Dark Translations served with a DMCA notice

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#201

Your argument sounds like “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. A business decision is an intangible concept that we cannot personify, yes. But the motivations and reasoning behind that decision might be xenophobic. To put it bluntly, whoever is in charge of minori’s PR doesn’t like gaijin, or at the very least feels threatened by them because of what “equality now” has been attempting to do with the Japanese eroge industry (Erase it from existence because of a few outliers that don’t conform to the mainstream of the industry).

If I grouped up with a bunch of fluent Japanese translators and some coders etc I would not be able to approach Minori because from my side of the Internet they do not exist. To perform my market research I would have to fly to Japan at cost, and initiate communications through personal business connections and word of mouth.

The Internet has significantly broken down barriers to entry in digitally oriented knowledge based industries. Web 2.0 has empowered countless amateurs to spread awareness of their product. What Minori is doing is the polar opposite, they are denying themselves the modern tools that are necessary to the growth of their business. They doing the equivalent of plugging their ears and going “IM NOT LISTENING IM NOT LISTENING!”. So while you might think they aren’t acting like 6 year olds, I would have to say their actions thus far do qualify them as such.

Defacing wikis instead of sending a civil and polite notice? Check
Sealing yourself off from the rest of the Internet? Check
Acting condescending and blaming us for your actions? Check

Minori essentially fits the bill of a little kid that ran away into his room to cry because someone offended him. Now they’re just pouting and refusing to talk to anyone about their actions.

#202

You would need to do that anyway though, regardless of which company you went after. Doujin circles, less so; in fact, it should be possible to work out a commercial localisation deal with one of those without needing to bother. But if you want to deal with an eroge company, you’re going to Japan. Why not ask Peter Payne what he does to contact eroge companies he hasn’t been in communication with before? I don’t think it’s by email!

Besides, whoever said you can’t email minori? I’ve emailed minori both before and after this whole incident. I email eroge companies all the time. But no, that is not how you conduct business with them. Even a phonecall would be better.

#203

Yes I would have to do that anyway, but it won’t do me much good if I don’t they exist to me because they decided to drop off the face of the Internet. I should be able to view their portfolio and see what they have to offer from the net, contact them by e-mail or phone and work out a meeting and THEN fly to Japan.

Hiding your website and acting like you don’t exist is not a very good show of faith with regards to your interest in licensing out to foreign companies. Japanese business deals usually involve taking out your client for a meal, buttering him up etc. Often the first meeting isn’t even about the business you came to discuss but is instead just them trying to warm up to you. What Minori is doing is broadcasting general waves of coldness. I think it does a lot to hurt Japan’s reputation as a place for international business.

If I was a transport company I know at least Kawasaki Heavy Industry would treat me with dignity and respect if I wanted to sign a deal with them to build bullet trains in the United States or something. The reason why such things haven’t happened is due to political pressure to make sure that any such solution is an American made one and just obtaining the funding to begin with. But even these things can be negotiated.

Japanese corporations are known to be inflexible on the consumer level but everything I’ve read about with regards to their Business to Business transactions have been quite favorable. The major industrial giants know that the best way for the nation to get out of debt and create jobs for its people is through exports. It’s a shame that some bad apples in the eroge industry don’t seem to understand the lessons their keiretsu elder brothers have learned since the 1950s.

EDIT: I’m not saying e-mails are how you should contact them, but hiding their website isn’t exactly the way to go either. The information needs to be out there so they can get noticed and it looks like they don’t want to get noticed.

EDIT2: Has Minori answered you? What have they told you?

#204

I haven’t asked them anything about licensing/localisation. I don’t particularly care as I am not in that business. I asked them if they were planning to do anything about the group ‘NNL’ which planned to (and since, have) release a standalone translation of the ‘ef’ games without authorisation or even tacit permission. They seemed to plan on pursuing legal action against NNL - since I haven’t heard anything more about it I’m assuming they realised what a foolish waste of money that would be, and to virtually no effect.

It is not very easy to license, translate and sell an eroge and make a profit. Not very easy at all. The profits, when they exist, will be tiny. There’s a way to go about this but throwing money at everything isn’t it.
Are you sure you’re actually in this business?

#205

If you were a serious company/group with actual intent and ability to license and sell minori’s products overseas, then a company not showing their products on their own consumer-facing website isn’t really going to be much of a hamper. Sure, it’ll make minori look cold, but if you really wanted to get a deal through, you’d contact them and arrange to have a meeting in person. What do you think companies did before the advent of the Internet?

#206

Fair enough. I still would like to know what their official stance on licensing offers is. So far we’re only speculating their intent.

#207

Just to be clear (and because this is at least the third time you’ve brought it up), I’ve never accused minori of racism. I’ve accused them of xenophobia / isolationism, which I do not see as equivalent to racism. Clique behavior, for example, could be interpreted as isolationist and possibly xenophobic, but is generally not considered racist in itself. Another example: A country sealing off its borders in response to some international crisis would be considered isolationist, possibly xenophobic, but not racist.

#208

Apparently

“It’s been confirmed (ask in #tlwiki for more details) that the C&Ds are actually the result of a single xenophobe with no direct affiliation to any eroge company but enough free time on his hands to telemarket them. The implication is that the companies themselves (other than minori) couldn’t care less and are just sending the messages to shut this guy up.”

The power level of Japanese Otaku trolling is OVER 9000.

Well that should put I new light on the dicussions (maybe) lol

Maybe I should just start learning jap in college? (Is it too hard vs learning in H.S)

But then, I’ll be trilingual (with my chinese) lol…

#209

Unless that statement has stuff to back it up, it’s just an empty statement.

#210

Well, I never went onto tlwiki’s IRC channel as I’m still completely retarded on how IRC works. So I myself could not substantiate it myself. However, it seems that most fan tl sites and /jp/ has taken this for “truth”. :?

#211

Taking this thread a bit off topic (frankly I think it could use some off topic time, with further assistance by Narg posting twins), I’ll answer this question. As I understand from what my first Japanese instructor said (since she has taught both at a college and high school setting), it isn’t really harder in college to learn Japanese. However, because you are in a college setting, it is expected that you will apply yourself to studying the language more than if you were in high school. Thus, the pace is faster than if you had started learning in high school.

#212

I think it’s too hard/boring/inefficient to learn Japanese in college full stop. I mean you’ll spend what 3-4 years in college learning the language and at the end of it you won’t even be able to read Bengarachou Hakubutsushi.

#213

And what is Bengarachou Hakubutsush?

#214

It’s an eroge by raiL-soft. 2893 unique kanji which is quite scary given its relatively short length. The only eroges I’ve seen with more (except the other raiL-soft eroge, Kagerou Touryuki) are at least twice as long. They’re both pretty good stuff though.

OP video, song by Rita

EDIT: It’s written by the person that wrote The Sagara Family (who is the writer for all raiL-soft titles). Apparently his writing style wasn’t quite as developed at that point.

#215

Gods… yet even more eroge I can’t ever play. Oh joy. :expressionless: =P

Waitamint… 2983 unique kanji?! :shock: Yeesh… uhm, why that many kanji?

Ooh… i shall and will look at the video soon. Not now, though 'cos i’m stuck on some ancient laptop that can’t run flash. Damnit, I’m so Flash-deprived that I swear I’ll look at nothing but Flash after my pc’s repaired.

Sagara Family, eh? Mmmm… wonder if i should get it. =P

#216

This kind of reminds me of what Narg said about Sabae no Ou. I wonder how many unique kanji that had

#217

Because they can? With that amount I begin to wonder if they are just trying to show off.

Knowing your tastes, I’d skip it for now.

#218

Ehhh who knows? =P I hope they aren’t showing off and that it’s really a good story. Too bad though it sounds too complex to ever be localized, if it’s really good/great.

Wait… what tastes? :?:

#219

I meant show off their vocabulary knowledge with lots of unique kanji (and kanji pairings).

It’s basically a sex-romp, although the story is slightly better than some other such titles, it’s a rather thin shell. There isn’t anything dark in here either.

#220

US government considers crackdown on online piracy, Alec Meer