KnK on .epub, and some news on Mahoyo

Posted in Kara no Kyōkai, Mahōtsukai no Yoru, Translations with tags , , , , on May 12, 2012 by cokesakto

So, it’s been a while. A few important things have happened, chief among them being Mahoyo’s release. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

 

I know some of you have been looking for an .epub or .mobi version of my translation of Kara no Kyōkai. Since I had no familiarity with how to convert them properly, I never really bothered to do it. But thanks to the goodness of commenter Kei00’s own heart, we now have an Ebook version of Empty Boundaries. It can be located here. Thanks Kei00, and very much appreciated!

 

So, now to deal with Mahoyo. As I have previously said, I will be translating the game. Though work and other hobbies have slowed me down from even finishing it, rest assured, I will do it. Now, believe it or not, I’ve been listening to all of the criticisms I’ve found of my work, and I hear you guys. You want me to use already established fandom terms? Sure, I can work with that. The style will remain more or less the same however,  since I’m still of the opinion that natural-sounding dialogue and narration is the most important thing. Honorifics and such are in, due to style guide requirements (see next paragraph).

 

And yes, for those of you concerned, I will have an editor. As a matter of fact, I’ll be working with the guys at Amaterasu Translations to get this whole thing out the door. It’ll be my first time working with a team, but this entire thing has been a succession of firsts for me. Translating has been a learning process for me, and it’s the feedback that gets me to improve. With any luck, I’ll be doing this translation with a relatively relaxed but scheduled regimen, so we can all read it as soon as possible.

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Mahoyo, in English, in the actual game

Posted in Mahōtsukai no Yoru, Translations with tags , , on January 30, 2012 by cokesakto

So it seems some enterprising Russian chap by the handle of “pin201” has stuck my translation through the game script and produced the actual game. With my translation in it! Kudos pin201! You can find the download here, just Ctrl+F for “Part-1”. Alternatively, you can go direct to the downloads: here, here, and here. Again, major props to pin201 for this.

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There was a mansion that rested on top of a hill…

Posted in Mahōtsukai no Yoru, Translations with tags , , on January 26, 2012 by cokesakto

After much postponing and delay on my part, here it finally is, the Mahōtsukai no Yoru demo translation!

mahoyodemo_trans (This is the PDF version, purely for reading)

mahoyodemo_trans (This is the text version, for anyone who wants to use it in a patch or something. Credit is all I ask!)

As I said on a few comments, the delays were largely my fault. Christmas vacation, which was supposed to be my time to work on this, became board game time with the family, and Memoir ’44 is so hard to put down. Also, I got KoF XIII and it is a really good fighting game; let’s just leave it at that.

The translation process had an unexpected level difficulty. As I’m sure most of you have learned by now, the demo is not actually one contiguous portion of the story, but a bunch of chapters in random points in the story, which may or may not even be in order of chronology. A lot of characters were referring to previous events that had already taken place (which means I have no context with which to refer to), and there were a few places here and there that I suspect were trying to explain context, but were obviously crowbarred in there to let the demo reader not totally be in the dark, but in practice ended up being a completely awkward digressionary flashback (the scene with Sōjūrō remembering the classroom lecture, as well as the scene where Sōjūrō meets with Kumari comes to mind). Oh well, pretty sure it’ll not be there in the actual game come April anyway.

As for scenes where I had to mostly guess context, these were few and far between, but enough for me to say the caveat that some of the phrasing of these scenes will obviously change once the actual game shows up and I have a complete story to work with. Again, any criticism and pointing out of mistakes is welcome, no matter how red in the face it makes me. I’m still learning this language same as anyone, and I’d be glad to share notes with anyone else who has a different idea of how to translate any particular scene.

Alright, back to Mansions of Madness with me…

EDIT: Made some changes to a paragraph that I read immensely incorrectly (see comments below). This is one of those “red in the face” moments I mentioned earlier. It is totally fine though! I am very welcoming of any critique or correction that anyone throws at me, whether its stylistic, in translation, or otherwise. It’s not like I’m going to react by sitting slumped in a chair, flicking a lighter on and off, and wondering where it all went wrong, or something.

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A mysterious visual novel…

Posted in Mahōtsukai no Yoru with tags , on December 18, 2011 by cokesakto

Hmm… an interesting visual novel has found itself in my desktop.

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Kara no Kyōkai translations

Posted in Kara no Kyōkai, Translations with tags , , on July 25, 2011 by cokesakto

So here I am, having just produced a sorry excuse for a blog, just to have place to post my translation of Kara no Kyōkai, which I have chosen to translate as Empty Boundaries. Yes, I know the title has a lot of meanings within the story, and yes I know there are a lot of ways to render it. This is the one I chose.

I’ve had a doozy of a time translating this, but it was very fun all the way. The first thing you’ll notice about it is that the translation is very…well, loose might be a word you could use. Obviously, English and Japanese are two very unrelated and different languages, and translating (or localizing, if you prefer) one to the other will necessarily require no small amount of rewriting. There is a time and place for stiff, strict, and exact translation, but written prose is—in my opinion—certainly not that place.

I know a lot of the people who will be reading this are also fans of Kinoko Nasu’s other works within the fictional semi-shared universe of his own creation. I know that a lot of in-universe terms re-occur in these other works, and that over the years, a lot of these terms have been translated—either by fans or in an official capacity. While I’m familiar with a number of renditions of these terms, I have, for one reason or another, ended up not using much of them. A lot of it has to do with a lot of them not really flying off the text so well, and so I regrettably had to change them. Please note, I don’t bear any ill will towards those other translators who have put their own stamp on Nasu’s creation, nor the fans who have painstakingly charted the details of this universe. It’s just that I thought that, for the purposes of Kara no Kyōkai‘s translation at least, some of these terms would not serve.

If you like it, hate it, or have some criticism to send my way, send it to riflespam@gmail.com. Lord knows there’s probably a dozen or so typos still left in there, right beside the details where the devils dwell.

Empty Boundaries – Volume 1 (contains Parts 1-3)

Empty Boundaries – Volume 2 (contains Parts 4-5)

Empty Boundaries – Volume 3 (contains Parts 6-7, and epilogue)

You can also get it by way of Google Docs, though I’d prefer if you download it since it messes up my stupid gradients for the title text:

Empty Boundaries Translation Folder (Google Docs)

As Bob requested below, I’ve uploaded the images from the books. Full disclosure, I actually don’t have the picture for part 7. The picture I used was supposed to be for the “Boundary Goetia” interlude chapter. I could never scan the images myself at a satisfactory quality, and all the scans on the ‘net omit the part 7 illustration for some reason. So if anyone can provide the picture, I’ll happily put it in.

Volume 1:

      

Volume 2:

      

Volume 3:

    

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