Conjueror

That's why I only go to winter Comikets.

Yeah, it definitely flows better with "though". It's your translation so you can surely keep whatever you want; at this point it's more or less subjective stylistic preferences talking anyway. Isn't he talking about his experience in Gretgard there? I'm too lazy to check the game again, but I'm quite sure the phrase was used literally. What rather bothers me about this line instead is the "but that was just an illusion" part, again with that accursed "was". It's also kind of confusing whether he means that the sound in his ears (which he does in Japanese) or his whole experience in Gretgard was an illusion (which is a very bad idea to imply ).

This sentence bothered me a little too, but I didn't bring it up because it would be extremely tricky to fix. Personally, I find the "ones reflected in none of the eyes around the room" to come off kind of clunky, particuarly the "ones" part. It puts a bit too much of unwarranted emphasis on those particles. There should be a more elegant/subtle way to introduce the idea that no one could see them. Though still kind of meh, I'd probably find a construction like "Gathering not a single glance from the eyes around the room, small particles of light flickered from my body and disappeared like sparks from a campfire." to be bit less in your face with "look no one can see them!!!". Either way, this is the type of sentence I'd like to sit on for a while (or preferably just tell my editor to figure out xD).

Yeah, those sentences Chronopolis pointed out bothered me a little as well. To nitpick a little bit further; it's easy to overuse weak/vague words like was/go or things/that when tling from Japanese, and sometimes you have like five sentences in a row that keep repeating "was", sometimes even twice in the very same line:

It would be really cool if they could implement that to their other upcoming titles as well.

That serious business could have hired someone to translate their page instead of relying on machines (or local Japanese translators; it's sometimes hard to tell). xD

I dunno, I think you can get most of the story by just ctrl+c'ing through text and observing character reactions. There's very little point to translate, or read nukige of this type. But it does have really awesome art, and H scenes are great.

The translation looked quite all right from the steam screenshots to me. Probably already way better than this game deserves. xD I wish Koestl just concentrated on translating good games instead.

Yeah, both his English and Japanese tweets are pretty awesome. xD I'm not the biggest fan of ChuableSoft (or moege in general) but I truly hope his games will get localized now.

I think I was damaged by the hundreds of mosaiced vns I've read; I can't even look at the non-mosaiced HCGs anymore -- they look real creepy to me now xD (I can only imagine how'd they look to a native Japanese that has been brought up on mosaics from the get-go).

I liked Tokyo Babel way more, but Tsuki no Yorisou is probably smth I would still translate (though it's pretty low on my priority list).

OreTsuba has some licensing issues that MG can't go around. I forgot what it was, but I think it was voice related (and it's the best Navel's game for fuck's sake). It's a mystery why they haven't gone for Tsuki no Yorisou to me too, though. Maybe they can't find anyone who'd want to translate it? It's pretty long as far as I can remember. The games they've tled so far are all on the short side though, so I do not doubt that factored into their decisions.

Incidentally, Himawari's new OP (Japanese version) has been put up on the MG's YT channel, but they seem to have forgotten to announce it:

Their most highly regarded game seems to be Ano Harewataru Sora yori Takaku, though Astraythem seems to come in second.

I'm not sure who wrote that page, but the translator himself is actually pretty good, even Rooke was relatively satisfied by his writing. He's also working for MG on Higurashi's retranslation (and has actually translated Index's light novels for Yen Press). I highly recommend backing this, if not for the game itself, then for what these guys might bring you in the future.

Well, first you'd have to do a whole separate release that looks nothing like the English version we're releasing visually, and then the text in those scenes is mostly preserved except for the most explicit stuff anyway. Just google the ero CGs of the old game after you reach the scenes in the PSVita version, and you'll have your 18+ version. xD

People actually do this?

Can't say I agree with that decision either, glad I had specified I'd only work on Higashide's games. It's the best yuri visual novel afaik, at least given the reactions in Japan (I'm no big fan of the genre so I might have missed some, but ppl certainly seem to like it better than Flowers). I've already waded through Book of Biblical Antiquities to find out how to actually spell "Gethel's" name correctly (thanks katakana). Luckily, I'm both into Christian Mythology and Megaten games.

Don't forget to film it.

I'm not sure if you'll find my opinion trustworthy since I'm actually translating the game, but I've read all Higashide's vns, and I didn't find Tokyo Babel that much different. The poor reception on egs is probably because most of the fans were used to his titles having more sexual tension as opposed to pure chuuni stuff that Tokyo Babel is (incidentally, even Dies Irae is not *that* highly rated on egs, people over there tend to like steamy stuff instead). I originally was interested in translating any propeller title as long as it was written by Higashide, and I'm pretty happy I got this. I hope you guys will like it, too.

Yeah, I agree with you, more or less, and admit we should tone down what we're doing a bit (though I do think a few liberal additions are warranted here and there). Anyway, I really appreciate your comments -- it helps us broaden our perspective. Input like this is precisely why I'm posting these translations publicly. P.S. Eleonore's bone is actually way harder than steel (that implication was deliberate), but that's chuuni for you -- Dies Irae doesn't exactly follow the physical laws of our world.

噴き出る紅の鮮血は彼女ら二人に降りかかり、同時に熱で蒸発していく。 My interpretation of this line is that the blood evaporates as soon as it touches their clothes, but I can see how you could interpret it evaporating mid-flight as well. There is nothing in the Japanese text to definitively say it's one or the other (降りかかり can both mean it's raining down on, or that it had already rained down on), though I'd argue that my interpretation paints a more evocative image (not that it really matters which version you go with context-wise, anyway). 骨まで届かない again can literally mean that she couldn't "reach" the bone which I find contradictory given the line explicitly tells she rend the flesh, but it can also be used in the same fashion as 力が及ばない in that "her strength" can't "reach" the level where it could cut through bone. And again, this line is only used to demonstrate how indeed robust/menacing Eleonore is, and as long as you can catch the grandiosity / menacing mood in your line I don't think it really matters if the sword stopped a mm from bone or at the bone itself. I did notice that we might have gone a bit overboard with verbosity when I was subtitling the vid, and agree that we should probably cut down on a few overly excessive takes. It's just that I'm of the opinion that when you treat the whole thing line per line, you will unavoidably meet with grandiose JP lines that due to the limits of English language will not sound as grandiose as the original, and if you don't embellish others in return (where English has more opportunity for grandiosity than JP) you'll end up only chipping away at the overall style. Well, it's entirely possible it's just my lackluster understanding of English language that makes me think this way, though. P.S. Regarding translated sentence being longer than the original I'd like to quote Jay Rubin from his book on literary J->E translating, where he points out that the correct translation of 私は行きました is usually not "I went" but "I don't know about those other guys, but I, at least, went." A lone 行きました would be most commonly used for something as simple as "I went". Hence, JP language being inherently full of implied context can achieve grandiose tone with short sentences a lot more easily, and a translation that tries to achieve that will unavoidably be affected by the translator's own interpretations. If a perfect/correct translation was a thing we wouldn't have a dozen versions of Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's works (and they wrote in a language much more similar to English than Japanese!). Not that I'm trying to say "adorned a bitter smile" was a good idea, or anything.

Having a dictionary in hand, and staring at sentences without quite grasping their meaning for a while is a genuine Masada reading experience even for native Japanese that we've tried to emulate. It's extremely hard to pull off and be consistent in that grandiose theatrical style without relying on tagging on extra words and becoming too wordy in English, while all Masada needs to keep the mood consistent in Japanese is use a couple of fancy kanji when he's not feeling like being long-winded. Well, either way, this was sort of an experiment, and I personally think this take is so far the closest in style (and my favorite) of the ones I tried on Dies, but I do feel there should be a better compromise between grandiose theatrics and excessive wordiness that I still fail to grasp.