A new version of the translation patch has been released! It’s version 0.57, which, as it indicates, means 57% of the text has been translated. After looking at the screenshots, it looks pretty good, and close to high-quality, because when a Japanese term comes up, they explain it right after the dialogue that had the word. Pretty cool.
Thanks to insertcredit.com for the news.
A Link?
Whoops! I indeed forgot to give the link, even after going through the trouble of copying it before writing that post.
Here: http://www.haeleth.net/
It’s not saying much, due to the scarcity of competition, but Haeleth’s partially-translated KANON might be the best Japanese ADV game available to the English market right now. I consider KANA to be a superior game, but that’s about it.
The translation is about as good as the old JAST releases, though in British English and with a dash of literary pretension. But it’s at least as good as a professional job; taking G-Collections into account, it’s a better than professional job. I’d go so far as to say that it’s well-written; the protagonist’s smartass comments can be downright funny sometimes.
As in my last post a few months back (the time passes pretty quickly!), I’m still keeping my fingers crossed at the possibility that a game fan translation community will spring up along the lines of anime fansubbing fifteen to twenty years ago: first as niche activity of fanatics, then as an underground sensation, and finally as the impetus that helps break Japanese ADV/SIM games into American youth mainstream. As with the as-yet-uncompleted process of mainstreaming anime over here in the US, it isn’t going to happen overnight.
While nothing other than the realities of the American market can be blamed, what is being brought over usually doesn’t hold a candle to what isn’t–though that may be comparing apples and oranges. Still, the first step towards making the ADV/SIM genre viable in the English-speaking world is the demonstration of some sort of consumer support; so I encourage everyone who hasn’t yet played the translated KANON to give it a try and see if it appeals to you.
I still [hope] that a game fan translation community will spring up [and grow into what] anime fansubbing was twenty years ago: first as niche activity of fanatics, then as an underground sensation, and finally as the impetus that helps [to break the genre] into [the English] mainstream. [Similar to] the [evolving] process of mainstreaming anime over here in [Region 1 areas including Canada], [this] isn’t going to happen overnight.
Unfortunately, this will never happen. Having been a small part of both the anime fansub scene and the game fansub scene, I’ll throw in my $0.02:
The reason why anime fansubs are so frequent nowadays is because it’s pretty simple to throw one together. All the “jobs” besides translating are learned through trial and error, and just about anyone can “QC” an upcoming release. All the tools are already provided to a fansub group, such as SubStation Alpha, VirtualDub and TextSub. Therefore, if you have a translator and a bunch of friends who don’t have anything better to do, you can make a fansub.
However, that’s not true with game fansubbing. Every game has a different encryption method for their files. As a result, the translator is not the only experienced “job” that is required. You now need someone who can hack into the file format, and you also need someone who can retouch system graphics into their English equivalents. This makes the barrier of entry notably higher than a making an anime fansub.
If you’ve got all those people, now you have to make the poor translator go through thousands of lines instead of the average 300-350 lines in a 25-minute anime episode. An editor filled with an equal amount of angst will have to look it over. QCing no longer means watching a show several times and nitpicking all the fine detail … it involves paying attention to those thousands of lines and running the game on a plethora of systems to make sure it’s running all right. Finally, distribution of patches only really encourages piracy of the R2s and does not help spread the word around contrary to popular belief. This is one such flaw I find with the “Kanon” translation project – everyone who is supporting it has already heard of the hype through other means, mostly because of the fansubs that preceded the project. Anyone who can play the patched game already has the Japanese version, which means they’re already a bishoujo game fan. In order for a game fansub to actually increase the awareness of bishoujo gaming, the game fansubs have to be directed at people who wouldn’t otherwise be bishoujo game fans. Those people are the ones who can make a difference.
In order to do that, a more equivalent approach would be to release the entire patched game as a standalone, but with the games growing over 1GB in size and beyond, it’ll be hard to distribute even with the help of BitTorrent (Then again, who would have thought five years ago that a 175MB anime fansub download would be the common method?). People might (and probably will) cry foul over this idea, but in actuality the ideals are not particularly different than an anime fansub. The game has been hacked so that all the Japanese has been replaced by English text, which means the original condition of the game has been altered. This is what anime fansub groups bank on – since they usually use TV raws with their large subtitles permanently blocking up a portion of the screen, they hope that their fansub is not a replacement for a commercial release. The same can apply to a game fansub. However, the fansub groups aren’t trying to fool anyone: In the end, they’re both illegal and no one’s trying to change that fact. It’s the ethical factor that drives most anime fansub groups to what they do. Can this also be true for game fansubbing? Since game fansubbing will never be the phenomenon that anime fansubbing is, no one can say for sure. However, I believe that standalone releases are still better than patches because standalone releases will impact the public on a wider scale than patches. Check the number of hits on a fansub download site versus a site such as scriptclub.org … the results are obvious.
Please note that a good number of fansub groups are simply a bunch of teenagers with lots of free time. Those people can’t obtain bishoujo games legally in the first place. Some are in it only for the number of downloads their fansub will chalk up on BitTorrent, so those people won’t have the patience to deal with a game fansub. Also note that many translators in the anime fansub scene cannot actually read the language; they can only interpret casual dialogue that is muttered. Translators for most manga fansub groups rely on furigana or even worse, Chinese/Korean adaptations in order to produce their results. Most editors I’ve seen do not edit an anime fansub or have any knowledge of Japanese that would assist them in providing suggestions – they just run the script through a spellchecker and if it “seems” good enough, it’s accepted (For example, not too many anime fansub editors can suggest the aesthetic changes to your post I made above). Plus you need people for all the unique positions that aren’t required for anime fansubbing but are required for game fansubbing as I’ve stated above.
Therefore, the number of people who are actually capable of doing a game fansub decreases to a fittingly small amount, and that small amount won’t increase dramatically any time soon. The number of people in that pool who would want to game fansub is even smaller. And thus, game fansubbing will never become the force that anime fansubbing is today.
quote:
Originally posted by Matthew:
It's not saying much, due to the scarcity of competition, but Haeleth's partially-translated KANON might be the best Japanese ADV game available to the English market right now. I consider KANA to be a superior game, but that's about it.
By all (other peoples') accounts, Kanon is one of the best b-games ever to come out of Japan. I've not played it myself (lacking the expertise to read Japanese) but I have every intention of doing so eventually. So it is NOT only that there aren't many b-games out in the states. Kanon is a wild success in Japan as well.
quote:
Originally posted by GipFace:
I still [hope] that a game fan translation community will spring up [and grow into what] anime fansubbing was twenty years ago: first as niche activity of fanatics, then as an underground sensation, and finally as the impetus that helps [to break the genre] into [the English] mainstream. [Similar to] the [evolving] process of mainstreaming anime over here in [Region 1 areas including Canada], [this] isn't going to happen overnight.Unfortunately, this will never happen. Having been a small part of both the anime fansub scene and the game fansub scene, I'll throw in my $0.02:
*snip the rest*
You make a lot of good points. However, fansubbing grew out of nothing. I'm sure there were just as many convincing arguments that it would never work. People did it anyway. The VHS days produced a lot less product but had a lot more dedicated people, and they had to build their expertise from scratch.
Also, a note about bandwidth: 1 GB soon won't be nearly as much as it sounds. A good few years will be required before ANY b-game fannotation 'scene' could be started. "A few years" in Internet time means "a generation", at least in terms of access technologies.
Net use has really only been widespread for about 8 or 9 years. It did not exist really before then. I don't remember when we
got an Internet connection at my house, but it was probably my sophomore year in high school. A few years after that, broadband started rolling around. A few years from now, it will dwarf dialup. A few years from then, the successor technology will emerge.
You make a lot of good points. However, fansubbing grew out of nothing. I’m sure there were just as many convincing arguments that it would never work. People did it anyway. The VHS days produced a lot less product but had a lot more dedicated people, and they had to build their expertise from scratch.
Yes, people had to make anime fansubs out of nothing but cumbersome genlocks back in the day. This eventually led to digital capturing which meant no more signal degradation and further propogation, which then led to the creation of standardized tools such as SubStation Alpha for all anime fansub groups to use. Actually, SSA was made before digital anime fansubbing was made but let’s not get there …
The problem is that tackling each bishoujo game is different in terms of code and hacking. Sure, all the games from Key might use a similar AVG32 engine … but what happens when you try to use that same AVG32 tool on another game? It doesn’t work.
Anime fansubbing grew because of the relative ease of making them and because of the standardized tools that almost every group uses. However, this will never be the case with game fansubbing. There are a bunch of fan-made bishoujo games made with Flash or various game creation systems. Why are flash games and game-creation systems so popular? Because they’re easy to use.
The bishoujo gaming community will obviously increase over time, but that doesn’t mean game fansubbing will increase.
quote:
Originally posted by GipFace:
Therefore, the number of people who are actually capable of doing a game fansub decreases to a fittingly small amount, and that small amount won't increase dramatically any time soon. The number of people in that pool who would want to game fansub is even smaller. And thus, game fansubbing will never become the force that anime fansubbing is today.
Thanks for your response. Practical details always provide an effective counterpoint to my airy theorizing--not that I won't be filling this post with a lot more of the same. Really enjoyed the Wind demo, by the way.
For just the reasons that you state, I wasn't drawing a parallel between the current anime digisubbing phenomenon and the possibility of game fansubbing on a significant scale in the future. As I mentioned in my previous post, I do think a comparison can be drawn with anime fansubbing during the VHS era: it was largely undertaken by those with a cultural (rather than merely conversational) familiarity with Japanese; it required a fair amount of technical ability; its tangible rewards and impact on commercial media were initially minimal to nonexistent.
With any sort of media, what is required of an underground fan community seeking to gain mainstream acceptance is to spread the word about the existence of their interest, and then to convince the powers-that-be that it is commercially viable. That was accomplished in the US well before the digisubbing boom. The existence of dozens of anime translation groups translating every episode of every anime series shortly after it appears on Japanese television is an effect rather than a cause of this: by the time they came around, anime was available on television in North America, theatrical features were receiving exposure and a number of commercial distributors already existed. Anime had already proven itself to the market, and the wave of enthusiasts who took advantage of this became the digisubbers of today.
What's my point? Keeping in mind that such projects are indeed an order of magnitude more complex than their anime equivalents, the early fansub community succeeded under a set of circumstances similar to those facing ADV/SIM game enthusiasts today. Therefore, some of the same tactics might apply. Game subbers wouldn't need to be very prolific. Nor would very many of them need to exist. All their efforts would have to accomplish would be to reveal to sympathetic subcultures that Japanese ADV/SIM games exist, that many of them are quite good and are worth playing. If the amateurs could uncover the audience, the professionals would be more than happy to step in and make it grow. (Sure, there are a lot of paths to that goal--Mixx/TokyoPop (or some other commercial anime translator) goes once more into the breach; a Japanese console heavy-hitter that also distributes here takes a risk with an English adaptation; Japanese ADV/SIM games turn out to have no real market here after all; existing bishoujo distributors expand beyond their niche; a fan with deep pockets (the equivalent of Robert Woodhead) comes along--but they seem even less likely.
I keep the faith because I really do feel that these games* could fill a conspicuously empty space in the English language gaming world. With anime enjoying its time in the sun, sim-style games (or rather The Sims) breaking sales records and adventure games slowly making their way back from the wilderness, their time might very well be approaching. My only concern is that, in light of recent mainstream news stories about the lurid side of bishoujo gaming, their cause will be set back by portraying them as 'Japanese sex games,' much as anime has had to shake off a similar reputation that resulted from past marketing decisions.
*I use the cumbersome 'ADV/SIM' label instead of 'bishoujo' because I want to encompass the Japanese variants of the 'interactive fiction' and 'lifesim' genres as a whole; the domestic market for the latter is just currently the same as that of the former. Then again, the domestic anime market was one-note for a long time, too.
quote:
Originally posted by GipFace:
You make a lot of good points. However, fansubbing grew out of nothing. I'm sure there were just as many convincing arguments that it would never work. People did it anyway. The VHS days produced a lot less product but had a lot more dedicated people, and they had to build their expertise from scratch.Yes, people had to make anime fansubs out of nothing but cumbersome genlocks back in the day. This eventually led to digital capturing which meant no more signal degradation and further propogation, which then led to the creation of standardized tools such as SubStation Alpha for all anime fansub groups to use. Actually, SSA was made before digital anime fansubbing was made but let's not get there ... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
The problem is that tackling each bishoujo game is different in terms of code and hacking. Sure, all the games from Key might use a similar AVG32 engine ... but what happens when you try to use that same AVG32 tool on another game? It doesn't work.
Anime fansubbing grew because of the relative ease of making them and because of the standardized tools that almost every group uses. However, this will never be the case with game fansubbing. There are a bunch of fan-made bishoujo games made with Flash or various game creation systems. Why are flash games and game-creation systems so popular? Because they're easy to use.
The bishoujo gaming community will obviously increase over time, but that doesn't mean game fansubbing will increase.
Speaking as someone who briefly flirted with the idea of creating a fully generic engine that would allow the porting of pretty much any ADV b-game, I can attest that it's easier to create a patch than you think. I abandoned my project when it became clear that a friend of mine could create tools to patch games quickly enough that there was no point in me continuing what I was trying to do.
The average b-game's script is about 100 episodes of anime. Most of the work is going to reside in the translation phase anyway. The tools to make a patch only need to be made once.
People make apps all the time. Look at the open source community. It's not a total impossibility.
I'm not going to deny that the kind of work involved is quite technical. Nor am I going to deny that this means the pool of interested individuals is going to be MUCH MUCH smaller. Trying to denying that creating patches is a bottleneck would be foolish.
I am going to claim that the effect of this bottleneck are not going to be as severe as you may be thinking. The tools will need to be created up front - then the translators have to do a lot of work for a fairly long time. It will be quite possible for someone who specializes in making tools, to work on several different projects without much difficulty.
I don't see the creation of tools as the real bottleneck here. The bottleneck, as I it, is see the size of the scripts and the complexity of the Japanese involved in those scripts (b-games are aimed at older audiences, and (I'm told by people who know) thus have harder Japanese in them). A game is not an anime. The game is as large as several seasons (usually) and furthermore it isn't broken up into short episodes with convenient stopping points. None of this makes a tool writer's job harder, but it immensely complicates the translation; large monolithic projects inherently make slower progress than projects with frequent high-visibility milestones.
quote:
Originally posted by Matthew:
With any sort of media, what is required of an underground fan community seeking to gain mainstream acceptance is to spread the word about the existence of their interest, and then to convince the powers-that-be that it is commercially viable....
What's my point? Keeping in mind that such projects are indeed an order of magnitude more complex than their anime equivalents, the early fansub community succeeded under a set of circumstances similar to those facing ADV/SIM game enthusiasts today. Therefore, some of the same tactics might apply. Game subbers wouldn't need to be very prolific. Nor would very many of them need to exist. All their efforts would have to accomplish would be to reveal to sympathetic subcultures that Japanese ADV/SIM games exist, that many of them are quite good and are worth playing. If the amateurs could uncover the audience, the professionals would be more than happy to step in and make it grow.
Very well said, Matthew. That is exactly what I tried to say, but I did not do a very good job of it. It does indeed seem to me that we are now, in the bishoujo gaming world, where anime was when fansubbing got its start. I have friends who tell me about the old days, the days before VHS fansubs; when typed scripts (and sometimes not even that, but just a summary) of the episode would be given out along with the episode being screened. This led to VHS fansubs, which were rapidly subsumed by the Internet.
Right now we haven't got any kind of fannotations at all. There are partial translations and FAQs out there for a select few titles and that's it. There's no reason we couldn't see a VHS-like batch of activity. I do NOT predict we will ever see an avalanche in the manner of digisubs. But groups will be able to put out versions of enough plot-driven games, that we ought to be able to help expand awareness that "hey, these aren't just sexfests".
quote:
I keep the faith because I really do feel that these games* could fill a conspicuously empty space in the English language gaming world.
So do I. There really aren't any good stories of this sort in the anime market; nor in the gaming market. The market right now isn't there to support a big name game. It probably won't be for a few years yet, either. But I predict it will, eventually, be there. We have managed to avoid a market crash so far.