天下制覇

Only a week+ after the fact.

The more astute among you (ie nobody) realized that I skipped my five year tradition of announcing/releasing a new game translation on the site’s non-birthday of April 1st this year. Well, boys and girls, it’s because it’s not all rainbows and puppy dogs in translationville. I am just going to ramble for a while about various things though.

There was a certain silly gimmicky game that may or may not have appeared on the internet that I may or may not have finished translating last October (well, technically, and not counting image work), barring an add-on that did not exist on the internet until late January, but after sitting around for five months, editors not wanting to go anywhere near it for many moons, its repetitive awful boring porn having been a particular trial for all, and with no urge to finish any of the obnoxiously complicated image editing remaining, I didn’t really feel like that was worth it either. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

I did start working on something else around mid November after that, but our story takes a slight twist here. Something else started taking over a lot of my free time and energy and will continue to do so for at least the next three months, if not more. At the same time, real life is beckoning as my fellowship has pretty much run its course (and beyond it actually, no thanks in part by my own machinations). It may be a while before I get back to my original project as I have to start concentrating more on other things.

That’s gotten me thinking a little bit though, as well as talking to some other people involved in localization a little, especially those more connected to the more professional side of things. Fan translation of games occupies a really weird kind of space. There’s no shortage of great games that never got localized, console and otherwise, but despite the audience, there’s no market. It’s technically copyright violation, but most game makers are happy to see their games (long after the fact) enjoyed by more people and turn a blind eye.

Every now and then, a fan translation does make the jump to official, most notably some visual novel stuff and the Felghana project, but it’s typically long and arduous work done out of only love for the game. Even then, the final result is subject to about fifty times more scrutiny and internet critique than any professional game translation is. It’s really interesting to look over even some of the best regarded translations out there. Twice as many translators, a fifth the text of medium length VN, extra writers going over everything, and the end result is still one part genius, one part errors, and one part censorship.

It’s a weird situation all around for translators and something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. In a perfect world, I’d love nothing more than to focus on that instead of the soul crushing pursuit of finding something ‘productive’ to do in the real world. I like the attention and air of mystique. The games too. However, the clock’s starting to tick quite a bit on me doing this. I’ve been thinking of ways to keep up with it, but I’m not really sure. And no, cutting back on blogging terrible shows wouldn’t really help much. The years have made me efficient as hell and I doubt I’m known for my longwinded posts with an intense amount of thought instead of rambling about whatever comes to mind off the cuff.

One thing I have been thinking about is the recent fad of the whole crowdsourcing thing. It’s absoutely insane what people will toss money at. $3500, not for a deck of a dozen poorly drawn cards and the rules for Mafia. Or even more money for even more unsavory things from the darkest parts of the internet. Canada, man. Although I suppose given parts of some of the stuff I’ve translated, I probably shouldn’t be talking. Commissioning translations for doujins/manga is pretty widespread, but it’s also not really abundantly applicable to projects taking a half dozen people minimum months to years to finish. Plus all the other stickier issues.

I think if that kind of thing were to work though, you’d have to go big and ballsy. Certainly seems to have worked out well for Crunchyroll. On the other hand, it’d mean risking the project being shot dead outright by C&D. Then again, given how Kamidori, GA, and all the shenanigans with Duel Savior have gone completely ignored (not to mention other high publicized VN projects from other people), I don’t think it’s really that much of a game of chicken either. It’d be incredibly interesting to see the ramifications if it worked out though. Or depressing if it turned out to be utterly unviable. I’m more than a little tempted to toss the half-finished Project1 up there to find out.

So anyway, yeah. Them’s my mind boggles for the moment. I am still doing my thang and working away, but I probably won’t finish either project for a good while, and there’s a solid chance that they may end up being my swan song(s). I figure after about sixish months since the non-DS post, I should at least say something. Maybe it’ll keep me from getting any more semi-literate beggings e-mailed to me, but I doubt it. Do let me know if you’ve got any thoughts or the like on any of the above. I am sorry that I don’t actually really have anything at the moment, but such is life. And yes, I already know that I’m beloved by all as well.