Leaderboard

Disclaimer: At the end of this post I get pretty salty, so be aware of that. This post endorses MY and MY OPINION ONLY. The numbers about the costs of a translation team were researched before putting them here. Hello guys. Aizen-Sama here with another spicy rant. Although I haven’t been around the forums as long as other users who have spent their time here several years (I have spent around 7 months more or less at the present time being) I have seen that there’s a huge problem that I’ve mostly seen here, in Fuwanovel, more than any other site that congregates VN fans. In fact, I think that this doesn’t happen anywhere but here, but again, what do I know? I don’t really visit Reddit nor 4chan that much, let alone interact there. Anyways, what I want to address is a problem that has been going on since the beginning stages of this site, and that problem is the Translation Requests, or what I like to call “e-beggars” (yes, I know this term has been invented already). First and foremost, the majority of people that make these Translation Request posts are usually new users and I’m fully aware of that. But this has been blowing up lately. I know that 4 posts in the last month and a half doesn’t sound like that much, but the proposals are getting so ridiculous that it’s hard to believe sometimes if the guys asking these things are for real or if they’re straight out trolling. Let’s take this post as a quick example. You’re scrolling through the forums and see this post, and then the thought comes to mind “Another typical Request Post. Sigh. Let’s see what this guy’s asking for…” and then you see this: These posts show nothing more than ignorance and arrogance, as well as no interest towards these groups they are begging to translate something for them. Do these people even understand what it takes to translate a medium length VN? A medium length, around the 35-40k line mark in my opinion, could easily take a year. And the guy in this post begged for 5 medium and long length VN’s to be translated, one of them being >50 hours long. But don’t be mistaken, the worst part about that post wasn’t the amount of VN’s he was begging for nor their length. It was the last statement: “Thanks in advance”. Although it sounds stupid, that’s what triggered me the most. A shitty “thanks in advance” is not something that motivates people to do these things. People have to put themselves in a translators’ shoes sometimes. Not only him, but also the people who aren’t translating, but the ones who edit the text, proofread it, the image editors, the quality checkers, etc… Do they think that the task can be easily done if the guy in question knows Japanese? Not even close. The secret of a translation project. I know this is hard to believe for the e-beggars, but the translation of a game requires an enormous amount of time, and one year to finish the TRANSLATION, not editing, of a medium length VN is a very decent deadline. And I’m talking about a medium length game, not a long one. Majo Koi has around 47k lines. Supposing it had one sole translator and the translator in question did 100 lines a day, the game would be finished in around 470 days approximately, this taking into account he diligently does 100 lines a day, no skipping, no nothing. Let’s convert that into hours spent in total, since that tends to shock people more; 470 days doing 100 lines a day, if the translator is an experienced one, meaning that he has done this before or is a professional in the field, he could get rid of that task in about an hour. But an amateur translator, basically the bulk of the community in itself when it comes to fan translations, could take around 1,5 or 2 hours to do the exact same number of lines. That could mean than in total, just translating could take from 470 hours for the experienced translator, which means around 20 full days translating something, to 705-940 hours for the amateur translator, which is around 30-40 days translating nonstop. And this would be just translation, I’m purposely taking out the other processes such as editing and QC’ing. Do you e-beggars understand the amount of work is being put in these projects? This is why Translation Request posts should be completely banned off this site and instantly deleted. Then again, where would I put my insulting memes towards the op’s to gain likes for no reason? Let’s throw in another question now that we’re shifting towards that matter: Is fan-translating Visual Novels even worth it in the first place? Before I answer (although it’s probably known what I’m going to say, given my tone) let me address this: I by no means think that fan-translation is bad, in fact, it has been the reason why we’re getting official localizations now and I think that no amount of praise of thanks can equate the amount of work the translators of these projects did in order for this genre to be known better in the Western community. But, as sad as it sounds, fan translating at this moment is not worth it. Why? I’ll put in some of the reasons: - Although some members of the vocal community throw in the occasional thanks once the patch is out that’s all the team who translated the game gets. Nothing more, nothing less. Some people might say that recognition counts as some sort of reward as well, but personally I don’t think that’s the case. - No reviews of the translated VN’s are usually made (this is what in my opinion spreads the awareness of these games), only discussion threads are made, which is pretty sad in my opinion. - I’m going to quote something that Clephas said in one of my posts, that sums up this next point: “Another thing is that most people in the community will never even try to experience fantl from the other side of things... they don't realize how much time it eats up, that emptiness you feel when you realize you've used dozens of hours of your personal time only to put out a patch that people bash left and right for 'errors' and other shit.” - The work put in to translate the game itself is not worth, meaning that the compensation that the translator/team worked for it is not even close enough to what they should be getting. Lastly, I want to address the problem that comes with donations, awareness of localization costs/translation costs, and ignorance. I’ll cut to the chase; for the people that think that with donations alone you can “pay” a translator to do some kind of game, you’re WRONG. Let’s put an example of what could a medium VN translation cost: let’s suppose that the team consists of three persons, to translate a 1.5 million jp character VN (equating to a 45k line count approximately). The translator gets 1 cent per Japanese character, the editor gets 1 cent per English word and the QC gets a quarter of a cent for each English word. In total, the final price equates to 33k dollars JUST FOR THE TEAM TO TRANSLATE A SINGLE VN. And these prices are apparently pretty shitty for a translator, so yeah, there you go. Besides, why donating a random group of guys, who could easily run away with the money and machine translate the game, or not even translate the game at all, when you can just support the official localizers? Contrary to what some people think they are actually releasing more games than ever and the 18+ industry in the scene has never seen so many official releases ever. Summing up this 3 page-long essay of frustration: 1. Please for the love of god don’t e-beg or Request for translations. Just no, it triggers people off and it only shows how ignorant you are about what happens behind the scenes. 2. Fan Translating in this actual moment is NOT WORTH, only people who are very commited and have a strong resolution will be able to start one, and very few out of those will actually finish the project. 3. Donations are NOT a solution to encourage Fan Translation, it ruins the very concept of it and it’s also ILLEGAL. Don’t support an already illegal activity by paying it. 4. Before posting retarded shit on the forums please look for other posts similar to what you might want to post. Maybe looking at the responses could enlighten you and help the other users not waste their time by reading the same shit over and over again. 5. Before criticizing Translations and patches for “errors” and “typos” and being a little whining bitch how about you try to show interest on how much effort people put on the translation of these games behind the scenes? (This goes solely to the people that haven't experienced working on a fan translation and whine non-stop about "how bad the translation of this is" and blah blah blah.) Anyways, I think that’s all the rage out. For those of you who haven’t dozed off already have a nice day and all of that stuff. And if you smash that like button you will get your very own… DIES IRAE MACHINE TRANSLATED PATCH. Yes! This is not a scam at all, your own personal Dies Irae Machine Translated patch. If you leave a like you can choose between a Google, Bing, or a Skype translated patch. I’ve invested so many hours on them, it was totally worth though ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).

Speaking from the heart, I agree with most of what Aizen-sama said. I also approve of his use of my quote up there. Now, to be clear here... it hurts horribly the first time someone criticizes your translation. I experienced this repeatedly as a fansubber for anime and it only gets worse for VN fantranslators because it is text and not audio. Do you know the reason so many translators experience 'burn-out'? It's a combination of the sheer amount of work they put into what was, to them, a labor of love, only to have some smartmouth jackass publicly insult them for typos, nitpick about word choices, and generally make an ass of themselves... As he quoted me saying above, when you put that much time into something, only to have someone snipe at you over the details, it slowly corrodes your motivation, leaving you apathetic toward translation in general. Moreover, when you are a translator looking for just a few words of encouragement and you get some ****head wailing about how the translation is behind schedule, it pretty much shatters you. Human beings aren't designed to work without some sort of compensation, whether it is a full belly, cash, emotional satisfaction, or social encouragement. With something as time-consuming as VN translation, the pathetically small amounts of money offered by those who want to 'pay' a translator and the emotional satisfaction from a job well done just aren't enough to motivate one to finish one of these projects. If you worked the same amount of hours some people put into fantls in a retail job in the US, you would actually make more money than you could from a 'professional' translation job in many cases. So... for those who think translation is 'easy' or 'pays well', get a clue. Even I never seriously thought companies would willingly pay what that kind of work deserves when I was a newbie, and that was over a decade in the past.

Ah I remember asking if someone could translate a title in my early days of fuwanovel, than I realized what a dork I was and created a completely different account months later with a different username so no-one would recognize me.

Or back to French

It's been a while I saw something so heart touching and bittersweet at the same time. Thoughts?

This is a simple post putting forth my views on what the largest pitfalls are for a fantranslator, both in the immediate sense and the long-term. Immediate 1. Making promises: Anyone who starts a translation is bound to do something stupid... such as setting a deadline or predicting how long it will take them to do something. Even experienced translation groups trip and fall into this particular trap. Nothing good comes of making promises, primarily because rl exists. 2. Agreeing to translate/edit/proofread something you aren't interested in: This links to motivation. To be blunt, no fantl will be able to finish work on a VN if they don't enjoy the original or at least prefer the genre it is in. Fantls are a labor of love not a workplace with a set salary and a boss telling you to get back to work or he'll dock your pay. Passion about the subject matter is necessary to get anywhere on a fantl project. 3. Taking on a job you aren't qualified for: This mostly applies to beginner fantls... to be blunt, don't take on something you can't read easily. If you can't read and fully comprehend the text of the VN you've agreed to translate, don't even make the attempt. 4. Machine translations: Don't work. 5. Looking up your name/reputation/etc: Some people get addicted to looking for positive reactions to their work. Unfortunately, this also means that they stumble across the negative responses and can damage their confidence in ways that can destroy a project. Long-term 1. The choice to announce a project or not: Many who translate VNs use community comments to help them build motivation. However, choosing to involve the community in your project is a two-sided sword... it cuts both ways. Negative comments, people asking you when it will come out, and complaints about the translation of any partial you put out can obliterate your motivation and cripple the project. 2. Internal group chemistry and mechanics: No matter how you look at it, the translator is the origin and star of any given project. Without the translator it goes nowhere... but translators can't be the ones going around motivating the group to keep working. It's inefficient and emotionally draining for the person in question, and it is the number one cause of project failure I've seen related to group chemistry, when the translator finally falls apart. An editor's role only seems minor to a translator. It is actually a job that can be equally frustrating to that of the raw translation, and a decent translator's secondary job often becomes tlcing and explaining his own work to the editor. Thus, my advice to any fantranslator is find an editor you can talk to and get along with, or you'll regret it later. My advice to editors is: Be patient. Many translators really don't like going back over their own work, so just keep an eye out for potential signs that they are at their limit. 3. Burn-out: This can potentially happen to any fantl position. It is also related to all the things above, since it is a state where all motivation is lost and the individual in question basically just drops out of the project. Apathy toward the project and ignoring group members are fairly common signs of this. Whether it is permanent or not depends on the individual, but it can take years to recover mentally and emotionally once you've reached this stage *speaking from personal experience*

Has anyone read Mr. Moody's borderline terrible essay? I really don't advise it, you never know how much of somebody's stupidity rubs off on random passers-by. Let me quickly explain why this 'philosopher's' essay on transgendered pronoun is the stupidest thing I've read this week. First some history. A very long time ago, English used to be a gendered language (probably due to English's tendency to steal from other languages) with nouns expressing a gender like in France. Le horror. A simplified explanation can be found here: Or for a more in depth explanation you can read the book - English Historical Linguistics 2006: Syntax and morphology However this wouldn't last. In the 1300s gender was eliminated from English nouns, and there was a concerted push to do the same for pronouns. This is why you had people like Shakespeare using the word 'they' in the singular - this was the word that was designated to for a non-gendered third person pronoun. Examples can be found here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.html Unfortunately later on, many centuries later actually, grammarists struck this down telling people it was wrong. 'They' is plural, they said, and therefore using it to indicate a singular pronoun is obviously terrible English. So after this people tried using 'he' as a universal pronoun that included both the sexes, but this is obviously quite controversial these days. Now knowing this, how can anybody read Daniel Moody's essay with a straight face when he opens with: You have permission to laugh, I certainly did. What he does is take a system everybody agrees is obsolete, and have been happily finding ways around for 800 years or more and atrributes a reason for its existence that is not only non-sensical but is incorrect. A third person pronoun denotes a person, it does not NEED to denote more than that, just like ‘it’ just denotes and object and ‘they’ denotes a group of people. Details are lacking because they aren’t needed, and can be added later if they are. That gender/sex was used was a hangover from an obsolete system of English which attributed gender, or sex, to many nouns. So he’s wrong. But not only is he wrong, he ludicrously writes an essay extrapolating from his wrong assumption. He then concludes with this statement – People have been trying to get rid of the system for almost a millennia because 'it works', apparently. Referring to people via sex is a pain in the arse. Why? Well the first obvious reason is that the sex of an individual is not always known. A less obvious one is when you’re looking right at somebody, and still can’t figure out a person’s sex. But watch out you don’t slip. Ever call a woman a guy mistakenly? It’s not fun. So as an ‘anchor’ for communication, it’s a pretty lousy one. It's also unclear what he means by 'transgender pronouns'. He actually doesn’t say anything about this at all. However, the term has been thrown at gender neutral pronouns which is quite hilarious. Gender neutral pronouns are a way to refer to a person without referring to anything else about them. Recalling from before that a third person pronoun by definition refers to a person in the third person, not a GENDERED or SEXED person in the third person. But this is quite beside the point. Daniel Moody begins with a misunderstanding, and extrapolates that until everything he says is an embarrassment, and is an example of extremely shoddy and wishy-washing thinking. This is why you do your research BEFOREHAND. Daniel Moody describes himself as a philosopher and has released a book about … who cares. If this is the type of thinking coming out of the mouths of modern day philosophers, then maybe the field is in as dire shape as people say.

^ pretty much. People, even if new, should first do some interior or exterior research before posting these retarded posts that have already been done to death. The level of ignorance shown with these posts/threads only comes to show how much people don't know and/or don't care about what happens behind the scenes and just want the end result. And it indeed isn't, if you aren't doing it for: Learning, like say, practicing for better linguistic skills or just overall better understanding of a language. Have huge amounts of motivation and drive for it. Want to get involved more in the scene, or use it as a stepping stone in your future career, or something of that sort. I'm very much triggered that people aren't double-checking on what they're doing on the internet or in general, and donations for fan-translations are a very good example of that. If they'd just dig around for a bit, they'd find pretty easily that paying money for fan-work is in most cases illegal. People honestly should pay more attention before bashing something they don't like, but that part of humans won't change, ever. Things be dumb and unfair to the end, so better get a thicker skin before sliding deeper. Or at all, really.

>Sex works An extremely bold claim that I don't quite trust. I have to say, I was expecting something completely different when I read the thread title. Not sure I like the actual content much better. Grammarians are a joke, as always. The only language experts we need are those who teach our children how to read and write, and those who transcribe what the actual people are speaking and writing. If you're a linguist seeking to be the guiding hand of the English language, then nah, we're good. You can find a new job now. We're actually doing just fine without you.

You or Derg should read the one that feels is right (I think you already read it xD). I like literal translations (the more literal the better for me), I hate when the translator takes liberties just to make it sound good for the English audience but this is something not many people agree with and I understand that, they also changed many things on how miki talks, is not bad or good it's just different but I personally don't like it. Still, is not a bad translation, just different. The real issue here is if you want to wait until alternative gets released or not, maybe read extra and unlimited and if you see that you cant wait for the release of alternative then read the amatersau version of alternative xD I don't know what was cut from the muv luv all version, there isnt much to cut aside from the h-scenes (i skip them when I read it) and i didnt notice anything being censored (like when miki falls you can still see her panties) maybe certain scene... but either way there is nothing really important being cut from the novel. Now, reading the censored version of alternative... that would be a shame and I don't recommend it at all, alternative doesnt have a release date yet, probably next year and seeing that it takes them around 5 months to release a +18 version of the same game... maybe it will be released by the ends of 2017, so it would be a pretty long wait and like I said before, reading extra and unlimited without alternative is like cutting a movie in the best part.

Here's a comparison I posted when the new version first came out: I haven't had the opportunity to play all the way through the new version, unfortunately, but everything I've seen has been improved to this degree. The tl;dr is that the dialogue previously felt very stilted and didn't flow very well at all. The new version pays a lot of attention to the flow of conversation, giving a much snappier and coherent feel, and actually making the back-and-forths pretty entertaining.

A nukige. Censored. On steam. No 18+ release. ... ... Alright. I'm just gonna go over there to smash my face into my keyboard now, good day. (The worst part is, the steam crowd will jump at this like crazy, which might make the company think this was a good idea... sweet lord have mercy...)

I'm just misunderstanding misunderstandings I guess, ignore me

Of course not. You address people with the gendered pronoun "you", as is good and right and holy.

I might as well give it a try, let me put my translator clothes on.

Okay, let's see what's my opinion here or I should said few elaboration here. In regard of translating cost here, guess I'd learning something new here which is quite interesting. Although if I may nitpicking here Majokoi was only 40,000 lines though instead of 47,000 lines, but I knew it still take long time though (Sorry). About saying translation bad, it's not only the fan translation problem. Even Conjueror who hailed managed to made Tokyo Babel translation very good was facing critic in regard of translation. So yeah, there's always the people who nitpicking too much in regard of translation (And I think most of them were at 4chan iirc). As for e-begged, suddenly I'd remember back when VNTL was one of site that I'd visit to seeing the VN translation progress there. I'd always see the comment from one user that always asking like when Miyako route translated (He also made parody of UBW chant in regar of Miyako). Oh, and another people there also always asking euphoria to be translated iirc. For more e-beg, just read this thread (To Sekai directly though) and you could put your insulting meme there if you wish (By the way, I'd amazed that the OP there (Shini44) was very quick to change his stance from hopeful to Sekai to distrust Sekai in about 12 hours, while Sekai didn't do anything at all). By the way, I think it would be called entitlement by Decay if you speak about e-beg. From the reason that fan TL not worth, I think one of those could be improved here and that's in regard of the review. In fact, I think the translator could send the patch to the reviewer of Fuwanovel, then the reviewer write his/her opinion about the translated game and publish it on Fuwareview if the translator want to raise awareness of translated game there (Sort of like review copy system). Just saying my idea here. Other than that, more or less I kind of agree with the blog post here.

I remember a podcast where part of the translation team mentioned that the patch would probably add an ingame (menu) option to turn on or off the H-content. I guess that would be like the FSN Realta Nua patch then. But obviously the patch was not finalized at that time so who knows if they actually implemented it that way. Here is the link to said podcast: https://alternativeprojects.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/arg-unhinged-cast-ii/ Besides that I think there is a chance that the patch for Alternative would take less time than the one for Extra/Unlimited simply due to the fact, that the team had work to do on Alternative after they finished the first game, and I guess the patch for the first game took a bit of backseat in comparison. But that is obviously just my guess.

Note that "Visual Novels" =/= Nukige and Eroge. I can see the argument for the latter, but there are many different kinds of visual novels, some of which (short and meaningful -- Narcissu, Planetarian, some Western VNs) are entirely appropriate for the digital distribution platform. I'm also not positive Eroge is wholly ill-suited to the distribution platform, but I'm not starting a discussion on the topic here.

Hell, I didn't know that it has a 18+ version when I picked all three at a discount. I mixed it up with something else, lol. I only realized that after I had encountered those conspicuous "there-should-be-ecchi-here"-shaped holes in the "story".

Not necessarily. Certain questions will definitely be raised.

Someone has way too much free time......Most people on here could care less about this.

My opinion is that it is definitely worth a try. You will get a general feel for the game after the common route, and you can decide then whether or not you want to continue. ChaosRaven's little review above sums up how the game is pretty well tbh. It's a very nice little moege-like game, with some cool battle segments on the side, a fun and interesting cast with some pretty decent heroines. Worth a shot.

You is a second person pronoun. When you want to refer in third person to someone who is present, instead of using 'he' / 'she' you call them by name or some other way, e.g. our chief technician (here).

After that title I expected a simple post with something like "Sod Off". Would have probably amassed more likes. Maybe. And it does sum up the post if you want to achieve the pinnacle of curtness. I agree that said posts do annoy me, especially knowing personally how long these things can take, so I just don't read them.

Yeah, Chiyoda was quite the quirky one. It's a petty that she didn't get more screen time. I was actually thinking about the fan disc since Chiharu has a route there, but my VN schedule for the rest of this year is pretty much already fixed. Might be something for next year though, since technically Koiken Otome is a knight girl VN, and I have a bit of a weakness for those. And Koiken was certainly a lot better than Seikishi Melty ☆ Lovers.

I finally finished Koiken Otome. Overall, it was a pretty solid school-life moege. Not exactly groundbreaking, but still a nice heart-warming cuddle VN. The VN had a bit of a Harry Potter feeling. All the characters are in a special school for 'douryoku' (aka magic) users, and fight each other and other schools in small teams in a Japanese highschool version of a gladiator-arena . Sounds actually more exiting as it actually was, since the story could get rather tedious from time to time. IMHO, the VN didn’t do itself a favor by limiting the protagonist to a semi-passive supporter with his ‘special talents’. On the other hand, most of the characters were rather likable, not just the main heroines but also some of the side characters. It also had several (drawn) male characters who didn’t even all belong to the idiot friend trope. And that’s actually a lot more remarkable than it should . Four of the main heroines had their own route with some light drama and several rather decent H-scenes. It was a bit surprising that Chiharu didn’t have a route though, considering that she was one of the most funny characters. Comedy wasn’t the best I’ve read, but it did certainly have its moments. The VN had also pretty polished visuals although the soundtrack could have been certainly better. And although the story was nothing to write home about, it also didn’t do anything particularly wrong, considering what it wanted to be. And that’s actually not something I can say about many of the VN’s I did play this year. Heroine ratings: Nao > Touko > Chiharu > Austin > Akane > Rei > Suzu > rest Overall rating: 7 / 10 Overall, a pretty save read for someone who wants just a simple feel-good moege with decent art and ero and without any serious drama. Not something I’d advice for someone who wants an interesting story though.

Thanks, I appriciate it. Certain threads, like this one, where the OP clearly has not played the game in question, does warrant the use of spoilers if you ask me. (And on that note, so does the post you linked from me as well, so I'll edit that once I'm home.) I was not trying to sound like I was sitting on a high horse criticizing you, thinking you were the only one in the wrong, (sorry if it seemed like I was); I quite simply did not want to get spoiled. This is like Vorathiel pointed out, a thread that was made by someone who clearly has not played the games at all, so discussing said game in the thread in itself might be a bit out of place, at least if it's outside spoiler tags.

It's your thread and therefore it's your call, so I've corrected my relevant posts and put them into spoiler tags. But if you criticize others I'd appreciate it, if you'd follow your own words and use spoiler tags in posts like this too, where you're openly talking about details in Maggot baits. That would be quite the special case. But you aren't exactly an angel either if it comes to spoiler tags. Like here where your spoiling details about Sharin no Kuni. The two links I've given are actually not meant as petty nitpicking. I just want to make clear that we somewhere have to set a 'reasonable' limit for the usage of spoiler tags, or otherwise we can put pretty much every post in spoiler tags or this forum will degenerate into a real mobbing circus where everyone blames each other for not putting spoiler tags on some ridiculous bogus details. The last five pages of the "What are you playing" thread would be already enough to send about two dozen warnings out at least. There are even posts where entire walkthrough details were posted. So do we behave like adults and reserve spoiler tags for important information or do we all start to troll each other for every minor detail? In the latter case the complete "What are you playing" thread should be deleted because it's a complete hotbed of sin. And I surely wouldn't envy the admins for the approximately 50 posts they'd have to censor each day. Anyway, sorry this went completely off-topic, but I think it was necessary to say to make people aware that they might be sitting in a glass house when starting throwing stones. Sorry again, last post from me in this thread, so no more off-topic from me.

I think it is better that way, even when it is something minor. It might seem totally trivial to someone who has experienced the game already, but yes, there are people who want to go into a new experience completely unspoiled. Seeing that a character wears a uniform on a cover, and hearing information about what they are and how they are used in the game is two very different things. Please just use spoilers, even for minor things if you feel like discussing the game is needed in this thread. Just to be safe and to not upset anyone, I think that is the best way to go about it. There is no reason for a discussion about the game in this thread to begin with anyways. I appriciate the information and your view on the content in the first game and alternative though.

Dark Jeet Kun Do, on the other hand, is a mysterious martial arts created by Bruce Lee when he was corrupted by the dark side of the force and summoned to the parallel world of Pangaea.

This thread just turned into a minefield... Please don't accidentally click the spoilers Derg

It's been over a year since I started my project to translate Arcana and so far I've only managed to get half of it done, and I've probably made a lot of mistakes while doing it. There's a whole second arc of the game which I'm probably not going to bother with, at least not for a long time, unless someone else wants to join the project to do the translation work. Hacking the VN and getting at the scripts took perhaps a few weeks. Translating the scripts, more than a year, and Arcana is a fairly short work. My estimate is that the common part is something like 60,000 words, and the light arc is also around the same length, and given the length of the untranslated scripts for the dark arc is in that range as well, I estimate that the whole script would be 180,000-200,000 words. That's about the length of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. To give an example of a long visual novel, once I tried extracting the text from Mirror Moon's Fate/Stay Night translation and found that the Fate Route is in the 330,000 word range, UBW is in the 244,000 word range, and Heaven's feel is in the 314,000 word range. The whole VN is 916,000 words or so, making it nearly twice as long as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (580,000 words), and close in length to the entire Harry Potter series (1,084,170 words). I'll let that sink in for a bit to give an idea of the enormity of the task.

Sure, why not? In fact you could just give me the scripts for all of those VNs and I'll translate it to 4 languages here (English, Latinese, Arabic, and Indonesian) in one year at very late by using Google Translate lol. Okay seriously it's just like anyone said before (And to be honest I want those to be translated). It'll take too much effort to translate those properly, and there's so many technical work there. Also in regard of both of Shinigami no Testament and Sakura no Mori, the company behind those two (3rd Eye and Moonstone respectively) had the deal with Mangagamer so the fan translator didn't want to deal with official works or procedure (Probably). PS - By the way, one VNs here was very long in term of length (Kenseki) and one medium (Shinigami no Testament).

\ /

Sure, just give me a week or so and I'll translate them.

okay~ you don't can use old encryptdat or siglusPCK tool... this is a little stuff to translate and create a patch with wordwrap, you need copy all files showed after run the "Repack All" http://www116.zippyshare.com/v/l1boCYs6/file.html

I play VNs because I hate real people. Why woudl I play a game where I have to interact with those people.

But.. You might be able to steal another player's waifu in before he trigger the flag and watch him cry lol. NTR next gen Joke aside, there is no point really imo ˆˆ. As said before, vn are more digitalized books than games, you would have a lot of issues with writing a "dynamic" script for your game.

Haha, I really hope not. They didn't leave it open enough to justify an entire sequel - most of it is just stuff you could just claim means nothing, anyway. Though I have no doubt there will be something like Persona 5 Arena, I hope they just kind of do their own thing.

Hi! (: If you let me, I will copy something I said in LSF: The mechanics are similar to The Yawhg. I won't lie: it's pretty simple, in the sense is just up to 4 chars with different stats that can be managed even by the same controller or keyboard. Each player can manage his char and the main idea is to have fun together the same way you can enjoy watching together a funny TV show. The idea is for all of you to see the absurd and crazy situations you're facing. Also, we're trying to include events with some complexity that can be altered by other players. Finally, you can always try to pursue the same NPC, fighting for his/her love. But in best case scenario we get enough funding to add more secret endings... and I'd love to add special secret endings when 2 players fighting for the love of a same NPC doesn't necessarily ends in one succeeding and the other failing, if you know what I mean Obviously, in the end, each person is building his/her own storyline, but I want to explore as many ways as possible to make the storylines collide... clash. That you feel like if your friend wants to cooperate he/she can help you to unlock a better version of your storyline. But in the end is more than that: as said, is the communal experience of living a crazy narrative altogether. The Yawhg's gameplay video conveys it excellently: What do you think? (: I'm not fond of MMORPGs myself, but still I think it's always good to have a variety of options, mechanic-wise. Anyway, in our case it's a local multiplayer experience, so think more of a tabletop game night with friends than a MMORPG. I insist: probably most similar experience would be The Yawhg.

It sounds good on paper, but eventually, it's all gonna come crumbling down and then no one is gonna have a good time, Firstly, donations for fan-translations are illegal, and making it legal is way too much of a hassle, and pretty much impossible. No team would want to have all the traffic to go to Fuwanovel and not their own website; such a thing would be ludicrous. It'd also create a lot of backlash by monopolizing the traffic and fanTLs in general. Paying for a whole team to do it for said donations would require quite a hefty amount of money, which would be borderline impossible with just donations. What would survey the quality and not just machine-translate the whole thing, and thus basically giving them the money and running away? Nothing, which everyone would do. A bad, bad idea. Do not do this. Fan-translations should be fan-work to the end unless they get localized or work with an official company. I heavily advise against everything you've said.

I've said it before, but I will say it again... No.

You're in a wrong place to ask for translations, OP. That said, people have seriously no idea how much work it takes to translate a single game, especially a japanese one.

Wait... Multiplayer usually introduces player competition or cooperation within the game's main workframe. Care to explain how such mechanics would would work in a visual novel? It's hard to think of anything, because vn's can be barely considered games and what little interaction it is, ammounts to nothing more than advancing the text on screen and making choices. Where's the point?

Is this actually a new fad or something? Well, it'd take a ridiculous amount of free time to translate these, maybe about six to eight years, considering the person translating them isn't all that motivated. And that's not even counting the rest, hacking, editing, quality control, proofreading, which would take even more, probably the same amount, maybe even more. I doubt anyone would be willing to do this, even if you'd pay them.

You're ignoring option 3 of selling the new game in English and set the price appropriate for the English market. They'll be two different prices for the two different markets. This already happens, just with launches that are somewhat close instead of simultaneous. Kara no Shoujo 2 is cheaper here than in Japan, for instance. Wagamama High Spec is releasing maybe within the next four months and that came out earlier this year, you can bet the prices will be different. It still makes sense for Japanese developers to probe the English market with shorter VNs, though. They probably view such a move as a risky endeavor, and making your first English product a relatively short game heavily reduces the amount of risk involved. Maybe they'll start working on translating their bigger titles if they like what they see here after their first short one.

My opinion is closely aligned to Funyarinpa in his earlier message. I don't know if anyone else has spoken from the opinion of an OELVN dev yet, so i'll act as if i am the first. Naturally, i fall into the category of those who had their VN virginity brutally torn by Katawa Shoujo, but even then, after reading subsequent Japanese novels like G-senjou no maou, i never actually compared the two. Why? Because they were both great. This may sound like i'm trying to defend OELVNs but it's the undisputed truth. It doesn't matter how, why, what or who made a VN. A good story is a good story no matter what it's 'ripping off'. Some who've read this far might still disagree with my notion. Then let me explain a little further basing my opinion on facts and ideas. There are two popular VN forums sites for western otakus. There's our very own Fuwanovel and there's Lemmasoft. Fuwanovel strikes me as a Vn site that is mostly focused on Pure Japanese Vns as opposed to lemmasoft which tries to promote OELVNs. this is true because this forum has a sub-forum for OELVNs that sees even less action that most virgin NEETs. Neither of the sites are better than the other and neither of them are worse. But after browsing these two for a while, I've come to learn quite a few things about the differences between OELVNs and Jappy VNs. 1. Literature. OELVNs use a different style of literature as opposed to Jap Vns. To be precise, they are more focused on prose and the utilization of text heavy lines and powerfully fluid description. So it's almost like reading a paperback novel on screen with art. I myself dislike writing with prose, as i prefer utilizing Japanese literature and plot devices. An example would be the very well known Boke and tsukkomi routine (think Comyu). Most OELVNs are focused on delivering the story with excellent wording at the cost of visuals. 2. Art. Art is the main branching point and the OELVN's greatest weakness. i'll be blunt. Sometimes i see some projects on Lemmasoft and be awe-struck by the art used to depict characters... and not in a good way. It seems like OELVN devs are satisfied with utilizing low to medium-low quality for their projects to cut costs, as they are not companies who can shelve the heavy costs that comes with great art. Most of the freebies have low quality art, while the Commercial ones have medium low art. Like Funyarinpa stated, this community gathered because of Japanese art, music and style, so OELVNs with such art would have little to no impact on those used to the excellent qualities Jap Vns deliver. I'm an OELVN dev, yet I've never bothered to read a single OELVN except KS. (the ones I've edited and proofread don't count). This is because, before i am a writer, i am an Otaku. that means i love Japanese stuff. that means i want Japanese stuff. But attempting to produce something on the level of the Japanese is apparently being termed as a 'ripoff'. It makes you wonder what exactly the consumers want. Do they want westernized art? No. Do they want Japanese art? Yes, but not from you. A difficult situation indeed. 3. Communication. Another bane of OELVN creation. From what I've read/heard most Japanese devs are mostly located in a single room/complex/building during most of the VN's creation. Most OELVN devs do most of their communication over the internet. Something like this doesn't sound like a pressing problem from the perspective of a non-dev, but trust me, communication is what has lead to the crumbling and breakdown of most OELVNs. For example, an artist is working on a CG. Now CGs unlike sprites or Character designs, have to be done right from the get-go otherwise you're going to lose a lot of time in correcting it. So they send WIPs and Lineart sketches. You'd have to pray and hope your description and their understanding matched well, otherwise you'd have to restart. Jap devs, however, just need to look over their shoulder and check out their comrade's WIP, or the artist may even explain a better idea for positioning and perspective as opposed to the writers description. Also some associates on the EVN sphere can remain offline for days or weeks and there's absolutely nothing you can do but wait patiently for their return. The internet is difficult like that. 4. Commitment. Apart from one or two exceptions, most associates in the EVN creation are not fully committed to what they're doing, especially in the case of Artists. It seen by the style of advertising on lemmasoft. "Pay half to my paypal, i'll send a sketch and you pay the other half". After that payment is done the association has ended. Whatever the art is used for is not their problem, since it has been compensated by a few bucks. I'm not saying artists should work for free, but rather take a controlling share in what they draw for. Unfortunately for EVN devs 95% of artists aren't interest in Sales commitment or as it's called, "Rev-share". Yes, i know that economical and financial security play a part etc but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a problem. Another point under this, is that EVN artists hardly actually read the story their drawing for. I mean they just read the summary and draw based on whatever you give them alone, instead of mixing it with the emotions, perceptions and ideas you derived from reading. It still works for business purposes, but it would never match up to Jap Vns with their enthusiastic and moving work. Aside from these points, there are many other deep rooted and subtle difference that bar EVNs from making it big. I can't touch on everything since i don't have the energy for that, but i would spent a little more on talking about my 100% personal opinion. What the OP refers to as 'ripoffs' are those EVNs that utilize Japanese names for characters, Japanese locations and Japanese culture, while using western style literature, art etc and the writers themselves only have a second hand grasp of the Culture. Like Funyarinpa said, what the EVN community needs is that one (or two) project(s) that stands out from the rest with Art, Music and story that are original and compelling while delivering it in the style that Jap VN lovers want. Hopefully, with the increase of the EVN output, that one project may come sooner rather than later. EVNs may not be the best examples of VNs, but like all things that are shot down by humanity, it's just a mentality... which i'm also criminal of. Being someone who understands this very intimately, i hope that whatever i throw out would be to the satisfaction of both sides of the market and wouldn't fall into the demeaning category of 'ripoff'.