Even as the Narcissu 2 project had been winding down, I’ve been searching for a new project.

Narcissu 3 negotiations are, shall we say, extremely difficult now that the PSP version is out. The PSP version means on top of having to get permissions from every last writer, artist, composer and voice actor, there’s now a whole company to deal with. I haven’t given up hope just yet, but let’s just say it’s “extremely difficult”.

So in the meantime, here’s a new project! Project T0rama, aka. Translation-Matsuri. As part of the new site I’m building for people who want to translate things in peace. (See the news post about it.)

It is open to anyone who can translate. The main goal here is to work together, with other translators, and creating a complete game.

You might think it’s like an al|together 2005 or al|together 2006 but there’s a few really big differences.

First, there’s only 1 work. It’s not 10 people doing 10 different things. There’s 1 game to be worked on, and everyone’s working on it.

Second, T0rama is all about building a community of translators. It’s about people looking at each others’ work, making comments, corrections, learning from each other. We’re supposed to help each other out, learning along the way.

If you’ve always wondered what it’s like to translate a VN, but didn’t know how, or were intimidated by the size and scope, here’s the best chance to give it a shot!

There’s no huge time commitment. If you have time to commit one script translation, and can check/look at one other person’s script, then that’s more than enough.

The game

The game I’ve selected is Kisaragi no Hougyoku, a gakuenmono (story set in school), and relatively lighter fare than what I normally work on. There’s a “Lite” version in English written by the original author himself, but we’ll be tackling the full game, from top to bottom.

It’s a nice read, and we have full enthusiastic cooperation of the original author. There’s even word of new graphics and stuff to go with the release when it happens, and the final version will be pull into the app store and properly distributed.

Why?

Why am I going through this crazy group translation format? Isn’t it faster to just do it solo or with one or two other people?

Absolutely.

But, I’ve always hated how translators don’t “travel” much. They more or less form their circle of people they work with, but rarely reach outside beyond them once they’re settled.

Then comes the problem, how are you supposed to get help when you want to take on a big project? The few translators you know are likely to be busy with their own stuff. And working with complete strangers for 1MB worth of script is very high risk.

You want people you know, both in terms of work quality, and personality. The only way to get that is to go out and meet people. That’s what this project is. Get a game translated, and on the side, meet some people who you might want to work on a big project with later! Hint. Hint.