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Skunkrocker fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2012 11:20
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The_White_Crane posted:Isn't it a little presumptuous to imply that after Oren and Fedule are done, you don't know what the original intent was? Not saying that Oren and Fedule aren't doing a good job translating, since I can't really judge that at all without being able to read the original japanese. Oren could be completely making up his own dialogue for all I know. But consider the translation updates. Right now, I find them as important as the regular updates because a lot of the intent is there. If those translation updates did not exist, would I find DR2 as presented inferior to DR1? Probably not, I'm still enjoying it. However, because the translation updates contain new information, what was originally presented in Oren's updates feels inadequate. Ideally, I would hope what would be 'fresh' info pertaining to character/plot in the translation updates already be present in the main updates, since that to me is the sign of a complete translation. I would prefer translation notes to be presented with the story rather than separately. The normal rules for localization, to preserve flow, just don't seem to matter to me in a text based medium. I can understand how it would be necessary for films and games, but not for text. But then again, I'm the type of person who reads the footnotes as I come across them so I'm sure a lot of people are content to just skip on by.
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Dec 15, 2012 11:53
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WarpedLichen posted:But consider the translation updates. Right now, I find them as important as the regular updates because a lot of the intent is there. If those translation updates did not exist, would I find DR2 as presented inferior to DR1? Probably not, I'm still enjoying it. If that's how you feel, we failed in our jobs. The translation commentaries are not supposed to be required reading. Fedule describes the challenges he faces when trying to make flowing English prose out of my literal translation, and I'm providing things I think are interesting about the Japanese language and how it's used in the game, for people who are interested in such things, but we don't expect everyone following the LP to read them and we will not hide crucial information in there. Our goal is to make the characters feel the same as they do in the original. Now, this may sometime take some more time in English - as mentioned, Japanese has many linguistic shorthands that help you gain a lot of insight into characters just by what verb forms and pronouns they use when they say even something as simple as "My name is Hajime Hinata". In English, you may need to spend a little more time with the character to get the same insights, but they should come across, and we try our best to do so. There are still cultural notes in the translation - the game still very much involves characters who are distinctively Japanese, and we're not trying to hide that. However, I believe that in-update footnotes should be confined to actual cultural notes, and that linguistic issues should be dealt with more creatively if we want this accessible at all to people who aren't hardcore Japanophiles.
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Dec 15, 2012 12:50
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orenronen posted:If that's how you feel, we failed in our jobs.  after each obscure cultural reference(or hell, even having to explain things like "Hajime reads like a typical teenager to most Westerners, but he'd seem very sarcastic and standoffish in Japan"). It's even worse here, since we've only had a few updates and we don't even really know where the story's heading yet - how can most of the people reading the LP know what the real intent of most of this stuff is(or how your translation changes affect anything) when we haven't gotten to the part where the intro's groundwork leads into the real story?For what it's worth, I've been reading the translation commentaries because they're interesting, but I've never really felt that the updates themselves left anything unclear(or added in information that I overanalyzed despite it not being part of the overarching mystery in the first place). I'm not saying there's no merit to some of these complaints(I've been through enough media with varying degrees of that things that seem obvious to me wouldn't to someone who's mostly steered clear of the anime/manga that DR draws so many of its ideas from. That was blindingly clear when we got to the final trial of DR1, and so many people saw Junko as adopting the mannerisms of the other characters & not the typical anime tropes that each character and Junko were both drawing from), but there's always going to be people complaining that "removing those ellipses ruined the intent of the work!" or some other such nonsense. Doubly so when anything Japanese is involved.On the bright side, the reasonable complaints mean that I can read Usami's speech without having to quietly sound out stuff like "fwowers coming into bwoom" to figure out what the hell she's saying.
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Dec 15, 2012 13:17
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Thank you for taking our comments into account and changed Monomi's speech. I had some trouble reading through it the first time around. And I thought Hinata's tie is supposed to say "love" in capital letter? The pattern on Nagito's shirt, on the other hand, is quite hard to decipher.
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Dec 15, 2012 13:41
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I feel like I should point out Usami/Monomi is almost certainly being controlled by somebody who doesn't normally talk like that, like in DR1, so her being inconsistent about her speech pattern is perfectly fitting. (Unless her controller DOES talk like that normally or she's an AI or something in which case, uh,  Downside of not being familiar with the entire script before translating I guess.)
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Dec 15, 2012 13:46
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I think the thing about the translation process and the commentaries is that over-analyzing things (to use a strong word, I personally like what you're doing and see no reason to complain) will always make some people feel like they're missing something. However, I believe that you could do the same thing to even the most basic and simplistic prose - you could probably take the script of the original Dragon Quest and write a paragraph for each line about what speech mannerisms and personal pronouns the king is using and how a pun in the original differs from the official English translation, etc. That doesn't mean it's in any way important for enjoying the game. Personally, I love in-depths commentaries and cultural side-notes like this, but I've become pretty good at enjoying games/books/films on their own merits without worrying about what was left our or lost in translation too much. I'm sure oren and Fedule have a pretty good idea when a cultural note is really necessary and when it's more important for the text to flow well.
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Dec 15, 2012 13:58
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Put it this way: In Japanese, you can insult people with grammar in a single sentence. To do the equivalent in English requires at least a short conversation. It is inevitable that details - like first-person pronouns - will get lost in translation because they just don't exist in English. So something needs to be added to compensate. As I see it, the "intent" at any given point is less a matter of specifics about speaking style and word choice and more about establishing things - in this case, we're establishing characters (later we'll be establishing facts pertinent to a murder (which may include more characterization)). So, in the first half of that update, the intent is to convey that:
Everything else is just details, really. This is the stuff that should be getting across to you in the script, without having to read any of the notes.
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Dec 15, 2012 14:18
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Fedule posted:Everything else is just details, really. This is the stuff that should be getting across to you in the script, without having to read any of the notes. Yes, and it's obvious the care and love that was put into the phrasing after the fact, but in cases like that, I think it might be worth putting in something like: " It's not immediately apparent, but Nagito's speaking in a very brash, self-assured sort of way, while Hajime's phrasing is a bit more muted"Every reader of this LP knows that he's reading a translation, and so we take various intricacies of conversation with a grain of salt. If you explicitly point out "This is how he talks, and so that's why we put it this way" in the post itself, it's easier to take the actual nuances of the dialogue at face value. Just my opinion, and I'm still enjoying the LP (both TranslationChat and the game's buildup itself) greatly.
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Dec 15, 2012 14:37
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The characters in this are so much better than DR1, it's ridiculous. -- snip -- (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 15, 2012 14:47
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miguelito posted:The characters in this are so much better than DR1, it's ridiculous. Based on what? Character design? Because we certainly haven't seen enough of them to say "Oh yeah, Kuzuryu is totally cooler than Mondo because of reasons." Character design preference is certainly a subjective thing, but I would not really say any of the designs in this game are immediately better than the ones from the first game.
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Dec 15, 2012 14:57
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Yeah, right now, the designs seem a bit... paler? less vibrant? It's probably because most of them are more obviously wearing school uniforms as opposed to the first game. This makes the ones with more human body structures blend together a bit, especially the women.
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Dec 15, 2012 15:03
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Meme Emulator posted:Have I got Jojo on the brain? This was totally my line of thought as well when I saw the delinquent. The chain in the collar of his uniform is textbook Jotaro and I love it.
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Dec 15, 2012 15:13
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Fedule posted:Put it this way: In Japanese, you can insult people with grammar in a single sentence. To do the equivalent in English requires at least a short conversation. It is inevitable that details - like first-person pronouns - will get lost in translation because they just don't exist in English. So something needs to be added to compensate. I just want to say I'm perfectly fine with your translation style because this is how every game is translated. Phoenix Wright is one of my favorite games of all time, but I don't mind when they change ramen to hamburgers because it really doesn't effect anything. As long as the murders and character development is more or less untouched I don't think it's a big deal that throw-away lines are slightly changed to ease reading for English audiences. Also on characters and how they compared to the old ones: We're three updates in. I remember starting DR1 thinking "Ugh, a girl who's into swimming? Boring. A nerd? He's going to die first. This is so generic and anime."
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Dec 15, 2012 15:15
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Sex_Ferguson posted:Based on what? Character design? Because we certainly haven't seen enough of them to say "Oh yeah, Kuzuryu is totally cooler than Mondo because of reasons." Character design preference is certainly a subjective thing, but I would not really say any of the designs in this game are immediately better than the ones from the first game. Sorry, I should have mentioned I finished the game earlier this month, so based on that. So uh, I hope "the characters are great, I like them a lot" wasn't too spoiler-y or anything. 
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Dec 15, 2012 15:26
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I have no real complaints about the translation, (besides that Usami's seech took me a bit to read, and even then I didn't really care,) because I'm going into the text completely blind, with no real ideas of the plot or characters. I have no previous knowledge with which to base complaints about the intent being ruined. The setup of the LP really masks that this isn't a translation done by a company, and when I get confused by some Japanese thing in the game there's a note right there to explain it to me. Maybe one day, I'll learn Japanese and play the original game, and maybe I'll think to myself, "Wow, I don't remember Hinata like this," but right now, I think you guys are doing an amazing job translating this.
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Dec 15, 2012 15:30
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I just wanna say, I love this debate. My capstone paper for my bachelor's degree was about the different options for localization of video games, and the pros and cons of putting in a slider, in the game's Options menu, for "how localized" you want the dialogue. This was a few years ago already and the arguments are pretty much all the same still. 
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Dec 15, 2012 15:39
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miguelito posted:Sorry, I should have mentioned I finished the game earlier this month, so based on that. That first comment about liking the cast better isn't really, but the second one about who dies when is. You don't give any specifics, granted, but that's still a *wink wink nudge nudge*-style hint, whether or not that was your intention. A good rule of thumb from the first thread was that if you know what happens, don't say anything. Even if you're trying not to spoil the game, some things can slip through. CandyCrazy fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 15:40
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miguelito posted:The characters in this are so much better than DR1, it's ridiculous. Really? Based on designs alone, I am having the opposite response. I understand that the game is, in all likelihood anyway, using elements of DR1 characters to play with and subvert the expectations of people who are familiar with that game. Putting aside Fat Togami and not-Naegi, who have already been kind of fun, my reaction to seeing the new cast was to think it was some sort of joke. Or that all of these look- and feel-alikes were going to be killed off and the real cast would show up. Obviously it is still very early and we know next to nothing about 13/16 of them, but from an art perspective my initial feeling is that they overdid it a little bit.
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Dec 15, 2012 15:44
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CandyCrazy posted:That first comment about liking the cast better isn't really, but the second one about who dies when is. You don't give any specifics, granted, but that's still a *wink wink nudge nudge*-style hint, whether or not that was your intention. EDIT: Point taken, I'll shut up completely. I'd just like to mention I do want to do fanart at some point. Sorry for the derail, but I figure it's important to state that this was not a nudge/wink thing. miguelito fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 15:51
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The_White_Crane posted:Isn't it a little presumptuous to imply that after Oren and Fedule are done, you don't know what the original intent was? The debate isn't "should one change up phrasings or insert lines/thoughts in order to get across the same meaning?" The answer to that, in general, is quite straight forward. The debate is on how close the end result is to the original text in intent. I don't think anyone can criticize the types of things that Fedule is doing, just individual choices. For example, Usami being tedious to read was probably not an aspect of the story in Japanese, so making her tedious in English is ruining the intent and style. EDIT: Wandering Knitter posted:I just want to say I'm perfectly fine with your translation style because this is how every game is translated. Phoenix Wright is one of my favorite games of all time, but I don't mind when they change ramen to hamburgers because it really doesn't effect anything. Twiddy fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 16:31
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I just realized something: There's much more of a gap between player (on in our case, audience) and protagonist in this game than in DR1. In DR1 the player learns information as it is revealed to Naegi. In this game we already know a LOT of things that Hinata doesn't know. If figuring out the Mastermind's identity is as big a part of the plot as it was the last time, I really wonder how they're gonna handle that.
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Dec 15, 2012 16:34
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There's a great deal of speculation about Nagito being Naegi, but I don't think I've seen anyone post the idea that immediately popped into my head: could he be Naegi's son? That would explain how he knows what he seems to know and why he's shepherding the player character around. Of course, that would require either a rebuilt society or Hinata having been asleep the whole time, considering that he seems to remember Hope's Peak the same way Naegi did. Either that or his odd breakdown at the beginning indicates that we're dealing with a Matrix-style simulation of some sort. ... 
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Dec 15, 2012 16:58
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orenronen posted:
As for the Naegi-Nagito debate, I'm inclined to think that he really is Naegi, just after a short time skip. The main reason of doubting that is his birthday, and all explanations I can come up with are rather shaky. It can be the birthday of his Nagito personality, but who would actually bother remembering that? Syo certainly didn't have a separate birthday from Fukawa. That means that it's probably made up, but it's made up well enough to fool Hope's Peak Academy and have it written down in the student's profile. So Naegi either has a powerful ally who can do such a thing (Togami, perhaps?), or he has a more important role in this affair, important enough to mess with his own student profile. He might even be the mastermind: that would sure make it easy to do, well, anything. Which leads to another question: if Nagito's birthday date is made up, what is the actual meaning behind it? Even fake dates are rarely chosen at random, so there's some room for speculation here, too. Then again, it might be something we wouldn't know, like Naegi's sister's birthday. At the very least, it doesn't seem to be an abbreviation (is that a proper term?) that the Japanese love so much (like 765 being Namco or 961 being Kuroi, "Black").
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Dec 15, 2012 17:00
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Tee-hee... I'm not ashamed of apowogies. They're vewy impawtant!
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I think we should all just wait until more updates have come and we actually see the characters interacting before we start (continue) having this huge discussion about translation versus localization, authorial intent and perceived characterization. All we're doing is belaboring points now.
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Dec 15, 2012 17:25
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SingerOfW posted:So Naegi either has a powerful ally who can do such a thing (Togami, perhaps?), or he has a more important role in this affair, important enough to mess with his own student profile. He might even be the mastermind: that would sure make it easy to do, well, anything. If we assume "Nagito == Naegi" from the start, the problem here is that we first have to determine where Usami's true intentions lie, which is likely still a ways off in terms of updates. Is she really meant to be a tool of Hope, or is she actually in collusion with Despair? If it's the former, then yeah, you could probably make a solid case for Nagito/Naegi being the one pulling the strings this time, or at the very least be heavily involved in the whole affair. If it's the latter, though, that assumption pretty much flies straight out the window. Mersenne fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 17:48
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Sorry to butt in for a moment, but I'm not sure where else to ask. Any word on the first game getting archived yet? Friend of mine was hoping to read it on the LPArchive and not sure what to tell him'.
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Dec 15, 2012 18:14
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Fedule posted:Put it this way: In Japanese, you can insult people with grammar in a single sentence. To do the equivalent in English requires at least a short conversation. It is inevitable that details - like first-person pronouns - will get lost in translation because they just don't exist in English. So something needs to be added to compensate. This all came across in the update. I see no value in putting translation and editing notes about how Hinata or Nagito or whoever is speaking right after they speak. That's absolutely silly and no competently written piece of work, translation or otherwise, should ever do that. If people aren't able to grasp how the characters are behaving from the updates, then the problem lies in their reading comprehension and not the writing. I'm sorry if that's harsh, and I don't mean it as an attack on anyone in particular, I'm just enjoying this LP so far and the care that's very obviously going into it and all the bitching that feels like it amounts to "GOD SAVE THE GLORIOUS NIPPONESE!" bugs me. If slowbeef feels I'm speaking out of turn, I'll gladly accept a probation in support of my statements.
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Dec 15, 2012 18:14
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:Sorry to butt in for a moment, but I'm not sure where else to ask. Any word on the first game getting archived yet? Friend of mine was hoping to read it on the LPArchive and not sure what to tell him'.
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Dec 15, 2012 18:17
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Stoat posted:I'm going to go ahead and guess that Naegi 2.0 is the first one to bite it. Remember in DR1, they established your heroine sidekick and then immediately killed her off? I think the devs would be up for introducing a character who has the same 'super' skill as their previous protagonist, got you all worked up over visual similarities and so on, then had him killed by a coconut falling on his head or something. I don't think he would be the first to die. It would come off as too obvious since they already pulled the stunt in the first game. Plus SHSL Good Luck has to be good for something. I expect more of the comic relief characters to get offed first in order for the game to switch into a more despair tone. As far as the translation goes, I think you both are doing a wonderful job. There is no single correct way to translate anything. I'm just grateful to be able to experience the game without an official English release.
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Dec 15, 2012 20:11
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What if Nagito is Naegi, the SHSL Hope, infiltrating the new class to make sure nothing goes wrong? From there we could either have a Kirigiri and Naegi dynamic between our protagonist and him for the whole game, or Naegi could die first after getting too far in over his head. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 15, 2012 20:33
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Mitt Romulan posted:What if Nagito is Naegi, the SHSL Hope, infiltrating the new class to make sure nothing goes wrong? From there we could either have a Kirigiri and Naegi dynamic between our protagonist and him for the whole game, or Naegi could die first after getting too far in over his head. I don't think Naegi would pop right in with " Don't tell me... you're going to make us kill each other on this desert island...?!" if he were actually Naegi "infiltrating" something. He'd want to keep his foreknowledge a secret. My favorite idea, though not born out by any evidence so far, is the possibility that this is the idea for the initiation of a new Hope's Peak Academy after the world has been rebuilt. They put in the antithesis of monobear, controlled by Alter Ego or one of the "graduates" and then send all of the students to this island as their initiation. Then, somehow, the monobear protocol reactivates, and poo poo hits the fans. We'll see, though. So far, the most interesting thing is the UI element with "despair points vs. hope points". It'll be extremely interesting to see where they go with that.
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Dec 15, 2012 20:43
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Kytrarewn posted:We'll see, though. So far, the most interesting thing is the UI element with "despair points vs. hope points". It'll be extremely interesting to see where they go with that. It's like Persona 3! If you don't visit someone often enough, their social link reverses. And by "reverses," I mean "they try to murder you with an axe." In all seriousness, I'd like to see it used for something like Devil Survivor's death clocks and death clips -- at predetermined points in the story, you somehow get a notification that a character is falling into despair, and depending on what you choose to do, you can either save them or have them go crazy. On the other hand, if we did that, everyone would probably die. The Goonmind is very easily distracted.
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Dec 15, 2012 20:50
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The thing is, the despair points are in a section dedicated to... A pet? So it's probably something like a tamagotchi? I'm going to guess that it's just a random mini-game they added rather than a key gameplay mechanic. ...Though it would be mildly amusing if characters could be saved by raising your tamagotchi well enough. "Hinata! Your tamagotchi raising skills have shown me the light! I no longer have the urge to kill people! Only... to play... with the Tamagotchi..."
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Dec 15, 2012 20:58
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RyuujinBlueZ posted:I'm sorry if that's harsh, and I don't mean it as an attack on anyone in particular, I'm just enjoying this LP so far and the care that's very obviously going into it and all the bitching that feels like it amounts to "GOD SAVE THE GLORIOUS NIPPONESE!" bugs me. If slowbeef feels I'm speaking out of turn, I'll gladly accept a probation in support of my statements. No, this is appropriate. Less is always more. It's a better reading experience when you can read the characters as you wish, rather than being told how they are reading. I think the long translation discussions confuse readers into thinking they are actually missing content. Honestly, I think the best way to handle these kind of posts is to put them far after the corresponding updates. Any translations I have read put their notes/philosophies at the end/beginning, but not interlinear, or mixed in with the normal pages. Right now, Oren and Fedule, you guys are giving us 1:1 points of comparisons with the updates still fresh in our minds. More people are going to quibble when it is presented like that.
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Dec 15, 2012 21:14
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likecnsnnts posted:No, this is appropriate. Less is always more. It's a better reading experience when you can read the characters as you wish, rather than being told how they are reading. I agree with this statement. While the discussions that Oren and Fedule are posting are themselves interesting, the last thing I want to read is a thread constantly turning to a discussion about translation.
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Dec 15, 2012 21:26
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Dr Subterfuge posted:I agree with this statement. While the discussions that Oren and Fedule are posting are themselves interesting, the last thing I want to read is a thread constantly turning to a discussion about translation. I always looked forward to the translation notes in DR1 because I always learned something from them. 
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Dec 15, 2012 21:33
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Dr Subterfuge posted:I agree with this statement. While the discussions that Oren and Fedule are posting are themselves interesting, the last thing I want to read is a thread constantly turning to a discussion about translation. This is more or less the core of my complaint, I think. I absolutely love the notes from oren and Fedule, and don't want them to go away, but everybody bitching about the translation or bitching about the bitching is going to get trying very quick. Unfortunately I see no middle ground, and I appreciate that oren and Fedule like and want the live feedback on their process. So...Uh...
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Dec 15, 2012 21:38
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What if the translation notes were all put together and updated at certain points where there's a break in the game? Assuming there is one, that is. So, if this was DR1 they could be added after a murder and before the investigation. And again between the investigation and the trial for instance. That said personally I'm fine with things as they are. Catastrophics fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 21:47
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That's actually quite a good idea; perhaps put the translation notes at the end of each chapter? Because I agree, I think that if you moved them out so they weren't immediately after the actual scene, we'd see less nitpicking and endless circular arguments about the translation.
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Dec 15, 2012 21:54
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