This quote here is a mood.

Seriously, game companies, stop allowing and encouraging perpetual NDAs.

Here's a highly competent translator looking to talk about his best work, and he just can't. Full stop.

Why is this a privilege? What does it take to stop making NDAs the norm?

https://twitter.com/JENTranslations/status/1406576542847696904

Why do perpetual game work NDAs keep happening?

Easy: The rise of translation agencies as publicly traded corporations.

They have every possible incentive to deny individuals the ability to earn a living outside of their purview.

They have zero incentive to make exceptions.

Since Uncle from Another World just recently got an anime announced, I want to talk a bit about what makes this story so compelling.

This both is and isn't an isekai manga - the uncle is back after spending 17 years in one, and he's now readapting to the real world. But the story is largely about the uncle and Takafumi living with each other and figuring out how to make a living off these new magical powers.

It's also about language. This man has to contend with tons of modern-day languages and concepts he doesn't understand.

People regularly reach out and ask me for advice on how to break into the J-E translation field, and what to expect from it once you get in.

I'm going to share a thread of my thoughts and advice here in hopes that it helps more people reach an informed decision. 1. What skills do you need for J-E TL? Here's a handy thread where I elaborate on that topic.

There is no one-size-fits-all TL skillset. Interpretation jobs require different skills than text translation, and EN fluency is vital.

https://twitter.com/dramata1/status/1237154234992414722?s=20

Now imagine how long we're going to wait for mainstream Western gaming media to start covering otome games in earnest.

It's a prolific genre with tons of titles both big and small, not to mention major advancements over decades. But to most people, they might as well not exist.

https://twitter.com/iiotenki/status/1370216816987889666

Here, have some light reading on what an otome game is.

animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2020-0…

https://twitter.com/Mcbuzzerr/status/1370226892893130753?s=20

I'm going to talk some about vernacular English and its place in J-E media translations, particularly those set in modern or near-modern settings.

Vernacular language is a translator's most powerful tool and a critical building block for every other form of literary writing. Let's start with an example: An introductory scene for a pair of characters in A3!, Juza and Banri. I'm going to post the source text, a straight/dry translation, and the translation that got put into the game.

This is the first impression the reader will get of both characters.

The SRW livestream featured some gag new SRW "features": The Discutter used for BBQ, familiars having kittens that tag along, and "When Ideon's Ide activates, it also destroys your game data". Terada's Shin SRW live play with Morizumi on guest commentary is starting.

One thing I notice in the game translation field is the difference in how senior and junior translators react to adversity, whether that's in the form of poorly organized source files, urgent deadlines, or client mandates that nobody agrees with. So here's some basic pointers. 1) Unusable/disorganized source files: This happens. I've gotten entire spreadsheets of dialogue with no listing of who's speaking. If you can't work on a file as-is, decline and send it back ASAP. Put the ball in the client's court to clean it up. It's not for you to solve.

I'm going to talk a bit about the individual skillset components that go into different types of translations, and why language pairings don't always go both ways.

Thread. Translators have 8 different linguistic skill components:

1. Reading target language
2. Writing target language
3. Hearing target language
4. Speaking target language

5. Reading source language
6. Writing source language
7. Hearing source language
8. Speaking source language

Dragon Quest has a long and interesting translation history which I would like to talk about.

A thread draws near! Command? It's hard to understate how much Nintendo strove to help make "Dragon Warrior" a thing in the West back in the late 80s. Copies of Dragon Warrior 1 are still cheap nowadays primarily because they shipped it for free with early Nintendo Power subscriptions.

I often see amateur J-E translators looking to go pro. There's a number of hurdles:

-There are barely any mentor figures in the industry
-There's no such thing as "entry-level" translation jobs/internships that check/correct work and offer detailed feedback and training "Just fan-translate some things for experience!"

-Fan TLs have no meaningful feedback mechanisms re: work quality, so "experience" is a relative term
-You can never be sure whether a client will like your work or frown upon it; drawbacks outweigh the near-nonexistent benefits

I'm seeing a lot of discourse in my TL about an otome game kickstarter that's skating by on $7,000. I spent years doing the "Otome games for peanuts" work, and this is entirely unsurprising to me. It's really difficult to put into words how hard it was for me to get out of that work and into more mainstream games. I definitely wouldn't have survived on that pay if I wasn't married and in a dual-income family, for one thing.

Time for some talk about The First Super Robot Wars Alpha. Alpha 1 was published by Banpresto in May 2000. It was their first non-Winkysoft developed flagship SRW title.

A full Dreamcast remake was released in August 2001 featuring all 3D models. (As an aside, this remake was a precursor to SRW GC/XO in many ways.)

Revisiting the Grand Imperial Theater in Shin Sakura Wars was so nice. Everything was right where it used to be. It felt like I'd never even left. There's so much to the theater, and so much personalization that goes into every character's room there. Even their nameplates are distinctive. One thing Sakura Wars does well is create rich, vibrant characters with lives and hobbies and tastes of their own.

Geez, I wasn't expecting it to be 306 pages long... There is an illustration in here of Iori totally shredding on a lute in the middle of a bar (plus bonus fantasy Choi), and I've never been more excited to parse a Japanese novel before

The King of Fighters series is an old favorite of mine. I'm terrible at fighting games, though. What's the solution? Why, a King of Fighters visual novel, of course! Buckle up, team—This is going to be a pseudo-Let's Play for a hidden gem called the King of Fighters Kyo, for PS1. Let's get into some background first. This game was one of several PS1 titles developed by Yumekobo as SNK spinoff games. Their other notable PS1 title was Athena: Awakening from the Ordinary Life, a 3D game with prerendered BGs, survival horror mechanics, & psychic powers.