Where Can I get people to translate Visual Novels?

[ExtraMana]

On 10/5/2016 at 10:33 PM, Dergonu said:

Fan translations are already in a bit of a legal grey zone, but paying someone to produce a fan-translation is illegal. Don't do that.

 

Speaking as a fan translator, we tend to pick the projects we want to TL first, not the projects we know other people want. Being motivated is extremely important when it comes to fan TLs. Without motivation, even translating a handful of lines can feel like a chore. Because of this, most of us don't really take requests. Translating takes a long time- you will be "stuck" with one project for months, sometimes much longer if the project is big, and so if you are doing it just because one person asked for it, you probably won't feel that motivated.
I get your reasoning, but you really won't be able to just ask someone to TL something for you. That's not really how it works. You are better of using your money to purchase the Japanese game, and playing it next to the English one with a machine translator or something of the sort, to at least see the original scenes in some way. It won't give you an incredible result, but it's better than nothing.

Making a fan-translation is just as illegal tho.

[Nandemonai]

19 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

So you're looking for someone to translate the H-scenes in Chusungura?  That's probably doable.  You just need to interest a translation group that cares about censorship.  Translating a few H-scenes could take as little as a few days.  Inserting the text into the game could be the larger issue.  But as the KonoSora restoraton project shows, such projects are certainly doable and even finishable in a relatively short timeframe--provided the original translation is actually worth adding to.

If the screenshots I've seen of the later chapters are anything to go by, the translation is probably not worth adding to.  It's probably looking more like the full on IMHHW retranslation that followed from the uncensorship project.  That's much more difficult.

I at least am not willing to work on such a project.  Training companies to do crappy translation jobs because fans will fix it all for you, and you don't even have to pay them, doesn't strike me as a good idea.  But as the restoration project shows, it's not impossible to get people behind it.  Fan translation projects have gone pro before as well.  And ChuSingura does sound like the kind of game that might get sufficient interest.

[sanahtlig]

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Training companies to do crappy translation jobs because fans will fix it all for you, and you don't even have to pay them, doesn't strike me as a good idea.

Ironically enough, we also get companies like Debonosu who insist that translating the H-scenes would "cost too much".

[Toranth]

7 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

Ironically enough, we also get companies like Debonosu who insist that translating the H-scenes would "cost too much".

Well, depending on the Debonosu game in question, there may be several times more content in the H-scenes than in the rest of the game.

Looking at you, Kagura series.

[Nandemonai]

18 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

Ironically enough, we also get companies like Debonosu who insist that translating the H-scenes would "cost too much".

That makes perfect sense from a business angle, even if it is ack-basswards.  They looked at how much it would cost to translate the H, they looked at how many extra sales they expect it would bring in, wasn't worth it to them.  I'm guessing a) the h-scene text is most of the text in the game, and b) they weren't expecting to sell many copies.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if they deliberately picked a game they could slap together for very little money to put out as a test release, to see how well the market reacted.  In which case, they might well decide to be as cheap as possible to hedge their bets against the whole thing bombing and not even selling 100 copies.

I hate it when companies do that, especially when they compromise the quality of their releases in order to do it, because it often leads to the companies mistaking the "crappy releases don't sell" message for "nobody wants this".  But they're far from the first.  Even the mighty Atlus made this mistake when they cut out half of Persona: Revelations.

[sanahtlig]

1 hour ago, Nandemonai said:

That makes perfect sense from a business angle, even if it is ack-basswards.  They looked at how much it would cost to translate the H, they looked at how many extra sales they expect it would bring in, wasn't worth it to them.  I'm guessing a) the h-scene text is most of the text in the game, and b) they weren't expecting to sell many copies.

Keep in mind this is the same company that hired a translator to translate the game (poorly, yet at least comprehensibly), yet literally machine-translated the promotional materials (e.g., image text on Steam).  This is a company that clearly has no clue about the English market OR business in general.

[Nandemonai]

2 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

Keep in mind this is the same company that hired a translator to translate the game (poorly, yet at least comprehensibly), yet literally machine-translated the promotional materials (e.g., image text on Steam).  This is a company that clearly has no clue about the English market OR business in general.

I don't suppose I can argue with that.  Machine translating marketing materials is pretty pathetic.  Even I know better than that ¬_¬