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Visual Novel Translation Status (07/16/2016) For your info I was type this at the tab, so forgive me for some shortcoming here. Anyway, as for the title because we had Muv Luv released, and the sequel (Alternative) was happened to be inspiration for hit manga Attack on Titan, so I decided go to use title Attack on BETA (Since Attack on Titan also had prequel titled Before the Fall, so I decided to use the same title, although the picture for title inspiration was girls from Muv Luv playing lacross though). Oh, and by the way for some people who didn't knew BETA, it's obviously mean as stand in for the titan ie the aliens that invade Earth. This week, other than Koiken Otome and Muv Luv releases I think there's only usual update here. The unusual thing this week would be that JAST had the update here, although too bad that Mangagamer didn't had any update this week (Guess I need to wait for another week here). I'll give my thought in regard of Decay musing at PS later. For JAST, one of interesting thing for now would be Eiyuu Senki translation progress, which for the progress they started to translating H Scenes. In regard of H Scenes translation, I remember that back at Hongfire one VNDB user Surferdude was translating H Scenes and right now it was around 50% H Scenes translating. Maybe Surferdude was decided to work together with JAST here. Another interesting thing here would be Flower progress, which right now was had 70% editing progress (Although the progress from JAST Tumblr page itself was at 50% though) and 15% beta testing. For progress roundup here Princess X was 70% translated (Very fast progress for just recently announced project), Schatten was 96% translated, and Ryko was editing 50%. Sekai progress was usual here. Since finally the progress was touching 5%, I decided to cover the translation progress for Korean VN here 'I Miss Her' (The exact number here was at 5.66% here). For Chrono Clock translation progress, it was at 25.97% translated while finally Tenshin Rahman translation was moving slightly here (30.04% translated here). Memory Dogma was almost fully translated with the progress was at 97.07%. That's all for Sekai progress here. Oh, and apparently Princess Knight Chapter 1 will be released at this month. For Other segment, we finally had Muv Luv released at Steam. For now I'll just said this release was redundant, although I'm also know that there was some people who like new translation compared to the old one here. Corona Blossom Chapter 1 will be released at July 27th according to VNDB, although it was only July at Steam store though. The surprise here would be finally we had Mari's route fully translated for Libra translation progress here, although we still had Mari's bonus route untranslated though (Hopefully this will be quick, because I think it'll be shorter compared to the route itself). Bishoujo Mangekyou as usual give the translation progress, although the team was facing slightly obstacle in form of translating interface and reforming the staff (For the progress, 23.4% edited and 14% QC-ing here). Tsui Yuri was also had usual progress here (Halfway (50%) 53% translated and 43% 44% edited here). No update from both of Majokoi and Witch Garden yet, and we had Hanasaki translation progress was at 32% translated for Hikari's route. For Tsukiyori, we had Luna's route 20% translated and overall translation progress was at 32%. Oh, and there's a project that was dedicated to translated Nocturnal Illusion Renewal, and apparently our JAST head Peter Payne was okay for fan patch here. For sad news, sorry to say that Koiseyo translation project was dropped here. And for a good news here let me said congratulations to Flying Pantsu for finally giving birth to their 'baby' safely after 3 years or struggle iirc (By 'baby' I mean Koiken Otome translation patch duh). Hopefully some of you enjoy Koiken Otome, and once again just think Koiken Otome as charage/moege with chuunige spice instead of full chuunige here if you ask my advice of how to enjoy Koiken Otome. That's all for my review, and see you next week. PS - To answer Decay comment, I didn't had complaint for both of Koiken Otome and Muv Luv new translation here. So my statement in regard of Muv Luv translation would be even if I said the release was redundant, I'm still said that it's fans right to either liking old translation or new translation here. Oh, and if Decay said that Ixrec translation was bad, I'd read some rumor that Ixrec was translating it half-hearted because he didn't like Muv Luv here.

(Still a Work In Progress) This week I was busier than in a long time with the project. First, I must apologise. When I released the prologue patch I was sure that everything from the engine to the buttons would've been translated, and according all common sense it was the case... until I revisited it this week. Let me give you a short version. I resumed my work on the engine since there were a few quirks I wanted straightened out. So I finished my work and gave the interface patch to my proofreaders, assuming that it would more or less go fine. Well, I was gravely mistaken. Hex editing, UTF-8, resource editing and much more. All of these were used in the engine, making some buttons, text, menus and some features to remain untranslated. Since then I've busted my ass ironing out everything and soon I can say that it will truly be completed. Allow me to say it again: I'm deeply sorry for my errors. I thought that just editing the files would be enough, but I was naive, too naive. I intend on finishing it in these following days, but the full interface patch won't be released. Instead, once the full patch comes out, that'll replace everything, and I'll destroy the prologue patch, since it's unfinished in every possible aspect. I hope you understand. One other thing, One of our editor's work was severely lacking and after some serious contemplating, I've decided to kick him out of the team, recruit another QC and move the team roles around according to everyone's wishes. You can see those in the Staff page in the upmost part of the site. As I just stated, because of this unfortunate outcome, editors and QC'ers have had their hands full with fixing the aftermath the one editor left behind, so I once again apologise for the lack of progress this week. But on the bright side, our team is now solid and the progress should be more solid and smooth. Progress: Translation: 100% Editing: 24,3% QC: 14% Proofreading: 0% Until next week, everyone!

What up people. I'm here again with the spicy weekly news as always. Majo Koi Nikki Translation progress has recuperated now, since @Hasa is back again with full force. Alice's route is progressing as well as Mii's and the second part of the prologue after the OP. Regarding the partial patch, it's basically finished at this point (just some buttons left to translate and we're good to go). We decided to delay its release date. Sorry about that, but shit happens. Editing progress has been slow, but now that I'm back from vacation in Portugal (nice country btw) I'll start editing as well. Progress Translation 24% - (9857/40394) Editing 13% - (5234/40394) Witch's Garden Translation keeps progressing and we added a new TLC to the team, making it 4 people checking the translation text at the moment. Editing is progressing slowly at the moment because we want to TLC a big batch of text before letting them work. The most probable thing is that our 50% game patch release will come out by the end of the year or so, and it will contain interface, prologue, common, Ririko and Misumi routes. Progress Translation (yes, there has been a slight progress here) - 63% (42410/67197) TLC - 8% (5354/67197) That's all. Cya next week peeps and have a nice day.

Last time I talked about trade-offs in editing and high-level motifs; macro-scale stuff. This time, I want to talk about a micro-scale topic: how to make an individual line better. As before, I'll be demonstrating this with examples drawn from recent editing experience. Before writing this post, I went around looking for other people talking about similar things, and I found this reference: http://kristensguide.com/Writing/powerful_sentences.asp. Frankly, it's great; probably better than what I have, especially in terms of breadth of topics. Give it a read and get your editing learning on. For this post, I'm going to deep dive into one single topic mentioned there, though, for which I've been saving up examples: putting the first and last words of your sentence to good use. The first and last words of a sentence are powerful. They're memorable. Forgetting the middle of a sentence is natural, so put a word at the end of a sentence when you really, really want that one word to be remembered. Okay, so what did you get from that last paragraph. I hope it was "first", "powerful", "memorable", "forgetting", and "remembered", because that's the point of this blog post. Anyway, let's look at some examples from my recent edits to Majo Koi Nikki, some to the prologue patch we're about to release, and some later. I'll point out other things that I changed as well and why, but this one point is going to be the running theme. Original: Looking in the mirror, she pondered for a second and answered with a shy smile on her face. Potential problems: - "on her face" is extraneous - that extraneous phrase is squatting on valuable real estate at the end of the sentence. Mine: Looking in the mirror, she pondered for a second, and then she answered with a shy smile. Changes: - drop "on her face" (for both reasons above - it's less verbose, and now I get "smile" as the last word in the sentence, which is great) - the comma after "she ponders for a second" is intended to give the reader that same mental pause as "she" has, to better set up the last part - "then she" somehow pushes you out of that mental pause and into the most important part: that shy smile, lingering at the end of the sentence. Original: Tokeizaka-san irritatedly flips through the book, but her hand stops suddenly. Potential problems: - With the benefit of spell-check, "irritatedly" => irritably - "suddenly" is often overused I actually really like the original; if you left it alone, aside from the spell-check correction, I wouldn't fault you for it. The verbs are great, "irritably" is a good use of a modifier, and the sentence communicates multiple events very concisely. But there's always room for improvement. Mine: Irritated, Tokeizaka-san flips through the book, until her hand suddenly stops. Changes: - Drop "suddenly." "Stops" is strong enough to carry that feeling of suddenness on its own, so "suddenly" is only making things weaker. I've also noticed a tendency for raw JP translations to overuse "suddenly", which makes me especially biased to remove it. It's the typical problem of overuse: if everything is happening suddenly, it might as well all be happening normally. - Move those good words, "irritably" and "stops" to the memorable points of the sentence. "Stops" we got for free, "irritably" requires a small bit of juggling. Unfortunately, Tokeizaka-san's family name is a bit unwieldy at best; better to bury it in the middle of the sentence and let the nice, emotive words take pride of place. - Swapping "but" for "until" made for a clearer plot to the sentence, I thought. Original: - The colorful beauty article are displayed neatly. Potential problems: - Engrish - Passive voice - Not flashy enough Mine: - Iridescent beauty products dot the shelves, arranged with flawless precision. On that last potential problem: normally my style is pretty spare. My typical goal is to drop adjectives and adverbs, and make verbs and nouns stronger to carry the weight of description, without going overboard on vocabulary. More often than not, I'm trying to make long sentences shorter and punchier. I didn't do that here. For context on why, it would help for you to hear the ridiculously high-brow BGM accompanying this scene and see the gorgeous background art. So, here: Background: BGM: Equally important for context, you need to know about the surrounding narration: basically, the narrator is currently marveling at just how amazing this beauty parlor is. One of the benefits of generally being spare with your adjectives and adverbs is that they then work a lot better when you actually do pull them out. A good mental model is that you have a budget: don't spend your nice words if you don't need to. Only pull them out when you're going for the razzle dazzle. The analogy breaks down fast, but basically, if you're constantly using flowery language and overdecorating the ordinary scenes, nobody's going to be impressed when something extraordinary happens, just like the overuse of "suddenly" I mentioned earlier. Since this actually is an extraordinary moment for our narrator, I'm spending a few nice words now. And again, I want to call attention to the first and last words of the sentence. Those are strong places in a sentence (or, especially in the case of a VN, a line). Previously there were pretty weak words there ("The colorful" and "neatly"); now we've got "iridescent" and "precision". Good words in good places. One last thing to mention. I wrote each of these up in the middle of editing, and then later edited that up into a blog post. I made changes to the edited line itself in the process of writing all this stuff up, which made it better. In fact, I even noticed a problem while writing up this blog post and further refined the line. You'll never know what it was (probably). The point being, simply spending time reflecting on an edit, and especially writing down your observations and motivations for certain choices, will help you do better work. You don't have to be this thorough all the time (I certainly am not), but every time you do an exercise like that, you'll learn from it, and then you can write up your own blog post and teach me something.