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Question about official translations


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I know this maybe a newbie question, but how do sites like jastusa or mangagamer choose which novels to translate? Now mind you, I greatly respect the hard work that the fantranslator groups put into these novels. However, this is just something I always wondered. Moreover, is there a way to request visual novels for them to translate?

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I know this maybe a newbie question, but how do sites like jastusa or mangagamer choose which novels to translate? Now mind you, I greatly respect the hard work that the fantranslator groups put into these novels. However, this is just something I always wondered. Moreover, is there a way to request visual novels for them to translate?

 

Well, it's more complicated than that.

 

MangaGamer is a subsidiary originated from japanese companies Circus, Tarte, Overdrive and Nexton (including the BASESON and LIQUID sub-labels), and has a partnership with Minori, so they translate their almost exclusively their games with a few expections like Shuffe (Company Navel).

 

JAST USA has partnership with NitroPlus...so they focus more on their games, but now those lazy fuckers are picking up finished/almost finished fan translation project to release them oficially. This is a good and a bad thing. A good thing because the VN creators make some profit (wich is fucking low anyway but it's something) and a bad thing because their take so much fucking time to release them even if they already have the complete translation. (I hope they fail miserably some day)

 

Now, they can't pick up just any VN for the following reasons:

 

1- They have to give priority to their respective parent companies/partners

2- If the game has a big cast (Example: Koihime Musou) they have to pay for the seiyuus, that's why Koihime first was released voiceless.

3- They mostly focus on nukiges and not deep stories because it's easy to translate and sells more or less well.

 

About requesting games, I don't know about MangaGamer but JAST usually makes a poll to vote wich games they wil translate next. You could try but I doubt they will give shit about one person's request.

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Ryu summed it up pretty well, I have 1 thing to add: Currently Mangagamer mainly licenses "shitty nukige" (with an exception of Ef, though that was already translated) because the licenses for them are way cheaper then some bigger games. They don't have to worry about the music license for them and so on.

They recently said that the business is getting a bit better and they hope to release some bigger stuff in the near future.

Edited by killerinsidee
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I give MangaGamer 2-3 more years so they can make a good competition against JAST, hopefully this will force JAST hurry and release games more quickly.

 

Ye I guess. The thing that I kinda hate about JAST is that they pick up crapload of licenses and they just sit on them for 1-2 years without any progress. While Mangagamer picks them up and works on them right away, e.g. they picked up Otoboku and Eroge earlier this year and it's getting finished up at the moment.

Edited by killerinsidee
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Well, it's more complicated than that.

 

MangaGamer is a subsidiary originated from japanese companies Circus, Tarte, Overdrive and Nexton (including the BASESON and LIQUID sub-labels), and has a partnership with Minori, so they translate their almost exclusively their games with a few expections like Shuffe (Company Navel).

 

JAST USA has partnership with NitroPlus...so they focus more on their games, but now those lazy fuckers are picking up finished/almost finished fan translation project to release them oficially. This is a good and a bad thing. A good thing because the VN creators make some profit (wich is fucking low anyway but it's something) and a bad thing because their take so much fucking time to release them even if they already have the complete translation. (I hope they fail miserably some day)

 

Now, they can't pick up just any VN for the following reasons:

 

1- They have to give priority to their respective parent companies/partners

2- If the game has a big cast (Example: Koihime Musou) they have to pay for the seiyuus, that's why Koihime first was released voiceless.

3- They mostly focus on nukiges and not deep stories because it's easy to translate and sells more or less well.

 

About requesting games, I don't know about MangaGamer but JAST usually makes a poll to vote wich games they wil translate next. You could try but I doubt they will give shit about one person's request.

 

 

 

Thanks for replying so fast and for the pretty detailed answer. It was something I always wondered about so I thought I should ask some people who have more knowledge than I did. Furthermore to confess, I asked about requesting because I really want to play 11 eyes but after what you said it has reignited my faith to wait for the thule society to do it if and/or ever gets translated. Because after hearing your explaination, I agree it is bullshit that some of these companies are profiting from free labor.

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because I really want to play 11 eyes but after what you said it has reignited my faith to wait for the thule society to do it if and/or ever gets translated.

 

In case you didn't know.....:(

 

We had a meeting today with the main staff of the 11eyes project in regards to the status of it.

 

There have been two translators working on the project, Sabino who has been on it since the beginning and Zky (myself) who came at a later date to support it.

To make a long story short, Sabino is still intent on working on 11eyes to the bitter end, but has difficulties stabilizing his life. His GPA has taken a big hit he says. With this said the main translator wants to continue 11eyes, but it is just a matter of him sorting out his life.

 

[14:43] but there’ll be no change in my part of the promise.

[14:44] so you are planning on continuing 11eyes?

[14:44] Good, so I wonder what will be our options on this one?

[14:44] I’ll be willing to do it during my open time till the bitter end, as long as fallen’s up for it.

[14:45] I’m still up no need to worry about it

[14:45] but how much time can you open up though?

[14:45] That’s the thing

[14:45] Before I put in lots of time and effort to translations and payed the price with my GPA

[14:46] I’ll be willing to volunteer, but I don’t want to be putting my future on the line.

[14:51] if i can see 11eyes possibly finishing, i’ll help the project

[14:57] Guys, I can’t tell you how much I love VNs

[14:57] But life’s gotta come first

As for me (Zky), I honestly don’t have the will to make a commitment to the 11eyes project as my own. I will continue to watch over the 11eyes project but until Sabino is able to make a recovery or manage to translate most of the game before he goes back to being busy with life, I will pretty much stay on standby. I have reasons why I don’t wish to take up 11eyes personally; making a personal commitment to translating a visual novel is a 250-500 hour commitment, not to be taken lightly.

Again, we are looking for translators willing to pick up the slack, because Sabino is busy and I am not willing to treat this project personal and work on it mostly myself.

 

The recent patch is pretty Fugly with broken triggers, off-track voices, and typos everywhere (blame a certain someone for releasing it on Christmas when he shouldn’t have) and will of course have to get fixed. That can be done by other people other than the translators, which we should at least be able to sort out easily with the help of the editors.

 

We apologize to those looking forward to the project, but the main translator is still very much intent on not giving up. For now though, consider the 11eyes project asleep until the main translator wakes up or it receives support from other translators. Progress is being made… just it is too minimal to consider lively at this time.

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I asked about requesting because I really want to play 11 eyes but after what you said it has reignited my faith to wait for the thule society to do it if and/or ever gets translated.

So I'm not the only idiot who's waiting for a translation which won't be finished in the next 10years?

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