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We're talking about Fuwa Reviews here, you don't actually have to read the thing you're reviewing. Just put low score on it for clickbait and complain about the things you kind-of remember.

Im sorry SP but mangagamer releases euphoria in 4 days and I just couldnt bear to see myself not preordering that one and some japanese doujin VNs. (also grisaia made me wanna stay away from everything that resembles the school setting for a long long time)

While "desu" can indicate a more formal speech or a peculiar character trait (versus those who don't use "desu"), the fact of the matter is that "desu" is typically just indicating state of being, so I feel as though keeping it in English, more often than not, just ruins the sentence for no good reason. This is on a whole different level than honorific usage since it doesn't particularly indicate anything relevant in English if you were to keep it. In Japanese the word "desu" has a proper grammatical function and that grammatical function has an English equivalent so there is no reason to keep it in a translation, as much as you see it as a character trait. As much of a weeb as I am, I don't feel like keeping end particles is a good decision no matter how frequent they are in the original script. You'd have to give me a really good explanation to keep desu in an English script other than "it's a character trait", because plenty of characteres have plenty of different ways to end their sentences in Japanese. If we were to keep all these different particles, the finished product would be a mess.

Whether it’s fine translation philosophy depends on whether it's explained. The word ‘desu’ may convey a speech quirk of a character, unfortunately you are translating the game for an English audience and English speakers have no clue what the word means. Therefore the trait you are trying to convey will be overlooked by the audience you’re targeting. In other words, including a word which has no meaning is akin to leaving it out altogether, except you add a little bit of confusion to the pot as well. Deep Blue is fine with it because he has knowledge of Japanese, this is not your target audience. There are two ways to go about things. The first is to leave the Japanese word in, but explain it either in game or in footnotes. I keep saying this, and I’ll continue to say it over and over, every single professional literal translation is accompanied by hundreds of footnotes. Every single one. You cannot do literal without explanations – at least not in any credible way. I’m looking at literally translated literature as we speak and there’s a massive number of footnotes. P&V would take a Russian book, leave a paragraph in French for authenticity purposes, but translate it into English in the footnotes. If you don’t explain these foreign terms that are unfamiliar to the English speaking audience, it’s just poor translation philosophy. The other way is to localise things. I’m fine with either method what I’m NOT fine with is having to look stuff up on google every couple of minutes because somebody littered the story with Japanese words and concepts and didn’t include footnotes, that’s NOT cool. And I just looked up ‘desu’ on google, and I still don’t understand what quirk it’s meant to convey. I really don’t have the time to hunt this down purely because I want to read a story. So your translation is fine if the word is explained to the English audience. I’ve been watching anime and reading translated VNs for 20 years, and I have no clue what ‘desu’ is outside of ‘it’s a speech quirk.’ So all you’re conveying to me is the character speaks with a quirk. Unfortunately most people speak with a quirk so that’s some pretty useless information there. It may signify ‘cute and peculiar’ to Japanese speakers, but it just signifies ‘foreign’ to me. Case in point, the lady who talks in short sentences. That’s an interesting quirk right there, intentional? Feel free not to answer, just something I noticed. I don't know if you're getting the desired effect there, early on her dialogue read a but like bullet points. Not really important though. But it's a quirk, and it's a quirk I can understand because you used techniques familiar to English audiences. The way to localise this is NOT to try for a one-to-one substitution. You identify what the word actually does, you identify the tonal change it gives the character speech, and you look for a technique in the English language that affects speech in similar ways. This will most likely NOT be a word you tack onto the end of sentences because of how different the languages are, and it could change case by case. There are many ways to characterise ‘cute' and a gazilliion ways to characterise 'peculiar’ in English, you pick the way which closely approximates the desired effect. PS: To anybody who thinks my tone is confrontational in forum posts, it's not meant to be, I'm doing a few things at the same time and this is my 'business' tone.

Quick update! We've just released our first translated gameplay video for Libra. Please check it out when you have a chance. More clips are coming soon. Enjoy!

the structure of clannad is cancer good luck completing that game without a walkthrough

For those of you wondering about the meaning and usage of "desu":

They seriously don't give steam keys for physical backers? I never noticed that before. I don't know if SP was just unaware of this, but it is common practice in video game kickstarters to give a steam key to physical backers. Now that you've backed them for more money, you have to wait two or three extra months to be able to play the game? lmao.

I'm totally fine with keeping that. I mean, it's an English translation, doesn't mean we have to try so hard to translate everything into English, even the untranslatable ones. That's almost a "trait" of the character, so there is just no reason to cut it off or change it into some weird English words that cannot sound dumber. And seriously though, is there anyone here who doesn't know about the word "desu"? Hell, if anyone here follows Umaru manga, you will see that readers even demanded the translation group to include "desuwa" in Sylphi's lines. Rozen Maiden dub was horrible, btw.

It's a possibility, but~ even if it doesn't work out, I think we'd likely end things on good terms (I hope). If I'm still interested in VNs, anime and such, I doubt I'll leave fuwa just because of that. I'm not sure what question you're referring to xD. Btw, those are huuge... Confession: I'd personally rather get a dakimakura instead of a mousepad, like this one!

I like it, is like makina on grisaia when she says all the time なのよさ at the end of the sentences, there is no real translation for that(it was lost on the translation) neither for this desu. Personally I think is really charming, but like I said not everyone is going to like it.

God dammit I'll write the thing tonight and send it off to editing tonight.

Finally finally finally got my copy to work. Clannad FuwaReview coming ASAP

Clannad made it to rank 3 of current Top Sellers. I guess that's a good start alright. I don't mind the price, it's about as much as euphoria is selling for and a bit less than Maggot Baits. I'll be skipping this one, though. Already skipped the After Story part of the anime, nakige just aren't my cup of tea.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while USA has Mexico nearby, and England has Spain, I don't think any other english native speakers have spanish speakers around all the time .-.

I'm sorry SP, but Clock Up releases Maggot Baits in 4 days, and I just couldn't bear to see myself not preordering that one (and there's Narcissu KS, too). (Also, KonoSora makes me wanna stay away from everything that resembles a school setting for a long, long time.) Though I wouldn't have bought Steam-infested stuff anyway. Well, at least the price is now reasonable, with that discount.

While I don't have much to contribute, I am incredibly happy to see some constructive discussion on translation and localisation of speech patterns, quirks, and untranslatable things in general. I'm very much a fan of creative solutions, no matter how unorthodox or, well, plainly bad it turns out to be. It's certainly a welcome effort to try and be unique.

If all else fails there's always the time-honoured tradition of privateering.

The reason why Spanish words are okay is because major English speaking countries also have many Spanish speakers from surroundings countries which causes their culture to sift in. As a result, almost every English speaker in say the US will now a few Spanish words like say Uno, Adios, Amigo, etc. It's basically the same thing as how Japanese has a shitload of English words in the language that people know and use all the time, but to a lesser degree. The same thing doesn't really hold true in English for Japanese save a few cultural words like Samurai, Ninja, Sushi, you get the idea. Putting in desu in a translation isn't a smart idea because the vast majority of English speakers, yes even in the anime community, aren't going to understand what it means even if they know of the word. That's what translating is. Speech quirks typically don't have much meaning on their own beyond being a part of certain speech habits. Even if the "nanoyosa" wasn't directly translated, that doesn't mean meaning was lost in the transition. Also just translate desu as yes most of the time, be creative when you can't, there problem fixed.

reading tapestry, I already love hikari xD

makina verbal tick is not translated, the " なのよさ" that she adds at the end of every single sentence is not translated because it cannot be translated, even if you want to it would look bad. What they did manage to add was the way of her speaking, doing things like "th'" "excellen''" etc but that is not related at all with the "nanoyosa" that she constantly keeps adding. Again that was lost in the translation. This makes her sound really subservient which is probably not what you want. that's the idea, she is a subordinated and again it was just a silly idea.

But that's precisely the problem with Japanese visual novels in the West: the market is super niche. If you can't appeal to a wider audience, you're bound to not sell very well, and this could potentially make developers like Key back off from localizations if they can't turn in a good profit margin. The problem with the price point being this high is that it'll heavily restrict the amount of people who will actually want to buy it to simply anime/visual novel fans, and probably only the hardcore ones that are willing to pay $50 for it knowing it's going to be that good. The Western market expects a game's price point to be related to the amount, or at least quality, of gameplay, not just the story itself, so you'll find it very hard to convince people to pay $50 for literally no gameplay over here. Japan understands the value of things like good art and good voice acting and the target audience over there is way bigger, that's why price points like this are something much more acceptable there, but over here that type of stuff won't fly very well, that's just the reality of it. I'd love it if people bought Clannad en masse, but I'm very skeptical it will happen like this.

Honestly, here's your problem with it, and why visual novels just aren't ported as much. Taking the technical aspects into account with localization and everything else, $50 seems to be a pretty fair price. It's comparable to typical costs for PS4 and X-Box games out there, so it's not like gamers don't drop that kind of cash on something. The problem lies in that it's not really a game. As a visual novel, you're asking people to drop $50 for a digital Choose Your Own Adventure novel that likely consists of repeating backgrounds and character images and mostly reading text with a few choices here and there to set a path to an ending. It has some replay value in choosing a few different paths, but in the end, it's a digital book, which makes it hard to justify asking someone to drop $50 on it. Considering most typical books run $10 to $30, depending on what it is and who the author is, etc. $50 is steep even for cool sprites and voices. Your typical gamer is not going drop that sort of cash on that sort of thing unless they're already into the format. Concurrent development of Japanese and English versions of a visual novel would be a better method, but without any guarantee it'll sell in the West (or should we say East, I mean, technically the USA is more East of Japan than West) it would be hard to convince a company it's worth their time.

And I'm currently working on getting all teh feelz in Grisaia. Why do I read things that make me bawl like an unmanly man? because it feels good obviously : 3. dont deny it. I dont know though, grisaia didnt rek me as much as I had hoped tbh. And actually I would like to say that "Grisaia no Kajitsu is a 7/10 game. It has great moments, yes, but overall it isn't all that impressive. IMHO it does not deserve very high a place in the hallmark of VN's." I've only made my way through one of females thus far, working on the second. While it isn't quite as loaded on teh feelz thus far, it still does catch me, in maybe a way it's supposed to. Hidden Content Well. Depends on who you went through actually. Hidden Content Well, that would be Amane's route that I've finished. To be honest, it didn't do that much for me. The feels are there, but it feels hollow as well.

Indulging trap needs with Kimi to Boku to Eden no Ringo. Definitely. I love how he is just as messed up mentally as girls. And the overthinking situations just to decide on the dumbest one.

Boo. It needs to rain more. I miss getting to walk under an umbrella with my female friends

It's not only about being one of the longest and biggest translation projects, ever. The game itself is insanely long and thus, you can't really complain about 50$ being "too much", considering how many hours of reading you'll be getting out of it. I'd even say 50$ for a translated game like this seems a bit underpriced. It's just hilarious how single-minded western fans are; it's like they feign complete ignorance in regards to localization attempts every single time, when things don't go their way.

Totally agree. The price is fair. Especially considering if we westerners want untranslated VNs we have to pay out like 80-100$+, due to the third party shipping costs. Honestly, 50$ is more than fair. Especially because of how big this project has been. Cant wait for it to release!

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but there you go. It does create a character quirk, I have no idea if it accurately approximated the specific quirk in question. This page has a lot of anime characters saying 'desu', but it seems a lot of the English dubs just drop it. Without seeing the dubs in question, I'm thinking most dubs may strive to emulate the effect of that quirk in ways other than a direct replacement. That's just a guess though. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VerbalTic/AnimeAndManga

The experience of reading a translation should be as close as possible to that of reading the original, without requiring knowledge of the original language. Ask yourself whether the Japanese readers need footnotes to understand what they're reading. I won't say adding TL notes is bad in and of itself, particularly if a work has a lot of references to stuff specific to a certain culture. Food, historical events, mythology and such. But generally speaking, that should be supplementary material.

I think you need to address the じーっ thing and add something like "staaaaaaaaaare" because that is in fact something that not many will understand if you don't know some japanese and adds a lot to the scene (in a funny way) just like they did with the びくびく The way to localise this is NOT to try for a one-to-one substitution. You identify what the word actually does, you identify the tonal change it gives the character speech, and you look for a technique in the English language that affects speech in similar ways. This will most likely NOT be a word you tack onto the end of sentences because of how different the languages are, and it could change case by case. There are many ways to characterise ‘cute' and a gazilliion ways to characterise 'peculiar’ in English, you pick the way which closely approximates the desired effect. PS: To anybody who thinks my tone is confrontational in forum posts, it's not meant to be, I'm doing a few things at the same time and this is my 'business' tone. I did say it was my personal opinion that it was a charming thing for her to say, I also did state that I was sure not everyone was going to like it. Probably you are right, they shouldn't target people with some understanding on the language (like me) they shouldn't take this types of things for granted, like the knowledge of the word "desu" but even so I think that "westernizing" a character or the translation itself is the complete opposite to this and equally harmful, like dropping honorific, changing the uses of surnames for names or even adding english traits to a character that doesn't have them in the first place, you are basically rewriting a character just to appeal to another audience. The best solution for this in my opinion is to add some kind of "encyclopedia" like clannad did recently or steins;gate etc etc, an easier way to do this is to add footnotes but again footnotes are not always welcomed by many readers. In the end you can't please everyone.

If you want to get the full characterization in any Japanese game, the only real solution is to read it in Japanese. Desu is one of those things that will just always be lost in translation, we should just accept that. This is a really terrible solution to the problem in my opinion. Again, this is the first time I've ever seen any professionals do this because it's usually obvious that you shouldn't. Expect to get a LOT of pushback for this.

We anticipated that including desu would raise some questions . To be honest, I was curious myself after I'd seen a couple drafts of the translation. So we brought it up to our veteran translators and asked them why they were adding the desu. After a lengthy discussion, they all commented that this stood out as a character trait (a cute and peculiar one I'd imagine) of Lycoris's. So, this is why we've decided to include it.

I love the です there although I'm sure many will complain about it (hope I'm wrong)

And I'm currently working on getting all teh feelz in Grisaia. Why do I read things that make me bawl like an unmanly man? because it feels good obviously : 3. dont deny it. I dont know though, grisaia didnt rek me as much as I had hoped tbh. And actually I would like to say that "Grisaia no Kajitsu is a 7/10 game. It has great moments, yes, but overall it isn't all that impressive. IMHO it does not deserve very high a place in the hallmark of VN's." I've only made my way through one of females thus far, working on the second. While it isn't quite as loaded on teh feelz thus far, it still does catch me, in maybe a way it's supposed to.

And I'm currently working on getting all teh feelz in Grisaia. Why do I read things that make me bawl like an unmanly man? because it feels good obviously : 3. dont deny it. I dont know though, grisaia didnt rek me as much as I had hoped tbh. And actually I would like to say that "Grisaia no Kajitsu is a 7/10 game. It has great moments, yes, but overall it isn't all that impressive. IMHO it does not deserve very high a place in the hallmark of VN's."

Git gud taste pls.

I had been worrying and worrying about this, but I've finally found an answer. If I had to name a preferred female character, it would be this one:

Confession: I don't think I have ever been as honest to someone about myself as I have been today.

Assuming everything related to localization got paid through Kickstarter, the only reason I can see for this price is Visual Art's taking a huge chunk of the profit or straight up having the rights to set the price as they wish. VNs in Japan have always been super expensive due to their high production values and niche market, it's not surprising that a release this big would make the developer want a good profit out of it. I still think $50 is a fair price, assuming everything has thoroughly undergone quality checking and is as good as it can be. Just because a game is a decade old does not mean the price should inherently drop a lot, especially not when it's a series as famous and as sought after as Clannad. I do think the Japanese market and the Western market operate very differently and have very different expectations though and I can not imagine this tactic pulling in a lot of new costumers but rather just pulling in existing anime fans and VN fans and then just sorta dying out like Grisaia did (Grisaia still only has about 10k owners).

I could spam so many pages of this manga, it was lit.

Seriously what did you expect? It is EA. Don't blame Dice.

I'm not really scared of buying things from Japan. But I am scared that I might waste all of my money doing so. lol

1) 2)

Gonna go with here https://figuya.com/en/products/dark-angel-olivia-aus-rage-of-bahamut Its probably one of the best figures i have ever bought in terms of quality and detail.

Quoting this for posterity.

Being popular doesn't mean it's good. And being good is subjective to your own tastes. If after the common route and any heroine route you still don't like GnK, don't bother, it just means it's not for you. Sometimes there is no reason for you to don't enjoy something even if everyone is telling you it's awesome. I don't like Breaking Bad. Everyone told me it's the best show ever. But I still don't enjoy it, no particular reason. I just accepted it. As for Grisaia, well, for me 80% of the fun was the comedy. I like humor, a little drama is good but too much and I end up wondering why I read something that makes me feel bad. And in its category, Grisaia is one of the best comedy I ever read and that common route that many found boring was the highlight. Laughing makes me feel good. And Grisaia mad me laugh a lot. So I love Grisaia.

It was good, but most of the routes sort of went into really ridiculous bullshit at times.