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See, that's exactly what I was talking about. I can already tell that based on what you said here, you definitely aren't gonna be a fan of either Nukitashi or, for that matter, the VN that's coming out in just a couple of days, Sankaku Renai. I can already tell you right now that both of these are gonna be full of "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and maybe some "low class american idiots swearing" (not sure about the third one, but with TBAC being the main TL for both Fureraba and Sankaku Renai, it's quite possible he may have used that style of swearing again... that is, if he considered it appropriate for the VN in question). That's just how comedy VNs work. I don't know how else you could properly localize these. They are pretty much dumb in Japanese, and so I don't see any problem with them sounding dumb in English too (and hence one of the major reasons I avoid moege with accent on comedy like a plague - they are a huge pain in the ass to work on, and whatever you do, someone's always bound to consider your comedy writing "idiotic"). Also, that last piece of advice I marked in your comment... Man, do you even realize what "make it as widely acceptable as possible" even means? I hear that all the time and I am really starting to believe you people have no idea how many disagreements among everyone on this there are. "Widely acceptable" implies that whoever's working on VN translations should go out and always measure how many people want translations to be in one or the other style (I've seen some folks trying to measure this by doing surveys) and then act according to the results. Do you realize how unfeasible doing this all the time really is? First of all, even the fans themselves don't really know what they want. I see so many disagreements between people who want honorifics/no honorifics, who want liberal/non-liberal translations, who want dumb memes/no dumb memes, who want masterful prose writing (LOL at this one!)/no masterful prose necessary... etc, etc. How's one to decide on what to do?! Who's able to satisfy all these contradictory demands?! I don't know anyone who has ever seriously tried to measure what the VN fans want, and it's probably for a good reason. Even if they could, there's just no way you would be able to satisfy everyone, or for that matter "as widely acceptable as possible" size of community. "As widely acceptable" is just a myth. You don't know what's really "widely acceptable" as you're often gonna see complaints from a sizeable portion of community no matter what you do. There's just no way to accurately measure this, especially if you consider the new fans who might be coming in and who aren't necessarily gonna be weebs. And that's one of the major reasons why I believe translators like Arunaru and his ilk do what they do. They don't bother with "as widely as acceptable as possible". There's no such thing to begin with. So... what's a TLer gonna do then? Simple. They judge according to what sounds good to them and how they imagine the VN should read like. This sort of bias in translation... you get it all the fucking time, no matter who's at the helm doing the translation. I can tell you that every TLer out there has his own fucking way of translating something, and that's why no 2 translations are ever the same. No, I don't approve of translators who overlocalize and invent up silly shit just for the sake of novelty (no, I definitely don't approve of random Spanish lines that feel forced and out of the setting at hand), but that's just how things in this industry go. I don't let my "preference on style" cloud my judgement. Otherwise, I'd have to start despising the so-called "rewriting" that so many translators do. In fact, all the translations that we read are in fact nothing more than re-imagining of the Japanese works they are based on. Even the most literal translation you could dig out is still a re-imagining of the original work at hand (just remember that Japanese doesn't really have accurate English equivalents for many of its words and expressions and you'll understand what I mean by this). So you can recognize the inclusion/exclusion of honorifics as a style choice, but not "idiotic humour", "shitty 4chan memes", and "low class american swearing"? Tell me, have you read anything in pure Japanese so far? And if yes, imagine you were a TL. How would you translate this commonly used simple phrase from Japanese "よろしくおねがいします"? I'll tell you... if you have any sanity as a translator, you won't ever TL it as "Please treat me well.", no matter the context (I've yet to see a crazy-enough TLer who would do that). Basically, what all TLers do here is, they "rewrite" it every time they see it, depending on the scene, character, tone, etc. You people have to understand that translation work is more art than science. What you refer to as "rewriting the entire fucking thing" is exactly how all translations in a nutshell are. They are essentially someone's rewriting (I called it "reimagining" earlier in my post) of the VN at hand. Unless you're reading VNs in Japanese, you are always gonna be reading someone's reimagination of the VN based of its original. And while we can criticize a TLer's accuracy of translation, his creativity to carry over the Japanese lines, etc, etc. I would never go and say that TLers are "void of rationality and critical thinking" for just being liberal with their reimagination of the work at hand. In fact, I think totally opposite here. If they didn't do this type of stuff, then I'd question their sanity and rationality. I am in no way endorsing what NekoNyan did with Fureraba. I didn't even read it myself to judge their work yet. That said... if the biggest complaint one can make about a translation work is "swearing", then I don't really believe that translation was as bad as some are making it out to be. We have far, far bigger problems with translations nowadays. Personally, I am more pissed off about poor grammar, typos, and overall QC issues plaguing so many of official releases coming out nowadays. I consider that to be real shoddy work and that's what I am more worried about than some localization choice. Also... "people at large complain about this" - how many people? Did you measure? I am asking you this because I tend to see a lot of pro and anti-sentiments regarding this. I've seen a lot of praise from some of the more casual VN readers, loving Fureraba's localization. And then there are more weeb-oriented fans who absolutely abhor the localization of Fureraba. So which one is the right way? The casuals? The weebs? How do you satisfy all of these people at once? Is it even doable? No, I definitely don't think so.

I've been looking for a place to talk about VNs for a very long time, though it only just occurred to me to simply look forums up on Google. I'm a rather new fan to visual novels (compared to most anyways), as for the longest time I just figured they were some off-shoot off hentai and never bothered to look into it more than that. I finally took the plunge into the genre in 2016 and have been trapped in this hell ever since. I play pretty much everything - from your steins;gate to your Hatoful Boyfriend. Really so long as it has a VN tag on it, I'm game. Nice to meet you all, and hope your all having a great day.

Thanks, everybody! I really appreciate the warm wishes.

I finished Virtue's Last Reward last night, and haven't stopped thinking about it since. I picked up the Zero Escape Nonary Games last steam sale, and powered my way through 999. It's funny since I immediately went into reading ever17 after learning that Uchikoshi was involved instead of jumping straight into VLR. Few weeks later, I ended up diving right into VLR. Ever17 left me craving some massive spoiler plot-twist style games, and VLR didn't disappoint in that regard. The soundtrack especially left a good impression on me. Same level of atmospheric sounding as 999. Couple of the puzzle rooms didn't sit well with me, but that can't be helped. This track especially grew on me. It plays all the time whenever there's down time in-between the story. I listened to it plenty skipping through previous choices, and thought it fit very well. This song was so good too. They used it for just about every major explanation for the events of the game. For anyone looking for a plot-twist filled emotional trip, 999 and VLR are the two games to give a chance. They're serious and darker than the standard vn affair, but well worth the time and effort put toward them. I admit that I had to use a walkthrough, and advise doing so to prevent any frustration. Those puzzles were difficult, man. I personally liked 999's puzzles more, but VLR really made you have to think. I have yet to play Zero Time Dilemma, though I heard it isn't really a visual novel and isn't as good as the other two. I'm a little hesitant to start it, though I'll probably run through it pretty soon just to finish the series off. On a side note, I'm looking for something light and relaxing to read next. I finished Yumiko's route in Grisaia (for the second time) last week, and understood more about her than when I read her route the first time. Might just be time to jump straight into her afterstory in the next game, but we'll see.

Euphemic Translations presents: Beauty Kaleidoscope 4: Girl's Crime and Punishment / Bishoujo Mangekyou 4: Tsumi to Batsu no Shoujo Title: Bishoujo Mangekyou -Tsumi to Batsu no Shoujo- | 美少女万華鏡 -罪と罰の少女- Developer: ωstar (Omega Star) Official Site: http://www.omega-star.jp/ VNDB Link: https://vndb.org/v19182 Translation Site: https://arcadeotic.wixsite.com/euphemictl Description Yuuma is on leave from school since being hospitalized due to a certain incident. He reunited with his beautiful twin sister Yuuri for the first time in a year and began to live with her, but he had a secret that he could not tell her: he is deeply in love with her. When that secret came to light, love turned to madness and he was assaulted... Team Project Lead Arcadeotic Translator Arcadeotic TLC - Editor - QC - Proofreader - Ending Note For now, only I will be working on this project until the TL is 100% completed.

Just goes to show how questionable stylistic choices can destroy an otherwise acceptably accurate translation for a considerable chunk of the audience. Readers are not robots constantly analyzing the accuracy percent, after all, they just want to enjoy the stuff they read, and original obnoxious "style" of the translator can hamper that enjoyment a lot more than actual mistakes in the translation which they possibly wouldn't even notice without a TLC. Though, at the same time people occasionally complain about the stuff they wouldn't like in the japanese version either and project those dislikes on the translation so what do I know? The line is thin and the end is not in sight. Any work in a creative field is generally a thankless job so when you obtain the power to implement questionable ideas you personally like, it's easy to forget that you ultimately do this work for the people to enjoy.

I should also point out that people have been very kind with my To Heart 2 translation as I've received almost no harsh criticism, so in that particular instance I did not find people hypercritical nor ungrateful (contrary to my own comment). It seems fair that audiences are more lenient towards amateur translations as the translators are doing it for absolutely nothing. Certainly very low accuracy translations should be unacceptable at any level (and I don't think we need to revisit what people consider poor accuracy) but complaining about stylistic choices means the translation itself is usually more than acceptable in its accuracy, dude.

For what it's worth, when I spoke to TBAC, he said the copious swearing in Fureraba at least was the editor's choice. The style guide for solpress at least wouldn't have allowed it btw. Personally I found reading Fureraba quite funny.

I have to say that I like Zaka's meme localization. It serves the basic purpose of a translation - to give the reader the same or a similar experience a native would have had reading the original. I personally wouldn't want to see random kanji on an english translation unless it was plot relevant or had some kind of meaning, and I suppose the same would be for most people. Actually, I'd guess that hardly anyone who would read this knows what an ateji even is. Maybe 5% of your audience at most. It doesn't have to be word by word exactly what Zaka wrote, but he turned something that most people would glance over into a decent gag and I think that's more in the right track. While they're just a few lines, it's something nice to keep in mind as part of your translation philosophy, I believe.

For episode 14, we talked about Endings in Visual Novels with well known community member and Umineko Fanatic, /u/ctom42 from /r/visualnovels! YouTube link: Blog Link: http://thebroadcast.club/2019/05/27/episode-14-endings/ We did our best through this episode to avoid spoilers, despite the spoiler heavy nature of the topic at hand. We don't mention any explicit details about the endings of any VNs on the discussed list. That said, depending on where you personally draw the spoiler line, I don't think everyone will consider it 100% spoiler free, but anything we mention is something that I've seen talked about openly in other venues of discussion about VNs. We are also pleased to say that future episodes should have much less time between them! Real life got in the way more than a little bit for the last few episodes we put out, but now that we are all located in the same country once again, our scheduling should be much less painful, so look for more episodes to come in the future, sooner rather than later! As always, comments are very welcome! -------------- Also, if you're interested in being featured in our shill segment, my bank of shills is currently empty, so if you would like to have your shill in a future episode, please record a 2-3 minute segment promoting a VN you're excited about. It should be something we haven't had featured before, so ask if you're unsure what that might be! Feel free to contact me via DMs or Discord if interested. Make sure to follow us on Twitter! https://twitter.com/VNBroadcastClub ----- Some discussion questions: Do you think an ending can make or break a visual novel? What sorts of endings do you want to see more of in visual novels? If you could rewrite an ending to a specific visual novel, how would you change it? (Don't forget the spoiler tags please!)

Yeah, it was open in terms of

Very well, let me try... 「む～……次は穴埋め問題……。ざくろに教えてもらったんだけど……」 "Jeez, next there's this proverb question... I asked Zakuro about it, but I'm not sure about what she told me." 『○肉○食』 The paper said "Please explain the following idiom: 'As thick as thieves.'" 「……ざくろは、何て？」 "What'd Zakuro tell you?" 「『ふにくあくじき』だって。身体に悪いものばかり食べてることだって言ってた」 "She said it meant being really fat. Like how robbers and corrupt politicians would get fat off their ill-gotten gains a long time ago." 解答欄の横に『腐肉悪食』といちごが書き込む。 Ichigo wrote "really fat" next to the answer line. 気付かないか……当て字もいいところだ。 I guess she hasn't realized about Zakuro, huh. Well, it's certainly a... creative interpretation. 「でも、一応意味は通ってるのか」 "Well, I have to admit it does make sense." 「えっ、合ってるの？ 焼肉定食じゃないんだ」 "What, is it right? I was sure it meant that they were just really dumb to turn to crime. Like, thick." 「いや、どっちも間違い。正解は弱肉強食。弱いものは強いものに食べられるってこと」 "No, no, no, none of those are right. The correct meaning is 'in a very close relationship.' Like, you've heard about honor among thieves? Outlaws had to stick together since everyone else disliked them." ------------------------------------ I'm not sure why it'd be awkward to wrap all dialogue with double quotes, that's done in practically every American book you can find. with that said, if nametags are displayed, I really don't you think you actually need to show the line being spoken; the nametag will do that for you without adding redundant quotes. More than one tl has done this, actually, and I'd say it's probably the better choice even. Though I liked the effect in the harisenbo tl (ETA who knows), lol.

I suddenly remembered our chat on Discord. And yeah, all your points stand true. Knowing all these things that I've come to realize after following this scene for so long, I dare not to publicly speak ill of any VN translation's quality nowadays, whether it be official or fanTL. The situation has really gone for the worse. It saddens me to say that most English-only VN readers will never understand what it looks like to be the one having to work on this stuff. The stuff you said are things only someone who has worked on visual novel translations can truly understand. All the time, I see VN fans complaining about the minorest of shit that they don't like in some translation works out there (from honorifics inclusion to whether there's too much swearing used in the translation and other types of silly shit), not realizing how difficult it really is to fulfill all of their selfish demands. The people they are looking for to do those "proper translations"... those people don't work on visual novels. I'd really like it if they could stop deluding themselves into expecting amazing translation works done by anyone who's working on VNs nowadays. Only hardcore VN fans and hobbyist type of freelancers work on VNs nowadays. Nobody who has any semblance of self-respect won't come anywhere near VNs. That word you just used in your post... "ungrateful"... that's exactly how I would describe working on VN translations. Ultimately UNGRATEFUL.

The text is long and presents a lot of unique challenges, the artform is lowbrow, the pay is shitful, the deadlines are punishingly short, and some (not all) of the audience is hypercritical and ungrateful. If you were a half decent translator, of all the translation gigs in the world why would you do it unless you loved VNs? Additionally since the pay is so bad one can only earn a living off it by doing vast chunks of stuff they don't like at all. I know many translators that started out loving VNs and translating them has killed their love of them. Luckily I can afford to just do it for fun and will only work on VNs I find appealing in some way. Not everyone is so lucky.

... ah, how nostalgic. First stage addiction, where 'everything is awesome'... Soon, you'll be staring longingly at the massive pile of untranslated VNs, wondering why the fantls and companies don't translate faster, and some time later, you'll join a fantl project as an editor, only to find out that you are now producing the very Engrish you bashed for so long... Hahaha... welcome to hell. On a more serious note, welcome to the community. This is a good place for basic recommendations and fairly welcoming as otaku communities go. I'm one of the go-to people for untranslated VN recommendations, whereas you'd probably be better of with @Plk_Lesiak for EVNs. While we are a slowly decaying community, we still have a decent array of experienced and not-too-jaded people that are willing to provide their recommendations as long as you have a decent idea of what you want. I'm jaded as hell, but I try not to be an a-hole about it, so feel free to ask.