Personal Translator at your service.

[Talychon]

Hello everyone.

My name is Talychon, and I enjoy this board for it provides me with an abundant supply of ero RPGs.
I also happen to be a Translator fluent in English, Japanese and French, and have practiced localization for well over a year as both an amateur (scanlation etc), and as a professional for companies located in Japan.

I am aware that many of you cannot read moonrunes, so I would like lend a hand.
To be precise, I offer to take translation commissions from individuals.

I can translate pretty much anything, be it a game, a manga, a doujin, you name it. The main delivery format is that of a word/excel document with cues to what belongs where. If it's not too much of a pain, I can also try to incorporate the text directly into the material (in form of a patch, or typeset'd etc), but that is on a by-case basis.

Now you're probably wondering how much that would cost, and the answer is, not that much. The price would be only a few cents per word, which means that a small game could cost you around 10-50 bucks. While a long game with lots of text would hit the hundreds.
My goal here isn't to make money. I am offering assistance, and still receive something in exchange to make it worth my while.

The perks of commissioning me are:
- Actual translation, not some interpretation of machine translated gibberish.
- Perfect English. Accurate translation with smooth English, no awkwardness.
- Speed. Depending on the size of the game and my current schedule, you could have your translation delivered in under a week. Do note that I may close commissions from time to time.
- Customization. You like to see -chan/-kun? I can keep them. You want the TL to be written in a specific speech style? Say pirate? Ghetto? I can do that too.
- Selectivity. Tight on money? Don't want the sex scenes translated? You can choose to let stuff out, and I'll only translate the sentences that are relevant to your interests.

If you have any questions or are interested, you can contact me by PM or post on this thread.

 

[noman]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Considering that most games are in the 20s, it is expensive to hire your service if only a single person contributes to it. Group contribution is possible, but it will complicate the payment process.

I have a few questions that I suspect you already have the solution to:

1) How can we arrange the payment in such a way that protects both of us?I would hate to see you not get paid for your work, but at the same time I don't know you well enough to completely trust you.

2) You claim that you are capably of high quality translation, but again we don't know enough about you to judge on that. Can you provide any example?

3) How are your programming skills? What are the types of games that you can translate? (e.g. rpgmaker XP, ACE, Wolf, etc.)

 

[Darkstrain]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

where did you learn moonrunes?
can you share some previous translations of anything?

i think that for the translation you shouldn't charge more than the game itself costs, unless it's a really cheap cheap game and make the fee a set amount, not a per word fee, because some games have repeated dialogue in different parts of the script and that may inflate the price.

now the games that would be awesome traslated?

princess sacrifice, but that is kinda ultra hard due to the program it's made in i think.

i dont think there is a translation for valkyrie destruction but that game is good as well.

rhode's fortress i dont think anyone has begun the translating but its another good game.

i don't know what the community thinks about it, but i think it may be a good initiative.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Other thing is how game authors will see it, free mods like translation or uncensor is one thing, but they could not like someone making money using their games - even if you're getting money from service and not product itself. Maybe you could try contacting some game authors and work directly with them - I think it would be best solution to everyone: you could get more money that way, developers would have good English version which could increase their sales outside Japan and gamers would have already translated game out of the box without the need to decompile or modify something. I know it's not always possible, but maybe it's worth a try.

My question is: how are your skills the other way around (English->Japanese)? I may know someone who could use that in the "near" future.

@Darkstrain
Per word fee is standard translation practice and pretty fair to the translator so I doubt he would like to change it - translating cheap game with lots of text is just not worth the effort.

 

[squark]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Altair is quite right in that per-word is standard for commission work like this, but Darkstrain is also right in that a TL should never cost more than the game itself.

Read it like this: Game costs 30, is decently long and has some nice extras.
With so many words, the TL cost can run up over 30 times the cost of the game itself. Yes, that mean 900 and no, it's not an exaggeration. The problem lies in just how much are people willing to shell out for it? You'd effectively be buying the same game TWICE if you could get those 30 people together.
Rather than inserting the TL directly, spare us that and people will be willing to pay for a patch rather than the same thing again. Most people here have the right tools to install patches.

I'd also echo the general sentiment of the thread -- examples. Picture it like a portfolio when applying for a job. Not many people will hire a contractor on the strength of word alone. We need to see what you can offer.

 

[Drix]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

How about setting up a Patreon as that seems to be popular?

Supporters get to vote on what gets translated and get progress reports and the latest updates.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Altair is quite right in that per-word is standard for commission work like this, but Darkstrain is also right in that a TL should never cost more than the game itself.

Read it like this: Game costs 30, is decently long and has some nice extras.
With so many words, the TL cost can run up over 30 times the cost of the game itself. Yes, that mean 900 and no, it's not an exaggeration. The problem lies in just how much are people willing to shell out for it? You'd effectively be buying the same game TWICE if you could get those 30 people together.
Rather than inserting the TL directly, spare us that and people will be willing to pay for a patch rather than the same thing again. Most people here have the right tools to install patches.

I'd also echo the general sentiment of the thread -- examples. Picture it like a portfolio when applying for a job. Not many people will hire a contractor on the strength of word alone. We need to see what you can offer.

I know that translations are expensive, but if OP wants to do this for a living (for example), translating game for max it's market price is not gonna work out - it's just too much work. To make it work like Darkstrain (initially) suggested, OP would have to sell translations per user, and we all know that it would not work due piracy, etc. That's why I suggested working directly with developers. That's what I would do, but I'm not OP, so he will do what he wants.

 

[YummyTiger]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Altair is quite right in that per-word is standard for commission work like this, but Darkstrain is also right in that a TL should never cost more than the game itself.

You guys are comparing two distinct sales models, which you can't do. A full translation for less than $20-30 is simply not feasible. The game developer is selling based on a wider, release model. Meaning he will hopefully sell thousands of copies. This sounds like a commission service, which means it is a contract between a single translator and a single consumer (or group of consumers). The payment for services is no longer distributed over thousands, but is limited to the single consumer. For the OP to use the prior model, he would need to develop a company like Jast or Peach Princess (whatever that company is called now), and acquire rights with the developers.

I appreciate the service being offered. I think it would be best suited for a group effort to chip in a small amount to see the game translated. I too would be interested in if you offered translations from English to Japanese.

 

[Bark]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Unless the copyright owner gives permission or is the client to begin with, it is outright illegal to provide translations against a fee. Free fan translations (or maybe even donation based translations) are somewhat of a gray area, as it is not "really" for profit.

But just for the sake of argument: Let's ignore the legal elements. It's still unrealistic. Profit margins would be ridiculously low. Let's take ROBF by アスガル騎士団 for example, a game which many people actually wish a translation for. I'd estimate the game maker had a net income of around 90k$. Take note: It's an estimate, as I am lacking too much information to accurately calculate the profit.

I did the numbers for a translation and, if going by regular market prices for Jp-En*, it would require about 15k$ (without counting building up the necessary terminology etc.). And who'd actually -buy- an official English translation anyway? The market for English H-Games is so much smaller - it's lightyears away from the profits of the Japanese H-Game market.

Return on investment? Nada.**

Of course, you could go the non-profit approach (take Rogue and his great translation of MGQ for example) or you could sell yourself for far below market prices (which is anything but "professional"; and you could definitely not live on it).

Translation industry just does not work for such niche markets as H-Games. How did you come up with such low numbers as "10-50 bucks for a small game" anyway? May I reiterate the question about your experience in game localization, that others brought up already?


*Just to be more precise: The game dialogue alone contains about 240k kanji/kana. Going by a price of USD 0,06 per kanji/kana, we get around 15k$. As noted above, menu localization, terminology management and such is still not included here.

**The game maker would need to sell about 1k game units 15$ each to compensate the cost for translation alone. On the Japanese market he sold somewhat more than 10k copies. Would he sell even remotely that many copies on the English market? Not really.

 

[Grandork]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Unless the copyright owner gives permission or is the client to begin with, it is outright illegal to provide translations against a fee. Free fan translations (or maybe even donation based translations) are somewhat of a gray area, as it is not "really" for profit.

Translation is not illegal in anyway, distribution is. He can translate the text, he can't sell the translated game.

If you are the owner of the game and you want him to translate it for you, fine. But he can't sell that translation to other parties has a "translated game" for a cost, he can choose to translate again, for the same fee he charged the first party, even if he uses his own notes to help him, but he can't distribute it. Nor can the person who bought said translation copy it and distribute it.

 

[Bark]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Translation is not illegal in anyway, distribution is. He can translate the text, he can't sell the translated game.

Hence I said "provide translations".

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Well, in most cases making translation without author's permission also requires decompilation/dissasembly/etc. which is also illegal, but I'm not sure whether it's applicable to every piece of software or whether it must be included in EULA or something similar.

 

[YummyTiger]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

**The game maker would need to sell about 1k game units 15$ each to compensate the cost for translation alone. On the Japanese market he sold somewhat more than 10k copies. Would he sell even remotely that many copies on the English market? Not really.

Good post. I do want to just note this point though. Apparently, translating Japanese to English can work, as Peach Princess/Jast USA has been in business for awhile. There is a market there, it just has to be approached in the right manner. Traditional sales models may be problematic--I don't know. That said, I think English developers have more incentive to translate to Japanese and sell on that market as well, than vice-versa. You need a solid game though, as the market is more fierce and expectation higher.

To your overall point on this though, I agree. It would be hard for a single user to pay for professional translations of any game, unless it was ridiculously short. In which case, why do you even want it translated?

 

[Xilnold]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

1: Would you be willing to actually provide examples of your work? Both your amateur work and your professional work. Having done official translations sadly isn't an indicator that they're good translations, I've seen plenty of official translations that were bad.

2: If someone hired you to translate the text of a game, would it be alright for them to then hack that text into the actual game?

3: As mentioned, your fees might work for doujins or CG sets, but have you really thought the 'game' thing through? Games have a ton of dialogue. Especially if you're counting things like character/location names as dialogue.

 

[Dracharil]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

I don't know much about the legal or business aspects of this discussion, so forgive me if I am completely off the mark, but I do have a thought based on what I've read so far.

Would it be possible to sell commissions for the translations themselves, rather than selling a translated game? Maintain the client relationship, but have anyone able to purchase a commission for a game, even if it has already been done, with the benefit being that once something is translated, all those other commissions can essentially be filled at the time of purchase.

So, rather than selling a translated game, the OP would be working on a commission, as ordered. Whether or not that translation is already sitting around waiting to be delivered seems besides the point. The obvious problem here is file distribution and breadth of sales. There's apparently nothing stopping someone from distributing one of the translations across the internet once purchased (this is the internet we're talking about), and if the requested games aren't popular, it probably wouldn't pay for itself in the long run.

Still, Interface translations are another matter *entirely*. I love SLG games (Aliesoft, Eushully, Dual-Tail, Unicorn), but a lot of them are *impossible* for me to play (particularly Unicorn-a games). Getting good interface/tutorial translations for H-games with actual game-play is something I, for one, would definitely consider. But the whole game? No way. So there's that, too.

 

[FruitSmoothie]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Seconded that it seems weird for you to target the consumers of games and not try to work with the game/art/whatever developers instead. I mean there are a few game developers lurking around here, but if they were interested, it'd probably be turning their English text into Jap for DLsite.

I mean not bad to put the option out there, I'm just not sure if your main concern is money that this is the right way to go about it. Asking the consumers makes it more of a hobby type deal, I can't see it being very profitable. There are very few games I can think of that I'd pay for a translation of for example (Even then, I doubt I'd be willing to pay the amount you probably should be making.).

 

[Talychon]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Hello again, OP here.

I am glad to see that my proposal is getting some attention.
I have read all the post and will try to answer all the points that have been raised.

First and foremost, I would like to clarify that this is not a "business", but a service I am offering. I do not plan to make a living out of this, I am merely offering to help comrades in Ero.
As such, even though I am an experienced translator, this is more of a hobby for me, something I'm doing with my free time outside of work.
While indeed market prices per words are around 6-12 cents per word, for this offer I am considering something around 2 cents per word.

Second is project scale.
It seems that people assume I'm going to translate whole eroge with tens of thousands of words. Well, I did work on amateur project of that scale before. I can easily reach a cruise speed of 4000+ words per day.
Now though, I didn't have anything of the sort in mind when I made that post. That kind of work takes a lot of time, and would indeed require a lot of money. With crowd funding, it could become a reality but I believe it is too early for that.
What I had in mind was more moderately sized. An average RPGmaker game, translatable in a few days, a doujin, a particular scene, an interface.
It can also be something totally unrelated to games etc. The basic idea is "help people understand stuff, get pocket money on the side".

Third, the trickiest part, payment/delivery.
For very small requests, I believe that providing you with a screenshot of part of the translation once it is complete should be proof enough for a paypal payment, following which I would immediately email the finished product.
For bigger commissions, I was thinking of splitting the delivery and payments into steps. Say, split the translation every 500 words or so along with the payment. This isn't ideal, but it at least reduce the risk of loss for both sides.
Either way, I will only ask for money once the translation is ready to be delivered.
As for the delivery format, it will depend on the request. If it's a game where the text can be easily extracted/replaced, I don't mind putting it in for you. If it cannot, It'll be in a word/excel format with cues to allow you to easily link text in game with the translation.
Also, you can do whatever you want with the translation once you have it.

On the same topic, I've read a few suggestion about using Patreon. if there is a strong enough interest, this is something I might consider.
Another suggestion was to work directly with the game makers. As stated earlier, my goal here is to lend a hand. However, should any game maker request my services, I will gladly enter a partnership with them.
As for EN -> JP translations, I have no prior experience in that pair, so I cannot promise quality. I am however very interested by the prospect and am open for proposals.

Lastly, on actual quality.
I learned Japanese in university, it was my major. I am currently living and working in Japan.
Rather than examples of previous works, I'm more interested in picking a small rpg game and translating it for free. I have one in mind, but you can always try to suggest something.
I also already received a request, and if that person is okay with it, I might share the finished work as an example.

Phew, that was a lot of text. I believe I covered most points, but feel free to add things I might have missed!

 

[Apathy]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Holy crap everyone seems a little put off by this.

Notes:

Dude-person doesn't want his/her name associated with creepy Japanese porn game translations probably so won't be providing prior work. Legit reasoning.

Also, in the USA at least, this is entirely legal.

Also, in the USA at least, the price is good. For comparison, writing is usually per word and usually $.05-$.15 for cheaper crap stuff. I know for a fact The Guardian pays writers at least $.20 a word.

 

[Bark]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

First and foremost, I would like to clarify that this is not a "business", but a service I am offering. I do not plan to make a living out of this, I am merely offering to help comrades in Ero.
As such, even though I am an experienced translator, this is more of a hobby for me, something I'm doing with my free time outside of work.
While indeed market prices per words are around 6-12 cents per word, for this offer I am considering something around 2 cents per word.

Doing it as a hobby is fine, I guess. Keeping a low profile would probably avoid legal problems too. This thread's title was a bit misleading though, since you'd expect someone calling himself a "professional translator for hire" would also do work on the scale of what professional translators would do.
Regarding pricing: Are you referring to target-language "words"? USD 0,02 per word would be less than a cent per kanji/kana... Gives me a quirky feeling just hearing that. But sure, that's closer to what members of a community would pay.

Second is project scale.
It seems that people assume I'm going to translate whole eroge with tens of thousands of words. Well, I did work on amateur project of that scale before. I can easily reach a cruise speed of 4000+ words per day.
Now though, I didn't have anything of the sort in mind when I made that post. That kind of work takes a lot of time, and would indeed require a lot of money. With crowd funding, it could become a reality but I believe it is too early for that.
What I had in mind was more moderately sized. An average RPGmaker game, translatable in a few days, a doujin, a particular scene, an interface.
It can also be something totally unrelated to games etc. The basic idea is "help people understand stuff, get pocket money on the side".

Even moderately sized games are filled with lots of text. And as YummyTiger pointed out: For a game so ridiculously short that a quick translation would be feasible, a translation is in general not necessary.
Regarding partly translations: Sure, a basic menu translation (interface) is a matter of a few minutes (considering the game data is accessible, e.g. in RPGMaker games). A complete menu translation (items, skills, etc.) is a matter of one or two hours at max. But for such a task you would not need a "professional" translator. Actually, such translations do occasionally pop up.
And to translate just some scenes of a game... seems strange to me. I cannot really imagine people wanting to just have a few specific scenes translated. Why play a "game" to begin with, if it's just a single scene you want to see. But whatever, maybe there are some people who'd want to.
Regarding doujin and manga: Well, these are a completely different matter (as evidenced by the fact that there are quite a lot of doujin translation groups in existence). However, the amount of text is just so much smaller (much of a doujin's information is contained in the pictures, after all). So that's completely reasonable, though this forum is probably not the best place to provide doujin/manga translations.

Third, the trickiest part, payment/delivery.

I won't go in detail here. Just take note that some plattforms like Paypal do not endorse payments that are - in any way whatsoever - related to pornographic contents (even if it's just a translation). Also consider the legal frame. But things like that work out eventually, anyway.

Lastly, on actual quality.
I learned Japanese in university, it was my major. I am currently living and working in Japan.
Rather than examples of previous works, I'm more interested in picking a small rpg game and translating it for free. I have one in mind, but you can always try to suggest something.
I also already received a request, and if that person is okay with it, I might share the finished work as an example.

If so, please do. I'm still assuming you somewhat underestimate the work related to translate any game worth a translation.
Also, I'm not sure if you are intending to work with CAT tools, but if so, you'd have to find ways to extract and reinsert the text. Which do exist, but will not work in many cases. It also depends on the engine the game works with (RPGMaker is an easy case, but others may be not). On the other hand, if you intend to do the translation within the game engine, the work conditions become much more difficult (take terminology for example).

Phew, that was a lot of text. I believe I covered most points, but feel free to add things I might have missed!

I'm still sceptical though. The legal problems stay (as said: It's a gray area at best - in all legislations that I'm aware of, including the USA.) and considering that some people, who also have experience in the field, do translations for non-profit, does not improve the conditions for profit-oriented translations either.

But well, good luck then. Let's see how it turns out.

 

[Megas]

Re: Professional Translator for Hire.

Translating games is too expensive probably but it could be good for translating other stuff like guides and stuff.
Like I could pay 20$ for translating Venus Blood GAIA wiki so it's more playable.

Perfectly legal too.