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.

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

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: