Quote:
Originally Posted by chrno_the_sinner
Before I start, let me say thank you for translating.
Now, I can see where 4chan is coming from. Umineko reads like a translation, not a novel. If the same translation style were to come from a fansub or whathaveyou, it would be perfectly fine. Since it's a novel (albeit a visual novel), there should be some flow, which isn't there. I can't get a feel for Ryuukishi07's writing style the same way I can from the official translations of novels such as Nisioisin's Death Note novel or Chain Mail (which utilized 5 different narration styles, all of which came out relatively clearly).
Compare it to Tsukihime. Umineko is a good deal 'chunkier', while Tsukihime reads very nicely, and has a flow to it as well. I'm supposed to get a feel for Battler's relations with his family, but I really have to strain, since the feeling doesn't convey itself as well as it should. Alternatively, I can see how Akiha and Shiki get along very clearly from their dialouge. To localize a VN, you don't only need to translate, but you almost have to rewrite it as well.
In any case, I truly appriciate what you guys have done. It saves me the trouble of going in blind with AGTH.
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Being a translator is so much fun. You won't make a penny and you might even learn that, though you thought you were bilingual all along and you could actually write in your mother tongue, you find out that you actually DON'T. Stuck between the purist crazies who won't let you swerve a bit from the original japanese and the idiotic crazies who say your english sucks.
Thank you so much for opening our eyes. What do you suggest now ? Should we kill ourselves in shame ? Would a knuckle from the pinkie suffice, perhaps ?
HELLO ??!! Either come back with something specific or don't start criticizing just for fun. We're a bilingual team, we're fluent and we even have COLLEGE DEGREES to prove it so stop wasting our time with groundless criticism.
If you have any specific point of incoherence/unnaturalness you wish to talk about, we happen to be open people. If what you say makes sense, it WILL be taken in consideration and might even end up in the final translation.
Oh, and in case you've never read any piece of work by Ryukishi07 in the original Japanese (which I highly suspect), you should know that he doesn't write novels. He writes mostly *dialogues* with narration interludes. Which is probably why he's not the nobel litterature prize, but we happen to like his work anyway.