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Win10 in a nutshell.

Heh, if you read it closely both translators muddled up their metaphors here. A curtain is used for concealment (think theatre curtains) or prettying up a frame (normal curtains,) but here they both use it as a backdrop (not a curtain.) A common mistake is when people think they want to make writing sound grand by adding more words. That's got little to do with it. Grand writing can be lengthy or brief, rather it's the precision of language use and clarity of images presented which marks grand language. Grand language is precise, and the images conjured tend to be evocative and ... well, make sense. Basically GHS needs to practice writing more instead of writing 300 page essays dissecting Cross Channel: A distant memory shrouded in the mists of time. Though I could not remember the year or my age, I remember a grand bedroom befitting one well born. There were many places one could sit, the canopied bed, the European styled chair, but I always preferred the floor. Especially on nights like that. Through the window, strewn on a blanket of darkness, twinkled countless specks of light. A twinkling that ended only at the window frame. And in the glass that separated that world from mine was the image of a young lady. Full of grace and clothed in a western dress, she was kept secluded from the world. Obviously not a translator but it's not really a place to be grandiose is it? xD I mean, they're describing a room and a sky for heaven's sake xD The bits of prose in that excerpt are some of the worst pieces of writing I've seen all year 0.0

A great poet once said "people die when they are killed."

None taken Translating hundreds of thousands of words so that he can quote sections here and there is probably the biggest waste of time I've heard of. If that was the reason behind his translation of Cross Channel then I have to congratulate him for inventing such a unique way of wasting years of his life. Normal people would translate the relevant sections within the essay itself instead of producing a separate few hundred thousand word "throw away" translation (which was never meant to be good) solely so he could quote a few thousand words from it xD (and even that number is too many.) That is the very definition of inefficient behaviour (so very much doing it wrong.) So I would have to question the point on that count. Content and themes can be summarised, select quotes could have been translated within the document. Secondly and probably more importantly, considering that some of his prose is almost impossible to decipher, I would have to wonder if the translation served any point at all. If you put forth an incompetent translation, then any conclusions or statements drawn from that translation is lost. Words have been improperly used, the style has been butchered, meaning has been lost. Because of this, as an accompanying text to any reasoned argument it's almost pointless. Nabokov needed no translation accompaniment to Turgenev when he critiqued his work, rather he quoted and explained the relevant points within the text: And when Nabokov did release a translation along with his commentary, it was an exemplary translation (not a throw away one,) because doing anything else would have been an affront to the author (he wanted liberal translators put in the stocks and other stuff. He was very passionate of translation quality ... the zealot.) To me, the idea that the released translation accompaniment of Cross Channel was "never meant to be good" and "was just an aid" reeks of the excuses used by people who want to dodge criticism of their work. An excuse to sidestep judgement and criticism. Just my 2c Basically, if what GHS wants to do is write essays then he should stick to writing essays. Translate and quote the relevant passages within the text itself.

No offense, but this is such an arrogant and entitled statement, I have to call you out on it. His intend was never to make a "good" translation of Cross Channel, his only purpose was to write his essay on Cross Channel. Also translating the game was a necessary evil because he needed a quotable source and Ixrec's translation was too liberal. He needed a translation that was very close to the Japanese script, because his thesis was based on nuances not found in Amaterasu's version. Saying he should rather practice writing and translate games instead of writing essays is extremely disrespectful to him and the work he did. Maybe I'm the only one, but I really appreciated his book. It's a very interested read and helped me to like Cross Channel (which I actually don't really like) a little more by offering some new points, ideas and theories I hadn't thought of yet. I might not agree with everything he wrote, but at least he gave us some interesting and original thoughts. That's 100% more than most people in the English VN community can offer (not you Rooke, you write usually very interesting comments) who are ironically the first when it comes to dismissing GHS' work and calling him a troll. Which leads me to: What even is this? This is exactly what it wanted to be; a literal translation of the original prose. You call him out on being too wordy when that was exactly the point of it. When he released his book (and with it his translation of Cross Channel, since the translation is an attachment to the book, not the other way around) he explicitly stated that the translation is not supposed to be a "normal" translation, not supposed to be read the first time you play the game and should only be seen as an accompanying material. A purpose it accomplishes adequately, by the way, and which would not have been possible if he translated it any other way. I know you know that, I know that most people in this thread know that, and still, you guys deliberately choose to ignore this fact just so you can thrash his works and efforts and make him look like an illiterate. I wonder why? What is the reason for being this envious, malicious and toxic? Has anyone of you actually read his book? What do you think of the points he made? Do you want to engage in a discussion about his thesis? ... Of course, you don't. That would take effort and actual thinking. It's much easier to make someone into a meme and criticize him for the things, he never was out do to. In some way GHS is really a troll, but not in the way most people try to depict him. He is the kind of troll who, every time he surfaces, gets people to show their true color, while still providing interesting and thought-provoking material. Just like last month, when he released his (pretty interesting) book and translations of the talestune games, and was again misquoted and badmouthed by people who didn't even read his essay or only skimmed through it to find something they can take out of context and make fun of it. The level of shallowness, pretentiousness and lynch mob mentality in the English VN community is really astonishing. GHS is indeed a troll, the best kind of troll. Not the kind of troll the VN community wants, but the kind it deserves.

I haven't actually finished a VN since Chrono Clock, and I chose not to review that in the end because of the ongoing negotiations I was party to with its publisher. Before that, last finished Himawari in January. And then Supipara last August. Ouch. I don't have as much time as I used to for frivolously playing VNs, true, but to be honest, I also don't have quite as much drive as I used to. I still love VNs and enjoy reading them, but working on VN translation makes me want to do other shit after I mentally exhaust myself for the day. I'm halfway through Dies Irae and I plan on finishing that eventually. Hopefully sometime this month, but maybe next month instead. I'll review it once I'm done. After that, who knows. I don't want to quit reviewing but if I'm not finishing any new releases then I'll never have anything to review. Maybe once I finish Dracu-Riot I'll binge on a few games.

I don't run FuwaReviews anymore (That's Palas), but as somebody who used to run it, I can at least shed a little light on what's going on, and explain why I stopped doing reviews in the first place: So, for those who aren't aware, I work for quite a few different companies in the localization industry in various different roles. I won't provide that list here because you can find most/all of them by looking around. Some of these companies I started working for in the past couple years. Before that, I had a ton of connections with a lot of different devs, and I was able to get us signed up for review keys from something like a dozen companies/teams/groups/whatever you wanna call them. Some of those connections are still around today, while others have pulled out for various reasons (none of which were our fault—at least not that I'm aware of). During that time, we had pretty consistent reviews, a great set of reviewers (many of whom are still on the team), and it was 20% thanks to our reviewers and 80% thanks to Flutterz (seriously, he edited everything for us and is amazing—10/10 would recommend) that we were able to be that blessed. Thanks to our connections, I was usually able to just be like "Hay [company] can I get key for x?" and then divvy out the keys to whoever wanted them. Then, everybody started getting busy. A few reviewers, including myself, fell off the face of the Earth/peaced out/couldn't spend time playing VNs. It sucked. I put out a call for new reviewers and got basically nobody (except Decay—love you bae). I got slammed with school and life and official stuff, so I stepped down. Bats took over and tried to keep the ship afloat, but during this time we lost roughly half of our connections for various reason (not because of this swap, just bad timing). We attempted to pick up more reviewers, but nobody fit the bill. We have a general process for our reviewers, which is why we had to turn down quite a few people. We try to remain unbiased (though, like any review site, it happens), and we write enough to justify our reasons. A lot of our posts are on the longer side, follow a pretty straightforward format, and give people a good idea of what to expect. We also anticipate that our writers have some mastery of the English language, so that we can get reviews edited in a timely manner. Not much to ask for: you spent two to 40+ hours playing a game, hopefully you'll be willing to spend thirty minutes to an hour writing a solid review. So we were having problems finding reviewers. And while I say "We," I mean Bats. Later, some "things" happened. At the time, we had a rule in place (mostly for me) that we cannot review any title we worked on. For the record, I never reviewed a title I directly worked on, and any titles I did work on had a disclaimer, especially when I was the one who got the key. It's the ethical thing to do. But, because that wasn't enough, we had to strengthen the rule to "We can't review games from a company we work/worked for." I understand why that rule is in place, but the number of companies I can do reviews for is fewer than the number of companies I can't do reviews for, so I was finished. Bats left the VN scene completely shortly after this, and Palas stepped up. He's doing what he can, but there are a lot of roadblocks. The fact that a couple other reviewers also had restrictions placed on them caused a bit of a dead space that we still weren't able to fill because nobody applied and met the basic requirements to be a reviewer. We still have a strong team, but virtually all of us are involved with something (official, unofficial, or non-VN related) in one way or another, and it's difficult to make it work. Would I love to run FuwaReviews again and get it back to the glory days? Yes, of course I would. But I can't. I'm too involved in the community for that to work out. Instead, I'll have to depend on somebody else, and I look forward to seeing if we can make it work out. And maybe, one day, I'll do a JAST game review. Maybe.

Sounds like a perfectly accurate description of ROM if you ask me.

It is a dakimakura with a CD, similar to this one: http://www.suruga-ya.jp/product/detail/864009039001 You can buy the Miyako one from these: http://samuraibuyer.jp/cn/item/detail.php?item_cd=B00B5VUT9K http://jmty.jp/kagawa/sale-hom/article-2cmjw https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00B5VUT9K/ https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/227614286

Yes, bottom 4 items are "Heroine Visualize Note PCs". A-3 is making progress, just little by little.

We tossed this idea around for a while, but the problem is that the content and format of these user-submitted reviews was so inconsistent that editing them to at least match the straightforward format we use would have been a nightmare that I would never wish upon anybody. When I asked for reviews/reviewers a couple years ago, I got a bunch of 1-2 sentence "reviews." There were one or two reviews at most that nearly met our requirements, but we ended up scrapping those as well because they still required more information to fulfill our requirements and Tay and I agreed that trying to get those up and running was more work than what we wanted to do. This is also huge for us. We want to create conversation using our reviews, and knowing that people actually take the time to read our reviews is an incredible feeling.

Wtf!? There better be a patch restoring that bestiality scene! I will not accept anything less!

Guys, thank you for your answers! I completely understand you having to step aside because of life matters, as I already did something similar before. It saddens me to have few reviews, but at the same time I got happy knowing Ryechu is getting more opportunities to work, so congrats Fred, about Symphonic Rain, that is exacly the kind of review that I would like to read before buying the game. I also have read it before, and would not want to buy it to have a bad experience. Wouldn't be interesting to have user reviews on the website? Whenever a game was released, users could send their reviews and after analysis have them posted. Just an idea. I usually don't comment on the website, but I do here on the forums. I remember even doing that on a recent review you posted here (though I don't recall which one, maybe Chrono Clock). I have also read pretty much all available reviews until now

From my perspective as one of the current reviewers, and speaking only for myself, not for FuwaReviews at large or Palas in particular as the head, I see a combination of factors influencing the rate at which we publish reviews (which, btw, I don't think is all that slow; we've maybe had some outlier slow months recently with only one review a month, but these things are going to be cyclical): Reading a VN simply takes time, and we're all busy individuals doing various things. Reading a VN to review it vs. reading it for pleasure is actually a surprisingly different experience. Reading something with the intent to review it actually puts a fair bit of mental burden on me, vs. simply reading it normally, for better and worse: I spend time stepping back and assessing how I'm feeling about certain things, taking notes, constantly considering collecting screenshots, etc. All told, it's actually a fair bit less entertaining to read this way. That said, the psychological payoff of actually putting out the review and having a big public conversation with people about a game is substantial (and is the reason I do reviews). It actually takes a while to write a review. Even if you're thoughtfully preparing along the way while reading it, like I mentioned, preparing the final review takes a few hours (at least for me). Basically, choosing to do a review is signing up for a fair bit of work. We don't have all that many active reviewers. Looks like only 5 reviewers have posted something in the last 10 months? Palas recruited another reviewer fairly recently, and I myself only joined the team within the last year, so this isn't an area where we're completely stagnating, but finding interested and qualified people is not easy. To have a review, you have to have a game that people want to review. There are a ton of VNs coming out all the time, of course, but individual reviewers have their own preferences and interests, and not much incentive or desire (hopefully understandably) to review outside of things they're already interested in. And even within the bounds of those interests, things don't always work out. As an example, the Symphonic Rain HD remaster came out recently, and I picked it up with the intent of reviewing it since I really liked it back when I read the fan TL years ago. However, a couple hours in, I realized the release was sub-par in a lot of ways (backlog didn't work correctly, lots of proofing errors, translation did a poor job of capturing characterization), and I just couldn't stand the thought of sinking 40 hours into ruining my pleasant memories of a game by playing a bad release of it at that level of elevated scrutiny, just to wind up saying, "This game I loved got a sub-standard official localization and HD remaster," even though I think that's exactly the sort of review that would be great to put out there, in that it would likely create an interesting conversation. Now, all that said, I can personally say that I'm planning to pick up WagaHigh on release date and review it, since for whatever combination of reasons, it's caught my eye. I don't know how long it will take—my time is always limited—but you have my word there will be a review of it before too long after release. I also want to add one important request, as a reviewer. If you want to support FuwaReviews, from my perspective, the best thing you can do is to make sure to comment on the reviews, in whichever venue you prefer: the tweets (retweets are always appreciated), the FuwaReviews blog posts themselves, associated forum threads, the Facebook post I guess (I've never even looked at those to see if there are comments... I probably should...). Doing reviews, for me, is an extension of why I'm on Fuwanovel in the first place: I like VNs, and I want to talk to people about them. The payoff of all that time spent reviewing a game is all in that subsequent conversation a review sparks.

Don't you dare besmirch "Please Bang My Wife," Ningen.

http://www.minatosoft.com/10th_anniversary_final/ http://minatosoft.com/10th_anniversary/spark.html

I'll never touch shocking party after getting to 666 plays on that song, never again.

When the novel is open and running, with text displaying, go to te side menu, and go to "Menu" then "Text Preferences". Change the text thread to UTF16 or anything that displays the right text. Some pics for help in this thread: https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/17863-vnr-text-problem

its bad for us ;W;, I want my vns for myself, dont dare touch my black cyc vns western vn industry!

So both Dies Irae and Subahibi will get localized the same year. 2017 is looking pretty good for western VN fans.