Conjueror

Yeah, in this case we were trying to emulate the overall feel of Dies Irae being grandiose, and somewhat wordy as opposed to being faithful to individual lines. But yeah, now that I look at it, we went a bit overboard -- it's gotten unnecessarily cumbersome to read. These lines were edited so many times I actually forgot what the original JP even was by the time we were finished. xD

Hello guys. I had a bit of extra time on my hands before Otakon so I decided to put it to good use and practiced my skills on translating an excerpt from Dies Irae yet again. It's the final installment to the battle I've been doing for like half a year now. I had Rooke help me with editing this time, and I dare say he actually managed to capture Masada's grandiose style. I will probably re-post my old videos with vastly improved writing (of Rooke) eventually as a definitive version of this scene. The scene has spoilers, obviously, but most of them are so cryptic you'll likely have no idea what's up if you haven't read the work already anyway. Text-based TL on my blog: https://vnrw.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/translation-dies-irae-beatrice-vs-eleonore-part-iii/ Subbed YT video:

Omg, it was my 37th VN a couple of forevers ago. So close! I still think it's better than Baldr Sky because it takes three times less time to tell a better story.

From that list I doubt he can speak jp, or I'd add Harukani Aogi Uruwashi no and Hatsuyuki Sakura, also White Album 2 and Parfait to a lower extent. As long as translated titles are concerned -- that list seems to be missing ef -fairy tale of the two-

Because in foreign countries people have complicated names? I knew a guy by the name of Note Niti Wattanasirichaigoon, and it's pretty common to have three names in Russia and Eastern Europe, too. Those examples are still pretty tame to what we have in the real world. Also, Japanese love long foreign sounding words that they can't themselves pronounce.

I think they're alright? I mean, cooperation between a localization company and a developer isn't marriage, as proven by Flowers, and SP already licensed those two.

Well, translators of paper novels are usually writers themselves, or are at least closely involved in the craft (Jorge Luis Borges started as a translator). The issue is not that the translators can't be writers, but that there are very few translators (or even editors) in this industry who actually specialize in and understand writing. Koestl certainly seems like he understands what he's doing from what I've seen of his works, though. And Makoto's translations are usually spot on as well.

Haha, well, don't quote me on that, then. I only played Eustia myself. But I heard a lot of good things about Yoake, nonetheless. It was pretty much what single-handedly turned AUGUST into a respected eroge brand back in the day. (Though both FA and Daito are also considered to be among their better games. It's their earlier games prior to their breakthrough with Yoake that are usually written off.)

Ehm, what? Yoake is widely regarded as August's second best game (after Eustia), in Japan at least.

I can't comment unless I see the JP lines, but I can guarantee you that the translators currently working on non-nukige at MG are far better than your average fan-translator (actually most of them started as fan-translators before getting hired), and know their nuances. Cartagra was originally done as a fan-tl project, and then took in and heavily tlced/edited by MG (heard it had a lot of problems originally). I also heard a lot of good things about how it turned out, so I'm leaning towards either the instance you found being a minor slip-up that they overlooked on their tlc, or actually intentional.

I like the new YU-NO look, but Kana looks kinda weird. I liked the original visuals very much so I have mixed feelings about this, but I'll probably get it anyway.

While Rance06 seems to be very popular among the vocal community, it's also a very old game. MG was probably worried about betting their partnership with Alicesoft on a game that could very well be dismissed by regular buyers that don't know wtf Rance or Alicesoft even are (not to mention they have no sale charts for non-nukige game-play VNs). Meanwhile, their game-play nukiges sell the best of their games, so they picked Haruka (that is pretty much the king of game-play nukige in Japan, and is more or less a guaranteed sell) to show Alicesoft good numbers first, and then probably get their hands on Rance and their other games without as much risk. In my dealings with MG I learned that 1. they aren't stupid, and 2. they love story-titles just as we do. And I'd say it's a smart strategy in the long run, even though they had to piss off some of their future customers in the process (it's all to establish a long-lasting relationship with Alicesoft, guys!). Not to mention that good relationship with Alicesoft could lead to other game-play companies wanting to jump in, too, like Eushully. I'm pretty sure it's not only Rance that depends on the success of BBH. (This is all pure speculation. I'm not involved in anything relating to Alicesoft there.)

Saya's route is one of the best things about this game, so you might want to wait if they're almost done.

Well, storyteller's translation might not be as literal but it's much closer both in meaning and mood to the original script. Literal ≠ closer to the original. Different cultures interpret "the same words" differently, and it's a job of a good translator to translate nuance/mood/meaning rather than syntax. Literal translation can help if you're studying Japanese syntax, but that's about it (though it seems that's exactly what you're doing in this case, haha).

Oh, phew, for a moment I was worried I'd turned color blind there.

Yeah, I guess I went a bit overboard. Your take is probably better in this case. It's a bit hard to tell what voice the author is going for without knowing the context of VN.

I second Parallel Pain on this: you are dang good! It's just how different languages work sometimes, and it's a bane of literary translators everywhere. I hear old languages like Hebrew and Akkadian had tons of repetitions in their writings as well. It just flows well in Japanese (maybe because their words are so easy to rhyme), but sounds really lousy in English, so you have to be very wary of that when tling.

Yeah, they sound pretty awesome, and Umineko is a great game. I myself played it on PS3 and know just how good that version is. I was just worried they might get in trouble, but, hopefully, it will turn out all right, especially if they'll go an extra step to somehow make it work on the official release. I don't know which version I'd go for if I couldn't speak Japanese, though. Umineko is very sensitive to the slightest of mistls and imprecise wording, and the fan-translation has problems (spawning weird alternate theories even) that I doubt anyone but a professional, with Ryukishi's guidance preferably, could fix. But then again, it remains to be seen what MG will really do with the scripts.

I know there's something like license fees and also wish to cooperate from companies, but MG should do better work in bringing us Umineko. If staff allow me I'll make/post 2~~ mins preview video of the current version, since beta for EP1 is near. They should make their patch work on MG's version and translation. I doubt whatever they're planning to do to the script is going to be anywhere near close to MG's touch (I could already spot excessive ellipse overuse in the demo video you provided). ...And wouldn't it make this illegal, as in C&D territory, if they were planning to release this as competition for MG's release? I'm pretty sure MG would turn a blind eye if this worked on their version, and boosted their sales though (as long as both of them don't get C&Ds and flack from Alchemist or smth). xD

Himawari was somewhat of a sleeper hit in Japan as well. It's really hard to market a sci-fi / serious romance novel that looks like nothing but a moe lolige from first glance (though it might look a little less that with the new art now). A recurrent theme with hard sci-fi visual novels for some reason. I hope it'll get a bit more buzz when it's actually released and people try playing it for themselves (that's what happened in Japan after 2007's comiket; the vn blogs were on fire). I'd particularly recommend it for people who liked Ever17 and Narcissu.

Btw, the reason I checked BBH all those years ago was because it was (and still is) #1 at egs おかずに使える rankings. For better or worse it might as well be the best nukige ever made (for its sheer nukigeness), so I'd rather people were excited on that front. I'm more worried that if gamers get disappointed by the "barely alright" game-play in BBH, they'll later dismiss titles like Rance which actually are good FOR their game-play. I'm sure MG is confident at meeting AliceSoft's expectations with their nukige sales alone, or they'd have probably negotiated for another game. Either way, steam version is out of the question: you'd have to rewrite pretty much the whole script, and Alice Soft doesn't do AA releases in general. I'd rather expect to see euphoria's AA version than BBH's. That being said, MG might do good to at least advertise the game has some game-play, but certainly not make it sound like its the game's selling point.