I'm...I'm very sorry.
(cracks knuckles) Well, time to get onto fixing that.
Today I whacked open all the Excel sheets I had and I wanted to break down crying at how bad this work is. Some of this stuff was done over two years ago (when I was just getting started with translation) and it's so painful that I'm ashamed beta patches with this stuff even exist.
I'm...I'm very sorry. (cracks knuckles) Well, time to get onto fixing that.
2 Comments
Which means if you have a Vita or PS4 and want to have your productivity rate heavily lowered like mine is, you should get to playing that.
Even though, despite the fact I don't have much of a right to talk considering I'm nowhere near professional, the translation and localization quality makes me want to die a little inside. Well, after that rather unhappy and somewhat frightening announcement, things are looking up! I had some discussion with Coraje of NGG (who has been very gracious to me regarding this situation), and he's allowing me to use this blog as needed for future updates, which is probably for the better as I know most people were referring to this site. So that's all good.
Anyway, the situation was that it doesn't seem like NGG will be able to continue this project - basically, the key members of the team have been very busy lately, so that effectively left me as the sole active member left, which was why I had to make the announcement in the last post. Fortunately, I've managed to procure assistance with the lovely folks from Deep Dive Translations, who are already in the process of translating the game to Italian (I'll also be assisting them as their intermediary translator). So it looks like there's going to be a lot to look forward to, and things are looking up! Finally, the last announcement for this post: I'm looking for assistant translators! One-manning this translation is simply not a feasible option for me at this point as school has become quite time-consuming, and in addition it's always best in a translation to have a third-party to look over my stuff or do corrections (as much of the current script has some mistranslation). The kind of person I'm interested in:
Kazari here. This is going to be coming at a very bad time, and it's something I've been debating for a while now, but if things continue the way they are, you probably won't be seeing this game translated anytime within your lifetime anytime soon, but: officially, as of today, I'm departing from NGG as their translator.
This means a few things. Most significantly, it means that NGG won't have a translator and will have to procure a new one. I do want to make it clear that I am still interested in translating this game - I have a significant amount of work put into the translation of this game (I'm still in the Dark Masters arc at this stage) and I'd hate to have to stop working on it at this stage - but the way NGG's work environment and my schedule work, working with them will simply not be feasible for me at this stage. I'm really sorry that this news has to come so suddenly and it's a severe hit to the status of this game's translation progression because it means throwing the status of ever seeing this game fully translated under the radar, but I do want to see this game translated myself eventually. If you're interested in more details or are interested in helping me out, I've posted them on Tumblr. I wish NGG the best in finding a new translator if they so wish, and they have permission to use all translated material I currently have given them provided sufficient credit (to name Kazari) is given. I'm sorry for the trouble this is going to cause. Bandai Namco Europe's going to be doing a livestream of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth in a few days. Great game, by the way. I highly recommend looking into it if you're able to.
With this and Digimon Adventure tri. next month, maybe all of you will be distracted so I can stall for more time. Sometimes I regret taking on more schoolwork this term. I really don't have much extra to share. Unfortunately, I haven't made any linear progress on the game's translation, because after the last announcement I have to go back and revise everything I did before. Because I started work on this about two years ago, during which my translation skills were much lower than they are now, there are a lot of things I have to look at and say, "wait, did I really think that was acceptable for a releasable product?"
As someone who really does love Digimon and Adventure quite a lot, and as someone who knows that a lot of people are interested in this game, I want everyone to be able to enjoy it the way it should be enjoyed. So I thank everyone for your patience. Again, if you're interested in more informal stuff, I'm still posting stuff every so often on my Tumblr blog! I just put up a little factoid about the game, so feel free to check that out. So as much as I know the "bad news" portion of this will disappoint people, I'm most concerned about ultimately bringing out a patch that'll be of the best quality we can, and so I hope everyone will be able to receive it kindly. I've discussed this with xhai already, and unfortunately this is putting a lot more work on the hacking team, so I apologize, but:
We will not be releasing any more interim patches until everything is complete. There may be at least one beta test stage, but until every part of the text has been translated and gone through at least one TLC (meaning that it's at least at some stage of completion), there won't be any more in-progress patches. There are a few reasons for this:
So yes, I know this is pretty upsetting (and a lot of people may think that I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but I think it's something you'd understand a little better in my position). I really hope this can eventually lead to an overall better quality patch and a much more enjoyable experience for everyone. In order to make up for this, I've decided to finish up my style guide now and post it here, as reassurance that I'm using this time to have a clear goal in mind for the rest of the translation. It was something I was lacking for the first part, because I'd figured I'd just fix it again in the TLC, but after putting the patch team through this much work I'd like to spare them as much effort as they need. I've posted them below (click on the "Read More" link on the bottom right). I may make some edits to it later as needed, but for now this should be a solid guide. Also, if you're interested in seeing more detailed updates on progress, I've opened a Tumblr blog - I've actually had it open for a while, so some of you may know this already - where I post other translations, many of them Digimon-related (usually while I wait for my next text dump from the hacking team). The current draft of the translation contains the use of Japanese honorifics. Whether or not to leave them in has been an oft-debated topic among translators everywhere, and my reasoning for leaving them in was that the audience for this translation patch would consist of die-hard fans who had already accepted that the game is Japanese and that it's leaning towards the Japanese version of the anime. However, I do agree that if you're not intimately familiar with how they work, you might feel a little locked out.
The way I've been handling this translation, for the most part, has generally avoided indulging too much into a degree of Japanese to the point where it would alienate anyone. I don't have the luxury of inline translator's notes, and I don't want to force players to have to put down the game and start researching, so all Japanese terms that aren't widely known in the foreign-language mainstream are appropriately described in English. This is generally how most localizations tend to handle this kind of thing (at least, when they don't change things outright). But I left the honorifics in; I felt they provided a nice bit of insight into how the characters see each other, which is helpful in a cast of eight characters. But I still don't know, while I'm translating this, whether this was the right idea. It's not like this would be the first game translation to include them, because they've been seen in things like Persona 3 and 4...although it should be noted that the majority of people I've met who've played those games said it sounds forced and awkward. Then again, most of this complaint came in regards to the English voice acting forcing those honorifics out, and this game doesn't have English voice acting. So it ideally shouldn't feel as awkward...but it could still, theoretically, contribute to the cultural lockout that I mentioned earlier. I've eschewed all family things like onii-chan because I felt they were appropriately replaced by names (both HIkari and Takeru use onii-chan, so it's not like you can even bring in an argument about a difference in reference), and the honorific -sama on the grounds that in most cases it's accurately reproduced by Lord/Lady. But then that only feels even more inconsistent - if you remove one honorific, why not remove the rest? It's a decision I'm still tussling with, and unfortunately if I decide to strip the translation of honorifics in the end I'll have to ask the patch team to go back and remove every instance of it on top of the usual TLC, which will definitely be asking a lot of them. That said, I would like anyone interested in this patch to know that I've definitely been putting a lot of thought into this. I hope everyone will be able to provide their support when the final version is out, regardless of the decision made. Today, while I was translating, I decided to make some alterations to some name romanizations and other kinds of translation modus operandi.
Since xhai is making it a point to release in-progress patches (which I don't have much to update about at the moment, unfortunately), I should make a warning that there may be quite a few inconsistencies as a result between earlier and later chapters in these regards. Some names may not match and the translation style will be very different. (I suppose this is to be expected; I started translating this about a year and a half ago.) This should not affect the final product, because I intend to do translation checks that'll make the whole thing consistent and easier to read. It is a remarkable testament to the dubious status of whether I should be trusted as the translator for this game when I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out how to make this as suggestive as I reasonably could.
|
Website regarding the status of English translation for the Digimon Adventure PSP patch. Archives
March 2018
Categories |