Recurring terms[]
Under more than one translators, some recurring terms could be differently translated. I'll be making a list of them here so that we can make them common across all cases. Frankincense 08:37, September 6, 2010 (UTC)
P.S. Make a discussion regarding this in its page. Frankincense 07:45, September 8, 2010 (UTC)
Honorifics[]
How to preserve honorifics in case it goes with rank/title/career. 用務員さん would be Janitor-san, which sounds a little off. Or is it just me? :P I was thinking of using Mr. Janitor, but it sounds even more off.
Should we discard it? But I think if we use honorifics after names or words like "onee-chan" or "ani-sama", we should use it in all cases too.
Frankincense 08:37, September 6, 2010 (UTC)
Err, if it's for cases such as janitor-san of the sort, I personally suggest we scrap the idea. It disrupts the overall flow of the story and all in all, it will confuse some of the more unfamiliar VN readers. Onee-chan and other honorifics of the use is pretty much more common methinks, and it shouldn't bother anyone too much. Plus, it adds a distinct more Japanese-y flavour to the VN, so I say it's good. Just that like all languages, can't really translate one term to another smoothly, honorifics are one of those cases.
Paladinoras 13:16, September 16, 2010 (UTC)
Original Japanese terms[]
Umm some terms like kyuutoushitsu (hot water room) or anmitsu (a Japanese dessert) is pretty difficult to translate into English. And should we keep some terms to their original Japanese form? (e.g. ani and onee-chan) (This discussion includes onomatopoeia too.) I'm thinking about a solution here:
1) Just literally translate it (clearly a bad decision)
2) Leave it as is
3) Leave it as is, and attach a footnote
4) Translate to the nearest English term available (for example, kyuutoushitsu -> kitchen(?))
5) Tweak with the original context a little
What do you think? And any more suggestions? Frankincense 02:24, September 1, 2010 (UTC)
I personally say 3. Amaterasu Translations did the same for Cross Channel and I think it worked out for them Just add like...TL note, somewhere on the bottom.
Paladinoras 09:28, September 1, 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, I think it's either localising those terms completely or attaching footnotes. However, I believe not all of the terms can be localised very accurately, and thus we may have to simply use their closest English equation. But some terms like food names (like anmitsu in your example) are just impossible to translate. Based on experience, on a manga chapter I translated, I had to leave a note to explain shortly what inarizushi is. So, I'm in for using footnotes altogether, rather than using them sometimes and using localised equations on other times.
Perhaps we can do it like how Insani did for Wind. They left footnotes in dialogue, e.g. "I choked after tasting the enormous wasabi1". Of course the 1 is made subscript. And they had a separate document for the footnotes (it was a help file, iirc). It contained an index of the footnotes, terms, character list, also even walkthrough and lyrics for the songs. Maybe we can also make something similar; either a help file, a PDF, a web page with navigations, or a simple VB-based navigable app. It's just because I think leaving footnotes in VNs will not make them very neat compared to doing so for manga.
For ways of addressing like onee-chan, pretty much I've tried elaborating my views to Frank via visitor message through SH (for your convenience, here is it: http://paste2.org/p/974081
Oneecon 10:40, September 3, 2010 (UTC)
Err, you have a point there, Iggy, but from personal experience, I can say for myself, and a few other VN players that having to look up a PDF help file everytime you find an unusual term can be rather tedious and annoying. And the TL note doesn't have to make it unneat and such, just put it in a bracket and slap it on the back of the sentence, at least IMO, that's how it will work best. It won't interrupt the whole reading flow of the VN too much, and it will help the readers.
Paladinoras 13:20, September 3, 2010 (UTC)
Inconvenience is guaranteed if we use such a method lol. Actually to me too since I never only play a VN when I do (if I failed to phrase that sentence, I simply mean that I usually also have other things open while playing a VN). Sooo it's down to attaching footnotes I guess. Yeah, guess we can make it quite neat since it will disappear along with the text block when triggered (completely forgot about this). I'm not really knowledgeable about text insertion in VN hacking, but is it possible to do something like this to avoid cluttering the textbox when we need more room than what we can spare? Of course with hope that the TL note shown in the image is gonna be triggerable along with the text block (i.e. it will disappear if the text block does).
Oneecon 20:53, September 3, 2010 (UTC)
@Ig's picture : ...I'm not sure if BGI/Ethornell engine is powerful enough to do that. *scratch head* Maybe we'll simply add line breaks to separate footnotes from the texts. If it doesn't fit in the box, we can change text size. Frankincense 08:57, September 6, 2010 (UTC)
Narrative tense[]
What should we use for narrative tense? Past tense or present tense?
I prefer present tense, because it gives the readers a real-time feel, and the feel that they're one with the protagonist, not just them being told a story.
What do you think? Frankincense 05:58, August 31, 2010 (UTC)
As I said before, I do believe that a mix of both is better, although for narration, past tense is better methinks.
Paladinoras 08:02, August 31, 2010 (UTC)
Yep.
So we use mainly present tense; and past tense when Kouhei talks about the past, e.g. his childhood, and things that just happened, right? Frankincense 02:24, September 1, 2010 (UTC)
Since the story is told from a first person's point of view, I think we should use present tense mainly, yeah. Basically I'm just strengthening points already said above. It's just like how you talk to other people in a live chat (real life or messenger or whatever); you talk in a present tense but you use past tense for something like... "Hey, I saw this chic walking around the town centre yesterday, and I couldn't get my eyes off of her!".
However, based on my personal experience, narrative stories written in present tense tend to be prone to mistakes (often in a tedious rate) caused by wrong perception of the tenses. So editors will have to be much more thorough. :3
Oneecon 10:54, September 3, 2010 (UTC)
Err, yeah, Iggy got it on the mark there. XD
I don't generally use present tense much, so as a consequence, my editing may not be as effective as it should be. But nevertheless, I'll try my best to make it work.
Paladinoras 13:14, September 3, 2010 (UTC)