JSK工房 Hgames Translation Thread

[Tellukoz]

Okay, this got tense pretty quickly, any feedback can be useful, but the people translating this are doing a good job so far, and using their OWN time to do it, no one is paying them (as far as I know), the last thing we need is people writing here about translations without actually touching any file of the game (sorry for any grammal error)

 

[GEORGEM]

Frankly, I'm surprised anyone even translates these games, much less for free, if I knew Japanese well enough to understand the text, I'd definitely just enjoy them by myself without even stepping foot into these forums. The fact that these translators not only translate the games, but also replace the text in the games is a testament to how uniquely dedicated they are to this community. There's only one official translation right now of the 20+ games JSK has released, the rest were made here on this forum. Freaking these guys learned Adobe Flash of all things! Then learned the newer Adobe Air when JSK switched. You can tell they're not just half-assing it either, when they talk about stuff like fitting the text in the boxes and formatting, that's a level of detail that I'm certain I would've left alone. I feel like most members of this forum (and the main Hgames forum) will agree with me in saying that the translators here are a major part of the forum, much more so than people who comment once every 5 months or so just to shit on people.

Critique of their work is fine, I would assume most translators would like to know when they've mistranslated something, or when the context leads to a different meaning for a sentence or passage. However, a lot of the negative feedback in these past 2 pages seems less like people trying to help out, and more like trolls dedicated to tearing down all the hard work everyone's put into translating, editing, and making guides. I think we should all just collectively ignore them and go back to what we were doing before.

 

[thatguyinthecorner]

Can't we just learn coding and start making our own games for free in our own free time?

I'm saying that if it's a problem with the game engine maybe you could get someone to help fix it? I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to help if you looked for them. I'm kinda confused since this is the first time I'm hearing about this problem and wondering what can be done to fix it.

 

[Fenko_I]

Well if you find someone like that let us know, for now we are working on what we actually can.

 

[Delexicus]

Frankly, I'm surprised anyone even translates these games, much less for free, if I knew Japanese well enough to understand the text, I'd definitely just enjoy them by myself without even stepping foot into these forums. The fact that these translators not only translate the games, but also replace the text in the games is a testament to how uniquely dedicated they are to this community. There's only one official translation right now of the 20+ games JSK has released, the rest were made here on this forum. Freaking these guys learned Adobe Flash of all things! Then learned the newer Adobe Air when JSK switched. You can tell they're not just half-assing it either, when they talk about stuff like fitting the text in the boxes and formatting, that's a level of detail that I'm certain I would've left alone. I feel like most members of this forum (and the main Hgames forum) will agree with me in saying that the translators here are a major part of the forum, much more so than people who comment once every 5 months or so just to shit on people.

Critique of their work is fine, I would assume most translators would like to know when they've mistranslated something, or when the context leads to a different meaning for a sentence or passage. However, a lot of the negative feedback in these past 2 pages seems less like people trying to help out, and more like trolls dedicated to tearing down all the hard work everyone's put into translating, editing, and making guides. I think we should all just collectively ignore them and go back to what we were doing before.

That is my suggestion. This forum does have an ignore function. I suggest that everyone use that feature if they do not want to spend their free time reading someone elses entitled rants.

 

[Aesthetic]

That is my suggestion. This forum does have an ignore function. I suggest that everyone use that feature if they do not want to spend their free time reading someone elses entitled rants.

Did you update Magical Girl Buster in your guide, because it's still untranslated there T_T

 

[Delexicus]

Did you update Magical Girl Buster in your guide, because it's still untranslated there T_T

I made the guide freely editable so anyone who is so inclined can make corrections and improvements to it. My free time has been almost wholly taken up with working on the MGB translation as of late.

EDIT 1.) I would suggest making a comment on the offending picture. One can do this by clicking on the plus sign that appears off the right side of the G Doc. Other editors and viewers can see the comment and make appropriate corrections.

 

[Icevail]

Okay, this got tense pretty quickly, any feedback can be useful, but the people translating this are doing a good job so far, and using their OWN time to do it, no one is paying them (as far as I know), the last thing we need is people writing here about translations without actually touching any file of the game (sorry for any grammal error)

We are not getting paid for this, that's for certain.

We / I respect / listen any kind of feedback / suggestion We / I receive to the translations, but when its smashed to our faces with a baseball bat and then kicked to groin to finish it off (figuratively speaking), it really doesn't encourage the others or me, to continue improving the content any further, especially when the said feedback is consisting complaining / whining / trashing / blatant criticism masqueraded as a constructive feedback.

We know we can't do perfect job and that we work with limited capabilities / time and knowledge, but people really need stop to harass us about it, we are not paid professionals with +20 years of experience on this field, we're amateurs, rookies, greenhorns, hobbyists and horny guys (maybe some girls too, I don't judge), those entitled pricks, whom demand perfection from us, are out of their god damn minds, if they so much love perfection, they can hire a freaking professional to do this for them.

I know my translations are not the best, however, those who know how I do things, know that I will keep releasing improved versions over the time, until I reach the point where I can't improve the quality any further, I am well aware I start from crude, basic as basic can be translation level, covering the gameplay parts, then the next one has the dialogue, interface, endings, then I start to improve the content little by little, to the point where I can't do anything myself to improve it, that's the reason why there is 20th version of Irene out there, its on a point I can't improve it for any further by myself and have given free hands on anyone, whom wants to finish it off, but this apparently is not good enough for some people, they demand more and better, and when they see that I can't do any better, they proceed to trash everything I worked for like it was their freaking entitled birthright.

 

[Delexicus]

We are not getting paid for this, that's for certain.

We / I respect / listen any kind of feedback / suggestion We / I receive to the translations, but when its smashed to our faces with a baseball bat and then kicked to groin to finish it off (figuratively speaking), it really doesn't encourage the others or me, to continue improving the content any further, especially when the said feedback is consisting complaining / whining / trashing / blatant criticism masqueraded as a constructive feedback.

We know we can't do perfect job and that we work with limited capabilities / time and knowledge, but people really need stop harassing us about it, we are not paid professionals with +20 years of experience on this field, we're amateurs, rookies, greenhorns, hobbyists and horny guys (maybe some girls too, I don't judge), those entitled pricks, whom demand perfection from us, are out of their god damn minds.

Just a heads up. I put both ThatGuyInTheCorner and HarleyQuin13 on my ignore list. Neither of them have contributed anything of enough value to the discussions they participated in to warrant tolerating their continued abuse. I recommend others that have been offended by them to do the same. Remember, they have no power over those that do not hear them.

You can add people to your ignore list by visiting that particular person's profile page, then clicking on the ignore button that is displayed to the right of their profile picture.

 

[QueenCompost]

I'm saying that if it's a problem with the game engine maybe you could get someone to help fix it? I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to help if you looked for them. I'm kinda confused since this is the first time I'm hearing about this problem and wondering what can be done to fix it.

I'm willing to give ThatGuyInTheCorner the benefit of the doubt, since it may be entirely possible he might not understand how difficult simply translating the game can be mixed in with a large dose of tone deafness. Nobody on the team right now (as far as I'm aware) has the knowledge or the time to learn the knowledge on how to edit / add speech bubbles. In all likelihood, learning how to add speech bubbles and then redoing all the translations in a game could delay the next release almost indefinitely with all the different ways a sentence or phrase could be translated. Just translating the work is time consuming enough, and the releases being put out are the best compromise between speed and quality.

I get where you're coming from, in the sense that you want the best possible translation to be released, but this isn't the way to do it. If you're bringing forth criticism, without giving the team the benefit of the doubt that they're putting out the best they can, you're not gonna get good responses, especially since the entire project is volunteer based.

If anybody is not satisfied with the releases, they are more than welcome to create their own translations. If you want there to be more speech bubbles, the onus is on you. Otherwise, you'll just have to trust that the translation team is putting out the best that they can. I've only been on the team for a couple days and lemme tell ya I VASTLY underestimated the amount of work and technical knowledge that goes into translating these games.

 

[Icevail]

I'm saying that if it's a problem with the game engine maybe you could get someone to help fix it? I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to help if you looked for them. I'm kinda confused since this is the first time I'm hearing about this problem and wondering what can be done to fix it.

The older JSK games had much less dialogue in comparison to the recent ones, I came across with 'not enough space' -issue multiple times on the Irene's player choices and her responses,
too much information to be accurately written and placed within limited space as written English which takes a lot more font space than hiragana and katagana, resulted me to simply cut out unnecessary dialogue between the two, needless to say, I had to rewrite a lot to make it fit.

There was literally a history lesson on the world setting told by the protag and then followed by Irene's own history knowledge about the gods of old and the ancient war where the evil god was sealed and how mages were part of the resurrection / sealing ritual on the past ages.

The protag's questions / responses often were too long for the player choice boxes to show, leaving me no other choice, but to oversimplify everything and leave parts of the dialogue out.

And right now, the newest game faces similar dilemma, if I write the translation literally, some of the text will end up going over the boundary and won't show to player, meaning I have to find alternative way to write it down, while keeping in on the point, as you probably noticed, Harley did trash the unfinished partial in rather stellar fashion, because I had changed parts of the contents of the dialogue in order to keep it short and visible to the player, but he unfortunately fails to understand that there is no other choice but do it, as if the sentence is too long in English, the whole sentence has to be shortened, simplified and cut, and with it, the next dialogue has to be reworked, to make sense with the previous one etc. That means some lines will be ignored and cut and at worst case, completely rewritten, and with it, the accuracy will drop when compared to the original dialogue.

Mid combat sentences can't be any longer than ~25 fonts (-1 for every [space] and ".", "! / ?" or -2 for "!?") and some of her lines are longer, especially when her armor / clothes are busted, or when her special / magic skills are charging up, those just won't be shown to player as the text cuts off as it goes over the given boundary.

For example;
Her super magic cast dialogue for 'Aura Blast', "I hope you're strong enough to withstand the strongest magical attack I have!",
Or when her armor is ruined, "You've destroyed my armor, you cowardly bastard!",
Or when her clothes are torn, "Don't you know any decency, you human scum!?"

And as you can see, those lines go way and some just slightly beyond the ~25 fonts that can be shown in her little, mid battle dialogue box.
Meaning I have to rewrite some and shorten some.

Same applies to the whole game in question.

 

[Delexicus]

The older JSK games had much less dialogue in comparison to the recent ones, I came across with 'not enough space' -issue multiple times on the Irene's player choices and her responses,
too much information to be accurately written and placed within limited space as written as English, resulted me to simply cut out unnecessary dialogue between the two.

There was literally a history lesson on the world setting told by the protag and then followed by Irene's own history knowledge about the gods of old and the ancient war where the evil god was sealed and how mages were part of the resurrection / sealing ritual on the past ages.

Impossible to fit in within ~40 fonts (one tiny speech bubble), I had to make it simple and short.

And protag's questions / responses often were too long for the player choice boxes to show, leaving no other choice, but to oversimplify everything and leave parts of the dialogue out.

That's one of the reasons we are looking into using different fonts. MS Gothic is horribly space inefficient. We looked up good web fonts to use based on compactness, readability, and style. The font Georgia is a good pick. Here is an example I put together. The translation quality of the example is a first draft FYI.

 

[Icevail]

That's one of the reasons we are looking into using different fonts. MS Gothic is horribly space inefficient. We looked up good web fonts to use based on compactness, readability, and style. The font Georgia is a good pick. Here is an example I put together. The translation quality of the example is a first draft FYI.

I was thinking to use CC Wildwords myself at some point, the font that's often used in fan translation doujins, but for artistic reasons I decided not to use it, it made serious line of dialogue look like a comedy skit, hard to take a scene seriously when the heroine pours her heart and worries to player in 'fap font'

But its totally suited for the sex scene moans and dialogue.

Also, it looks good, ganbatte kudasai~

 

[DarkFire1004]

@DarkFire1004 Is it possible to block @thatguyinthecorner from this thread? Not as censorship or anything but he's been making passive aggressive posts about the speed and lack of perceived "quality" of the translations despite contributing nothing constructive and also acting like he's entitled to a translation. Pretty please?

I won't be blocking him from the thread, but this is not the first time he's gone into a translation thread and unnecessarily caused issues because he felt entitled to free stuff. I normally don't care if people share their opinions, negative or not, but it's very clear that his posts aren't in the interest of providing feedback or support, but to profit off the work of others.

@thatguyinthecorner I am giving you an official warning now to knock it off. The next time I hear about something like this, you will be banned for 2 weeks.

 

[Harleyquin13]

Predictable responses from the inhabitants of the goldfish bowl creative writing circle and their sycophantic bottom-feeder hangers on.

• We're doing this for free.
• We're putting in the hours, so are entitled to what we want.
• Anyone not willing to kiss the ground the machine translator worshippers walk on can sod off while we continue our "noble" work in the autistic bubble. Translators can continue to misrepresent creative writing as "translation" and the "fans" will lap it up since they're so starved of anything to fap to.

etc.

Unsurprisingly there's not been a single rebuttal regarding the actual translation itself. It's a very basic point: if what little accuracy to begin with is being sacrificed on the grounds of expediency then it's not a translation. It's a localisation and/or creative writing and should be marketed as such. Putting in 20 rewrites based on zero fundamental understanding of the original text is not something to be proud of, it's a blatant omission the job is based on educated guesswork. That's fine for a rewrite, but not for something which claims to be a translation.

We are not getting paid for this, that's for certain.

We / I respect / listen any kind of feedback / suggestion We / I receive to the translations, but when its smashed to our faces with a baseball bat and then kicked to groin to finish it off (figuratively speaking), it really doesn't encourage the others or me, to continue improving the content any further, especially when the said feedback is consisting complaining / whining / trashing / blatant criticism masqueraded as a constructive feedback.

We know we can't do perfect job and that we work with limited capabilities / time and knowledge, but people really need stop to harass us about it, we are not paid professionals with +20 years of experience on this field, we're amateurs, rookies, greenhorns, hobbyists and horny guys (maybe some girls too, I don't judge), those entitled pricks, whom demand perfection from us, are out of their god damn minds, if they so much love perfection, they can hire a freaking professional to do this for them.

I know my translations are not the best, however, those who know how I do things, know that I will keep releasing improved versions over the time, until I reach the point where I can't improve the quality any further, I am well aware I start from crude, basic as basic can be translation level, covering the gameplay parts, then the next one has the dialogue, interface, endings, then I start to improve the content little by little, to the point where I can't do anything myself to improve it, that's the reason why there is 20th version of Irene out there, its on a point I can't improve it for any further by myself and have given free hands on anyone, whom wants to finish it off, but this apparently is not good enough for some people, they demand more and better, and when they see that I can't do any better, they proceed to trash everything I worked for like it was their freaking entitled birthright.

The older JSK games had much less dialogue in comparison to the recent ones, I came across with 'not enough space' -issue multiple times on the Irene's player choices and her responses,
too much information to be accurately written and placed within limited space as written English which takes a lot more font space than hiragana and katagana, resulted me to simply cut out unnecessary dialogue between the two, needless to say, I had to rewrite a lot to make it fit.

There was literally a history lesson on the world setting told by the protag and then followed by Irene's own history knowledge about the gods of old and the ancient war where the evil god was sealed and how mages were part of the resurrection / sealing ritual on the past ages.

The protag's questions / responses often were too long for the player choice boxes to show, leaving me no other choice, but to oversimplify everything and leave parts of the dialogue out.

And right now, the newest game faces similar dilemma, if I write the translation literally, some of the text will end up going over the boundary and won't show to player, meaning I have to find alternative way to write it down, while keeping in on the point, as you probably noticed, Harley did trash the unfinished partial in rather stellar fashion, because I had changed parts of the contents of the dialogue in order to keep it short and visible to the player, but he unfortunately fails to understand that there is no other choice but do it, as if the sentence is too long in English, the whole sentence has to be shortened, simplified and cut, and with it, the next dialogue has to be reworked, to make sense with the previous one etc. That means some lines will be ignored and cut and at worst case, completely rewritten, and with it, the accuracy will drop when compared to the original dialogue.

Mid combat sentences can't be any longer than ~25 fonts (-1 for every [space] and ".", "! / ?" or -2 for "!?") and some of her lines are longer, especially when her armor / clothes are busted, or when her special / magic skills are charging up, those just won't be shown to player as the text cuts off as it goes over the given boundary.

For example;
Her super magic cast dialogue for 'Aura Blast', "I hope you're strong enough to withstand the strongest magical attack I have!",
Or when her armor is ruined, "You've destroyed my armor, you cowardly bastard!",
Or when her clothes are torn, "Don't you know any decency, you human scum!?"

And as you can see, those lines go way and some just slightly beyond the ~25 fonts that can be shown in her little, mid battle dialogue box.
Meaning I have to rewrite some and shorten some.

Same applies to the whole game in question.

Assertion: Literal translation is impossible because of character limits.
Rebuttal: Machine translation doesn't even do a good job to begin with, and the translators are so liberal with the interpretation it ends up embellishing the original intent and adds unnecessary words to the word count.

Methodology:
Work from the original text. Identify base meaning and do basic translation preserving as much original meaning as possible. Taking into account 25 character limit, preserve core meaning of phrase while keeping to strict limits.

E.g. 人族風情が私に挑むとはな
Full translation: Lowly humans dare to challenge me?!
Core meaning: Humans aren't fit to fight the sovereign.
Trial translation: Lowly human fighting me? (24 characters including spaces and punctuation)

Rinse and repeat. Any liberal translations (貴様 becoming "bastard", "scum" or some such) is taken out of consideration. Complaining about word limits and getting even the basic understanding wrong makes whining "translators" look like fools.

More examples:

これを受けきれるか、貴様が
Can YOU withstand this?

この魔力に抗えるか？
Resist this magic?

ほう..., 面白い!
Hm, interesting!

何だと！私の鎧を弾くか、人族の剣が！
(One example of the 25 character limit being insufficient)
Full translation: No way! A human's sword able to rip apart my armour!
Core meaning: Human sword able to pierce her armour
Either change font (as suggested by one of the sycophants) or reduce size to accommodate. If not possible, preserve as much of the core meaning as possible. Word tricks like removing vowels while preserving meaning can be exploited.
Trial translation: His sword broke my armour (25 spaces)

我ら魔族の力を知れ
Know Our strength

覚悟せよ、人族の戦士
Steel thyself, warrior

うっ！？貴様、まさか狙って…!?
Ooh!? You aimed there!?

私を力だけの王と思うな
Full translation: Don't think I'm an all brawn, no brain monarch.
I'm not all brawn

む......、これくらいはやるか
Hmph, you'd go this far

なっ！？これしきて動きを止められると思う
Ah!? This won't stop me

The longer dialogue-based lines have more freedom to work with, but require the same attention to brevity and precise summary. Not that I'd expect the self-professed "rank amateurs" to care about, since they prize the hours devoted to the mundane copying, pasting and word editing to the actual task of getting the meaning across without winging it.

The above is no where near a perfect translation, but I'm not taking liberties with the text nor twisting the original lines with "creative license". This won't matter anyway to the "translators" and their hangers-on who have sworn oaths not to read anything from their detractors, but it'll serve as a reminder that their crusade is nothing about doing a proper job and more about boasting to others the number of hours dedicated to copying and pasting fabrications which will be lapped up by their slavishly devoted followers. Anyone not partisan to this debate can make up their own minds on what they think a translation should be, but it's going to be an argument using source material and primary interpretation on the one hand versus creative writing interpreted from machine output with no fundamental understanding of the original text. "World-class" interpretation isn't being requested, just the minimum of language equivalence to do justice to the task of interpretation. If that can't be done, especially by a team of "veterans" with long hours of copying and pasting behind their belt, then call it what it is and admit it's a rewrite and/or liberal reinterpretation of machine translation.

An epitath to the dying art of language translation(?), assuming the bubble inhabitants haven't already raised multiple petitions to delete the post.

 

[CosmicHouse]

Harley, I'm sure the other translators would welcome your translation advice once you're finished being an edgelord.

 

[Pacmanisawesome]

I mean there isn't much you can do in the face of overwhelming snobbishness other than to ignore them. There comes a time where even being right doesn't pardon your absolute lack of tact, terrible behavior, and fruitless criticism. Either he doesn't understand how obnoxious he sounds, doesn't care, or simply cannot help himself and continue to rant off where he clearly is not wanted. Either way he's just not someone worth talking to and really is best ignored.

 

[Fenko_I]

Alright Harley, how about, instead of sitting on the sidelines and being so upset with how we do things, you go on ahead and make your own translation? I mean with all that amazing skill and talent that you seem to have, I'm sure you'll bring forth a truly worthy piece of work that could be called an actual "translation" and be up to your standards!

I mean after all, we "creative" writers are just playing around with rocks in our goldfish bowl being praised by such simple minded people that have the audacity and gall to call what we do a "translation", that just cannot be!

So please, truly, go and make a true translation of the latest JSK game and show us all your superior skill and knowledge!

I would be so happy to see your work!

 

[Delexicus]

Alright Harley, how about, instead of sitting on the sidelines and being so upset with how we do things, you go on ahead and make your own translation? I mean with all that amazing skill and talent that you seem to have, I'm sure you'll bring forth a truly worthy piece of work that could be called an actual "translation" and be up to your standards!

I mean after all, we "creative" writers are just playing around with rocks in our goldfish bowl being praised by such simple minded people that have the audacity and gall to call what we do a "translation", that just cannot be!

So please, truly, go and make a true translation of the latest JSK game and show us all your superior skill and knowledge!

I would be so happy to see your work!

Letting this negativity fester won't do anyone any favors. This is not an argument that is worth pursuing considering HarleyQuin13's track record with dealing with criticism. You may not be aware, but this is far from how nasty he can be. He will quickly devolve into even more name calling and entrench himself in a persona of superior indifference towards helping others enjoy a translation. I remember one of his favorite lines is to say "Just learn Japanese it's not that hard". Or "Why should I help illiterate people stay illiterate".

At a certain point you have to realize that certain people are best to completely ignore if you wish to keep your sanity. Especially when dealing with someone with such blatant disregard for the basic concepts of

You must be registered to see the links

, and who apparently suffer from a superiority complex.

Let it go Fenko_I.

EDIT 1: I did something that I should have know better about and I read HarleyQuin13's last post. And then a few prior posts here and elsewhere. I had a different goal in mind than to convince him the error of his ways. I was looking for tell tale markers of a neurological disorder that is shaping his behavior. It doesn't take much to realize after you get him going with a criticism that he has

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(I highly recommend people read through this linked psychological paper. Here are some of the criteria for NPD.

1.)Long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance
2.)Excessive need for admiration
3.)Lacks basic understanding of others' feelings
4.)The narcissistic need to maintain a relatively positive self-image underlies individuals’ needs for validation and affirmation as well as the motivation to overtly and covertly seek out validation and self-enhancement experiences from the social environment
5.)A pathological complex that is self-reinforcing and produces deleterious effects on the individual, close relationships, and possibly the broader social community

It is important to remember that a narcissistic individual may not even be aware of their own affliction. There is no point in arguing with someone like that. They can not change. If they did, it would have deleterious effects on their self image. And that is one of the core tenets of a narcissistic individual. All must serve in propping up their self image to validate their self worth.

A narcissistic individual does not see criticisms of their behavior as a call to change, but as personal attacks on their core that must be defended and retaliated against.

Full disclosure on my part. I was diagnosed with a mild case of Asperger's syndrome (a form of autism) when I was ten so I'm a bit more aware of the nature of psychological disorders due to it being a part of my daily life. That plus the fact that I took and aced my Psychology courses in college.

I fully expect HarleyQuin13 to take this post as another perceived threat on his self worth and to begin throwing personal attacks my way.

 

[Icevail]

Harley, I'm sure the other translators would welcome your translation advice once you're finished being an edgelord.

We're not even considered as "translators" in his point of view, but vermin defiling his self entitled demand for perfection and quality, as you can clearly see, he knows a lot, but refuses to co-operate with us on civilized manner, nor work with us for a common cause, he'd rather rant, belittle us, and arrogantly assert his superiority over us.

I've seen similar behavior coming from "smurfs" in certain games, skilled and experienced players go trash beginners and then proceed to mock them, belittle them, harass them, telling them to uninstall and who knows what other worse forms of cyber bullying, to make beginners quit playing the game.

And Harley;

I'll gladly stop working on the partials* of these games the moment someone more skilled than me, takes up the torch and does it properly.
*Because that is clearly the message you're conveying to me / us by the way you communicate with me / us.)

I am well aware of my shortcomings and do what I can to cope with those, you however, not so much.