Moenovel teases localization of a new title

[Decay]

Dun dun dunnn

After several fakeouts, it seems like they're finally ready to announce the next VN they'll translate. Because the world can't get enough Moenovel.

On the bright side, this gives @Pabloc a clear next project to go for!

[Nosebleed]

I guess there were enough 12 year old French girls to fund a new title. 

[Narcosis]

Just now, Nosebleed said:

I guess there were enough 12 year old French girls to fund a new title. 

Are you implying there aren't that many?

[Decay]

Just now, Nosebleed said:

I guess there were enough 12 year old French girls to fund a new title. 

If My Heart Had Wings has sold extremely well. The money they made on that could have likely funded a dozen MangaGamer localizations, no joke. I'm surprised it has taken this long to announce a new game.

[Dergonu]

[Narcosis]

Just now, Decay said:

If My Heart Had Wings has sold extremely well. The money they made on that could have likely funded a dozen MangaGamer localizations, no joke. I'm surprised it has taken this long to announce a new game.

That's exactly what you do, when you have money. Those who work do so, because they have to pay their bills.

[Decay]

Thank you for getting the michael scott reaction image out of the way.

[Nosebleed]

2 minutes ago, Decay said:

If My Heart Had Wings has sold extremely well. The money they made on that could have likely funded a dozen MangaGamer localizations, no joke. I'm surprised it has taken this long to announce a new game.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. Maybe a mixture of both. 

[Decay]

7 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

That's exactly what you do, when you have money. Those who work do so, because they have to pay their bills.

That may be how people do things, but not corporations. A company that makes a pile of money doesn't say "Welp, guess we can do nothing for a while!" unless they're extremely bad at what they do. Money earned is immediately used for new investments so they can earn even more on top of that.

The real answer to this issue is gleaned when you look at where the IMHHW money has been going to. If it's not back into Moenovel, then it's probably going into the budget for Pulltop's Japanese releases, with them deeming that money invested there will earn back more than putting that money back into game localization. It's the only explanation that comes to mind.

[trickzzter]

I don't really care about the censorship, but the translation quality is... sigh.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=432577005

[Nosebleed]

14 minutes ago, trickzzter said:

I don't really care about the censorship, but the translation quality is... sigh.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=432577005

This is a company that should make most people worry about censorship, since they actually intentionally mistranslate the text to make it more kid friendly. It goes well beyond just removing sex scenes, it's a complete rewrite of the story, which is not okay by any professional translation  standard. At most you can call it an adaptation, not a translation, but even that would be too kind given the awful English. 

Imagine the Harry Potter books but the word wand was replaced by water gun. Yeah, not very fun. (well now that i think about it it does sound a bit fun) 

[WinterfuryZX]

Probably cocoro@funcion or Miagete Goran

[Decay]

As far as I can tell, the story wasn't actually "rewritten," people exaggerate when they say that they removed all romance. There's still romance and kissing and all that. But the Ageha route was turned into pure gibberish and they went way too far with their edits, much further than was necessary.

[Dergonu]

Just now, Decay said:

As far as I can tell, the story wasn't actually "rewritten," people exaggerate when they say that they removed all romance. There's still romance and kissing and all that. But the Ageha route was turned into pure gibberish and they went way too far with their edits, much further than was necessary.

The biggest part was Ageha's route indeed, the rest had most of the writing close-ish to the original I believe, though they did do some of that in those as well.

Another big issue was their translation itself. Pabloc posted a few examples in a thread a while back, (forgot which one it was sadly, so I don't have them,) of some very obvious mistakes that they did when TLing which drastically changed the meaning of the sentences. (As in, completely changing the subject and topic in the sentence, making it sound like something else entierly is being said.) It's a pretty long game, so chances are that happened a decent amount through the scripts, which would make the already "bad" work even worse.

Over the top censorship, re-writing of the scripts (even if it's minor, this is absurd), and a fairly bad TL overall. Not exactly ideal. But hey, who knows, maybe they replaced their entire staff for this new project? (#Wishful thinking.)

[Decay]

3 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Over the top censorship, re-writing of the scripts (even if it's minor, this is absurd), and a fairly bad TL overall. Not exactly ideal. But hey, who knows, maybe they replaced their entire staff for this new project? (#Wishful thinking.)

Well, if there's any source of optimism to be had here, it's that they probably don't actually have staff, and it has been three years since their last localization project. It is actually pretty likely that different people will be responsible for the new game's translation. Whether that means it will simply be a different Japanese college freshman being paid peanuts this time around or if they'll actually bother contracting someone talented for the job remains to be seen. I know what I'm betting on.

[Nandemonai]

56 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

I guess there were enough 12 year old French girls to fund a new title. 

I think it was Doddler?  Said on his Ask.FM like a year ago that they had sold enough to warrant doing more.  I for one had hoped these jokers would give up and go away; their business plan comprises largely of taking things that I want (I liked Princess Waltz, I want more Pulltop) and ruining them so thoroughly I can't even consider buying them.

Isn't this the same group that also announced the not-Essence version of Shuffle?

[Decay]

1 minute ago, Nandemonai said:

Isn't this the same group that also announced the not-Essence version of Shuffle?

No, that's someone else, YumeHaven.

[Dergonu]

18 minutes ago, Decay said:

Well, if there's any source of optimism to be had here, it's that they probably don't actually have staff, and it has been three years since their last localization project. It is actually pretty likely that different people will be responsible for the new game's translation. Whether that means it will simply be a different Japanese college freshman being paid peanuts this time around or if they'll actually bother contracting someone talented for the job remains to be seen. I know what I'm betting on.

Yeah.

Let's hope they pick up an all-ages game, so no one has to get angry at them for censorship, and that they have a new translator who is a bit better than the last one. (Or, maybe the last one who has simply improved over the 3 last years )

I'm a bit torn, as I'd like to see a TL of something like Miagete Goran, but... I really don't want it to be done by Moenovel, lol.

[Nandemonai]

I know the name is different.  I seem to recall hearing that MoeNovel was the people who localized Dark Souls, and I also thought I saw something connecting YumeHaven with an existing translation outfit.

 

5 hours ago, Dergonu said:

Yeah.

Let's hope they pick up an all-ages game, so no one has to get angry at them for censorship, and that they have a new translator who is a bit better than the last one. (Or, maybe the last one who has simply improved over the 3 last years )

I'm a bit torn, as I'd like to see a TL of something like Miagete Goran, but... I really don't want it to be done by Moenovel, lol.

Last time they spoke, they only had access to Pulltop titles.  Last time I checked, Pulltop hasn't got any all-ages titles.  We'll have to see what they announce, but I'm not optimistic.

[Decay]

8 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

I know the name is different.  I seem to recall hearing that MoeNovel was the people who localized Dark Souls, and I also thought I saw something connecting YumeHaven with an existing translation outfit.

lol, no, MoeNovel did not translate Dark Souls. Moenovel is a fully owned subsidiary of Pulltop that was established to localize their games. YumeHaven is a new brand for Active Gaming Media, a very large localization company with hundreds of games under their belt, translated to and from Japanese. They are not the same company at all.

I heard once that Active Gaming Media was hired to do the translation for If My Heart Had Wings, but I haven't seen anything to corroborate that. Certainly, AGM has a spotty track record, some of their translations are perfectly fine and others are not. But even if they were ultimately responsible for IMHHW's translation, they still aren't directly related to Moenovel at all. The people who decided to license the PS2 version of Shuffle are completely different from the people who are deciding to translate Pulltop's stuff.

[Yuuko]

8 minutes ago, Nandemonai said:

I know the name is different.  I seem to recall hearing that MoeNovel was the people who localized Dark Souls, and I also thought I saw something connecting YumeHaven with an existing translation outfit.

The guys who did Dark Souls only created the website for Moenovel.

[Decay]

2 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

The guys who did Dark Souls only created the website for Moenovel.

It sounds a lot more plausible that AGM only handled the marketing and stuff, they do that kind of work for Japanese companies trying to reach out to English audiences. I don't think even the worst AGM translations I've seen match up to IMHHW.

[Yuuko]

5 minutes ago, Decay said:

It sounds a lot more plausible that AGM only handled the marketing and stuff, they do that kind of work for Japanese companies trying to reach out to English audiences. I don't think even the worst AGM translations I've seen match up to IMHHW.

Found it. They did: CI/Logo Design, Web Design, SNS Administration, Advertisement/Promotional Tool Design.

 

[exaccuss]

As long as its a romance game with routes, i'm happy.

[Okarin]

After the Konosora fiasco, I suggest everyone they massively boycott Moenovel's further attempts. Elsewise, you're promoting censure and VN butchering. Let them learn their lesson.