They could just cut costs by releasing a localization of Cross Channel with the English patch pre-installed, you know. They can work with the fan-translators that way–I wouldn’t have problems with them taking down the patch downloads if that was the case.
I would like to see them go for Cross Channel, I know there is a patch. After Yama Hajime was involved
Yeah right.I can already see a lot of people posting here or making ticket on the Help Desk asking “why i can’t install/play the game?” because they don’t know that you must install the east asian language pack (if you have XP, because on seven it’s already installed) and how to change your regional setting.
And anyway, using a fan Made translation it’s not professional.(Even if some Fan Translation are really good)
I don’t think it would sell that much. I’m thinking most people, who did intent to get Cross Channel, have done so by now. Cross Channel is not quite the kind of game people wait for it to get cheap before buying. 
JAST is cooperating with fan translators on Demonbane.
Oh, and one thing about the Cross Channel translation… the translator Ixrec, said he would like to revisit and redo the translation in the future. I think he said he had improved on his translations since that time; and would like to do it justice. Something along those lines…
Cooperating is the key word here. ^^
In the end, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? For Demonbane, JAST USA hired fans to produce the translation. The main difference is that they’re being paid now, and the release isn’t free.
Some of JAST USA’s better translations (Yume Miru Kusuri and Princess Waltz, for instance) were also done by people who were involved with fan translation.
The same in which way?
All i see it’s fan translater giving opinion and point of view on the translation, no being the main translator…
For the best translation done by Jast USA group… i Agree with YMK being in the best but not with Princess Waltz (which is good too.)… The best translation that Jast USA ever made was for Yukizakura.
And, anyway, a lot of profesionnal Japanese translator tend to do Scanlation, Fansub and other thing like that.it’s not uncommon at all… But they’re Pro before being a fansuber
It was never “free” to begin with.
No, work on Demonbane is being coordinated through TLWiki’s leadership. The guy who handled Saya no Uta and Kikokugai (“Makoto”) appears to be the main translator.
Someone from Nitro+ is directly working with TLWiki, so the job is more or less in their hands.
The thing about the eroge business is that there’s little distinction between an amateur and paid “professional”. Neither JAST USA nor MangaGamer can afford professional game translators, so it isn’t like they’re ever working with highly qualified contractors. I wouldn’t be surprised if many are indeed fans with little formal training (it’s hard to determine the identities, but BTAxis is a frequent JAST USA contractor. He’s self-taught in Japanese and a former fan translator who tried selling his work to them. WooJin Lee, who once posted at the Megatokyo forums and wrote import game reviews for RPGFan, also did some work for them).
With fans who’ve publicly released some work, they can at least gauge the level of quality and competence. With some of the others, they can’t tell until it’s too late. Take Family Project, for instance.
one thing that i like that mangagamer does is use twitter to at least explain their level of progress on game and kinda wish jast would do that
Prove to me that fan-made patches lead to notable rises in piracy. I’ll wait here.
You’re not serious, are you? I mean, it’s not even debatable. What could be debatable is that fan-made patches sabotage sales of a subsequent localization, which is probably the more relevant issue.
Actually, it is quite easy to do with a simple equation.
P¬π = J
P² = J + E
P² > P¹
P¹ and P² are the potential number of pirates who can understand the game. J is the number of people who can understand Japanese. E is the number of people who understand only English. Does it increase piracy in general? Absolutely not, but it does increase piracy of that particular title.
Yes, indeed, the point is most certainly NOT that translations (whether fan-made or otherwise) result in higher amounts of piracy (of course they do), because piracy doesn’t harm anyone. At all.
What harms the company are LOST SALES, does a translation lead to LOST SALES? Of course it does, compared to the other kind of translation.
A fan-made translation leads to LOST SALES by the English localisation company - they can no longer sell as many copies as their audience has been diminished.
A commercial translation leads to LOST SALES by the original Japanese company, who can’t even sell extra copies of the game to English-language players of eroge - the only profit they see is through the English localisation company.
Which results in more money for the Japanese company overall? I don’t know! I’m sure it depends
Hongfire? 4Chan? vndb? ^^
All the place where most of the Western Eroge Fan goes… oh, i also can add my own personal experience, since i did the first translation for the English patch of Polygon Love 2 on Hongfire years ago (their is still renmant of my translation in the current English Patch)… And i can say that 99% of those who DL the patch was DLing the game at the same time and not on DLSite.com ^^
There’s the fact that the fan translators over at insani saw that the patch was downloaded like 2 orders of magnitude more frequently than the part of their website that was designed to help people order a copy of the game from a Japanese download site.
You’d have a hard time convincing me, for one, that a legitimate translation wouldn’t be pirated just as much.
can we get back on topic please discuss piracy in another tread