because it is strongly associated with "too stupid to understand 'I'". Unless that is the point you want to make about the character (very stupid, can't speak their own language) you shouldn't be using it in English.

[Darklord Rooke]

 

It isn't at all. Third person in English is associated with social position and power, and modernly a holier-than-thou attitude. if you use third person you're trying to elevate your importance, especially relative to those around you. It has never been associated with "stupidity" ever, and I really don't know how you can even come to that conclusion. 

 

Dr. Lutz: May I ask you something? Why do you insist on referring to yourself in the third person? It is intensely irritating!

Hercule Poirot: Because, Doctor Lutz, it helps Poirot achieve a healthy distance from his genius.

[Down]

Dr. Lutz: May I ask you something? Why do you insist on referring to yourself in the third person? It is intensely irritating!

Hercule Poirot: Because, Doctor Lutz, it helps Poirot achieve a healthy distance from his genius.

Oh yes, I forgot. The only third person speech I can bear in visual novel is Erika's occasional one in Umineko, because it fulfills the same kind of purpose as for Poirot

But in this case it IS also reflected in the japanese text with that nuance, though.

 

Nobody ain't gonna convince me Chinami and that catgirl are haughty and highly intelligent people.

[astro]

Two words.

 

[Toranth]

It isn't at all. Third person in English is associated with social position and power, and modernly a holier-than-thou attitude. if you use third person you're trying to elevate your importance, especially relative to those around you. It has never been associated with "stupidity" ever, and I really don't know how you can even come to that conclusion. You don't need to look further than the royal use of third person, in which a current monarch would call themselves "One," as opposed to their name. So you would say "One is happy." Its usage has died out now, but it's how things were in the past among royalty. That along with the plural "we," which is called the "majestic plural." It's not called the "stupid plural."

 

They're all associated with royalty and a high position in society, and it's for exactly that reason, that "normal" people using it gives the feeling of a holier-than-thou attitude, because they're trying to raise their own social position and power through using it. Those listening would very much disagree, and call them a pompous twat, that's why it's now seen like that. But the point is, third-person is all about social position, it has never been associated strongly with stupidity or childishness in English, quite the opposite given that it was used by the highest in the land. I have no idea where you guys are getting that idea from, but you're mistaken. Here's a quick comedy sketch about it, with an explanation of its meaning too.

The Royal Plural is still a first person pronoun - specifically, the first person plural pronoun. It was used because the monarch was frequently considered to speak for all of a nation, rather than just the individual self. It's still a first person pronoun, though.

Did you pay no attention to the same skit you linked? Using a title for one's self was done in Latin, but as the skit it said - in English, it makes you seem mental. Stupid, crazy, and just not normal in general.

However, there are exceptions. As a literary device, such as sarcasm, it can be useful for displaying detachment or for representing the views of another. When the usage involves titles or descriptions, it is used to remove a sense of individuality. However, "This [whatever]" would correspond to a "この［何か］", a different speech pattern than the plain third person self reference. If one were to use names rather than title/description, you'd lose the effect - and go back into weird usage territory.

In non-English languages, a third person self reference is not always considered strange. But in English, it is. Certainly in modern English. If you are attempting to claim that Chocola should speak like a Chaucerian monarch or a Roman Caesar, I think you've got more problems in your translation than worrying about pronouns.

[Kelebek1]

Did you pay no attention to the same skit you linked? Using a title for one's self was done in Latin, but as the skit it said - in English, it makes you seem mental. Stupid, crazy, and just not normal in general.

However, there are exceptions. As a literary device, such as sarcasm, it can be useful for displaying detachment or for representing the views of another. When the usage involves titles or descriptions, it is used to remove a sense of individuality. However, "This [whatever]" would correspond to a "この［何か］", a different speech pattern than the plain third person self reference. If one were to use names rather than title/description, you'd lose the effect - and go back into weird usage territory.

In non-English languages, a third person self reference is not always considered strange. But in English, it is. Certainly in modern English. If you are attempting to claim that Chocola should speak like a Chaucerian monarch or a Roman Caesar, I think you've got more problems in your translation than worrying about pronouns.

[Chuee]

 

Exactly. You do know that Japanese has no modern personal pronouns right? They're periphrastic forms. You can read about them here, with the relevant connection to Latin on there as well. And just as you said, in English it's strange, very strange. The whole time I've been trying to argue that it's not right to have her speak in third-person English, because it's not normal. We can argue the specifics of *why* it's not normal, but it seems we're both on the same page in agreeing that it's not, and she shouldn't be translated that way.

 

You can also argue using that reasoning that keeping honorifics in translations shouldn't be done since they don't exist in English. Yet, people leave those because removing them takes away elements of the story and such. Likewise words like onii-chan, onee-chan, and sensei are left untranslated too because they have no English equivalent (referring to someone as 'big brother/brother' or 'teacher' in English is like calling someone 'imouto-san' in Japanese). There's also times when you can't simply translate to 1st person. I know off the top of my head a VN where a character usually speaks in third person but then noticeably shifts to 1st person later on. In such a case like that, you have no choice but to use 3rd person or else you completely remove that element in the scene. It's the same as when Crunchyroll sometimes leaves out honorifics in their translations for more popular shows, but in cases where a character may change what they call someone (going from x-san, to x-kun for example) you literally can't leave them out because they're an integral part of that scene. 

[Kelebek1]

You can also argue using that reasoning that keeping honorifics in translations shouldn't be done since they don't exist in English. Yet, people leave those because removing them takes away elements of the story and such. Likewise words like onii-chan, onee-chan, and sensei are left untranslated too because they have no English equivalent (referring to someone as 'big brother/brother' or 'teacher' in English is like calling someone 'imouto-san' in Japanese). There's also times when you can't simply translate to 1st person. I know off the top of my head a VN where a character usually speaks in third person but then noticeably shifts to 1st person later on. In such a case like that, you have no choice but to use 3rd person or else you completely remove that element in the scene. It's the same as when Crunchyroll sometimes leaves out honorifics in their translations for more popular shows, but in cases where a character may change what they call someone (going from x-san, to x-kun for example) you literally can't leave them out because they're an integral part of that scene. 

 

 

I do think they should be left out, I think it's terrible to leave them in. Look at any professional translation work (again, outside of some anime subtitling like Crunchyroll and possibly manga stuff) and they're all omitted, always. The consensus is to omit them, and I agree with that. You're supposed to be translating the work, you're not translating it very well if you have to still rely on words that only people who know the original language understand. Why not just keep the whole thing in the original language? Leaving them in is an excuse for being lazy, and an excuse to not develop the characters' personalities or emotions enough through the writing to let the audience understand their relationships. If the suffixes were required, then how in any other language that doesn't use familiarity suffixes (i.e English), can we make any assumptions about the depth of a relationship between characters?

 

So they're not integral at all, you just have to express the intimacy in a different way, in a way which is normal to the target language. That's what translating is about. Look at any of the well-translated works, and you'll find none of them have those suffixes, and conversations are re-written, extended/shortened to fit with the language. Square-Enix for instance have a very good in-house translation department (despite what you think about the games or the stories themselves). Go play the undub of FFX, so you have JP audio and English subtitles, or the recently-PC-released FFXIII and FFXIII-2, and you can see in how many places they quite widely stray from the original, and the ending result is a game that's much more natural in English.

 

If you want to read some more about Japanese and its perspectives, there's an interesting book you can (partially) read here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hwfn7lLCqVYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=false - I suggest reading from there downwards, especially the 2.1 and 2.2 sections.

[Darklord Rooke]

It's certainly rare to leave honorifics in outside of the anime and manga industries, although there are a few cases where it is done quite successfully. It will generally be done in fiction by those translators who want to keep the writing style of the original author in tact and therefore cannot show the relationship in any other way. In these works you'll generally have long appendixes with 100 or so translator notes providing the reader with in depth explanations. So the term will be translated, just in the translation notes, and they're left in the work themselves to provide a subtlety unable to be obtained without fiddling with the style of the original work. Pevear and Volohnsky would leave paragraphs of "War and Peace" in French, with translations provided in the footnotes. It's not lazy, they merely wanted to convey an authenticity for those looking for it.

 

That being said the anime and manga industries ARE generally lazy and unfortunately every translation gets tarnished with the same brush. That is, leaving honorifics in gets a bad rap when there ARE valid reasons for its inclusion.

[Kendjin]

My complaint with Nekopara is that its not my actual life.

[Kelebek1]

It's certainly rare to leave honorifics in outside of the anime and manga industries, although there are a few cases where it is done quite successfully. It will generally be done in fiction by those translators who want to keep the writing style of the original author in tact and therefore cannot show the relationship in any other way. In these works you'll generally have long appendixes with 100 or so translator notes providing the reader with in depth explanations. So the term will be translated, just in the translation notes, and they're left in the work themselves to provide a subtlety unable to be obtained without fiddling with the style of the original work. Pevear and Volohnsky would leave paragraphs of "War and Peace" in French, with translations provided in the footnotes. It's not lazy, they merely wanted to convey an authenticity for those looking for it.

 

That being said the anime and manga industries ARE generally lazy and unfortunately every translation gets tarnished with the same brush. That is, leaving honorifics in gets a bad rap when there ARE valid reasons for its inclusion.

[Eclipsed]

My only problem with Nekopara was that during H-scenes my frame rates dipped to 25 FPS.

[SoulJustIn]

hmmm..... i don't think i have anything problem about Nekopara....

.

.

.

maybe the vn short and story plot plain ........

.

.

.

sometime it remind me about "Wanko to Kurasou" when i read Nekopara......

 

(ps: since Nekopara still incomplete ,  hope it can improve.... )

[Chuee]

I do think they should be left out, I think it's terrible to leave them in. Look at any professional translation work (again, outside of some anime subtitling like Crunchyroll and possibly manga stuff) and they're all omitted, always. The consensus is to omit them, and I agree with that. You're supposed to be translating the work, you're not translating it very well if you have to still rely on words that only people who know the original language understand. Why not just keep the whole thing in the original language? Leaving them in is an excuse for being lazy, and an excuse to not develop the characters' personalities or emotions enough through the writing to let the audience understand their relationships. If the suffixes were required, then how in any other language that doesn't use familiarity suffixes (i.e English), can we make any assumptions about the depth of a relationship between characters?

 

So they're not integral at all, you just have to express the intimacy in a different way, in a way which is normal to the target language. That's what translating is about. Look at any of the well-translated works, and you'll find none of them have those suffixes, and conversations are re-written, extended/shortened to fit with the language. Square-Enix for instance have a very good in-house translation department (despite what you think about the games or the stories themselves). Go play the undub of FFX, so you have JP audio and English subtitles, or the recently-PC-released FFXIII and FFXIII-2, and you can see in how many places they quite widely stray from the original, and the ending result is a game that's much more natural in English.

 

If you want to read some more about Japanese and its perspectives, there's an interesting book you can (partially) read here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hwfn7lLCqVYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA47#v=onepage&q&f=false - I suggest reading from there downwards, especially the 2.1 and 2.2 sections.

[Dragoon]

Square-Enix for instance have a very good in-house translation department (despite what you think about the games or the stories themselves). Go play the undub of FFX, so you have JP audio and English subtitles, or the recently-PC-released FFXIII and FFXIII-2, and you can see in how many places they quite widely stray from the original, and the ending result is a game that's much more natural in English.

 

You do know that they left in "w" (double), so you got weird spell names such as for example "Fire Beam W". Also in the case of the games, you're localizing them instead of translating them. In the case of VNs you're translating them, meaning you do your best to convey the original message of the work. Localizing it would mean that you translate it if as they were living in a different country such as the USA and then translate "onigiri" as "donut".

[Yeah Way]

Chocola does use 3rd person here and there when the situation calls for it. 

 

But SP's translation pretty much put 3rd person in almost all of her lines when she was clearly not even mentioning her own name or using any sort of kiddy speech for the matter.

 

Most ridiculous example:

Original:

そうか (sou ka) 

 

SP translation:

Chocola sees

 

More fair translation by me (and anyone with half a brain)

I see

[Sparkker]

The best/worst answer to this dispute is Chocola is still considered a cat thus, they can still consider her as an it. Doing so, Chocola can refer to herself as an it. "It sees." Or any lines which uses It in place of Chocola sounds wrong. In the first place, just to reiterate, she is still a cat. I is a good choice but "I" is more of a personal pronoun for people since no animal can talk like we do. It really is a good middle ground choice.

(The flaw of this is if Vanilla refers to herself as I.)

[Kaito Hirose]

I'm sorry i have for tomorrow 

[Zakamutt]

For a take on the whole thing by Agilis, translator for Narcissu / Ame no Marginal and random TLC for SP projects: http://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/2u42g7/im_agilis_tler_for_narcissu_12_and_other_vns/co5l99p

 

Hey look, he agrees with me~

[Decay]

Please lynch every translator who works "it can't be helped" into their scripts. 

[The Major]

Please lynch every translator who works "it can't be helped" into their scripts. 

 

It really can't be helped.

[Down]

Wait.

 

Original 「もー、しょうがないですにゃあ」

1st pass TL: 「Sheash, fine, nyaa.」

Edited Ver: 「Sheesh. Chocola guesses it just can't be helped, meow.」

 

 

Can I just get the first pass TL? It seems to be much better.

 

 

Hey look, he agrees with me~

He doesn't seem to express any kind of opinion here. Maybe he can't speak ill of his colleagues.

Haeleth's version of Narcissu was better anyway~

[Darklord Rooke]

 

 

Can I just get the first pass TL? It seems to be much better.

 

Except for the comma abuse *twitches*.

 

But yeah, what kind of editing is that? o.0

[Decay]

[Nosebleed]

It can't be helped.