translation-discussion Category

The importance of passion and people

There are three things needed for the success of a VN translation, the obvious one is skill, but the other, equally important ones are often put far behind skill: passion, and good people.

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The psychological lifecycle of a project

Previously on Neechin, I’ve covered a few topics on project management, but mostly from the perspective of managing them from the cold management perspective. But you can’t forget that we’re dealing with people, and most importantly, it’s the people that will make or break a project, no amount of paying attention to processes, schedules, and other management tools will make up for when people fail.

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When and how to start off as a vn translator.

It’s a question with many sides to it: who is capable of being a translator, how do you know if you are capable, if you wanted to get into it, how do you start. Well? Are there any answers?

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Translation rating systems for VNs revisited

Rating systems are tricky to design, but in designing them you learn all sorts of things about what you’re rating… So, let’s take a deeper look, at how we can talk about how “good” a translation is, waving our hands, being vague, and generally not getting anywhere.

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Literal and Liberal, Conscious Translation Style Choice

Literal translations are bad. Liberal translations are bad. Fidelity is good. Fluidity is good. Anything is better than nothing. Nothing is better than crap. Just about everyone has their own conception of what’s “acceptable and proper” for a translated work. But let’s just step back for a moment, and figure out where the major positions are coming from, and then try to figure out where we want to stand, when.

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A baseline rating system for translations

Previously I’ve written about translation quality in the visual novel translation community, and the fact that peer review is an important part of the process of building something like a web of trust dealing with quality and reputation. However, we all sort of talk about ‘quality’ in vague terms on personal scales.

So, taking some ideas out of talks with zalas at encubed in #denpa, I’ve sketched out a possible way of at least talking about this topic on a common scale, a Z-scale so-to-speak, that sets some minimal criteria for talking about translation quality.

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What if translators weren't invisible...

For today, wander along with me on a thought experiment and ask, what kind of world would it be if translators weren’t invisible. A world where we give them more attention than they seem to get now. What kind of world would it be?

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Finding translation quality in the dark

There is a chicken and egg problem when it comes to translations. Those who are capable of judging the quality of a work, are also the ones who don’t have any particular need for the translation. Meanwhile, the people who must rely on a translation, are also the ones least able to decide whether a translation is good or not. Is there any way that we can close this gap of knowledge?

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Why does translation look so easy?

I’ve been wanting to write about the actual translation process, and translation in general, for a while now. The problem was that the topic was too huge, even if you know you’ll be writing a series of articles about the topic, where do you start?

One thing that soon came to mind that bridges what us translators of visual novels experience, and what the more general public experiences: Why is it that people seem to think translation is easy?

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New IRC channel for pooling of translation talent

Chance meetings change lives and create new things. However, to do this online, someone’s got to make a place for it. So today I’m launching an IRC channel to bring together as many talented people who are interested in visual novel translations that I can get in one place.

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