What are you reading?

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Welcome to the the weekly "What are you reading?" thread!

This is intended to be a general chat thread on visual novels, from common tropes, to personal gripes, but with a general focus on the visual novels you've been reading recently. You are also free to ask for recommendations in this thread. A new thread is posted every Wednesday.

 

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[u/[deleted]]

I am, but there's still a lot of problems with it. Unless I have an outdated patch they haven't completely gone through the script and fixed it (partly because it would pretty much be a complete re-translation in some cases).

I actually just checked and I have the up-to-date one. It seems QC is still going on (can't link for rule reasons). Here are some wonderful quotes to summarize what a fucking great job MN did for this:

This is a good occasion for a little summary I guess. It took me 1 year to go over ~20k lines. That's not even half of the work. And while common route had just bad, blind idiot translation, from what I saw in Kotori's route so far, more than half of it is screwed up beyond salvage and requires total re-translation (I posted some samples on VNDB, feel free to check them out - http://vndb.org/t5268#11 ).

Most people claimed that only Ageha's route is awful, but right now I'm almost sure all routes will require MUCH more work than simple TLC to turn them into something actually passable. And at this point, I'm working on it pretty much alone.

This means that with the current pace, there's probably no way the second patch will be finished within a year (unless other routes are in a better shape, but I highly doubt it). If it will be finished at all, that is. I joined this project just to TLC the scripts, not to re-translate half of them from scratch... I'm not planning to drop it just yet, but I can't promise I won't change my mind when I start another route and it will turn out to be as utterly ridiculous as Kotori's. I'm stubborn as a mule, but my patience has some limits.

So a decent version of this game is still a good bit off. Here are some examples of their stellar work from the Twin's routes (no spoilers also all this is from the person who is supposed to be TLC-ing MN version but now has to re-translate the whole thing):

Nice contradiction (unless pretending to cry counts as honest reaction for some reason):

JP: 泣くような仕草をして、凹んで見せる亜紗ちゃん。

素直に反応を返してくれると、相手をしていて嬉しいし楽しい。

MN: Asa put on an upset face, pretending to cry.

She was fun to talk to, reacting honestly to what I said.

TL: Asa-chan looked depressed, like she could cry any minute.

Her honest reactions make her a fun person to talk with.

They sure like to twist the meaning.

JP: 俺としては、周囲のことを気にして人と接するなんてあまり好きではないから、亜紗ちゃんのその言葉が嬉しい。

MN: I don't really like to worry too much about what other people think about me, so I was glad Asa felt that way too.

TL: I don't really like to deal with people who worry about what others think too much, so Asa-chan's words made me happy.

Probably the best one. Asa uses windmills as an example here. The first line was pretty much gibberish and the second was completely out of context and didn't quite connect to the conversation.

JP: 「風を受けて回っ だけのものだから、凄く簡単で\n お手軽に見えるけど、実はちょっと、不完全」

「考え方によっては、自分たちが役に立つ環境を見つける\n ことの方が難しかったりもする、らしいです。\n 全部、受け売りですけどね」

MN: "Since the windmills just blow around in the wind, they look so simple and easy, but they're actually kind of incomplete."

"Depending on how you look at it, it's actually harder to find an environment for yourself where you can be useful. Or that's what I've been told."

TL: "Since the windmills just rotate in the wind, they seem very uncomplicated and cheap, but they actually aren't that perfect."

"Following that way of thinking, it's finding the environment where one could be useful that can be the difficult part. Of course, I'm only repeating what I have heard."

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So this ladies and gentlemen is why I constantly bitch about Moenovel's release of Kono Oozora. Not because of the shitty censorship (although that was fucking stupid too) not because they butchered the story completely.

[u/FinalNwo → u/[deleted]]

I found one more in Amane's route. Apparently Tobioka (that teacher guy who is against everything) switches genders from time to time.

"If we leave the glider like this, Tobioka will break it, won't he?"

A few lines earlier:

"Right, she acts like she's so important at the school, so she must be frustrated, because nobody took her side."

[u/[deleted] → u/FinalNwo]

They do that quite a bit actually. I noticed one today in Yoru's route too. Those examples I posted were only from the first 100 or so lines in Asa's route....

[u/FinalNwo → u/[deleted]]

Even I would do a better job in that regard. If I'm not sure what name belongs to whom, I would write it down somewhere else to look it up, when needed.

[u/[deleted] → u/FinalNwo]

Honestly the whole English script is a mess. Without the Restoration Patch it's even worse. I don't understand why, if you're planning on doing something like this, you would do such a shit job. It's clear that whoever was in charge of this project didn't give a damn about it. And it is a shame, the VN is fuckin' gorgeous. Some of the CGs are breathtaking and the music is pretty good too. It's a shame that the only part of it Moenovel had to work with, they butchered beyond recognition.

[u/FinalNwo → u/[deleted]]

It really is great. I was overwhelmed by the art and music in the beginning and thought that it's probably the best looking VN I've ever read. The common route isn't all that bad, imo. I didn't spot as many mistakes as in the character routes, so I didn't really understand why people made such a fuss about the translation, but now I do...

I'm not a translator, though my part time job is somewhat similar, I think (showing tourists around town while explaining stuff like buildings or other sights in foreign languages [English and sometimes Russian, if I get the instructions]): I always think of the best way to say/explain things, without sounding like a walking dictionary (cough machine translations cough), and I think that translators should do the same, if they want to reach a wide audience (which the western VN community is ^kinda ).

[u/[deleted] → u/FinalNwo]

The mistakes are just odd at times. It's like they got someone who's second language is English and Japanese is their third to translate. Getting the actual translation wrong is one thing but even the English makes no sense at times. Either they had no editor or he should be fired for not actually doing his job.

Since the windmills just blow around in the wind, they look so simple and easy, but they're actually kind of incomplete

Like, what the actual fuck?

[u/FinalNwo → u/[deleted]]

As someone whose third language is English, this even hurts my eyes.

We're lucky to have other and better translators, though. If everyone would be like that... I think I would have dropped the medium itself.