How much worse the experience is with VN reader compared to a normal translation?

[[Hun]Lepto]

I have been thinking about giving it a shot, since there is currently a VN which has a fandisc that will most likely not get an official translation and I don't know japanese (yet maybe). Yet I still want to read it, because it adds some interesting routes that were not in the main game.

Edited May 21, 2020 by [Hun]Lepto

[Chronopolis]

There's no comparison to an actual translation. Maybe if you just want to enjoy the moe and atmosphere. MTL can be helpful for reading description if you have no intention of learning Japanese, but it also tends to butcher dialogue horribly.

You can see a random MTL for reference.

 

Edited May 21, 2020 by Chronopolis

[Dreamysyu]

Well, I tried reading VNs and WNs with MTL a few times. But, honestly, it's almost never worth it. Most of the times it just gives you some incomprehensible sentences that you might feel like you understand, but there's no way to check if you actually do. Using JParser is a bit better, but it also makes a lot of mistakes in more complex sentences.

[Zakamutt]

41 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

Well, I tried reading VNs and WNs with MTL a few times. But, honestly, it's almost never worth it. Most of the times it just gives you some incomprehensible sentences that you might feel like you understand, but there's no way to check if you actually do. Using JParser is a bit better, but it also makes a lot of mistakes in more complex sentences.

these days the hot new thing is mouseover lookup with a browser plugin. since lookup starts where you put your cursor, you can mostly avoid the problems of misparsing.
however, this is doable in TA's JParser (and afaik chiitrans) as well; in TA you edit the text in the "original text" window, adding spaces, and click a button to reparse, and chiitrans, uh, you do something I don't use it. the original text edit in TA also lets you try manual substitutions (ねー or ねぇ to ない,てきとー to てきとう, changing particles from が to を or adding を to make phrases parse and so on (though if you're suspecting an idiom maybe you should google it in Japanese instead))

[onorub]

In most cases, you'll be able to understand the plot fine but lose almost all of the dialogue nuances. This is only recommended if you're pretty sure the VN you want won't have a translation, and you really should re-read if it by any chance gets it. Since you're planning on reading a fandisc, an interesting exercise would be going through it without translation guessing what's happening just by the visuals and voices, then try MTL to see how much stuff you got right.

[[Hun]Lepto]

1 hour ago, onorub said:

Since you're planning on reading a fandisc, an interesting exercise would be going through it without translation guessing what's happening just by the visuals and voices, then try MTL to see how much stuff you got right.

I mean, I can usually understand and read the situation based on sentence length, expressions and tone, but in a visual novel, it's alot harder especially when you don't have the exact place and situation shown to you (unless you get a CG scene). And anyway, how am I supposed to laugh or feel sad when I'm still scratching my head over what was funny or sad for the characters? I just can't understand the point of this exercise. It would be more understandable for someone with atleast basic japanese knowledge to have this exercise since they can get the situation more right by being able to read a part of the sentence and then interpret how the sentence continues (this technique was a big help for me when I was learning English too).

[Nandemonai]

On 5/21/2020 at 7:08 AM, onorub said:

Since you're planning on reading a fandisc, an interesting exercise would be going through it without translation guessing what's happening just by the visuals and voices, then try MTL to see how much stuff you got right.

Paying a language tutor to tell you what you did/didn't get right might be a worthwhile endeavor.  Using MTL is not.  If you already know enough Japanese to tell 'oh I should clean this up to be more standard so the MTL can figure it out' or 'this looks like an idiom, lemme google.jp this and see' then you will be more accurate than the MTL, making it mostly useless for that purpose.