I don’t necessarily agree 100% with what he has to say, but I don’t choose to ignore what he has to say because I don’t like the way he said it.
No offense, but you’ve said his points are pure tripe, but you haven’t really provided any convincing reason for me to believe it. You’ve provided a lot of opinion that you personally think the things he complains about are actually better. I have other professional translator friends and pretty much uniformly the consensus is the average fansub is very low quality. My own limited language ability is enough to tell me that this is almost certainly correct.
Game translations are different, because when you extract the script, you have … well, the script. But anime fansubs are going off of what the translators can hear, whereas I know for a fact (because I’ve seen my friend in possesion of them) that professional translators get the show’s script, and sometimes even notes or instructions from the series creators.
Bleh, the installer doesn’t let me choose where to install. I can choose what start menu folder the shortcut goes in, but not the installation directory? What the hell. I don’t like installing unnecessary things on my SSD. At least copying the Demonbane directory from the DVD to a HD seems to work.
Just installed, nothing special with the installer (It does at least have Azif though!)
Little issue I have with it; it did not give me a choice of directory to install to. C:\Program Files\Demonbane USA\ I’ll try moving it over to where I want it; although hopefully I won’t have to mess with the registry or something…
That’s good to know~
Game ran without problem…
I did manage to crash it in the config menu though; but it shouldn’t be anything anyone has to worry about lol
[I was playing with all the options for full screen and at one point somehow I managed to have a couple of them on at once… then it died]
Type-A is my preferred full-screen choice.
Began the game…
Without any spoilers, all I can say is it did a good job to keep me playing well into chapter 1, before I took a break. (wasn’t going to start it yet… took a peek and had to keep going) It’s quite fun so far. Already hit a few welcome surprises relating to characters… <3
Anyways, so far it is living up my expectations. I do like the voice acting… I would love to have it fully voiced though, assuming some later chapters might not have the voices?
So far a very enjoyable story~ The game overall is a bit awkward. Like certain pictures, songs, situations etc… But that quirkiness seems to be a boon.
EDIT : oh yeah some nitpicks and comments -
The right click menu doesn’t appear next to the cursor, but in the right hand corner of the screen sorta out there in the middle.
The logs are kinda painful to read. [The text is a different font and it ends line alot ]
Bringing up the log will end your current voiced line… But. when you exit the log it will resume the line… kinda interesting.
Loving the moveable text box. The log menu graphics are awesome. The various menus are great.
The font used for the pop-up menu and options menu translation is … alright I suppose.
The translation itself has been quite enjoyable so far. Well done!
That was the point I made, though: that they’re not essential; you only need to have a good enough translation. As such, it’s not an inability of the target language to convey what meaning, feeling, emotion, etc. soever is in the original text but rather an inability of the translator (and, truth to be told, the editor) to give a good enough translation. As written, I’m not saying it’s easy: to have such, you’d need at least a translator who excels in the mastery of the original language and is quite good in the target language (and I’m not just talking about fluency, I’m talking about mastery of the language) and an editor who excels in the mastery of the target language and is quite good in the original language. But, IMO, if one needs to keep the very specificities of the original language in the translation (namely, honorifics when it comes to translating Japanese) in order to convey correctly the original text, one just isn’t a good translator enough.
About the feeling of the box. I like the feel of it a lot more than the Ever 17 box. I don’t know the correct terms for describing cardboard, so forgive me. The Ever 17 box feels cheap like laminated thickened paper and the Demonbane box is nice to the touch, in my opinion. It isn’t smooth like the Hirameki boxes, but it isn’t sticky like someone spilled some soda on it, I guess? I was pretty bored, so I chimed in on the box.
Yeah, I would have preferred the package to be a box, too, LexarV. My game box actually has the top corner dented which I obviously don’t really care for given I said I didn’t care that my disc was loose upon opening it. My disc does have scratches on it that one would see on lightly used CDs - doesn’t bother me.
I did think about recording the grand unboxing that was removing the plastic wrap until I thought it a bit much. I haven’t played one of these in 8 months, so I am obviously a little excited. I did play two non-H games since then - they were not that good despite their moderate popularity and so I don’t count them in my 8 month thing.
As someone who opens scores of eroge boxes each year, I can’t really see the attraction of prolonging the process by recording it >_> Although I’ve got a lovely new HD camcorder which would be perfect for the job if I felt that way inclined. I mean, it’s just a pretty box with maybe an artbook in it most of the time.
My comment had nothing to do with his opinion about honorifics. I had a forum encounter with him about an entirely different subject and he treated me (and everyone else) with a differing opinion like we were dirt. I’m just saying he’s not someone to be admired or quoted.
Okay, gotten farther and now I have a better understanding about the voice acting thing that one poster mentioned before. Not too big a problem, though I do have to wonder at Nitro+ if you’re just going to have voice acting in the prologue and presumably the ending why even bother with voice acting at all? Use the money for something else.
Largely the most important parts of the game, though- the game only has ~5000 voice files, about half the voice files of your typical eroge (well, more than half if we look at typical works from 2003) - it’s not like Nekonekosoft’s White (full-priced eroge, 588 voice files) or GAIA’s Match-uri no Bishoujo (159 voice files) that raise serious questions about value. I think those 5000 voiced lines probably gave the game more sales than they cost to record.
Ok got my copy… but disappointed in the preview movies they loaded on it… they didn’t even bother with a preview video interface manually go to folder and preview the other games… Come on is it really that difficult to put a little effort into the DVD if your going to put video files on it. Secondly they call this an Art book it has 8 pictures in the thing… how is this an Art book… Oh well off to play the game but the way they copped out not having a video viewer interface and a tiny 8 pics that they called an Art Book… not impressed with the packaging side of it… the super tiny Art Book and the lack of a video interface is just sad.
Now off of the impressions… horrible that the very first thing I have to do is locate a crack so I can create a new CD image that I can burn so that 2 or more years down the road when I want to replay the game and the activations servers are no longer around I can still play my game… that is just awful… Hence reason I purchased a CD release for only to find it still has awful activation… so first thing I have to do before anything else is make myself a backup copy without the protection so I won’t have to worry about that in the future… (remembers first game that required activation that I purchased that I could not play again 2 years later because the company was no longer around to activate the game). I will never put myself into that position again.
Dude, calm down. To the looks of it, you’re getting so wrapped up in your own stance that you’re reading things in our posts that aren’t even there. For the record, I used both “Weeaboo” and “Liberal” with the same connotations here (half-endearing, half-derisive); I could easily have said “formal equivalence vs. dynamic equivalence”, but that would have sounded far more dry and boring than I’d like.
The first part of any rational debate is showing respect for your opponents and those that share their views. Openly insulting those that don’t agree with you and calling them names instead of rationally rebutting their points suggests that your own stance is indefensible (to be fair, your arguments have been more of the “they changed it, so it sucks” variety than well-grounded ones). Jack Thompson lost his law career for using these tactics, and he deserved it. If you’re wondering where the “rage” in this topic is coming from, you might want to look at your own words first (“thoughtless”, “obnoxious one-sided-pretentious moron”, “for fuck’s sake”, etc…). Of course, if you don’t want to be civil, you’re welcome to leave.
True, OtaKing’s examples are obviously cherry-picked and exaggerated, but that doesn’t make his criticisms any less valid. Compare the variations of aniue/niisama/oniichan with atashi/watashi/watakushi/boku/ore; fansubbers could easily use the same rationale to defend all of the above terms. It’s inconsistent to insist on preserving one set of terms but not the other when the subtleties of each are the same (ie: tomboy characters using boku instead of watashi or atashi). Many of the Japanese words that are “preserved” in fansubs are chosen just as arbitrarily as OtaKing’s case studies. I’ll add that an inconsistent translation is a bad translation (see: Ever 17 and Phantom of Inferno).
I can agree with this to an extent. On a related note, Rosenkreuzstilette is set in medieval Europe; I’d honestly like to see someone convince me that honorifics could have made my script better without them coming across as stubborn or uncompromising (“Sichte-dono” is “Lady Sichte” or “Milady”, as the situation warrants). In some settings, honorifics fit. In others, they come across as forced or unnatural. If Irish characters in a story set in Ireland sound Japanese in the English script instead of Irish, odds are pretty high that the translators have their priorities mixed up. Japanese pronouns and honorifics may be suitable when a script is retooled for a Japanese audience, but they aren’t always faithful to the original spirit of the work (see: The Count of Monte Cristo, Romeo x Juliet, Wolverine, X-Men, Iron Man, The Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight, Heroman, Halo Legends, Witchblade, Resident Evil: Degeneration, Baccano, Black Lagoon, Gunsmith Cats, and countless others. And Demonbane.).
While this may be true, even a broken clock is right twice a day. If someone as narrow-minded as Jack Thompson can recognize that Mass Effect isn’t a hardcore sex simulator…
That said, zettai ryouiki could be accurately be localized as “those beautiful stocking-adorned thighs” and nothing major would be lost, not even the fetishistic implications. Try using that in any description of Rin Tohsaka and I doubt anyone would complain (save the most devout of “purists” or hairsplitters that discriminate between thighhigh socks and stockings).
There are many English equivalents for ahoge, including cowlick, bed-head, and alfalfa; which would be best depends entirely on the context.
“Lolicon” is an abbreviation, not a word in itself (“Lolita complex”, which exists in English). The same could be said of “aircon” (“air conditioner” or “A/C”). Natural-sounding equivalents include “pedophile”, “craddle-robber”, “Humbert”, and so on; again, which is best depends on the context. The original Japanese is always an option, but should never be shoehorned into a translation when more fluid alternatives exist.
I reject the notion that honorifics or wordplays carry subtleties that “simply can’t be translated”. If you understand English diction, tone, and syntax and have enough skill as a writer, it isn’t tough to recreate that extra layer of meaning. In my eyes, “Demoned Away” is a great localization of “Onikakushi”, as is “After all, I am one hell of a butler…” for “Akuma shitsuji desu kara…”. As OtaKing said, many fansubbers shy away from having their skills put to the test; I for one see no problem with calling them on it. Note that I said his documentary summarized my thoughts (not perfectly; I don’t agree with his stance on characters referring to themselves in the third person, especially when it’s lampshaded like it is in Kanon). I never once said a word of praise or condemnation about the man in this thread.
On another note, Yumemi Hoshino was renamed Reverie Planetarian in insani’s localization of Planetarian, and I approve of the change. As do I agree with changing Tina Branford’s name to Terra Branford (the name is supposed to sound exotic, and Tina isn’t exotic in Europe or America). That doesn’t mean I approve of arbitrarily renaming characters, but I can see myself defending the rationale behind these changes if need be (though only on a case-by-case basis).
I live in Quebec, a bilingual province with two official languages. Pretty much everyone speaks English, French, or both. However, we’re pretty unanimous that anyone who speaks “Frenglish” isn’t very well-educated and is doing a disservice to both languages by peppering one language with seemingly random words from the other. Modern fansubs, unfortunately, are precisely this mishmash of languages that only people intimately familiar with both can understand (remember that translations are supposed to be for people who cannot understand the original language, not the people that do).
I’ll close by saying there’s both the word and the spirit to any line in a script, and a good translation skillfully balances both. For the most part, modern fansubs emphasize the word over the spirit, often almost exclusively. There’s a clear difference between “driving your point home” and “putting the point in your car and taking it to your house”; unfortunately, many fansubs read like the latter, and English-speaking otaku seem to be so accustomed to it that they believe anything else is wrong.
I’ll let you get away with this point IF you upload a video of yourself utilising a karaoke fansub OP. I think they’re the silliest thing ever, personally!
Don’t know if I’m the only Bleach fan here, but if not am I the only one who finds it a bit funny in the voice scenes that Kurou’s VA is the same one for Abarai Renji and the voice he’s doing for this game is pretty close to the one he does for Bleach? Kind of like how it’s funny that the VA for Shredder in the 80s NInja Turtle cartoon series is the guy who played Uncle Phil in Fresh Prince of Bel-air.
