I wrote a review about Newton and the Apple Tree and held an Interview with Translator Bango

[HataVNI]

Good morning to you fellow enthusiasts, 

I'm Hata-tan and I am the admin of Visual-novel.info, a German website and community about visual novels from visual novel enthusiasts for visual novel enthusiasts and I have written a review about the newest release of Sol Press "Newton and the Apple Tree". Instead of going to translate my whole review for you guys I'm really urging you to read it with google translate, as bad as that may sound - English to German is really good. It lowers the text maybe down to some typographical errors and wonky sentence structure, but believe me it's acceptable and nowhere to standards of your diary+

You can access my review here: https://visual-novel.info/newton-and-the-apple-tree-newton-to-ringo-no-ki-review/

In course of this review and also during the review period I got kind of closer to the translator of the game which presented a fairly zealous image to me and showed me that translators with passion are still among us. It is actually his first TL he worked on and so far there's barely any complaints about them if next to none. Really congratz to Bango for a successful release and the popularity in the international Steam-Lists represent that. Nonetheless, let's begin with the interview.

「Interestingly enough Bango personally agreed to this interview and answered quite a lot of answers for me and towards the reader of the game. I'll paraphrase them for you and hope that you support Bango for future releases and follow him on social media and check out his other project: Strongest Gamer: Let's Play in Another World.

1. Even though the used jargon in the game is scientifically versed you don't use completely alien words which you even have to look up as a native speaker. How do you word the terms so even an ESL can understand them without any problems? Was it hard for you to understand the specific jargon or did you have to research a lot? If not, what were difficulties you had to overcome?

Bango: I studied thermodynamics and electricity when I was at school, so it wasn't that difficult for me to deal with the themes of the game. The bigger problem would have been the wordplay and the puns. It's not easy to explain concepts taking into consideration I had to put myself in the mindset of people that don't know what gravitation is and explain it that way,

2. Towards the general translation: Many games have the problems that the Japanese is too descriptive also you had to shorten a few sentences I assume? How often did you rephrase whole sections and why? We received the All-Ages Version and I'm still having shade towards Sol Press because of it. I want to know how you liked the AA version.

Bango: Maybe during the sex scenes I had to spice things up a bit to make the reader "happy". Japanese porn goes into silly detail when talking about porn sometimes. And about the All-Ages version you received... I'd rather not think too hard about it.

3. If you look at the translation in retrospect, what could you have done better?

Bango: Maybe the beginning, Newton was my first project after all, so I was pretty green at first. I started Strongest Gamer around the moment Emmy's route starts. There are a few parts I would rephrase is I did them again today, but guess all writers of any kind feel that way about their work.

4. While translating, did you learn many new things?

Bango: I learned not to be too stiff with line and scrap repetition whenever it's not necessary in English. Simple is best to make things read natural.

(Hata's assumption: Japanese love the concept of over-descriptive text ever since literature began and its most noticeable in contemporary literature, also the self-recognition and confirmation of many things which completely contrasts with the more on-point writing style in the west.)

5. Do you think it is important to have played the whole game before translating? Or do you think you should translate from start to finish in one go and recheck several times? I personally think that an official release cannot avoid the fact you should know the game in and out flawlessly.

Bango: Yes, it's extremely useful to play the game first all the way. It's easier to plan ahead if you know what's coming up. There's a lot of foreshadowing in the early chapters of Newrin which are kinda hard to notice the first time around. Although most translators don't have the luxury to play their games in advance.

6. How does it feel continuing when you already know whats going on? Does it get boring because of it?

Bango: On no, the feeling of transmitting lines into another language with the same soul is very moving no matter the situation. It's better to work that way.

7. How do you create such a natural vibe with your phrases? Do you read them out yourself and analyze what sounds like functional English?

Bango: Yes, I try listening to stuff all day and read a lot, you get a feel of what's natural that way.

8. Two more detailed questions and then we're done: What did you learn mechanically when translating NewRin? New grammatical structure, certain kotowaza (proverbs) which you had to research and find English equivalents? Which resources did you use, physical dictionaries, online-dictionaries, J -> J Encyclopedia and other things. In addition to that which was your translated lines ratio per day? (Lines/Day) average amount =?

Bango: Dictionaries of all kind are quite useful and if we are talking about translated lines I guess its 8000/10000 characters a day which translates to around 500 lines a day. Color me surprised, some translators do even more (Hata's note: I'm thinking here of Steiner, AruNaru or Aroduc...).
When I started my goal were 250 line per session but beyond the beginning struggles, I quickly exceeded that.

9. Incredible, do you think that TLing H-Scenes is rather boring? Do they tire you out?

Bango: Not at all. I translated doujins for a whole year before starting my work on Newrin, sex doesn't scare me. you gotta strive to make lines hot in sex scenes.

10. Closing Question: Do you have any comment for the readers or the players of the game. You can also give a tip to our wannabe-translators.

Bango: If a dumbo like me can translate, anyone cans. I hope everyone enjoys the game as much as I did. And most importantly, don't play without the patch

Patch: https://pantypress.com/ 」

Thanks for this thorough interview, but the last and most interesting question hasn't been answered yet: Why do you use Kunrei-Shiki for Syujis name?

Bango: It's something I can't comment on, really sorry.

Buy NewRin here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/721010/Newton_and_the_Apple_Tree/
The team that worked on NewRin: https://twitter.com/ZeHaffen/status/1030219925623918593

Edited August 19, 2018 by EroHataVNI
Thicc

[Plk_Lesiak]

What was the line about the AA version about? Is there anything particularly wrong about it? I thought they offered a free 18+ patch off Steam.

Edited August 19, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[HataVNI]

Just now, Plk_Lesiak said:

What was the line about the AA version about? Is there anything particularly wrong about it?

https://vndb.org/t11053

[Plk_Lesiak]

2 minutes ago, EroHataVNI said:

https://vndb.org/t11053

I see. Well, I'll be among the 20 people to use the 17+ patch apparently. I know, I'm a freak.

[SaintOfVoid]

7 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

I see. Well, I'll be among the 20 people to use the 17+ patch apparently. I know, I'm a freak.

i bet there´s actually A WHOLE LOT more people going for its 17+ version than many think there are. like it´s basically the complete game, just without the porn, so said version should be perfect for reading on tablets etc when being among others. no risk of getting weird looks when suddenly stumbling upon h-scenes. at home is at home. and not everyone feels comfortable viewing porn in public. of cource there´s also others who dislike h-scenes in general.

[HataVNI]

Had to edit some lines on request of Bango. This fucked the formatting, really sorry. But the text has the same content.

Edit: This looks like absolute shit, Discord and its plain text/rich text is really shit for the fuwa editor.
Sorry.

Edited August 19, 2018 by EroHataVNI

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, EroHataVNI said:

Had to edit some lines on request of Bango. This fucked the formatting, really sorry. But the text has the same content.

Edit: This looks like absolute shit, Discord and its plain text/rich text is really shit for the fuwa editor.
Sorry.

[adamstan]

6 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

I see. Well, I'll be among the 20 people to use the 17+ patch apparently. I know, I'm a freak.

Count me in as well

[Veshurik]

Ehm... Will be review in English?..

[TexasDice]

I have a question: Is the entire 30 hour script just an excuse to have all the voice actresses rap about their characters? More like "Newton and the Mixtape"

[HataVNI]

On 21.8.2018 at 10:24 PM, Veshurik said:

Ehm... Will be review in English?..

You can use google translate. It works near perfectly. Just a little wonky with the typography~

[Veshurik]

On 22.08.2018 at 3:20 AM, TexasDice said:

I have a question: Is the entire 30 hour script just an excuse to have all the voice actresses rap about their characters? More like "Newton and the Mixtape"

What do you mean?..

[Yuuko]

On 8/22/2018 at 3:20 AM, TexasDice said:

I have a question: Is the entire 30 hour script just an excuse to have all the voice actresses rap about their characters? More like "Newton and the Mixtape"

No that would be noratoto

[Mr Poltroon]

8 minutes ago, Veshurik said:

What do you mean?..

Each heroine has a video where they uh, rap(?) for a scene. They're all a bit different, so I think there'll always be one to enjoy.
Here's one:

Spoiler

 

 

[Veshurik]

10 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

Each heroine has a video where they uh, rap(?) for a scene. They're all a bit different, so I think there'll always be one to enjoy.
Here's one:

  Hide contents

 

 

Oh my gosh... Sometimes I think, why Japanese have no conscience... ahaha... talking about such things so easy. I can't!