What Makes a Bad Fan Translation?

[Getsuya]

Well, yes, a team that would translate an entire game before even checking the quality of the translation would indeed be doomed to failure and we should probably just write them off. The proper way to do it would be to have the translator work in chunks of a few hundred lines and kick it over for TLC/editing once he's done, that way the work is spread out among the team and they move at a decent pace.

 

That said I think I'm beginning to see where you're coming from here. There is a level of crappiness in translating at which even a TLC would shake their head and say 'There's nothing salvadgeable here'. I've seen it myself, though not in the VN world (I had to 'fix' an actual legit paid translation someone in our town ordered from some Tokyo translation company that I'm pretty sure just fed it to Google Translate and then tried to pass it off as professional).

 

I think the problem is the way projects are set up. The project lead is often either A. the guy who ripped the scripts or B. the guy who wants to translate it. In situation A usually they don't know Japanese so they have no ability to screen translators and will accept any guy who can show them words on a paper that look maybe possibly correct. B can also be dangerous because seldom to Japanese translators know their own limits or failings.

 

I think a step that any project lead should add on when they're starting a project is to get a translator they can trust and tell them 'Listen I know you're busy but I just want to make sure I'm getting good people on this team, can you glance over their translation and tell me if it's competent?' And then sticking to their suggestions. Yeah a few amateur translators will get their feathers ruffled, but they can always polish up their skills and try again when they're more competent.

 

The reason I'm sticking up for Monobeno so much is that, from what I understand, the guy who did the video is doing a much better job now, and my buddy is also helping out quite a lot. Plus they have at least one editor now who knows what they're doing. If it works, it will be a good example of exactly what I'm trying to describe here. Taking a project that looks like crap at first and bringing in people to help out and make it better.

 

I want to be clear here. My position is not 'Bad translations are fine' or 'Let's blindly cheer on bad translations'. I don't like Bad translations. I don't want them to exist. However I also recognize the slim odds of a game getting more than one chance at translation, so I'd rather do everything I can to help make that Bad translation Good than just write it off as hopeless.

[XReaper]

The reason I'm sticking up for Monobeno so much is that, from what I understand, the guy who did the video is doing a much better job now, and my buddy is also helping out quite a lot. Plus they have at least one editor now who knows what they're doing.

regarding that...as far as i know he´s been the reason chuee had to re-translate everything he did in astral air, so yeah thats been only ~half a year ago & either he´s the embodiment of awesomeness, whos able to learns japanese in goodspeed, or he´s still the same dude dooming another projects success. & noone says that he´s to drop out of their project, just that´s too early for him further continuing as its leadtranslator.

for the rest i mostly agree, though some points are abit unpractical to do.

[Getsuya]

Nah man the guy who did the video uses the handle Zakudono. Astral Air was apparenty done by someone named SupremeTentacle and in the thread for that people said it was just some Hongfire machine translation, so I don't think you're thinking of the same guy.

 

And I realize that it's unrealistic of me to expect everyone to be able to find translators, TLCs and editors with free time on their hands to throw at a bad project, but I think at least trying to aim for that is better than  doing nothing at all.

[XReaper]

supreme tentacle is the new translator & its former one has been indeed zakudono.

 

[Getsuya]

I can't find any source for this so I guess I'll take your word for it. Well, hopefully he has someone looking over his shoulder for this translation.

 

Edit: Sure you aren't thinking of Zakamutt? The person who actually posted 'our translator is just using machine translation' in the Astral Air thread? As far as I can tell Zakudono has only ever done the Monobeno video and then he works at some random scanlation group.

[XReaper]

in the home section of their site its been mentioned somewhere on the february update.
https://whiteeternity.wordpress.com/
also on the monobeno thread, page 4, top by chuee & same page near the bottom

also if that isnt enough just pm him directly

[Getsuya]

Ah, my bad. He wasn't mentioned by name in any of those places so I couldn't find them just by searching.

[Chuee]

Uh. He did the prologue segment and then got busy. From what I had after he looked over it and what I have now, there's a lot of lines that are completely different in meaning. Granted a lot of the errors were lines he didn't touch, so you could maybe pass it off as just skimming over it without paying that great of detail to it, but there were a few lines that he gave an alternative translation that ended up being flat out wrong. 

[Pabloc]

@Getsuya

Your way of thinking is very utopian. But reality just doesn't work that way.

Considering that we get 0 or 1 translations, the patient isn't immortal. Once the treatment (TL) is finished, that's it. If it's decent, patient lives, if it's bad - patient is dead. The end.
 

Every translation project needs a competent main translator. Period. Less skilled people can do the proofreading or something. If they don't have the necessary JP knowledge and bare minimum ENG writing skills, they will NOT help with the TL, will NOT create anything that can be TLC-ed and will NOT get better - unless they quit and study for a while. Mistranslating stuff doesn't not improve TL-skills even the slightest bit.

And even if you actually managed to get competent people to check the TL from the very beginning, they simply won't cooperate with an incompetent team. Unless they kicked out all incompetent people from the team (who would effectively take credit for nothing, since everything they do needs to be re-translated from scratch anyway...).

 

I know full well that the chances a VN getting a competent TL are slim, but crappy translation projects decrease those chances even further. Competent translators (or even editors) won't join such projects.

 

I think a step that any project lead should add on when they're starting a project is to get a translator they can trust and tell them 'Listen I know you're busy but I just want to make sure I'm getting good people on this team, can you glance over their translation and tell me if it's competent?' And then sticking to their suggestions. Yeah a few amateur translators will get their feathers ruffled, but they can always polish up their skills and try again when they're more competent.

 

That's kinda what happens in those TL threads when the team gets bashed for their crappy work, only it's usually not that civilized.

[ittaku]

I think the answer to the opening question is converging on a single theme, and I tend to agree - any translation where the first pass is so bad that it cannot be translate checked and/or edited into a reasonable representation of the original text. That is (or at least should be considered) a bad fan translation by pretty much anyone's standards. Anything above that and you have a range of acceptability proportional to the fussiness of the audience.