so far minor characters arn’t voiced but the protagonist and all the major characters are voiced (Yay for voiced protagonist)
are any later versions more voiced like the ps2 version or another re-release
Throwing out the honorifics complaint, and the “not everything is voice” thing as well (as pointed out: this game was first released in 2003), what’s the [u]TRANSLATION[/u] like? You know. The story. The dailog.
For those who’ve played the Japanese original: is it a faithful “literal” adaption or a more “creative” compatibility thing. Ted Woolsey style? Carl Macek style? Victor Ireland style? Straight cut-and-paste style? Kinda curious, but got a huge backlog of games on my table, that prevents me from playing my order of Demonbane right off the bat.
Before Lancer-X replied I had no preference, but if it is a translation I really don’t think I’d want to see them. I may be remembering wrong - I don’t think I remember any game I’ve played where they added the honorifics. I guess that is a fan, unofficial, thing.
Shouldn’t bash preferences, anyways. Many of us only like these games and not other Japanese media, so it is a waste of time to discuss preferences in those in a Demonbane thread.
i say be happy with what you get
Whether to keep or not to keep the honorifics is the current “fan” wars anyway, the way it used to be with subbed vs. dubbed. Either way, some will complain.
For my part, when I read a French or English text, I like it to be French or English. There isn’t Japanese honorifics in either, so I don’t want to have any in my French or English text. I don’t care whether it was translated from Japanese, Chinese, Indian or whatever.
Honestly, I don’t care that much about honorifics. I will admit that if the setting is Japan (or a very Japan-like setting) then the use of honorifics is fine, but far from a deal breaker for me. Actually, if honorifics are used when the setting isn’t Japan then that’s actually a problem because it gets in the way of the stopry immersion because it simply does not fit with this clearly not Japan world. Also all the anime and manga I grew up on didn’t have that and I enjoyed it. The Yakuza games lack these despite their being undubbed, but they still manage to be awesome games all throughout. As for partial voice acting, so what? I grew up on plenty of partial voice acted games during the Playstation days (and in some cases that actually wasn’t a bad thing) and there’s plenty of partially voiced games being released on the market today on both PC and console (again I refer to the Yakuza series).
My copy has not come yet ;_;
As for honorifics… I don’t remember that many VN translations with those. A good translation should be able to convey the levels of formality without the suffix. Unless there’s a reason to show it…
Voicing : Wish it was fully voiced, but as long as they weren’t just left out for some reason… Then I can deal.
i am pretty sure someone will make a full voice patch like they did with fate stay night
Not at all. I should point out that I very rarely watch animation and I watch translations even more rarely. Reason is because when I do buy these things they usually only come with Japanese language subtitles, in which honorifics don’t bother me at all since they’re actually part of that language.
As for other cultural references, not at all. I don’t approve of localisation, where the reality of the universe is shifted to match things the viewer is familiar with. I do, however, think they should be translated if a familiar 1:1 translation exists (e.g. rice balls, not onigiri) If I saw ‘itadakimasu’ in a translation I’d probably drop it just as fast as if I saw an honorific- put in ‘let’s eat’ or something dependent on context.
BTW, when will we get into discussion about novels?
Don’t read if you haven’t proceeded much in the game or novel.
I can’t seriously believe that Hadou Kojo was Kuro from the future. I can’t believe he pulled all those things in prequel novels.
…Great. I wasn’t expecting a Weeaboo vs. Liberal Translation war to break out here. I think Otaking’s documentary sums up my thoughts on the matter nicely.
As do these:
If you know enough Japanese to insist on untranslated terms being used, why don’t you enjoy the Japanese version instead and leave the English version for those that don’t?
Full-disclosure: This is the project coordinator and lead scriptwriter of Darkside Translations speaking.
Don’t really understand this question.
Zettai Ryouiki could probably be rendered ‘absolute territory’ and explained in a footnote. Ahoge could easily be rendered as something else dependent on the context. The others are probably valid exceptions since they’re pretty untranslateable without altering the meaning.
I suppose this is largely because it’s a difference between description and meta. I believe description needs to be accurate more than it needs to be familiar, which is a stance you’d agree with. If the story is talking about a particular concept- for example, ??? has a story largely based on wordplay around how the names of people and things are composed. In this case, it’s certainly acceptable (and I’d say necessary), in a translation, to break the localisation barrier and talk about the names as being comprised of kanji. For example, in an eroge, if a person introduces themselves, then explains how their name is spelt, I think it would be perfectly acceptable in a translation to render it something like this: “My name is Chisa. It is spelled with the characters for ‘thousand’ and ‘gauze’”. It would not be acceptable for the English translation to translate Chisa’s name to ‘Thousand gauze’ or anything like that, I’m sure you would agree.
Where our opinions differ is that I don’t think the meta needs to be accurate because I think it is more important to be familiar - this is parts of the script that aren’t parts of the story, but just an element of the language. Going back to the name issue, yes, Japanese names are often composed of kanji, but I think that unless this is touched on in the plot, it is not necessary to know that Yumemi’s name is written as ‘dreaming’ unless this is actually part of the story. The reader of the translation does miss out on information this way but it’s not part of the story- it’s just an artefact of the words used to create the story. I would argue that things like this should be exempt from translation as the information they add is not useful. This is an important point because the vast majority of honorific use is meta, NOT description. When it is description, when it is actually useful, then you can talk about it. But it is not helpful to the reader to bog the text down with conversational artefacts that do not contribute to their understanding of the story and I would argue that Demonbane is included in this - the majority of honorific use in Demonbane, as in the vast majority of eroge, is not particularly necessary in an English translation of such.
There are always cases in which the exception is the best decision to take, but you haven’t explained why honorific use is crucial for Demonbane- you’ve only said that JAST made a bad decision in not including honorifics, but you didn’t say why the honorifics were necessary, which particular honorifics are necessary or what the story loses from this.
Hey all,
A couple of notes:
If you receive a disc that is damaged on arrival and unreadable we’ll happily replace it. Please contact us at https://help.jlist.com/ with the details of your order and we’ll arrange for the replacement.
Our position is that the translation done by the TLwiki team stands on its own merits as a very high quality piece of localization work, and we feel that the decisions they made regarding honorifics and other cultural elements are both appropriate and artful. (Note that a few portions of the script were translated by others, and we are arranging to patch those to be closer to the style of the majority of the game).
The voices in the game correspond with the original (and only) PC version release of Deus Machina Demonbane. A PS2 remake was later produced that contains additional voices, but in addition to the logistical issues of synching these to the PC version there were licensing concerns with the voice actors’ union that Nitroplus deemed insurmountable for this release.
All of us at JAST USA hope you enjoy the Demonbane experience, and we’re here to provide support if you have any order-related or technical issues. Please contact us here if you need any help. We look forward to your comments!
I suppose the rest of us in relatively close proximity should get it tomorrow. I’m surprised by the comment about the decision. Already said I preferred it this way, I just assumed they were told to do it that way. That’s quite nice to be known given the course the thread has been going.
I have a feeling I’ll get it tomorrow. Only bad thing now is that I will be so busy given it is a Monday.
Good images, TDOMMX. :lol:
I think that needs its own thread. Tons of people are gonna be posting in this thread about “hey, just got the game” and how they thought the first couple hours are and so forth. This thread is probably not the best place to try to have a spoileriffic discussion about the novels.
Oh, and interesting note about the BBS: Replying to a message with spoilertext reveals the spoiler >_<
my guess for the rest of the voices we have to wait for a fan patch
I find often Japanese media will have characters whose names are meaningful in some way in the original. (In the Meaningful Names TVTropes sense.) A name like Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood adds something to the movie; not necessarily by adding to the story, but as a kind of statement about the character.
Many times I will pick up on a Japanese character having this kind of meaningful name based on my own paltry knowledge of the language. The translation usually makes no mention of this. I like knowing about these things. Yes, I do think that the audience needs to know that Yumemi means “dreaming”. Not necessarily in the text in-game, but in the translation notes. Is the character an airhead? Deadly serious all the time and no-nonsense? A psychic? Yumemi is a meaningful name to all of these characters.
One of the things that seriously annoyed me about Muramasa: Demon Blade was how pitiful the translation was. As far as I can tell, it’s not inaccurate per se, it just eliminates almost all the subtlety present in the original. I think the game is far worse off because of it.
[color=#0000FF]JAST USA is horrible because of it,Mangagamer ever keeps all honorifics and because of it MG’s is ever most superior as JAST’s u.u
However,Demonbane’s translation is the best translation of JAST at the moment,but if having honorifics maybe was coming close with MG’s translations XD[/color]