Visual novel reader not translating ingame text

#Visual novel reader not translating ingame text professional#

When I was still a high school kid, a freelance literary translator did a presentation at our schoolВі. Until the line makes sense or youвЂ™re confident itвЂ™s not supposed to, I recommend leaving the line/section blank or at least leaving a strongly worded note to come back to it later. I canвЂ™t believe how many people seem constitutionally unable to do this, though the worst offenders are learners rather than translators). If you know someone with higher Japanese ability that can help check your translation of the line, ask them ( make sure to give sufficient context if at all possible.

Writers do sometimes make mistakes, but itвЂ™s probably you. If your translation is contradicted by other parts of the game, whether it be the situation the characters are in, the lines before it or after (painfully common), or something else, you should look at those line extra damn hard. The point is, we have a solution to the puzzle. Well, that or background 1 was a sort of generic movie-darkness-but-not-really kind of deal. The second background was probably going for an adjustment effect where everything but the light looked darker, but it wasnвЂ™t showing a bright light. I flipped the switch on the wall, turning on just the nightlight (гѓЉгѓ„гѓЎзђѓпј‰. For a subtle example of this, have something from a translation I love to hate on, Seabed:

Theoretically QA/proofreading is extra powerful in this regard for games, as they will usually play the game as they work, so they can spot backgrounds or character movements contradicting the text too. This is a pretty general principle and editors and proofreaders can both use it even if the translator does not, so itвЂ™s always a bit strange when I see some weird-ass obviously illogical mistranslation pop up. Does It Make Sense?Д«ar things that are written specifically to evoke surrealism, writers usually try to avoid things that obviously make no sense. Personally, I like to focus on two basic principles: always trying to detect possible gaps in your knowledge, and always considering whether your translation actually makes sense. There are more ways than one to avoid mistranslations, and often you can compensate for lacking in skill by being more cautious while reading the source text.

#Visual novel reader not translating ingame text professional#

Certainly most fan translators, and more professional translators than IвЂ™d like, are lacking in at least one of those two areas: personally, I am objectively significantly worse at Japanese than the average native Japanese high schoolerВ№. Reading a source text without making errors can be surprisingly difficult even with a decent grasp of both your source and target language. While writing sufficiently well in your target language is important to ensure both that the finished product is a smooth read and that no errors occur because of you being misinterpreted by your editor or audience, itвЂ™s all for nothing if you didnвЂ™t interpret your source correctly in the first place. Target language/text = language/text being translated into Source language/text = language/text being translated from For any fan translators unfamiliar with the jargon: