Anonymous asked:

Man, this takes me back. I don't know how many years it has been since I've played a Lilith game and checked on your blog. I've always wanted to thank you for your amazing translations, as I've dedicated quite a few of my... late night times to the Taimanin games. So here it is : a formal thank you, for your work.

Pity we haven't got anything in years, the Taimanin Cinematic Universe still has massive potential, but after phase 3 it went down the drain. I don't even know if Lilith is producing anything now.

Do you, like I and a lot of us lost souls do, lament the sad downfall of this company or do you not care at all ?

I haven't been very satisfied since they began doing gacha in the first place. Ever since they started making TABA, their VNs have suffered, first becoming shorter (like Alice and Chronos), then getting delayed, or downgraded from Anime Lilith to Black Lilith, then disappearing entirely. The later Taimanin games are a bit of a joke, story- and character-wise, even if there are still some good scenes.

The thing is, though, Lilith has always had flaws and corner-cutting. There usually isn't a very complicated or sophisticated choice structure; plot differences between routes don't necessarily make any sense; they stretch out already-low-resolution backgrounds for the sex scenes; etc. And there's always real story potential in every setting they establish, yet they rarely ever exploit that properly. Although some of their early titles were experimental, they do have only two formats of game, which they kept recycling over and over again. Taimanin is the best and worst thing that ever happened to them. By the time they did Yukikaze 1, they were already conscious of the need to plan for possible sequels (hence the "lol nothing happened" ending), which is the sort of thing that always signals a slow shift from a creative mindset to a corporate one. But at the same time, for all these flaws, Lilith used to be a company with ambition, and now their only ambition is to figure out what else can make them money.

Anonymous asked:

Is the guy that was translating "Seigi no Henshin" still alive or he disappered?

I don't have any idea.

I've been asked to link to a Waffle-related Discord group. Apparently, the person who runs it has been remaking a viewer for Edens Ritter Grenze. They messaged me about it after noticing a question from earlier this year, in which somebody claimed to be part of a server for translating the game. If any of you know anything about it, you're encouraged to get in touch with them.

Health-wise, I still don't have any real updates to provide. I have finally been able to see an ENT, and he wasn't all that helpful. However, I was given a congestion medication that might reduce the reactivity of my ear within another month or so. Once it stops inflaming every time I type, I think I may be able to start getting back to work, but probably only in a limited capacity. I also have to deal with the tinnitus, which gets worse as the day goes on, especially with my chronic sleep deprivation. That means it's likely to shorten my working periods dramatically. As such, I'm not committing to anything until I see substantial progress.

Anonymous asked:

I am a noob who doesn't know anything about translating VN so I am genuinely asking even if this seems dumb.

I thought translators would just extract the text, translate it based on it, put it back into the game and call it a day. What is (roughly) your workflow? You said you can't listen to high pitch noises anymore, so I assume you listen to the vn while translating. Is it only for testing if what you wrote shows up at the right time or do you use voices for translating too since the tone might help understanding what they say better? Or do you just play it first so you know what happens?

You have to do multiple passes. This is my version:

Translation: I go through the script blind, and as I translate the lines, I leave notes for myself to follow up on. I don't have to care too much about phrasing at this stage, as it's only a rough draft.

Editing: I go through the translated script, looking for mistakes, adjusting phrasing, doing research for things I'm not familiar with, and dealing with issues such as untranslatable jokes, things which need a TL note, etc. During this, I refer to the audio files in a lot of cases, such as when there are slurred lines that are hard to decipher through text. I do an entire separate mini-passthrough for lines with transliterated "f" sounds, because there's no way of telling on paper whether they're supposed to be pronounced as "f" or "h", and this can affect character reactions. (e.g., Did that character exclaim "Fuah" in surprise, or did they sigh "Haah"? If it says "Fuaih", is that a squeal, or a slurred version of "Hai"?)

Proofreading: This is the last chance to catch problems, as well as the QA test where I make sure that lines aren't getting skipped, and the game doesn't crash. I play through the game/scene twice, trying to catch typos, errors, or phrasing which might be misleading to the reader. When lines do deviate from what's strictly in the script, this is usually the phase where I introduce those changes, to in some way facilitate readability.

My issues at the moment are that (a) my ear is reacting badly even from me typing small amounts of text, and (b) because I'm supposed to avoid noise at the moment, listening to all the high-pitched wailing is a really bad idea. At one point, I tried continuing the Asuka scene, and had to stop after three lines because it was triggering spasms.

Anonymous asked:

I may be wrong but didn't you prepare a patch in the past for koutetsu majo annerose to import animated scene from another game? Would it be alright to ask a link?

Yes.