Thanks for the info. I hate it when translators inject unnecessary Western slang into translations. It really breaks the immersion for me.
- Feb 3, 2019
- 730
- 416
I fully agree on that, yup!
I still hope these were just two exceptions, after all the first one was literally a single line in a Fan Disc for a char which doesn't seem very well liked. You could even say it came across as an unfortunate mistake. This time however highlighted bold 115 instances of that word however reek very badly. And i really hope this will not just the stink blowing our way with every time a new NekoNyan tl gets put out in the coming months / years. So yup for me this is not a small thing this time either.
I still hope these were just two exceptions, after all the first one was literally a single line in a Fan Disc for a char which doesn't seem very well liked. You could even say it came across as an unfortunate mistake. This time however highlighted bold 115 instances of that word however reek very badly. And i really hope this will not just the stink blowing our way with every time a new NekoNyan tl gets put out in the coming months / years. So yup for me this is not a small thing this time either.
But hasn't this been NN's schtick for quite a while now? I've always found their translations vainglorious - so much that half the time it doesn't actually feel like the character is talking, rather it's the translator. I'm almost sure NN's translators think they're all cute after outright overwriting some of their characters' lines and replacing it with their own brand of quirks, Western slang aside.
This is probably going to be the first VN I've pirated on here that I didn't buy outright afterwards. This VN was a lot of fun, moreso than I was expecting. But those out of place lines seriously makes it look like the translators are literally inserting themselves into the story unwelcomed. It's honestly quite creepy and there's so much of it here that it really takes away from the experience.
I've worked with EMEA translators in a market setting so that's my only frame of reference, but god damn is the Visual Novel space so damn weird...
Stuff like this really shouldn't happen.
- Feb 3, 2019
- 730
- 416
Could be I just got lucky, I can't honestly say, but I myself only played three NN translated vn's to completion and one of them they bought the tl from. Which would be Sanoba Witch, Hello,good-bye and Dracu Riot! (the leaked patch, which they didn't put out officially to this day). So once again, it could be I just had luck. But despite hearing them "inserting memes" and "jokes into the script" for many years now, what little I did play didn't really make that apparent in a way this shit we have now does. I also tried two routes of Making*Lovers some time last year, but that thing didn't really gel with me at all. so I dropped it very early into
You must be registered to see the links
route. And I also want to say this is not the same as putting some jokes into a script which might not be the same in the og version at all!I fully agree! If this is what is happening and these translations go the way of english anime dubs a la
You must be registered to see the links
(and I really hope this won't be the case.) On the plus side now vndb has implemented a staff credit system for translations, so we can search the english translation staff for this and many other vns and gather at least some info who the folks responsible for this shit are. I did that the moment I saw the patch, but i didn't find anything.
You must be registered to see the links
which worked on their og Aokana translation is pretty much the only connection. He didn't work on the aforementioned Extra 1 FanDisc, which had
You must be registered to see the links
in it. However, and worse yet,
You must be registered to see the links
which way back when did the excellent Steins;Gate translation worked on this!So either he lost his fucking mind or this shit might indeed come as a company mandate… Only speculation at this point. Just going to say keep your eyes open and use the tool-set vndb provided to root out staff which might have a habit of doing this wank in the future!
Last edited:
- Feb 11, 2018
- 1,511
- 2,157
The number of instances tells you nothing, except for the fact that in the script that one character is addressed as ''Inkya'' 115 times total. Honestly, from all the VNs I've read, if I had to call a character an incel it'd either be this guy or Suguru from Majikoi. If anything I'd say that incel is way more appropriate than loner as far as translation goes. He's way closer to being a low tier incel than a loner. Inkya doesn't even mean loner, anyone who isn't part of the ''cool kids club'' would be considered inkya, whereas loner is specifically bocchi, a subset of inkya. And what is this side characters whole shtick? Being antisocial when it comes to girls, not being a loner. Something your run of the mill self proclaimed incel might suffer from. But people always assume its some form of targeted harrassment towards the reader. Like when Re:Zero fans thought the author was making fun of them by making Subaru seem slimy and despicable, before the plot progressed far enough to showcase that it was just him breaking down the character before building him back up. Personally so far I've found several issues with the translation but turning Inkya into Incel wasn't one of them. This isn't even the case of the translator ''westernising'' the VN since there are really odd cases of japanglish or other shit being left untranslated (he even left in kabedon without translating it into wall slam or some such).
That's also what makes this translation really strange for me. There's a lot more untranslated but romanized terms in this VN besides that and it makes me think the editors or translators trust the readers well enough to know what those mean either through context or pre-existing knowledge. So the question really is why single out inkya specifically and use incel in it's place?
I'm not going to speculate whether this is some kind of agenda from an NN translator though I did hear some rumblings about it elsewhere, in fact I don't even think the whole inkya=incel is the biggest issue here. It's the fact that the translations are progressively sounding more like staff self-inserts than characters with consistent personalities and you could really tell when the translator is breaking into the scenario or the characters themselves. The person you're responding to has a lot more merit with their concerns specially compared to NN's previous games.
I don't know if allowing these kinds of translations or having lax standards is unique to VNs or NekoNyan specifically but you generally don't get to be transformative over the underlying work like what they did here. I've gone through multiple translations of Anna Karenina and not one of them differed outside of style, so seeing translations like this VN and some of NN's recent works is just really bizarre to see.
Reading so far I wouldn't say anything reads like an insert. Most stupid jokes you'd find cringe are put in place of jokes that have a japanese punchline so translating them literally would be like trying to explain zoomer humor to a boomer. The only thing I can think of that is self-inserty would be that a lot of slang used is reminscent of twitter, but you'll always have subjective slang preferences and choices and its all in the eyes of the beholder. The only neutral approach would be to ignore slang dialogue and translate it as standard english and even then you'd have someone take issue with that. If anything I'd say the original writer used the characters as vehicles more, given how many times they break out of the 4th wall to talk about how you're playing an eroge, which is a very ASa project thing to do.
As far as comparing the translation of classic literature to eroges, I think you hit a dead end here. There're probably as many differences in the act of translating these works as there are differences between the works themselves, if not more.
I completely disagree on principle.
Classic literature's always been the frequent target of exercises for student and professional translators in my experience, I don't know if that's changed nowadays or if your expectations are different; but it's always been the jumping off point for a lot of the folks I've worked with and I would be suspicious of anyone who didn't at least cut their teeth on it.
I mentioned Anna Karenina because we used to use those translations as key examples in terms of maintaining consistency or readability (or both, even adjusting for the latter) despite there being so many of them published and iterated on. The key thing being that no matter how many ways people tried to skin the thing, the translations were still absolutely dependable and dependability is the most important quality a translation should have and never lose.
I wouldn't give myself authority on even subjective matters when the author has already decided those for me and NN's recent works strike me as being completely opposite of that, with them having seemingly decided for themselves quite frequently on a lot of things the subject language did not necessarily require. The obvious result being characters talking like a twitter thread when they didn't to begin with among other things.
So to me personally, it's either NN got the blessing from the original authors to depart from that standard on their own or they outright appropriated the product by themselves. Or is this simply the quality their customers expect out of them?
Because if it is, then you might be right and I'm just pitting professional work against one done by amateurs who didn't know any better. But that's the thing, they used to be more reliable than this.
They pretty much do, though. Try comparing actual japanese literature to moege writing and you'll find few commonalities. You underestimate how casual and purely made for entertainment value it is. You don't use the same guidelines when translating both the Bible and the funny collumn of a newspaper.
Those aren't guidelines, they're the literal backbone of the profession.
Anyway if you like it then fine. I don't personally appreciate things turning into garbage but if you find happiness in it, I certainly won't stand in your way.
It just keeps coming...
The literal backbone of the profession is how much you're getting paid.
It's not about me, though. Like I originally said, I have my qualms with the translation, I just take issue with comparing the translation choices made for a world famous novel in comparison to a porn game with lots of goofy writing in it. It sounds pretentious. If you tried doing a literal translation of this vn it'd be just as lame as what NN did with it.
- Feb 3, 2019
- 730
- 416
I think i saw that happening with Sanoba Witch once. Did you try the backlog? It usually shows up there. But that happening at all makes me question if there is even QA testing going on with pretty much any big VN localization company nowadays. Sekai Project are the most sloppy, but NN seems to want to catch up to them with force.
a cutoff. great
- Feb 3, 2019
- 730
- 416
Phenomenal work
Let me guess this is another case of ship it now and patch it later? Honestly, you would think a VN consisting only of text do not need patches, but recent years proofed that rule of thumb to be "outdated". -.-