Sanahtlig's Corner

Hi sanaht, its been awhile. I'm going to actually respond to this because it addresses a number of issues I've had with the english audience and why i've decided to disassociate with the english visual novel fanbase at large.
 

 

This is an opportunity for a translator to improve both his Japanese skills and his English skills

I don't know where this originated from, but it's very incorrect to even assume that translating increases your Japanese proficiency. If anything, it only teaches you how to think of Japanese in english when you are at a lower ability of japanese, which does not help you graduate to any sort of higher echelon of understanding what you are reading. And if you are still too stubborn to let go of this route, go ahead, practice translating. But theres no reason to release it at that point. It's harmful.  And maybe it could be a decent english exercise, when you simply take a moment to look at all the terrible english translations around that both fail at japanese level and fail at an english level, I simply doubt that it's ever used or taken as such. People are so focused on translating that they blindly, literally translate just from dictionary to dictionary and don't really care about meaning or writing style or anything. So, I don't think this applies to any fan translators.
 

 

I don't understand why anyone would think that fan translators have an obligation to provide a quality product, and that the audience should have an expectation of a quality product.

This line of thinking is just one I despise. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Time spent on reading a 4mb game like Monobeno could be better spent elsewhere, reading something that didn't have a bad translation. Or improving japanese so you didn't have to worry about that. Or anything. Either way, when the product is bad, the there is an enormous time wasted from both the translator and the reader. Whether the reader knows it or not, a terrible translation vastly negatively impacts how much they enjoy a work. Saying that 'it's better than nothing' is simply an extremely lazy attitude to take and the very reason why terrible translation after terrible translation continues to make it through the VN gutters with absolutely no standards set. The existence of the translation is more precious to people over the quality of it, because they are just that rare.

The fact that people don't care about the quality of the writing in a medium that is almost entirely focused upon narrative and writing is just insanely mind boggiling. Making something a lesser work because of ridiculously flimsy logic like practice and 'its free' is just disrespectful and just born of nothing but greed and desire for more works.

There :is: an integrity of the work to consider, and there is the enjoyment and readability of the work to consider. As far as i'm concerned, the notion that 'if i can understand it, it's fine' is utter bullshit. If something can be bettered by just effort and time alone, then it should be. The fact that completely ruining original works in favor of mediocre translations just because theres no alternative is an acceptable practice in this fanbase is just disgusting. If fan translators really want their game to succeed, then study, read more, get better, and do it when you can get off of EDICT dictionaries. There is no excuse to put out a shit product just because 'you want to'. It's lunacy.

Anyone who doesn't care about quality can just go smash their heads on machine translators, that's fine, but saying stuff like "I don't understand why anyone would think that fan translators have an obligation to provide a quality product" is incredibly disrespectful to the people who actually care, which I hate to say it, is a decent amount of people, however shunned. And these people get no favors done by having a bunch of people just not care and release crap after crap. If people need practice, fine. But maybe hold onto it for awhile and come back when you've gotten better and take a double check.

So, yeah. This is the unpopular opinion, but if this crap keeps continuing I can't help but think that a game that I truly like is one day going to get this stupid treatment, and a completely lesser product than what I read is going to be consumed by the masses. Thats just heartbreaking to think about.

I suppose I could reply at greater length to this, but I'll keep this short and sweet.  If you want the assurance of a quality translation, fan translations are the wrong place to be looking.  Buy professional releases, and hold them to high standards.  Fan translations almost by definition don't respect the wishes of the creators.  It's a bit silly to say that a bad translation respects them less when no respect existed to begin with.  As for respect for the wishes of "fans who actually care"... I'm not sure why such wishes deserve respect?  Why should anyone respect the wishes of those who seek to limit their freedom (to produce and enjoy low-quality translations)?  You're free to choose whether or not to "waste your time" with questionable translations.  But by demanding that low-quality translations not be available, you're restricting the freedom for everyone to choose and decide for themselves.  That's a very condescending attitude, and I hope you realize why people label such attitudes "elitist".

lol, neither side - commercial or fan - really respects the original material.  Do you know what a translation team is thinking toward the end of the project - or even halfway through?  It is very very simple... 'let's get this frigging over with so I can forget about this hell!'   Quality is something you think about at the beginning and perhaps a few months after you finished the project, not something you are going to be thinking about at the end, unless you are insane. 

 

One of the problems of trying to get a 'quality' translation out of anyone is that most companies and fantranslation groups are unwilling to seriously rethink the process itself when it isn't working.  Fantranslators wait for a particular translator/editor/tlc to return, eventually causing the project to rot.  Commercial translators are so focused on just getting it out of localization that they frequently make amateurish blunders that make fantranslators look better in comparison - yes, this happens surprisingly often. 

 

Jast is an exception... but look at Jast.  It takes them the better part of three to four years to get even the shortest of VNs released, and no one believes them for even a second when it comes to release dates.  Any decent translator could have finished translating Hanachirasu inside a month if he was being paid to do nothing but that (that means using the time others use for their rl jobs for it), but instead it took five very long years.  Do you have any idea how ridiculous an inflation of time that is? 

 

Fantranslators have a much wider variance in quality, meaning that they can be so bad as to be incomprehensible or so wonderful they make the best commercial translations look like someone took a battle axe to the Mona Lisa.  However, the majority of the curve tends toward the former, not the latter.  Commercial translations tend to be more reliable in terms of quality... but that is a midline quality that never manages to do anything but 'get the job done'. 

 

Simple things like a simple 'konbanwa' turning into 'Report, soldier' (actual example from Valkyria Chronicles PS3) are examples of wtf screwups by localization teams, but you see even more incomprehensible mistakes from some of the fantranslators out there (Kamidori is full of them, as an example played by many Fuwans). 

Jast is an exception... but look at Jast.  It takes them the better part of three to four years to get even the shortest of VNs released, and no one believes them for even a second when it comes to release dates.  Any decent translator could have finished translating Hanachirasu inside a month if he was being paid to do nothing but that (that means using the time others use for their rl jobs for it), but instead it took five very long years.  Do you have any idea how ridiculous an inflation of time that is?

You can't compare fan translations and official localizations as equivalents on the same timeline.  They're simply apples and oranges, because fan translators don't have to deal with engine incompatibilities with English Windows, licensing issues, and wrangling over mosaics.  Because they're entirely self-sufficient, they can proceed at their own pace, while an official localization can't.

I'm not sure why such wishes deserve respect?  Why should anyone respect the wishes of those who seek to limit their freedom (to produce and enjoy low-quality translations)?  You're free to choose whether or not to "waste your time" with questionable translations.  But by demanding that low-quality translations not be available, you're restricting the freedom for everyone to choose and decide for themselves.

So my wishes for a quality product shouldn't be respected, but the wishes of people for batches of low quality vomit to be spewed up because it's 'better than nothing' should be? What sort of backwards nonsense is that?

The problem with your liberal point of view here is that releasing a bad fan translation hurts the product forever. There is no "decision" to be made, because a second, better version won't ever be done. EOP's will simply have to put there head back and drink the sewege due to lack of options. That's the only reason why Ammy and Takajun were so well regarded, because they put out things nobody else will. Nothing to do with quality.

I guess this problem has become sort of moot, now. Subahibi will probably be the last big fan translation to come out, since almost all big translators have found official work, and quality standards for official releases have been raised across the board, and theres been a pretty big surge of awareness of TL quality. I just hate this idea that something should be left be, left alone, and left to ruin whatever product they are supposed to represent, just because "well, what do you expect?". That's bullshit, nobody should have to be fed garbage because theres no food in the fridge.

This is a bit of a late response... but no, I don't think you should have the right to set the bar which all translations have to meet or they're not allowed to be released.