It doesn't look like anyone's got any issues to report? No questions to ask? Eh, I'm not going to slam down a deadline or anything. But I might stop checking my notifications every day.
I'm going to go ahead and sort through my thoughts about the project now. Mostly for my sake, because it helps to put things to words, but the reader might also find some things interesting. If you don't, then, well. You don't have to read it. It's really long anyways.
Background
Most of my first playthrough of SEQUEL awake happened between 23rd and 29th of March. During this time I made spotty notes about possible problematic parts (puns mostly), and observations about how the characters talk, if they use any specific vocabulary often, and such things. The notes weren't immensely helpful or organized. Over about 81 days between when I started working on the translation and when I posted this thread, I worked in some capacity on 76 of them.
In retrospect, there are two things. First, I should have kept better notes. Maybe I should invest in CAT software that has a decent memory tool before the lore overwhelms me. I'm too lazy to organize a spreadsheet, so I just
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and it quickly degenerated into a mess. And I still keep dumping things into it. At least now I'm keeping three files instead of one to organize things better.
Second is that I should have taken more breaks. Especially during the H-scene translation hell I dug myself into. I'm fairly certain I would've got the scenes done faster and less laboriously if I had taken two breaks a week instead of about one break every other week. Whatever, watch me fly into the translation sun.
With SEQUEL blight I went into the project without any translation planning or strategy, without any translation theory, without any knowledge about RPGMaker workings, and having only played half of the game in some part of 2018. That resulted in the sinking ship that I need to issue constant patches for. This time I had vague translation strategies (some of which even survived collision with the work!), rudimentary translation theory, fair knowledge of RPGMaker, and having played through the game and most of the side content. This helped.
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Translation plan
For SEQUEL awake, I had myself the important goal of making
explicable decisions. Not necessarily defensible ones. For example, the two basic reasons why Pirila uses "
ya" is that 1) her accent is recognizable and 2) she uses a noticeable second-person singular pronoun that the rest of the cast don't. There's some more nuance to it, but that's the basic reason. It's an accountable decision in that if someone finds fault with it or asks me to explain it, I should be able to do so. Whether that or others are
good decisions or not is up to argument, which is fine.
Sometimes the decisions are affective. For example, during the storyline's climax I thought a lot about
whether to use "fuck off" or "screw off" when you're facing Siblum right before the credits. I felt the first one was too dramatic, but the second one was too tame. I erred on the side of dramatic. I considered that if the reader's engaging with the work, a "fuck off" is more appropriate given the circumstances. Either the reader sympathizes with Sheena meaning Sibluml killed a friend, the reader sympathizes with the protagonist and blames Sibluml for instigating everything, or the reader's really let down by the stupid eggman and wants to tell it to fuck off. Of course, assuming that the reader's not engaging with the work would not be helpful, because then the decision doesn't matter.
A side note. You might find the above explanations sounding rather cut-and-dry and calculative. It's art after all! Well, I don't trust my artist's instinct with big things. It guides me to decisions like "
Kuruha seems like the type of woman who says yup", and there's no real way to explain that. I couldn't begin to tell you what's the difference between a person who says "
yup" more often than "
yep", except that I think Kuruha is one. And I don't mean to say I don't use instinct ever--I use a translator's instinct, as appropriate. But, well, that's for another post.
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Issue - character voices
There's ten main characters. Twelve, if you count Sheena and Dire. They have different voices each: not necessarily unique, but different. My biggest problem with translating this game was that the three written voices that come to me naturally are formal, very formal, and texting friends/shitposting. The first one is the only one that might be generally helpful to have in my toolkit if only for the narration. The middle one I might've used once when Nazuna was apologizing about something? The last one might have enjoyed some very slight unconscious channeling into parts of Yanie's or Saxa's speech. It was rather difficult to try and juggle all of them.
Some characters I liked less than others. It might be because the large amount of characters sort of diluted their depth, making them bit more caricaturized than I'd like. Or it may have been personal preference. In any case, I worry for Yanie and Alma in particular. That my mild dislike of them is apparent through the text, or that it affected them indirectly through me unconsciously caring less about how they end up.
And I guess Alma's also got the problem that I couldn't naturally cram meowing in words like "
Nazuna". So I mixed in some "
nya" because I didn't want to edit all the regular meowing away, I wanted to cut the joke even less, and I am actively hostile to the idea of changing Nazuna's name to fit a meowing joke in. So, it's a disaster. Neither could I cram it into "
Andelan", and I wasn't brave enough to change that name to, even though it very likely would have been the optimal choice. I don't think anyone would have suffered if I changed it to something like "
Evdelan" -> "
Mewdelan".
Pirila worries me, not because I don't like her character, but because I am inexperienced with writing an apparent-but-not-too-thick accent. Also, I made the inadvisable decision of having her use "
ya" instead of "
you" and kept forgetting about it. I hope I fixed them all in 1.0.1, but probably not. There are occasions, especially when she explains stuff, that I don't think I did a good job with carrying her accent around.
Clar worries me too, because his presence is thin. My notes contain his name, his pronoun
boku, the joke Succubus (male), and a note on how I wrote the way he commonly laughs. There's literally nothing about his voice there? What did I even do? I hope my instincts didn't lead me too much astray, because it's only now that I realize that no alarm bells rung in my head at any point with him. Which is pretty wild.
In general, it's difficult for me to judge the individual voices of the characters, having just written them. Typical solutions to this problem would be to have a test reader (or an editor) to openly communicate with about the perceived voices, or to take a break of a few months and come back with somewhat fresher eyes. I don't really want to do either, so...they are what they are. I can only hope that I got there.
Other issues
Skill names are a problem. I talked about this somewhat in my readme, but I remain too lazy to use substitution so there's not a great tonal difference between the skills of many characters. A lot of Sheila's skill names are also a real word salad. I probably should figure out a good strategy to dealing with this. I'm not sold on the Final Fantasy 7's Omnislash-style strategy. If you're unfamiliar with it, Cloud's limit break Omnislash 超究武神覇斬 [
choukyuu bushin hazan] is apparently literally closer to "
Super Extreme Martial God Supreme Slash". But, eh. Bears thinking about.
My past translation decisions haunt me. I no longer would like to use "
bon appetit" in any form during my translations, but I was forced to. When gifting Infernal Cookies to Kuruha, the first thing she says is word-for-word what Rabi said in blight when you gifted them to her. Of course, the rest of the conversation is different. But I hesitate to change it for the sake of all the people who already gifted Rabi Infernal Cookies.
My current translation decisions haunt me too. The Empress/Emperor of Rage situation is a mess that I should have sorted out before giving up on. Pond of Ayakashi's name is a stretch: I assumed an unusual reading because of the Shikinowan stuff nearby. I'm not happy with Eerie as a Shikinowan creature, it's a stretch. Also it disincentivizes me into using the excellent word "
eerie" less. There's a pinch too much noja.
I think I take too much refuge in the awful, awful joke of quoting the Latin of Mikael Agricola when he invented written Finnish: Douglas Robinson translated it as "
for nothing is simultaneously started and perfected". I cannot describe how funny it is for me to liken my hobbyist translation of a porn game to the life work of some guy who started the literary tradition of a culture. It's so funny that I think I'm actually believing in it a little, and avoiding taking full responsibility for what I write. I might have to find another piece of pretentious Latin to quote in the future.
Finally, and most importantly, I didn't catch any Jojo references. This likely means I missed a Jojo reference.
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Successes
While it's dicy business to review your own work (especially after such a short time when you haven't yet had time to improve), I'm going to do it anyways because no one can stop me: I think that I managed to carry the general tone of the work well. A traditional adventure - highs and lows, betrayal and hijinks. Sharp edges you could hurt yourself with under the gentle surface. A soft breeze through the barren yet beautiful--okay, I'll stop. In the big picture, it's fine.
I think I did a decent job keeping unwanted cultural influences out of the work. Not a great one: I probably should've discarded "
speak of the devil" for being too Christian, but I kept it since it's not
really a biblical reference and there are actual monsters which I used 'devil' for in the universe. Otherwise, it was the standard fare. Avoiding usage of phrases that are tied to the real world like "
oh my God" or "
what on Earth", if there wasn't a reason to.
A little awkwardly, I decided that this included the "
missionary" position. Since, you know, whether the obvious etymology is factual or not, it's too obvious. There might be an argument for keeping it '
missionary' if 正常位 has roots in the spread of German sexology in the 1900s to Japan. But that's a really deep cut for like two uses for the word. I'm not about to try and find out, and I'm certainly not going to try and puzzle out the possible religious motivations of these sexologists. I'm still counting it as a success.
I feel that translating 鈴口 as "
bell end" was a small stroke of genius, even if it isn't very erotic. The reason why this is hilariously accurate is left as an exercise to the reader.
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Conclusion
I should read more books.
What's that, the conclusion doesn't follow? Hey, I like books. In all seriousness, this time I didn't learn any massive obvious things. I learned a lot of little things, that I should keep better notes, and that I should read more translation theory. Maybe play some game that has a translation I love side by side with the original, so I can
steal ideas gain inspiration.
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You're still here? Or scrolled past the rambling mess? You might be interested in knowing that
I've been translating SEQUEL colony
.
I might post updates about it on my profile again, or I might not. And I don't yet have a good estimate on how long it might take.
