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Parallel structure is a really simple concept that you probably already know in the back of your mind, but that you probably could use a little formalism to better understand. The idea is simple: when you're building a sentence with a list of multiple entries (which may potentially be pretty much any part of the sentence), try to keep the syntactic structure of each entry the same. If you don't do this, in the best case, your sentence will be a little harder to follow, and in the worst case, it will be downright ungrammatical. Ready for some examples? Here we go! VN TL Example I was mostly inspired to write this blog post by a translated script I was looking at a few months ago which had quite a lot of parallel structure problems. Here's a particularly clear example sentence demonstrating the issue, from the translated script: Makes me want to put my fist through a wall. The problem is that list of three items: "good grades"; "great looks"; and "is very popular among all the students." One of these things is not like the others. So, what do you do about it? You massage them until they're the same, of course. You could try to rewrite that last one to an "<adjective> <noun>" format like the others, e.g., "<some adjective> popularity", but I'm having trouble making that work. "High popularity?" Basically nonsense. Maybe chuck the word popular and find some equivalent? At any rate, I gave up on this branch because it was too much trouble already and there were better options: for starters, we could just switch to single adjectives down the line: It's a little terse now, and it doesn't say exactly the same thing, but this sounds quite a lot better because of the improved parallelism. You could also go the other the direction and make them all verbal phrases: Or even rewrite them each as a full-on independent clause: I probably wouldn't go with any of these (I actually didn't edit this line; I just left a note for the person who'd already been through it to come back and fix up the parallel structure). To be honest, most of the words here are pretty bland; the character in question is being painted in dull shades of gray. I'd want to splash some color onto it. And, yes, it should really have a serial comma (you'll see I added it to all of my versions), because the serial comma actually is as great as it's hyped up to be. That said, neither making things more interesting (while of course keeping in mind that the goal is to better match the intent and flavor of the original) nor waxing eloquent on the value of the serial comma is my concern with this blog post. At the moment, the goal is just to avoid wanting to put my fist through a wall, and if we fix all these parallel structure problems, I might just make it through the day with my hands and walls intact. Published News Article (if by "published" you mean "posted to some site on the internet") Example Here's a great, more interesting example. This one I just happened to stumble across mere minutes after I'd settled on writing this blog entry earlier today as I was, out of idle curiosity, poking around for more info about that zoo penguin with a Kemono Friends waifu: My fist is twitching. As with any writing problem, there are many ways to rewrite the sentence to fix the problem, but here's probably the least intrusive fix: insert a "to" after the "accustomed" and before the parenthetical. It's easy to convince yourself this is at least an improvement by dropping that whole additional verbal phrase inside the parentheses and reading the resulting sentence out loud to yourself, since the result is a straightforward, obviously grammatical sentence. As the sentence was originally written, if you drop the parenthetical, the result is equally obviously ungrammatical. So, here's the simple fix: This is passable, in my opinion (assuming the audience for said news article is a bunch of weebs who will understand "waifus and husbandos"), but it's still a pretty extreme example of odd sentence structure, and if you so desire, you can go quite a bit further to fix this up for better readability, by either breaking up that list entirely or by further enhancing the parallelism. This example is particularly interesting, and the mistake here particularly understandable, because the structure of that compound verbal phrase is so complex. My initial analysis was that "to grow accustomed to" was a transitive phrasal verb, but I don't think that's quite correct, because "accustomed to XXXX" is probably best classified as an adjective, which is consistent with this usage of "to grow" being best classified as a linking verb, rather than a transitive verb. By that, I mean that "to grow a fruit tree", the transitive version of "to grow," is quite different from "to grow bored", the linking version of "to grow," of which this is an example. Meanwhile, "to celebrate" is a simple transitive verb. So in this sentence, they've actually managed to build a compound verb phrase out of: a linking verb, linking the subject to a phrasal adjective which takes an object (itself a pretty long, complex noun phrase); and the simple transitive verb "to celebrate," which is taking the same really long noun phrase for an object. Bottom line, it's still a pretty gnarly sentence because of the remaining lack of parallelism between the verb phrases. Want to fix it more? Knock yourself out (but I think my walls are safe from me now, so please don't knock them out). Once you get parallel structure ingrained in your brain, it gets pretty easy to spot problems and to fix them. In fact, you might even start spotting correct usage of parallelism and appreciating it.

Visual Novel Translation Status (05/13/2017) For the title, since this week we finally had Yukino's (Complete) patch for HatsuKoi I figured that I should use the same pattern like back when Kyou's patch released. The pattern was once again was the same as Koichoco (Love, Election, and Chocolate), only that since we had Morino Yukino who was our (I meant Yuma) childhood friend reading a shoujo manga at the opening video, I figured that I should add 'childhood friend' and 'shoujo manga' (First love was still the direct translation from Hatsukoi duh). Well then, let me say welcome to this week VNTS Review in which there's some interesting announcements coupled with some boost from several fan translation project here. Let's see what I could write here. For Sekai right now they only had one usual update - Bokukotsu at around 70% translated, so naturally there's nothing much to write from their usual update. That aside, this week Sekai was released one sudden release which is Darekoi or as Sekai localized 'A Butterfly in District of Dream'. As for the VN, well it's already been translated for a while after spending one whole year to do the translation iirc. That aside, as I attempted to search more info in regard of this VN right apparently it was quite unknown so much that back at Erogamescape it was only had 2 votes and the score was quite average at that (74). But then again maybe someone else would be able to find out the hidden potential between this unknown VN, so if someone want to try Darekoi go ahead. Other than Darekoi sudden release, there's Sekai OELVN trial release which named Eternal Hour which safe to said not on my priority to keep my eyes on it. Other than those two, there's a news that fault series developer will be back at AX 2017 according to Sekai's blogpost. That's all for Sekai. Other To tell the truth, I didn't care about Taishou Alice release that much. But since we had one very interesting state of release, let me say something here. In regard of the release, it was actually was quite unacceptable so much it cause a conspiracy theory that E2 (The company behind Taishou Alice localization) was in fact a con company (Read the conspiracy theory article here, or a collection of the tweets to be exact). The problem was that it was quite a bad translation according to some people out there, and I'll just let you see here to judge it by yourself (The hiragana and katakana Alice was quite hilarious though). Oh, and by the way maybe I should 'praise' that one man managed to dub all of voiced lines by the voice actor himself I guess. Taishou Alice aside, actually there's an interesting news from Degica in which they decided to release Symphonic Rain officially. Yes, Symphonic Rain and I definitely not joking when I typed this. Anyway, for a little history lesson Symphonic Rain was one of the VNs that was translated back at TL Wiki back at 2010. Since then, Symphonic Rain was one of the popular VN and of course, being a popular VN was mean that this VN was already been discussed to the dead. While in theory it could be a redundant release, the Steam version itself was redrawn with the new art, so it might be worth to get if anyone else felt interested to had a little nostalgia with Symphonic Rain (Also obviously hope that more new player will enjoy Symphonic Rain). It will be released at June 15th if some of you interested of the release date. Oh, by the way Moogy was quite happy with this news, after last year he was said something 'I hope Degica will release Symphonic Rain instead of gay nurse VN' in regard of Hakuai release (Sorry, Hakuai fan). Other than Taishou Alice infamy and Symphonic Rain official release, there's also Chuusotsu in which managed to gather 14,284 out of 20,000 with 17 days left. Other than Chuusotsu, there's also another otome game release at Steam in which it was better than Alice Taishou (Gakuen Club). I mean at least there's no controversy in regard of the release. Mangagamer As for Mangagamer, this week they finally had some of the updates both from their revealed project and secret project. But before going to the updates let me remind that at next week Mangagamer will announce 2 announcements at Anime Central. As for the my expectation, let's wait and see here although judging from the last year it might be not interest me much here though (Just hope it's not another hardcopy announcements, although it might be 5th secret project though seeing that it was the complete secret project right now). Anyway, for secret projects update we got something like: 1st was at 94% translated and 88% edited 2nd was at 66% translated 3rd was at both halfway translated and edited 4th was fully translated and 77% edited 7th was at 64% translated and halfway edited For a bit of trivia here, our Quof was apparently the translator for Sweet Young Bride (Not that it was unusual though, I mean a fan translator became a freelancer translator). Of course other than secret projects Mangagamer got their usual updates, and the updates were goes like: Higurashi Kai was finished the TLC progress and in editing progress right now, which naturally mean that the translation for Higurashi Kai was finished - By Higurashi Kai I mean all of the three remaining chapters other than Meakashi (Tsumihoroboshi, Minagoroshi, and Matsuribayashi) Boukaku was in scripting Evangile W and Suki Suki was in beta testing, while Dal Segno was still in testing (I wonder which one will be finished the testing first) Hapymaher was past three quarter (76%) translated and 73% edited Sorcery Joker was reaching 90% mark (93%) translated and 77% edited Fata Morgana fandisc was at 54% translated and 44% edited Naked Butler was at 76% retranslated and 57% edited Imouto Paradise 2 was at 65% edited Trinoline was at 15% translated Hashihime was past halfway (55%) translated and 6% edited That's all for Mangagamer updates now, and let's see what Mangagamer had in their next updates next weeks. Fan Translation There's one big release from this section, and like Decay said it's been a while since we had big name VN fan translated (It was 11eyes back at December). Other than the big release (Very obviously HatsuKoi), there's so many boost if we looking at the updates from usual fan translation here. As for the updates, we got something like: Majokoi was at 80.05% translated (Which was quite big jump looking back at last weekly progress (74.8% translated)) and 74.03% edited Eustia was had Fione's arc was almost 7% translated (6.95% translated), which in turn bring the overall progress reaching 10% mark translated (10.23%); 5.98% edited (Prologue was at 64.95% edited); and 5.83% TLC-ed (Prologue was at 63.28% TLC-ed) Loverable was at 65.89% translated (Chinatsu route was almost halfway (49.07%) translated), 37.08% TLC-ed, and 19.28% edited Koiken Otome fandisc was finally added to VNTS, and it was at 4% translated (Or to be exact Shiho route was at 21% translated) That's all for the updates, and once again it's quite exciting imo. As for HatsuKoi, once again the complete patch was finally released exactly one day after last week VNTS (Monday). As expected from tone work, it was one with high production value such as seiyuu (Isshiki Hikaru and Natsunoo Koori), famous singer for VN players (Shimotsuki Haruka and Chata), and the image song for the heroines in which counting the number of the heroines it'll be five (Duh). While the production value was quite good, once again Yuma might be not for anyone else. For a little history, actually there's some sort of effort to translated HatsuKoi in the past through the Youtube video ie subtitle, but apparently it was stopped when it's about to entering common route so it's only the entire prologue was translated (From the old translator). Have fun to anyone else who want to play HatsuKoi there, and for next plan in regard of Tsurezure I'll report Tsujidou progress in here just like HatsuKoi. Other than HatsuKoi there's another VN release actually which was sudden, but it was for PSP so not interested here (Might be worth to check it though for the particular anime fan, although it might be better to just watch the anime imo). That's all for this week, and see you next week.