Anonymous asked:

What do you think of the official release of RPGX in English and do you think they should hired you considering your knowledge on the franchise?

I really hope they take it more seriously than they did with TABA. RPGX is far more story-focused, and has reached the point where some events are a tenth of the length of a game like TY1 or KS2. It's going to be a lot more work to do all the chapters and events, and I don't really trust them to not be lazy about it.

There's no reason why they should think of hiring or consulting me, because my knowledge is no greater than that of any other fan. But they should familiarize themselves with the series in general, especially its tone and style. Even though RPGX is very different from the VNs, given the emphasis on story, they should strive not to make the same kind of mistakes they did with TABA.

I tried checking out English TABA early on, and I saw a number of things that I didn't like, including:

1. The translators either not having context explained to them, or not being familiar with the source material at all, to the point where they translated the "Pieces of Murasaki" as "Purple Shards".
2. The translators having to make guesses about Romanization, because they hadn't been given any by Lilith themselves. This can result in things being wildly off, such as when they localize Anje as Angers.
3. Playing up to porn sensibilities all the time, even when not appropriate. The most blatant example I saw was the occasion where they translated Murasaki's ninja art (which I typically translate as something like "Immortality Awakening") as "Undying Lust". The reason for this is that the word that I translate as "awakening" can also mean "arousal". As anybody who's read the VNs knows, the lore and action parts are largely played straight (at least, when they're not being written by Sonoda Masaki). They therefore need to be approached from a serious angle, rather than a pornographic one.
4. Sex scenes arbitrarily altered to remove references to things like smegma (despite all the other things they didn't censor).
5. The smut writing changed from the distinctly Japanese style of "Good! It feels gooood!" to more Westernized porn phrases like "Oh yes! I love it!" Note how different that would make a rape scene: In the original version, a character might be chagrined by the pleasure, but be so overwhelmed by it that they can't help but cry out. In the Western version, they now suddenly approve of it.

Now, this isn't to say that they don't have good translators working for them—from what I could tell, some are perfectly decent. But others seem like they're phoning it in, or changing things arbitrarily. The above is my experience based on some of the early TABA events, and on the scenes that I retranslated for TY2. It's possible that they got their act together as time went on. But on the other hand, I have heard about similarly lazy things in Action Taimanin, such as them arbitrarily replacing an item's entire description with a Meet the Spy reference. So I hope they don't repeat past mistakes, but I'm not putting money on it.