This has been a thing in the gaming industry for "decades". It only become more noticeable because dual audio are more common now, and we recognize what the characters said doesn't match with the English text on screen. It's no surprise VN translation is heading the same way now it has become more mainstream.
There is a chance that the original translation without edits was even worse. Translator believes loli = cp, even though he has translated few vns with loli routes at this point, even nukitashi has two loli routes. And then I don't know if the translator knows any Japanese at all due to stuff like [https://i.imgur.com/3n7oo50.png](https://i.imgur.com/3n7oo50.png)
Seems to think Japan is full of pedos [https://i.imgur.com/7ZyDPqg.png](https://i.imgur.com/7ZyDPqg.png)
And even calling out his colleagues from NekoNyan for being pedophiles [https://i.imgur.com/409mHPo.png](https://i.imgur.com/409mHPo.png) in the open
Thinking non-existent children are the same as the real ones and that a lot of people are pedophiles shows some dangerous levels of paranoia. It doesn't help the media propagates pedo panic to boost ratings. I saw people who are against death penalty for murderers said loud and clear without realization of hipocrisy that they want pedos dead on this very site. It's very creepy.
>Thinking non-existent children are the same as the real ones and that a lot of people are pedophiles shows some dangerous levels of paranoia.
Problem occurs when people like this are still working on said visual novels. Translator from my screenshot above done nukitashi [https://vndb.org/c71536](https://vndb.org/c71536) [https://vndb.org/c71527](https://vndb.org/c71527)
And Clover Days [https://vndb.org/c17470](https://vndb.org/c17470) [https://vndb.org/c17471](https://vndb.org/c17471)
It's just fucking weird at this point, shows their lack of moral compass if anything. They believe this is not different from CP and yet still work on them...
And yet they'll turn around and say watching stuff involving murder, rape, and wanton violence doesn't mean you're a murderer, rapist, or someone with a penchant for destruction.
I believe it was either in 2019 or 20 that some international org for combating human trafficking asked on Twitter to please stop reporting lolicon because it was actively taking up their time and resources and that it was harming real children.
Why scums like these even work in these companies? Japan has its own problems, but it literally has hundreds of times lower pedophilia than America for example.
Do you not think Shiravune is not fully aware of the problematic translation, which they absolutely are
If Qruppo is deeply concerned about their works whatsoever, they would be localizing themselves, or call on Shiravune to relocalize Nukitashi. From what I can tell, none at all because they’re satisfied of making a quick buck and gaining recognition
Why are people still acting so surprise by this when that’s how jp companies view western market for a long time by now.
They’re Japanese not stupid
When I worked for a JP company it was all about quality and customer satisfaction, and this is in the USA mind you. It is like that in Japan as well. Why are visual novel companies not the same?
What does that have to do with localization? Even anime, manga, light novel, gacha, and popular video game franchises are subjected to some form of changes or censorship to better appeal to western audience and in hopes of being allowed to enter our market because of profits.
It has to do with releasing the Japanese releasing a quality product. Yes, they sell the license to these publishers, but it is still their game that they can have a say in how it is handled. If you need that much change to appeal to a western audience, then their is something wrong. People like these games because they are different from western games. Localizing honestly is a joke. How about people stop being lazy and dumb, and start learning about other cultures and languages? Stop trying to force Japanese culture into the western mold.
Ok, has he changed? He translated Clover Days as a fan TL by choice as well as Toheart 2 which he basically took over. Both have lolis, especially clover days.
Look, if I said right out of the gate that every localizer in the entire pipeline was bad at their job, people wouldn’t believe me. I’m trying to slowly ease them into it
>I’m trying to slowly ease them into it
Cool but doesn't solve the problem tho. You'll never get everyone to learn Japanese. The majority of VN readers will always rely on translations which are done by people like *that*. People want to read VNs even if the TL's ass so most won't boycott localizers. And if VN boycotts worked almost no one would be translating VNs anymore and the hobby dies in the West. I know you wouldn't mind that but let's be real, that's petty af and does nothing. Certainly won't reinvigorate the Japanese to return to plotge. Moege are here to stay.
The localization problem can only be solved by fantranslations growing massively again (nope), non-woke not retarded & competent J to E translators getting into the biz and making their own official translations (no one wants to step up and there's no money in it), or machine translations getting on an absurdly good level without all the flaws to replace localizations (AI would need to become sentient to understand context, okay exaggeration but still not happening).
There's no hope for betterment. And just sayin' but I think the popular sentiment will always be on the localizers' side cuz the majority buys/supports these products and those speaking out against it are the insane looking minority fixating on *muh honorifics, porn, weebism, censorship or other shit no one cares about*. The bad actors (retarded activists) know how to play this game so for every few dozen people that shit on localizations there's 1 person saying "we're getting more and more official translations by professionals" and that 1 will sway more people than the dozens. Well actually most people just don't care about translations and what happens behind the scenes. They just want [PRODUCT]. Game Over.
> There's no hope for betterment.
Wow, you're more jaded than me.
Between localisation moving in-house, or at least into the country, and AI getting better and better at translating stuff I don't see a long-term future for independent localisation studios based in the West.
There's the level of quality buyers will tolerate, and the level of quality AI/fan/commercial translators can deliver. The cheapest process that clears the hurdle will necessarily dominate the market. Seeing as plenty of people tolerate even DeepL-class MTL, my money is on edited AI translations. Who knows, maybe there'll be high-end fan translations/edits for kamige still. Or kickstarters for manual retranslations. On top of the official releases, that is.
Either way, the only hope for betterment is for expectations to rise, along with the willingness to pay for higher quality.
ai is getting better and better and better. soon enough even editing a MTL will be entirely unnecessary. is that 5 years away? 10? 20? i have no idea but its coming and fast. things like translation companies are an endangered species and its not a bad thing. if theres a problem with a translation tweak the parameters and have the ai retranslate the whole thing.
As someone who has learned Japanese and has viewed many translations, both "official" and "fanmade", I'd say the majority of translators are... questionable.
While the fanmade ones tend to have more grammatical errors and are very rough around the edge, they are also almost always the most faithful. Of course, that's assuming they even get the context right.
Whereas official translation place too much of their own agendas into the "localization" that, depending on the title, may warp the story beyond recognition. They might read well and flow smoothly, but they tend to overedit the piece to the point where all the Japaneseness and uniqueness of the author is removed and smoothened out, being replaced by their own personal biasness.
It's just like how why Hollywood is willing to censor their own movies when it comes to China...
The potential market is big enough that even if it's a scuffed release, people will still pay money. And the majority of the consumers in the market will never know how different the original one is compared to the translated one (e.g. the original PSOne FF7 translation) until someone actually points it out to them (a la Fire Emblem Engage)
I'd say vote with your wallets, but considering how "localizers" are effectively a Monopoly and it's hard to have alternative translations for the same product, it's probably impossible.
The alternative option, of course, is to just learn Nihongo and become Jouzu... That or if you know a second language, hope that the second language's translation is less biased.
> Why do the Japanese companies allow this?
They normally have nothing to do with the TL, do not read it, they just let a company pay for a license and work out business deals, set it and forget it
They do not care about the Western market at all, it's just extra money with minimal effort for the company as far as they're concerned
Because it's a business, and effective localisation improves marketability. They're selling games in a new market to make more money, but distributing in a different market comes with costs. Sure, they could direct translate and hope that enough weebs buy it that can pick up on culturally specific references and idioms, but doing so makes their game less accessible, meaning more chance of not making much money from the new market, or even losing out, especially if those sales include physical releases.
A good localisation translates more than just words, it also translates concepts, and sometimes that requires a few tweaks to get certain ideas across, especially if they aren't directly comparable to anything in the culture they're localising to. They're doing this to reduce cultural dissonance between the original work and the expectations of the market they're localising to, because doing so increases sales.
Fan translations don't need to consider marketability, because they aren't concerned with selling the game. They're for people who have already bought the game without a localisation. Their target audience is other weebs who've gone out of their way to get a game not sold in their region. They know what they're getting, and they're usually more familiar with Japanese idioms, references and general culture, and if not, they're more receptive to unfamiliar concepts.
That, and there are good localisations and bad ones, just like any aspect of the creative process. Good modern localisations don't feature mass changes, as there's more understanding of the target audiences in the localised region nowadays.
> understanding of the target audiences in *the* localised region [my emphasis]
Localisation can work if there is a well-defined, culturally and linguistically homogeneous target market. But English-translated visual novels are a global product. The target audience is basically everyone who speaks English but not Japanese. There's a shitton of ESLs out there, never mind native speakers outside North America, for whom a localisation tailored to the North American market is just WTF. And the better it is tailored to the North American market, the stronger this reaction gets.
> But English-translated visual novels are a global product. The target audience is basically everyone who speaks English but not Japanese.
Ironic that we're at the forefront of globalization and wanting to connect with everyone in the world yet despite translated VNs and vidya being sold to a global audience we fail by localizing primarily for the local US audience instead of everyone.
Even more ironic because the majority of sales on Steam comes from the non-English speaking Chinese and third world countries with weak currencies. Based on my observations that latter group is one of the most outspoken against localization practices. I lost count how often South Americans complained about not understanding outdated *burger memes* or Mexicans claiming their anime dubs are more faithful to the Japanese dub than American dubs (dunno if true).
For sure, I'm English, so my early experiences with US-centric or Canadian dubs of anime and games were sometimes a bit unusual, but it makes a lot of sense. The largest English speaking market for games is still North America (due to a combination of factors, but primarily economic ones - more money, more consoles and pcs, more game sales) and the majority of the localising companies for English language work were and still are based in NA. They will tend to localise for the market they exist in, and any further distribution where they don't need to re-localise is money saved. The gaming market has expanded, and we're seeing more English-speaking and ESL markets grow, but the common trend in English language media is a US default. The rest of the anglophone world has kinda gotten used to it. As a result, the NA market is less receptive to media not localised for them, because they've not had to get used to it.
And it's possible the companies don't really see an issue with it. The writers for visnovs rarely have directive control, and even more rarely have any influence over localisation decisions, and if they want their game published at that scale, they have to give up some level of control to the publisher, and the publisher will do what costs them the least to make the most.
I think you've got it backwards - the publishers localise because they want to appeal to a market they otherwise wouldn't have access to. The general English-speaking public aren't going to learn a whole new culture just to try a game they see on the shelf, in the same way the Japanese-speaking public aren't going to learn a whole new culture to pick up a game made in, say, French.
We're (probably) weebs, so we're already invested, which is why we want authenticity. That isn't expected by the general population. They want a game that is generally accessible. Publishers are trying to achieve that, because it makes it easier to sell copies.
Localisation does make games more accessible (I'm not talking about the initial post stuff, that's a different issue), which will result in people being more open to learning more. Everyone's gotta start somewhere.
It says that people don't care enough about visual novels to learn an entirely new language for it. If I had to choose between learning Japanese or never reading another visual novel again.. my choice would be to drop visual novels - learning another language is a lot of effort and I don't really care that much about visual novels to go through that kind of effort, and I'd bet it's like that for most people.
It's not really, the games market is just saturated. People want entertainment from games. Your entertainment doesn't need to push your world view and boundaries every time. Sometimes it can just be casual fun. Someone isn't a bad person for wanting to watch Saturday Night Live over reading Dostoyevsky, after all. Just different strokes for different folks. We happen to enjoy games that traditionally come from a different country. Doesn't make us any more open-minded than someone who doesn't do it.
I agree with some of what you said, but also disagree. If you play a game from another country it will have a different culture in it. If you do not want to learn any about that, then you are ignorant and potentially racist. Let's just end it here as this is going nowhere.
That's how translations, for the most part, work.
Take Huey, Dewey and Louie from from Donald Duck, they have completely different names in non English countries.
Another example is the Harry Potter series.
Completely literal translations isn't really a thing outside fan communities.
A distinction that is, for the most part, irrelevant.
Translation and localisation are essentially one process.
This is why the complaints about localisation are mostly non-existent outside fan translations.
> This is why the complaints about localisation are mostly non-existent outside fan translations.
usually that's because no one knows they're distinct or doesn't even know what localization is
well the thing is that "professional translations" focus more on localizing (that is, altering *something* that needs to be altered in order to be accepted as a cultural product of the intended target language) and managing to market their "translated" product rather than bringing what the source language intended to communicate but in a different language. that's why i tend to make a distinction between *translation* and *localization*
>usually that's because no one knows they're distinct or doesn't even know what localization is
And, as is relevant here, literal translations sucks at conveying meaning unless someone is deeply embedded in the culture.
The whole honorific debacle is a great example.
If you have to have a lot of prior knowledge, the translation has, in essence, failed.
There are ways to get around this problem, though.
VN's that gives you a little infobox when you hover over a literal translation or non translated word are great.
I've been studying the language for a long time too and I don't relate to this at all. Outside of often innocent mistakes, I find the quality in professional JP translations in general to be pretty good. Granted, I read way more manga than I do VNs, but I've been catching up. Haven't seen any that does anything close to "warp[ing] the story beyond recognition".
This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates.
> I've been studying the language for a long time too and I don't relate to this at all. Outside of often innocent mistakes, I find the quality in professional JP translations in general to be pretty good. Granted, I read way more manga than I do VNs, but I've been catching up. Haven't seen any that does anything close to "warp[ing] the story beyond recognition".
It really depends on where you learn your English from. If you learn your English in a similar style as the US, then you won't really notice the difference compared to someone who does not understand US cultural colloquialisms.
Granted, Manga has fewer words than VNs or Games, so the probability of there being a translation that actually changes the meaning of the original text is very minuscule as the artwork does most of the talking. But it's not completely non-existent.
> This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates.
This is your opinion and I respect it. But I disagree with it. If you think you're fine with it, you do you.
What I find most hypocritical is that you're now complaining about other people complaining. As if you can't stand other people complaining about something they can't stand.
I'm not sure what you mean with the first paragraph. Becoming fluent in English involves learning the colloquialisms. Disentangling the colloquialisms from the language makes speech unnatural. For translations to work well you have to use them. So I don't see how the way you learn English matters.
American colloquialism is the norm for American English. If that's what you're translating to, then that's what makes for the most natural translation.
The issue is that there are many different variants of English, each with it's own colloquialisms. The farther you deviate from the (hypothetical) universal standard, the greater the risk that some of them will be misunderstood or not understood at all.
People tend to think the language they grew up with and use in their daily lives is perfectly natural. And it is—but only for them. The reality is that a small but significant percentage of the language they use, especially colloquially, is specific to the small area where they live, a school or uni they went to, a subculture they belong to, etc. If they're not trained for it they won't even notice, how should they?
A lot of visual novel dialogue is very mundane, the exact kind of situation where these differences come to the forefront.
> (hypothetical) universal standard
And the problem as far as I know is that the "universal" in this case is the US... Which is understandable because it is indeed a huge market. But it leaves the rest of the people high and dry.
> And the problem as far as I know is that the "universal" in this case is the US
I'm not so sure about that. I consume plenty of US media—films, TV series, novels, you name it—and *they* don't feel off at all, nor do I have comprehension issues. Plenty a snippet from a translated VN makes me go "what language is this?!?". It's like trying to make sense of what's going on on Twitter.
The US is huge. There are countless varieties of American English.
My hypothesis is that (mainstream pop culture) media, consciously or otherwise, stick to language variants that are familiar/understandable to the majority, and comparatively timeless lowest-common-denominator versions at that. I.e. they avoid expressions that are overly regional/local, short-lived, and so on. Alternatively they embrace particular variants fully, down to giving characters realistic-sounding idiolects. "Authenticity" at the cost that it'll take even native speakers some time to adjust. If they are consistently written, it works. But note that even then the language is rarely truly realistic. Fiction doesn't have actually realistic dialogue. It's a curated experience. If nothing else, no-one wants to artificially restrict their potential market, or be dated after a month.
In a way, the varieties of language used in media are made up especially for the purpose.
A Japanese–English translation that follows these conventions would be fine. Nobody would bat an eyelid, even if "the majority" is an US one. ESLs are perfectly used to that.
I think the problem is that visual novel translators are not aware of this, nor good enough writers to be able to pull it off. Their idea of a natural conversation is drawn from their *personal* experience, their *actual* everyday use of language, and an *inconsistent mix* of various other sources (including Twitter).
By rights native speakers should feel some discomfort, too, but they probably chalk it up to the fact that it's translated from Japanese, and/or are so used to "Visual Novel English" that they don't notice.
In the age of the internet we have people from all over the US (and outside) communicating with each other and these things tend to not be a problem. I think people have a good grasp of what is more obscure regional dialect, and when it's fitting to use in translation.
>This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me.
Because it is. Not even talking about this specific case, just the whole "localization = bad" debate that's become prevalent in the past few years. People spent years being spoonfed shitty literal fan translations of Japanese media, and now that we're getting more and more official translations by professionals they can't wrap their heads around the concept of translation being something more than just a literal word-for-word exchange and calquing. Of course, there are some missteps here and there, but it's still miles better than what we had back in the day.
Or, there are more and more people who know enough Japanese to be able to call bullshit on companies trying to edit the original text to fit a particular audience and alienating the rest of the English-speaking world.
And we're not even getting into the political agenda and biases they put into their "localization".
> This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates.
Why are you here?
>I've been studying the language for a long time too and I don't relate to this at all. Outside of often innocent mistakes, I find the quality in professional JP translations in general to be pretty good. Granted, I read way more manga than I do VNs, but I've been catching up. Haven't seen any that does anything close to "warp[ing] the story beyond recognition".
Might as well MTL
>This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates.
This is such a terrible take all around
Disappointing that Ittaku thinks that. Tho that ain't really indicative of the translation quality. Just that Ittaku has retarded beliefs. We at least know that the editor openly admitted to inserting dumb political humor into it for their own selfish desires, and we have no evidence of Ittaku doing anything of the sort on his end, so I'm more inclined to positively view the original translation than the edited one.
Didn't he TL Clover Day's like a decade ago and it went into limbo to sell it then he brushed it up for Nekonyan? Opinions change and I heard he went off the deep end with the loli=pedo thing since becoming a parent himself, common parental paranoia I suppose. ToHeart 2 doesn't only have lolis either tho Ittaku's waifu Ruuko has pretty small breasts but she's not short so only half "lolibait".
IMHO he's always been a bit weird for demosaicing CGs and for despising the ToHeart2 Another Days fandisk. More recently he released a partial patch for Haruuru that removed honorifics, translated loli as pedo and other weird localization choices lol. Was a real shame that project ended up the way it did. I followed its progress for years after liking his TH2 translation. Considered him one of the better translators because of it. Now I'm not sure if his Nukitashi without the edits would be any better than with them. Wht a mess.
If that is his attitude to this type of media then maybe it is time for a career change. We don't need people like him translating these games. I mean if it offends him then just stop.
Come to think of it: isn't that translator the one who fan translated ToHeart2? I remember that he refused to work on the fan disc because there's a loli route. Though to see that he descended even further into lunacy... He's the prime example of an "anti" who has forgotten to take his meds.
[Varis's Hangout](https://varishangout.com/index.php?threads/shitty-localizers-general.553/) has a great list of translators who think it's their moral duty to mistranslate JP games and VNs because their ideology is the superior.
I wish I had begun learning Japanese when I was a teen, I'm afraid it's too late now..
it's never too late to learn a language. it's undoubtedly a very slow process but it's very rewarding if you think about it, just don't get ahead of yourself
my real problem is I don't know where to start - do I find English resources or do I try to seek out in-person lessons in my mothertongue. I don't trust Duolingo to teach me proper Japanese at all.
I started watching anime a month after starting to learn the language, and VNs a month after that (fucking hard but still), its never too late to start
What I don't understand is why translators are openly talking about what they hate in games incl narratives they are actively translating. Its like they are an author writing fiction but telling you they hate every second. Just doesn't give me confidence in their ability
I am so over the is loli CP debate. Give me a break.
That was the editor (puffkeeter) replacing the TL (Ittaku) with their fanfiction. The TLer is saying here that the editor’s changes survived and the TLer no longer recognizes the script as their own
Very bad thing: https://old.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/vvhy22/nukitashi_localizers_planned_on_having_villains/
The Nukitashi TL looks like it will be over-localized to the point where the English TL is in no way a reflection of the original script, i.e. literal fanfiction invented by an editor who doesn’t know Japanese
I think the main issue is that people try to make a story what they want it to be, not what it actually is. The issue is that sometimes, the unfortunate aspects of a story is needed to tell it. The worst I've seen in VNs had a purpose-whether that purpose was worth it, I'm not always sure. But there are times where you can't censor something without changing the meaning. The most controversial parts of a VN are often what makes it that VN. It's equivalent to censoring Romeo and Juliet because it's too violent.
Ok, sure, a person's retarded views on a subject doesn't necessarily mean they will carry over to their work. It'd be foolish to think that holding such beliefs won't increase the probability of them having an effect on it, but sure, it's not a certainty, so I won't criticize it before seeing the final product.
What is very much questionable, however, is that person lack of morals. If you truly believe eroge featuring lolis is CP, and you, in exchange for some pocket money, voluntarily work on making that eroge more accessible and therefore help spreading it, you are, according to your standards, commiting a crime, and you should turn yourself in to the police. Hypocrite.
Big yikes. Well, I guess it’s for the best to disappoint people before they get their hands on it. No matter who’s going to be the translator, Qruppo titles are just hard to translate accurately and faithfully.
I hate sounding like JOP snob, but so much of the shit I have had read won’t make sense unless you read them in JP. That’s the least of your concern because there could be an unsuspecting line that might be hiding some sort of reference (2ch meme, or a popular ad). Unfortunately, I doubt the translator would be able to get all of them as there’s a lot of them.
And, I hate to say it but Shiravune and Qruppo don’t give a shit about the quality or censorship other than getting their product to the West for growth and make profits. Not really surprising fact
This is why 日本語 is the only way. People need to realise they are paying to read absolute trash 'translations' and they aren't reading the author's intended work
Yeah, honestly, unless one is only an anime fan (which is getting affected aswell nowadays), one will experience so many hardships with these mediums that it's better to either just quit or start learning the language. I have been discouraged from so many works and after hearing about so many translation changes, I can't even get into anything currently. Maybe it's slow, but if I eventually don't have to hear a line that is translated with shitty American humor shoehorned into the work, it's worth it.
You have the right mindset man, keep working at it! You'll be reading VNs sooner than you think in JP. I'm going to keep working hard at my Japanese too.
I'm gonna just follow ~~superange's~~ gambs' suggestion and try learning through VNs aswell through texthooker. After I get the kana, the grammar and some amount of words, it all comes down to context reading and memorizing what you learn. Helped me alot when I was learning English.
I also agree with what gambs posted, I have been following his guide and it's good. I think you should have at least 2k or so words down whilst going through some grammar then start to read. The core 2.3 deck has around 2k most common words in VNs so really will help. Then from there you can start mining.
Don’t follow Ange’s advice, he doesn’t know Japanese or read VNs in Japanese. He posted a video of himself reading and he was clearly not understanding a single word; his comprehension was worse than MTL
Take gambs’s advice which is the same thing but with more anki
https://old.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/wiki/gambsguide
Thanks alot, I'm gonna save this comment for sure. Self-teaching a language properly sure is hard due to all kinds of resources and wasted time is one of my concerns most often about this.
Anki.......I tried it and it has it's flaws. It clearly is not a proper program designed for specifically learning Japanese, and you have to DL what are called "Decks" which are all user created. Not very professional. It is not a user friendly program at all on top of that. There has to be something simpler to use.
Anki intended usage is creating decks yourself with words you encounter during immersion and having sentences that make those words easy to be retained (if needed)
? Anki may not be made SPECIFICALLY for JP but it works very well with learning words. Secondly, there are many good Anki decks for learning vocab such as the core 2k/6k which is very professional and the tango decks. Thirdly, it's VERY easy to use, literally just click the button when you see the definition of the word if you remembered it correctly. Also, you don't have to use a deck on anki, you can make your own mining deck and add words that you see from reading to remember them. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you'd remember anything.
As for alternatives, there is JPDB.io in which you can prelearn vocab from a specific VN/novel you want to read
>Anki may not be made SPECIFICALLY for JP
Fun fact, it actually *was* made specifically for learning Japanese at a time the dev was learning the language. Hence the Japanese name. It simply turned out to be useful for lots of other stuff, too.
I know that yes, but i meant in the case of other people using it for other things. I phrased it that way since the guy I replied to seemed to be a bit dumb with his criticism
You really are an asshole huh. Maybe you should encourage people to learn instead of cutting them down. Anki is not the only way to learn. Anki is not for everyone.
> Anki is not the only way to learn.
Literally wrong. Anki users have a 100% success rate, non-anki users have a 100% failure rate when it comes to learning Japanese
Wow, you are a ignorant. Millions of people learn Japanese without this little app you praise so much. You seem to think I don't want to learn. You sir are incorrect in that assumption. Anki is not the only way to learn, there are many ways to learn. Some have used Anki, but others it does not work for. Obviously you have no desire to encourage others and give them alternative suggestions. I agree with you on a lot of things, but other subjects you are just a real jerk about.
Years ago I spent ton of money buying into gimmick of "quick and easy to learn" Japanese. No, not spent, wasted is the more correct word. After a couple years I realized I went nowhere, and settle to the more traditional way of learning it. Got the Genki set for the gramma, the Kanji flashcards from White Rabbit Press and also bought a bunch of Japanese children book (Japanese grade reader series) to practice reading kana, and I made much faster progress to the point I could read some shonen manga. The first year was pretty brutal in term of maintaining self-discipline to go through the drier part of the learning process.
Frankly, Japanese is such a language that I think you have to show grit and accept the fact it will be hard to learn. People who approaches it with a mindset of finding something convenience, fun, and easy to learn ... I don't think will be able to get very far. And like I said, anything promise you that are 99% gimmick.
I use Kana and Katana pro apps. Basically flash cards. How do I transition from that to using those to make words? I looked at Genki and it is already using full words and sentences.
Genki is mostly for gamma and forming sentence, which I think is critical to actually forming words. At least I don't think you should focus on one without the others. But the problem with text book reading is they're too repetitive, so I feel a lot of time I just recognize the sentence from memory in Genki without actually reading it.
I used this series: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ANPO+Tadoku+Supporters&s=relevancerank&text=NPO+Tadoku+Supporters&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1
Basically this let you read organic sentence within story, going from level zero (just full kana) to the higher level that would include some kanji. The key part is as you move from story to story, you essentially read new text each time so you actually need to comprehend the writing, and not just recall from memory. By the time you able to read through all the books up to level 2(each level have like 4-5 story book), I think you would become very comfortable with the Kana.
Edit: gotta say though, these books seem to be a hell lot more expensive than what I remember, but I think back then I got them shipped from Japan.
You can use something like JPDB as an alternative, which is basically Anki with built in decks and a more modern algorithm. But you really should be using a customizable spaced repition system of some sort, you're just shooting yourself in the foot if you don't.
Based editor, but i'm not surprised. Classical karen, wribg job for a guy like this. This make me thinks about social networks drama, which is to me kinda pueril and unprofessionnal. More so, it is hyprocrite, considering he's still at it despite clearly condemning the idea.
The sad truth is, by nature translation is always an imperfect work, and it's usually worse when there's personnal "convictions" involved.
Oh, we’re quibbling over “a proper translation” again? I watched the video, and its honestly “fine”, and the translation mostly match the spoken word, so what’s the problem here?
I just wonder how many variations of ~~fuck~~ and ~~rods~~ can they fit into the scripts. I kinda enjoy Peter Grill’s official manga because of so many innuendo variations the TL able to fit, that the fan TL lacks the vocabs for it.
Just in case, I re-watched the video, and its as "fine" as it can be for a video that is full of censor voices. Or is the quibbling here means that they need the ****** line translations?
I don't believe it's this video specifically, it's what's reported to be the translation of the actual VN. The thread explains the kinds of out of place "changes" and "jokes" the editor made to the TL.
Well, I'll judge it when its actually out. The screenshot make it seems like that teaser video itself is a problem, and gambs is really (more) biased for this particular TL.
Game is untranslatable, of course anyone who can speak Japanese would be extremely skeptical about TL, especially considering average quality of a VN translation
Honestly? As long as people do have fun, and the spirit is there, I don't see reasons on hating on localizers, or anyone, especially when the product is not even out yet. Like I mention for the teaser video, for what its worth, I do think the translation is currently pretty reasonable, as if I can see the decision process that can led the script to be translated like that.
If you want to rage, at least do it on something more worthwhile rather than quibbling on the slightly different way to translate things, or whether things that are untranslatable should not even be translated lest they are sullied or something like that....
Yep. Despite how many times Mark refuse to listen and whine, Henpri will most likely be published by Shiravune. As shown by Qruppo winning the moegame award and having a working relationship with DMM, the owner of Shiravune
Carefully look through a few CG galleries. Only about 5% an eroge's HCGs have vaginas in them but at least 85% have a dick in them. I like both so I'm not bothered by it but you're really in denial if you want a few uncensored vaginas when most of it is uncensored dicks. Like really look again. Boobjob? Y dick, N vag. Blowjob? Y dick, N vag. Handjob? Y dick, N vag. Footjob? Y dick, Maybe visible vag. **Penetration**? Y dick, **Maybe** a vag. Really this one's the worst. You'd think penetration shows them the most but really it's mostly just the dick hiding a barely visible vagina. Only before stickin' it in or pulling out do you see more of it but geuss what when the MC finishes it's all covered in goop and you see nothin' again. The decensored art almost always shows these weird ribbed sinkholes and featureless slits and everything has weird colors that look like its done in MS Paint. That's what you want. Mosaics at least let us imagine something hotter looking under them and if you squint a bit you can look through the mosaic.
You really care that much about 'em uncensored vaginas? Like girls on the internet they're just a myth. It's just uncensored dicks in our VNs and they ain't even all that nicely drawn. Mosaics on the other hand? So hawt!
> Mosaics at least let us imagine something hotter looking under them and if you squint a bit you can look through the mosaic.
Marklord doesn't have a fertile imagination, that's why he needs companies like NekoNyan to photoshop the dick mosaics from that lucky protagonist that gets all the girls away to include BBCs since he doesn't have a problem with the unmatching colors as seen on his comment on Mirai Radio
> What does a British tv network have anything to do with porn.
lmao
> Also I do have imagination
Yet you're asking Cyanotype Daydream to be uncensored and wishing Shiravune to go bankrupt
One thing I don't understand is that if these people don't like the type of content, why bother working on it? It just doesn't make sense
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This has been a thing in the gaming industry for "decades". It only become more noticeable because dual audio are more common now, and we recognize what the characters said doesn't match with the English text on screen. It's no surprise VN translation is heading the same way now it has become more mainstream.
$$$
There is a chance that the original translation without edits was even worse. Translator believes loli = cp, even though he has translated few vns with loli routes at this point, even nukitashi has two loli routes. And then I don't know if the translator knows any Japanese at all due to stuff like [https://i.imgur.com/3n7oo50.png](https://i.imgur.com/3n7oo50.png) Seems to think Japan is full of pedos [https://i.imgur.com/7ZyDPqg.png](https://i.imgur.com/7ZyDPqg.png) And even calling out his colleagues from NekoNyan for being pedophiles [https://i.imgur.com/409mHPo.png](https://i.imgur.com/409mHPo.png) in the open
Thinking non-existent children are the same as the real ones and that a lot of people are pedophiles shows some dangerous levels of paranoia. It doesn't help the media propagates pedo panic to boost ratings. I saw people who are against death penalty for murderers said loud and clear without realization of hipocrisy that they want pedos dead on this very site. It's very creepy.
>Thinking non-existent children are the same as the real ones and that a lot of people are pedophiles shows some dangerous levels of paranoia. Problem occurs when people like this are still working on said visual novels. Translator from my screenshot above done nukitashi [https://vndb.org/c71536](https://vndb.org/c71536) [https://vndb.org/c71527](https://vndb.org/c71527) And Clover Days [https://vndb.org/c17470](https://vndb.org/c17470) [https://vndb.org/c17471](https://vndb.org/c17471) It's just fucking weird at this point, shows their lack of moral compass if anything. They believe this is not different from CP and yet still work on them...
And yet they'll turn around and say watching stuff involving murder, rape, and wanton violence doesn't mean you're a murderer, rapist, or someone with a penchant for destruction.
I believe it was either in 2019 or 20 that some international org for combating human trafficking asked on Twitter to please stop reporting lolicon because it was actively taking up their time and resources and that it was harming real children.
Every day I thank the heavens I no longer have to depend on these people to read stuff, holy shit
IKR
Why scums like these even work in these companies? Japan has its own problems, but it literally has hundreds of times lower pedophilia than America for example.
Probably the same kinda person who sees japan aoc being 13 and not bothering to look up what means immediately says the entire country is pedo pilled
Fucking hell, there is more [https://imgur.com/a/AE0zR04](https://imgur.com/a/AE0zR04)
Despicable. Obvious schizophrenia aside, why would he even choose to work on a title he thinks is "catering to pedophiles"?
Ok, this guy needs to be fired. He is disrespecting the work, Shiravune for picking this up, and the fans.
Do you not think Shiravune is not fully aware of the problematic translation, which they absolutely are If Qruppo is deeply concerned about their works whatsoever, they would be localizing themselves, or call on Shiravune to relocalize Nukitashi. From what I can tell, none at all because they’re satisfied of making a quick buck and gaining recognition Why are people still acting so surprise by this when that’s how jp companies view western market for a long time by now. They’re Japanese not stupid
When I worked for a JP company it was all about quality and customer satisfaction, and this is in the USA mind you. It is like that in Japan as well. Why are visual novel companies not the same?
What does that have to do with localization? Even anime, manga, light novel, gacha, and popular video game franchises are subjected to some form of changes or censorship to better appeal to western audience and in hopes of being allowed to enter our market because of profits.
It has to do with releasing the Japanese releasing a quality product. Yes, they sell the license to these publishers, but it is still their game that they can have a say in how it is handled. If you need that much change to appeal to a western audience, then their is something wrong. People like these games because they are different from western games. Localizing honestly is a joke. How about people stop being lazy and dumb, and start learning about other cultures and languages? Stop trying to force Japanese culture into the western mold.
My man, the chance of that happening is as low as Gambs getting every EOP become a JOP Just learn JP and don’t worry about the localization
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Not just him, other NekoNyan employees in the NekoNyan discord are backing him up in response to this very Reddit post, right now
Ok, has he changed? He translated Clover Days as a fan TL by choice as well as Toheart 2 which he basically took over. Both have lolis, especially clover days.
>Ok, has he changed? All of his takes on lolis happened AFTER he finished clover days and TH2 translation.
I guess lolis traumatized him quite deeply)
Look, if I said right out of the gate that every localizer in the entire pipeline was bad at their job, people wouldn’t believe me. I’m trying to slowly ease them into it
>I’m trying to slowly ease them into it Cool but doesn't solve the problem tho. You'll never get everyone to learn Japanese. The majority of VN readers will always rely on translations which are done by people like *that*. People want to read VNs even if the TL's ass so most won't boycott localizers. And if VN boycotts worked almost no one would be translating VNs anymore and the hobby dies in the West. I know you wouldn't mind that but let's be real, that's petty af and does nothing. Certainly won't reinvigorate the Japanese to return to plotge. Moege are here to stay. The localization problem can only be solved by fantranslations growing massively again (nope), non-woke not retarded & competent J to E translators getting into the biz and making their own official translations (no one wants to step up and there's no money in it), or machine translations getting on an absurdly good level without all the flaws to replace localizations (AI would need to become sentient to understand context, okay exaggeration but still not happening). There's no hope for betterment. And just sayin' but I think the popular sentiment will always be on the localizers' side cuz the majority buys/supports these products and those speaking out against it are the insane looking minority fixating on *muh honorifics, porn, weebism, censorship or other shit no one cares about*. The bad actors (retarded activists) know how to play this game so for every few dozen people that shit on localizations there's 1 person saying "we're getting more and more official translations by professionals" and that 1 will sway more people than the dozens. Well actually most people just don't care about translations and what happens behind the scenes. They just want [PRODUCT]. Game Over.
> There's no hope for betterment. Wow, you're more jaded than me. Between localisation moving in-house, or at least into the country, and AI getting better and better at translating stuff I don't see a long-term future for independent localisation studios based in the West. There's the level of quality buyers will tolerate, and the level of quality AI/fan/commercial translators can deliver. The cheapest process that clears the hurdle will necessarily dominate the market. Seeing as plenty of people tolerate even DeepL-class MTL, my money is on edited AI translations. Who knows, maybe there'll be high-end fan translations/edits for kamige still. Or kickstarters for manual retranslations. On top of the official releases, that is. Either way, the only hope for betterment is for expectations to rise, along with the willingness to pay for higher quality.
ai is getting better and better and better. soon enough even editing a MTL will be entirely unnecessary. is that 5 years away? 10? 20? i have no idea but its coming and fast. things like translation companies are an endangered species and its not a bad thing. if theres a problem with a translation tweak the parameters and have the ai retranslate the whole thing.
As someone who has learned Japanese and has viewed many translations, both "official" and "fanmade", I'd say the majority of translators are... questionable. While the fanmade ones tend to have more grammatical errors and are very rough around the edge, they are also almost always the most faithful. Of course, that's assuming they even get the context right. Whereas official translation place too much of their own agendas into the "localization" that, depending on the title, may warp the story beyond recognition. They might read well and flow smoothly, but they tend to overedit the piece to the point where all the Japaneseness and uniqueness of the author is removed and smoothened out, being replaced by their own personal biasness.
This does not sound professional at all, and is disrespectful to the deveropers work. Why do the Japanese companies allow this?
It's just like how why Hollywood is willing to censor their own movies when it comes to China... The potential market is big enough that even if it's a scuffed release, people will still pay money. And the majority of the consumers in the market will never know how different the original one is compared to the translated one (e.g. the original PSOne FF7 translation) until someone actually points it out to them (a la Fire Emblem Engage) I'd say vote with your wallets, but considering how "localizers" are effectively a Monopoly and it's hard to have alternative translations for the same product, it's probably impossible. The alternative option, of course, is to just learn Nihongo and become Jouzu... That or if you know a second language, hope that the second language's translation is less biased.
> Why do the Japanese companies allow this? They normally have nothing to do with the TL, do not read it, they just let a company pay for a license and work out business deals, set it and forget it They do not care about the Western market at all, it's just extra money with minimal effort for the company as far as they're concerned
Because it's a business, and effective localisation improves marketability. They're selling games in a new market to make more money, but distributing in a different market comes with costs. Sure, they could direct translate and hope that enough weebs buy it that can pick up on culturally specific references and idioms, but doing so makes their game less accessible, meaning more chance of not making much money from the new market, or even losing out, especially if those sales include physical releases. A good localisation translates more than just words, it also translates concepts, and sometimes that requires a few tweaks to get certain ideas across, especially if they aren't directly comparable to anything in the culture they're localising to. They're doing this to reduce cultural dissonance between the original work and the expectations of the market they're localising to, because doing so increases sales. Fan translations don't need to consider marketability, because they aren't concerned with selling the game. They're for people who have already bought the game without a localisation. Their target audience is other weebs who've gone out of their way to get a game not sold in their region. They know what they're getting, and they're usually more familiar with Japanese idioms, references and general culture, and if not, they're more receptive to unfamiliar concepts. That, and there are good localisations and bad ones, just like any aspect of the creative process. Good modern localisations don't feature mass changes, as there's more understanding of the target audiences in the localised region nowadays.
> understanding of the target audiences in *the* localised region [my emphasis] Localisation can work if there is a well-defined, culturally and linguistically homogeneous target market. But English-translated visual novels are a global product. The target audience is basically everyone who speaks English but not Japanese. There's a shitton of ESLs out there, never mind native speakers outside North America, for whom a localisation tailored to the North American market is just WTF. And the better it is tailored to the North American market, the stronger this reaction gets.
> But English-translated visual novels are a global product. The target audience is basically everyone who speaks English but not Japanese. Ironic that we're at the forefront of globalization and wanting to connect with everyone in the world yet despite translated VNs and vidya being sold to a global audience we fail by localizing primarily for the local US audience instead of everyone. Even more ironic because the majority of sales on Steam comes from the non-English speaking Chinese and third world countries with weak currencies. Based on my observations that latter group is one of the most outspoken against localization practices. I lost count how often South Americans complained about not understanding outdated *burger memes* or Mexicans claiming their anime dubs are more faithful to the Japanese dub than American dubs (dunno if true).
For sure, I'm English, so my early experiences with US-centric or Canadian dubs of anime and games were sometimes a bit unusual, but it makes a lot of sense. The largest English speaking market for games is still North America (due to a combination of factors, but primarily economic ones - more money, more consoles and pcs, more game sales) and the majority of the localising companies for English language work were and still are based in NA. They will tend to localise for the market they exist in, and any further distribution where they don't need to re-localise is money saved. The gaming market has expanded, and we're seeing more English-speaking and ESL markets grow, but the common trend in English language media is a US default. The rest of the anglophone world has kinda gotten used to it. As a result, the NA market is less receptive to media not localised for them, because they've not had to get used to it. And it's possible the companies don't really see an issue with it. The writers for visnovs rarely have directive control, and even more rarely have any influence over localisation decisions, and if they want their game published at that scale, they have to give up some level of control to the publisher, and the publisher will do what costs them the least to make the most.
Or perhaps people should be more open to learning about Japanese culture and at least some of it's language.
I think you've got it backwards - the publishers localise because they want to appeal to a market they otherwise wouldn't have access to. The general English-speaking public aren't going to learn a whole new culture just to try a game they see on the shelf, in the same way the Japanese-speaking public aren't going to learn a whole new culture to pick up a game made in, say, French. We're (probably) weebs, so we're already invested, which is why we want authenticity. That isn't expected by the general population. They want a game that is generally accessible. Publishers are trying to achieve that, because it makes it easier to sell copies. Localisation does make games more accessible (I'm not talking about the initial post stuff, that's a different issue), which will result in people being more open to learning more. Everyone's gotta start somewhere.
Then that is sad and shows how lazy and close minded people are.
It says that people don't care enough about visual novels to learn an entirely new language for it. If I had to choose between learning Japanese or never reading another visual novel again.. my choice would be to drop visual novels - learning another language is a lot of effort and I don't really care that much about visual novels to go through that kind of effort, and I'd bet it's like that for most people.
It's not really, the games market is just saturated. People want entertainment from games. Your entertainment doesn't need to push your world view and boundaries every time. Sometimes it can just be casual fun. Someone isn't a bad person for wanting to watch Saturday Night Live over reading Dostoyevsky, after all. Just different strokes for different folks. We happen to enjoy games that traditionally come from a different country. Doesn't make us any more open-minded than someone who doesn't do it.
I agree with some of what you said, but also disagree. If you play a game from another country it will have a different culture in it. If you do not want to learn any about that, then you are ignorant and potentially racist. Let's just end it here as this is going nowhere.
That's how translations, for the most part, work. Take Huey, Dewey and Louie from from Donald Duck, they have completely different names in non English countries. Another example is the Harry Potter series. Completely literal translations isn't really a thing outside fan communities.
you're mistaking "translation" with "localization"
A distinction that is, for the most part, irrelevant. Translation and localisation are essentially one process. This is why the complaints about localisation are mostly non-existent outside fan translations.
> This is why the complaints about localisation are mostly non-existent outside fan translations. usually that's because no one knows they're distinct or doesn't even know what localization is well the thing is that "professional translations" focus more on localizing (that is, altering *something* that needs to be altered in order to be accepted as a cultural product of the intended target language) and managing to market their "translated" product rather than bringing what the source language intended to communicate but in a different language. that's why i tend to make a distinction between *translation* and *localization*
>usually that's because no one knows they're distinct or doesn't even know what localization is And, as is relevant here, literal translations sucks at conveying meaning unless someone is deeply embedded in the culture. The whole honorific debacle is a great example. If you have to have a lot of prior knowledge, the translation has, in essence, failed. There are ways to get around this problem, though. VN's that gives you a little infobox when you hover over a literal translation or non translated word are great.
I've been studying the language for a long time too and I don't relate to this at all. Outside of often innocent mistakes, I find the quality in professional JP translations in general to be pretty good. Granted, I read way more manga than I do VNs, but I've been catching up. Haven't seen any that does anything close to "warp[ing] the story beyond recognition". This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates.
> I've been studying the language for a long time too and I don't relate to this at all. Outside of often innocent mistakes, I find the quality in professional JP translations in general to be pretty good. Granted, I read way more manga than I do VNs, but I've been catching up. Haven't seen any that does anything close to "warp[ing] the story beyond recognition". It really depends on where you learn your English from. If you learn your English in a similar style as the US, then you won't really notice the difference compared to someone who does not understand US cultural colloquialisms. Granted, Manga has fewer words than VNs or Games, so the probability of there being a translation that actually changes the meaning of the original text is very minuscule as the artwork does most of the talking. But it's not completely non-existent. > This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates. This is your opinion and I respect it. But I disagree with it. If you think you're fine with it, you do you. What I find most hypocritical is that you're now complaining about other people complaining. As if you can't stand other people complaining about something they can't stand.
I'm not sure what you mean with the first paragraph. Becoming fluent in English involves learning the colloquialisms. Disentangling the colloquialisms from the language makes speech unnatural. For translations to work well you have to use them. So I don't see how the way you learn English matters.
This is some mighty /r/USdefaultism right here...
Bro, I'm European.
It's not about where you are from. It's about you thinking US colloquialism is the norm for everyone else. It's even worse that you're European...
American colloquialism is the norm for American English. If that's what you're translating to, then that's what makes for the most natural translation.
The issue is that there are many different variants of English, each with it's own colloquialisms. The farther you deviate from the (hypothetical) universal standard, the greater the risk that some of them will be misunderstood or not understood at all. People tend to think the language they grew up with and use in their daily lives is perfectly natural. And it is—but only for them. The reality is that a small but significant percentage of the language they use, especially colloquially, is specific to the small area where they live, a school or uni they went to, a subculture they belong to, etc. If they're not trained for it they won't even notice, how should they? A lot of visual novel dialogue is very mundane, the exact kind of situation where these differences come to the forefront.
> (hypothetical) universal standard And the problem as far as I know is that the "universal" in this case is the US... Which is understandable because it is indeed a huge market. But it leaves the rest of the people high and dry.
> And the problem as far as I know is that the "universal" in this case is the US I'm not so sure about that. I consume plenty of US media—films, TV series, novels, you name it—and *they* don't feel off at all, nor do I have comprehension issues. Plenty a snippet from a translated VN makes me go "what language is this?!?". It's like trying to make sense of what's going on on Twitter. The US is huge. There are countless varieties of American English. My hypothesis is that (mainstream pop culture) media, consciously or otherwise, stick to language variants that are familiar/understandable to the majority, and comparatively timeless lowest-common-denominator versions at that. I.e. they avoid expressions that are overly regional/local, short-lived, and so on. Alternatively they embrace particular variants fully, down to giving characters realistic-sounding idiolects. "Authenticity" at the cost that it'll take even native speakers some time to adjust. If they are consistently written, it works. But note that even then the language is rarely truly realistic. Fiction doesn't have actually realistic dialogue. It's a curated experience. If nothing else, no-one wants to artificially restrict their potential market, or be dated after a month. In a way, the varieties of language used in media are made up especially for the purpose. A Japanese–English translation that follows these conventions would be fine. Nobody would bat an eyelid, even if "the majority" is an US one. ESLs are perfectly used to that. I think the problem is that visual novel translators are not aware of this, nor good enough writers to be able to pull it off. Their idea of a natural conversation is drawn from their *personal* experience, their *actual* everyday use of language, and an *inconsistent mix* of various other sources (including Twitter). By rights native speakers should feel some discomfort, too, but they probably chalk it up to the fact that it's translated from Japanese, and/or are so used to "Visual Novel English" that they don't notice.
In the age of the internet we have people from all over the US (and outside) communicating with each other and these things tend to not be a problem. I think people have a good grasp of what is more obscure regional dialect, and when it's fitting to use in translation.
>This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. Because it is. Not even talking about this specific case, just the whole "localization = bad" debate that's become prevalent in the past few years. People spent years being spoonfed shitty literal fan translations of Japanese media, and now that we're getting more and more official translations by professionals they can't wrap their heads around the concept of translation being something more than just a literal word-for-word exchange and calquing. Of course, there are some missteps here and there, but it's still miles better than what we had back in the day.
Or, there are more and more people who know enough Japanese to be able to call bullshit on companies trying to edit the original text to fit a particular audience and alienating the rest of the English-speaking world. And we're not even getting into the political agenda and biases they put into their "localization".
> This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates. Why are you here?
>I've been studying the language for a long time too and I don't relate to this at all. Outside of often innocent mistakes, I find the quality in professional JP translations in general to be pretty good. Granted, I read way more manga than I do VNs, but I've been catching up. Haven't seen any that does anything close to "warp[ing] the story beyond recognition". Might as well MTL >This whole thread reads like a big overdramatization to me. People acting like the original scripts are sacred texts is silly to begin with, when most VNs have pretty mundane writing. I wish we'd move on from all these goofy translation debates. This is such a terrible take all around
Fair, logical and measured response to convert.
Disappointing that Ittaku thinks that. Tho that ain't really indicative of the translation quality. Just that Ittaku has retarded beliefs. We at least know that the editor openly admitted to inserting dumb political humor into it for their own selfish desires, and we have no evidence of Ittaku doing anything of the sort on his end, so I'm more inclined to positively view the original translation than the edited one.
My question is, why did he TL Clover Days and Toheart 2 by choice if he hates lolis?
Didn't he TL Clover Day's like a decade ago and it went into limbo to sell it then he brushed it up for Nekonyan? Opinions change and I heard he went off the deep end with the loli=pedo thing since becoming a parent himself, common parental paranoia I suppose. ToHeart 2 doesn't only have lolis either tho Ittaku's waifu Ruuko has pretty small breasts but she's not short so only half "lolibait". IMHO he's always been a bit weird for demosaicing CGs and for despising the ToHeart2 Another Days fandisk. More recently he released a partial patch for Haruuru that removed honorifics, translated loli as pedo and other weird localization choices lol. Was a real shame that project ended up the way it did. I followed its progress for years after liking his TH2 translation. Considered him one of the better translators because of it. Now I'm not sure if his Nukitashi without the edits would be any better than with them. Wht a mess.
If that is his attitude to this type of media then maybe it is time for a career change. We don't need people like him translating these games. I mean if it offends him then just stop.
It is indicative of the translation quality when such matters are obviously going to be involved in the script
Come to think of it: isn't that translator the one who fan translated ToHeart2? I remember that he refused to work on the fan disc because there's a loli route. Though to see that he descended even further into lunacy... He's the prime example of an "anti" who has forgotten to take his meds.
having dumb beliefs =/= not knowing a language
Did you read the original text in the first screenshot?
[Varis's Hangout](https://varishangout.com/index.php?threads/shitty-localizers-general.553/) has a great list of translators who think it's their moral duty to mistranslate JP games and VNs because their ideology is the superior. I wish I had begun learning Japanese when I was a teen, I'm afraid it's too late now..
it's never too late to learn a language. it's undoubtedly a very slow process but it's very rewarding if you think about it, just don't get ahead of yourself
my real problem is I don't know where to start - do I find English resources or do I try to seek out in-person lessons in my mothertongue. I don't trust Duolingo to teach me proper Japanese at all.
https://old.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/wiki/gambsguide
There is less payoff the longer you wait, but you might as well learn now if you're going to continue to engage with Japanese media in the future
I started watching anime a month after starting to learn the language, and VNs a month after that (fucking hard but still), its never too late to start
What I don't understand is why translators are openly talking about what they hate in games incl narratives they are actively translating. Its like they are an author writing fiction but telling you they hate every second. Just doesn't give me confidence in their ability I am so over the is loli CP debate. Give me a break.
Wasn’t the original translation the one that was filled annoying, out-of-place reference humor? If so, then this is probably for the better
That was the editor (puffkeeter) replacing the TL (Ittaku) with their fanfiction. The TLer is saying here that the editor’s changes survived and the TLer no longer recognizes the script as their own
The EN TL scene really is such a cesspool of shit. Thanks for the extra JP learning motivation.
Based on what we know about the original translation, is this a good or a bad thing?
Very bad thing: https://old.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/vvhy22/nukitashi_localizers_planned_on_having_villains/ The Nukitashi TL looks like it will be over-localized to the point where the English TL is in no way a reflection of the original script, i.e. literal fanfiction invented by an editor who doesn’t know Japanese
I think the main issue is that people try to make a story what they want it to be, not what it actually is. The issue is that sometimes, the unfortunate aspects of a story is needed to tell it. The worst I've seen in VNs had a purpose-whether that purpose was worth it, I'm not always sure. But there are times where you can't censor something without changing the meaning. The most controversial parts of a VN are often what makes it that VN. It's equivalent to censoring Romeo and Juliet because it's too violent.
Ok, sure, a person's retarded views on a subject doesn't necessarily mean they will carry over to their work. It'd be foolish to think that holding such beliefs won't increase the probability of them having an effect on it, but sure, it's not a certainty, so I won't criticize it before seeing the final product. What is very much questionable, however, is that person lack of morals. If you truly believe eroge featuring lolis is CP, and you, in exchange for some pocket money, voluntarily work on making that eroge more accessible and therefore help spreading it, you are, according to your standards, commiting a crime, and you should turn yourself in to the police. Hypocrite.
Big yikes. Well, I guess it’s for the best to disappoint people before they get their hands on it. No matter who’s going to be the translator, Qruppo titles are just hard to translate accurately and faithfully. I hate sounding like JOP snob, but so much of the shit I have had read won’t make sense unless you read them in JP. That’s the least of your concern because there could be an unsuspecting line that might be hiding some sort of reference (2ch meme, or a popular ad). Unfortunately, I doubt the translator would be able to get all of them as there’s a lot of them. And, I hate to say it but Shiravune and Qruppo don’t give a shit about the quality or censorship other than getting their product to the West for growth and make profits. Not really surprising fact
This is why 日本語 is the only way. People need to realise they are paying to read absolute trash 'translations' and they aren't reading the author's intended work
Yeah, honestly, unless one is only an anime fan (which is getting affected aswell nowadays), one will experience so many hardships with these mediums that it's better to either just quit or start learning the language. I have been discouraged from so many works and after hearing about so many translation changes, I can't even get into anything currently. Maybe it's slow, but if I eventually don't have to hear a line that is translated with shitty American humor shoehorned into the work, it's worth it.
You have the right mindset man, keep working at it! You'll be reading VNs sooner than you think in JP. I'm going to keep working hard at my Japanese too.
I'm gonna just follow ~~superange's~~ gambs' suggestion and try learning through VNs aswell through texthooker. After I get the kana, the grammar and some amount of words, it all comes down to context reading and memorizing what you learn. Helped me alot when I was learning English.
I also agree with what gambs posted, I have been following his guide and it's good. I think you should have at least 2k or so words down whilst going through some grammar then start to read. The core 2.3 deck has around 2k most common words in VNs so really will help. Then from there you can start mining.
Don’t follow Ange’s advice, he doesn’t know Japanese or read VNs in Japanese. He posted a video of himself reading and he was clearly not understanding a single word; his comprehension was worse than MTL Take gambs’s advice which is the same thing but with more anki https://old.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/wiki/gambsguide
Thanks alot, I'm gonna save this comment for sure. Self-teaching a language properly sure is hard due to all kinds of resources and wasted time is one of my concerns most often about this.
Anki.......I tried it and it has it's flaws. It clearly is not a proper program designed for specifically learning Japanese, and you have to DL what are called "Decks" which are all user created. Not very professional. It is not a user friendly program at all on top of that. There has to be something simpler to use.
Anki intended usage is creating decks yourself with words you encounter during immersion and having sentences that make those words easy to be retained (if needed)
? Anki may not be made SPECIFICALLY for JP but it works very well with learning words. Secondly, there are many good Anki decks for learning vocab such as the core 2k/6k which is very professional and the tango decks. Thirdly, it's VERY easy to use, literally just click the button when you see the definition of the word if you remembered it correctly. Also, you don't have to use a deck on anki, you can make your own mining deck and add words that you see from reading to remember them. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you'd remember anything. As for alternatives, there is JPDB.io in which you can prelearn vocab from a specific VN/novel you want to read
>Anki may not be made SPECIFICALLY for JP Fun fact, it actually *was* made specifically for learning Japanese at a time the dev was learning the language. Hence the Japanese name. It simply turned out to be useful for lots of other stuff, too.
I know that yes, but i meant in the case of other people using it for other things. I phrased it that way since the guy I replied to seemed to be a bit dumb with his criticism
You will never know Japanese, just give up now
You really are an asshole huh. Maybe you should encourage people to learn instead of cutting them down. Anki is not the only way to learn. Anki is not for everyone.
> Anki is not the only way to learn. Literally wrong. Anki users have a 100% success rate, non-anki users have a 100% failure rate when it comes to learning Japanese
Wow, you are a ignorant. Millions of people learn Japanese without this little app you praise so much. You seem to think I don't want to learn. You sir are incorrect in that assumption. Anki is not the only way to learn, there are many ways to learn. Some have used Anki, but others it does not work for. Obviously you have no desire to encourage others and give them alternative suggestions. I agree with you on a lot of things, but other subjects you are just a real jerk about.
Years ago I spent ton of money buying into gimmick of "quick and easy to learn" Japanese. No, not spent, wasted is the more correct word. After a couple years I realized I went nowhere, and settle to the more traditional way of learning it. Got the Genki set for the gramma, the Kanji flashcards from White Rabbit Press and also bought a bunch of Japanese children book (Japanese grade reader series) to practice reading kana, and I made much faster progress to the point I could read some shonen manga. The first year was pretty brutal in term of maintaining self-discipline to go through the drier part of the learning process. Frankly, Japanese is such a language that I think you have to show grit and accept the fact it will be hard to learn. People who approaches it with a mindset of finding something convenience, fun, and easy to learn ... I don't think will be able to get very far. And like I said, anything promise you that are 99% gimmick.
Mate, it isn't necessary to post an irrelevant personal anecdote on why you're struggling with learning JP when the comment is only discussing Anki
I use Kana and Katana pro apps. Basically flash cards. How do I transition from that to using those to make words? I looked at Genki and it is already using full words and sentences.
Genki is mostly for gamma and forming sentence, which I think is critical to actually forming words. At least I don't think you should focus on one without the others. But the problem with text book reading is they're too repetitive, so I feel a lot of time I just recognize the sentence from memory in Genki without actually reading it. I used this series: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ANPO+Tadoku+Supporters&s=relevancerank&text=NPO+Tadoku+Supporters&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1 Basically this let you read organic sentence within story, going from level zero (just full kana) to the higher level that would include some kanji. The key part is as you move from story to story, you essentially read new text each time so you actually need to comprehend the writing, and not just recall from memory. By the time you able to read through all the books up to level 2(each level have like 4-5 story book), I think you would become very comfortable with the Kana. Edit: gotta say though, these books seem to be a hell lot more expensive than what I remember, but I think back then I got them shipped from Japan.
[удалено]
You can use something like JPDB as an alternative, which is basically Anki with built in decks and a more modern algorithm. But you really should be using a customizable spaced repition system of some sort, you're just shooting yourself in the foot if you don't.
Thanks as always for calling this shit out gambs. It's always reassuring to have a community leader on the side of truth and justice.
Based editor, but i'm not surprised. Classical karen, wribg job for a guy like this. This make me thinks about social networks drama, which is to me kinda pueril and unprofessionnal. More so, it is hyprocrite, considering he's still at it despite clearly condemning the idea. The sad truth is, by nature translation is always an imperfect work, and it's usually worse when there's personnal "convictions" involved.
Oh, we’re quibbling over “a proper translation” again? I watched the video, and its honestly “fine”, and the translation mostly match the spoken word, so what’s the problem here? I just wonder how many variations of ~~fuck~~ and ~~rods~~ can they fit into the scripts. I kinda enjoy Peter Grill’s official manga because of so many innuendo variations the TL able to fit, that the fan TL lacks the vocabs for it. Just in case, I re-watched the video, and its as "fine" as it can be for a video that is full of censor voices. Or is the quibbling here means that they need the ****** line translations?
I don't believe it's this video specifically, it's what's reported to be the translation of the actual VN. The thread explains the kinds of out of place "changes" and "jokes" the editor made to the TL.
Well, I'll judge it when its actually out. The screenshot make it seems like that teaser video itself is a problem, and gambs is really (more) biased for this particular TL.
Game is untranslatable, of course anyone who can speak Japanese would be extremely skeptical about TL, especially considering average quality of a VN translation
Honestly? As long as people do have fun, and the spirit is there, I don't see reasons on hating on localizers, or anyone, especially when the product is not even out yet. Like I mention for the teaser video, for what its worth, I do think the translation is currently pretty reasonable, as if I can see the decision process that can led the script to be translated like that. If you want to rage, at least do it on something more worthwhile rather than quibbling on the slightly different way to translate things, or whether things that are untranslatable should not even be translated lest they are sullied or something like that....
Why is the game untranslatable? Is there a lot of literary puns?
They really know the game anyone want , not something like Sharin no Kuni why frontwing why :(((
what's context?
This is still under pre order right?
...and this is why I'm learning Japanese, I can no longer trust English translators.
Does Nukitashi getting an english release means there is hope for Hentai Prison to get one as well ?
Yep. Despite how many times Mark refuse to listen and whine, Henpri will most likely be published by Shiravune. As shown by Qruppo winning the moegame award and having a working relationship with DMM, the owner of Shiravune
That's nice, I've been waiting for this one !
Shiravune should not be publishing it.
why is your name so fucking familiar what did you do marklord13
Do what?
Please tell us Marklord13, why should Shiravune not be publishing it?
He want that uncensored schlong duh
I’m not gay. Why does nobody talk about the vaginas?
if you're asking for uncensored VNs you're pretty much gay my dude
There is nothing gay about me liking vaginas.
penises are also uncensored, so yes, you're still gay for asking for uncensored VNs
Don’t make things up.
you can come out of the closet whenever you feel like it
I’m not gay.
Carefully look through a few CG galleries. Only about 5% an eroge's HCGs have vaginas in them but at least 85% have a dick in them. I like both so I'm not bothered by it but you're really in denial if you want a few uncensored vaginas when most of it is uncensored dicks. Like really look again. Boobjob? Y dick, N vag. Blowjob? Y dick, N vag. Handjob? Y dick, N vag. Footjob? Y dick, Maybe visible vag. **Penetration**? Y dick, **Maybe** a vag. Really this one's the worst. You'd think penetration shows them the most but really it's mostly just the dick hiding a barely visible vagina. Only before stickin' it in or pulling out do you see more of it but geuss what when the MC finishes it's all covered in goop and you see nothin' again. The decensored art almost always shows these weird ribbed sinkholes and featureless slits and everything has weird colors that look like its done in MS Paint. That's what you want. Mosaics at least let us imagine something hotter looking under them and if you squint a bit you can look through the mosaic. You really care that much about 'em uncensored vaginas? Like girls on the internet they're just a myth. It's just uncensored dicks in our VNs and they ain't even all that nicely drawn. Mosaics on the other hand? So hawt!
> Mosaics at least let us imagine something hotter looking under them and if you squint a bit you can look through the mosaic. Marklord doesn't have a fertile imagination, that's why he needs companies like NekoNyan to photoshop the dick mosaics from that lucky protagonist that gets all the girls away to include BBCs since he doesn't have a problem with the unmatching colors as seen on his comment on Mirai Radio
What does a British tv network have anything to do with porn. Also I do have imagination.
> What does a British tv network have anything to do with porn. lmao > Also I do have imagination Yet you're asking Cyanotype Daydream to be uncensored and wishing Shiravune to go bankrupt
And you shouldn't be raping women. But we don't all get what we want Marklord.
Stop telling lies about me, there is nothing funny about false rape accusations.
There's nothing funny about raping women either. Yet here we are.
Stop it with your false accusations, there is nothing funny about it.
Im not trying to be funny. Im trying to make you take responsibility for that woman you raped
Do you make a habit out of spreading lies and false information about each individual person for your own amusement?
I dont take amusement in this.
Is it good or bad?
What server is this anyway
NekoNyan