The translation of the last section was yanked from an old entry.

( Timeline and summary. )


( Birth as Cain's copy, his connection with Miang. )


( The Demon of Elul, the Elements. )

Ahhh. I forgot what a pain in the ass the Perfect Works is. Stupid book. Er. I didn't realize I was using 'Elul' instead of 'Elru' until it was too late. Oh well. :D

In any case, this sort of answers our questions about Bekka - since Kahr had not yet taken a humanoid form, I guess he just... latched onto Bekka like a parasite. That's kind of the implication. There must be more to it though, because that doesn't explain why or how. I guess you can reason that he was able to fuse with or absorb the kid because he was still in a malleable stage of development (a writhing mass of cells and such?), but... ^^;

Somebody needs to write up a theory on this and turn it into a story - but it won't be me!

Skipped the character summary, since as you can see with Mysty's profile, it's basically what we got in the game.

( Profile information: the sin of ignorance; Jelanda's revenge... )

And then... developer notes. :D

( Q&A: what happened to Artolia? Why did she like Arngrim? )

It sure sucks to live in Artolia. Makes you think people should've been smart enough to get out, and never mind the practical complications involved in migrating to different countries. :P Actually... since Artolia has been around for quite a while, it makes me wonder how they lasted so long, if they're occupying prime real estate. Did their borders shrink? Did they have a stronger army at one time? I guess that's kinda sorta implied in the character profiles in VPS. Maybe. I don't remember.

These questions will, hopefully, be answered later in the book. And much much later, in terms of my translation speed. XD

Okay, prepare yourselves - this is a translation I had mostly finished last summer, before I ran out of time, motivation, or whatever stopped my run of entries. While I'm actually doing this work I er, know what I'm doing, but six months after the fact... since it was mostly done and I can't find any notes, it's harder for me to see what I need to correct.

So, the point of this disclaimer? There may be a hell of a lot wrong with this. I hope you can empathize with my desire to start something new rather than redo work I've already done. :p All I did tonight was finish the last half of the third section.

( Mystina - the rest of her profile. )

What a blow to the pride. I hope Lezard's profile says something embarassing.

Anyway, this is the last of the old stuff. From now on I'll take more care with the final editing.

This is great inspiration for glance_reviver~ The piece I was working on felt stale, but now I think I can make it work.

The question of why people put so much time and effort into translating for fandom is on my brain this year, since I'm one of the saps pouring my time into translation projects. (This line of thought is also worldserpent's fault, by the way.) So: why? Why do this with so little experience with Japanese? What are the motivations behind an effort like that?

Note I can only speak for myself here, as everyone's reasons are going to be different, even if they're only variations on similar themes. This will, in fact, be very self-indulgent. I couldn't write fandom meta to save my life.

Let's say your reasons for translating can be narrowed down to a few options:
a) fame/BNFdom
b) a genuine desire to contribute to your fandom
c) practice
d) evidence

Someone commented to me, once, that if one isn't a BNF, it's difficult to get any worthwhile feedback for fan work - in that case writing was the issue, but all sorts of fan activity is applicable. One's opinions will be ignored in fan discussion if one isn't known within the group, and so on. I think this is true, in a sense; not being a BNF myself, for instance, what little fan fiction I write gets almost no attention, and my fandom rants have a limited audience in my friends list. If I craved a ton of feedback, I'd have a problem. But in some fandoms, getting that attention is as easy as translating a few juicy bits of text with relative accuracy and making yourself known as a font of knowledge. Your fan fiction suddenly becomes a source for other people.

Take Xenogears fandom, the example that never dies. I got a lot of attention posting (or re-posting) translations of the Perfect Works, and that attention lasted quite a long time, even after int came along with his more accurate translations. At that time, I had a semester's worth of Japanese experience, and knew about thirty kanji. Looking back, I can't explain what possessed me to make the effort - except that I really wanted to know what the book said, and the fame didn't hurt either.

So that's one answer.

Regardless of one's professed reasons for doing fan translation, I think fame must be part of the motivating factor. This is a lot of work, even if you have a good working knowledge of the language. There's a lot of flipping through dictionaries for kanji (or the internet equivalent), wrestling with grammar and idiomatic expressions you can't find definitions for, and the ordeal of getting it down in tolerable English (which some people don't bother with). It's almost impossible to get good feedback on the actual translation process - versus your wording in English, I mean - unless you already know people who are better with the language than you are, and who also happen to own the source text.

My translation projects this year have been motivated by three things: a desire to know what the hell the books say, to practice skills that I don't want to lose (kanji, grammar), and to correct the mistakes on my websites. My material is difficult for my level of proficiency, but not impossible. I'm lucky enough to have friends (here on LJ) who can correct my mistakes, or at least help me out a bit.

Reason #3 is all about me. I want my sites to be correct, of course. They're supposed to be a source of reliable information. I would consider this an issue of noteriety. I also wouldn't bother putting it online if I didn't want people to see it.

Personal experience tells me, however, that accuracy isn't necessarily an issue for the audience. I was only right some of the time when I first tried, but the fact that we had the information at all was enough to get people worked up. I've read translations of Japanese novels recently that, while accurately expressing the meaning of the words, were written in terrible English. I'm still grateful for the work the translator put in, though - it's work I don't have to do, work most fans probably couldn't do. They should consider how accurate it really is, though; if the translator doesn't know the target language that well, they're just trading one kind of error for another.

The English-Japanese translations we had to do this semester were a travesty. Gods. I would never try to translate something into Japanese and pass myself off as an authority on anything, but that's just me. Semantics are important, vocab is a must.

.......................

Oh, yes.

Finals are over. Finally.

Up for discussion are the vague answers in the Developer interviews from the VP Material Collection. You might remember the one I posted for Mystina, and the underlying problem with that attempt (besides the convoluted sentences, which I guess you have to expect from conversational text) was that I couldn't decide how I wanted to present the information. From my point of view as a site maintainer, two things are going on here:

1 - what is actually said (a more or less direct translation of what's written)
2 - useful information conveyed / information defined as "fact" in VP canon

As maintainer, I don't care how the designer is phrasing the information that Artolia is destroyed after Jelanda dies; what I care about is the fact that he says it. That's a fact. Artolia falls. That he phrases it as conjecture - "One can assume that Artolia is destroyed after her death because-- et cetera, but who knows?" - doesn't mean much to me. If he didn't intend this information to be integrated into the reader's mind as canon, then he'd say, "Well, we don't know what happens to Artolia," or, "One of these three things could happen, but Ragnarok comes first." (And even this last example would be a nebulous sort of canon that would direct discussion topics.) In the Perfect Works (ala old translation, as I haven't gotten to this part yet), Krelian's profile says he may have met Miang before she returned to Solaris at so-and-so year after his ascension. They're telling us he didn't necessarily, but why put the thought in our heads if you don't want us to think that they did meet? You have to assume.

(That thing with Artolia? Not a direct quote. I still haven't gotten off my duff to do the work yet.)

As someone who wants to be faithful to the original text so other people can see it as it was meant to be read, I can't do that. I tried to do both, and it didn't work. So my choice when I do these sections of the books is to either provide a direct English equivalent, or just give you a list of facts that are implicated by the text. (Artolia falls. Mystina was recruited from a distant area by the academy. Krelian knew Miang.)

Originally my intent was to put the raw information up here and write it in my own words for the website, with references to the originals if necessary. I also wanted to put the Japanese up to be corrected, since I barely rate as a translator at all. There are bound to be mistakes. Yet, if I decide on localized posts - which would cut out a ton of unnecessary work on my end, because I could ditch all the redundancies - then I feel kind of guilty, like I'm hiding mistakes or process secrets, even when I'm not.

At the moment I'm not sure which I want to do, but a little bit of rescheduling is in order.

( Revised schedule. )

All translations can be found via the following tag categories:
-- general translation
-- Valkyrie Profile translation
-- Xenogears translation


Updates:
- 10.13.07: added older translations to the list.
- 02.02.08: added Winter '07 updates to the list.

The longer I do this, the more I love the early interaction between Jesse and Billy. I wish I had a save at that part of the game.

So here we go: Shitan's full profile, including the bits I've already posted for the sake of completion.

( Timeline, character summary, Cain's Directive. )

( Hyuga in Solaris - the plague, Ramsus, his connection with Jesse and Sigurd, etc. )

( The Third Invasion, sealing his skills, Yui and Midori. )

( Life in Lahan. )

... and then THEY ALL DIED.

That is, the townspeople. The character blurbs (for Lee, Timothy, Dan, Alice) aren't worth translating. They tell us exactly what happened during the game, or what you can learn by talking to the townspeople, and nothing more. They aren't even as important as the strike team, so they don't get any goodies from me.

I didn't want to do anything major. Here, have some characters nobody cares about. :P

( Dominia, Kelvena, Tolone, Seraphita. )


( Elly's Strike Team, Vanderkaum, other Solarian peons. )


Edit to add~

( On the Elements, from Kahr's profile; info on the Strike Team. )

I'm sorry, but even I don't care about Vanderkaum, poor guy. So I skipped the paragraph on his ship. :P

Like my reading and writing lists on the side there, this entry is going to list what I intend to post from the Perfect Works, VP Material Collection, and so on. (Those two are my priorities, but they don't exclude other things.) For the non-Japanese savvy, I'll also explain how I'm going about this and why I make certain decisions, and stuff.

I want a list post to come back to, refer to, et cetera, so I can keep track of my progress and stay on task. I come across a lot of interesting stuff doing this, and it's easy to get lured into work I've no intention of doing just because I want to know. I will add to this on occasion once I've finished a list (so after summer '07, maybe I'll put up a list for fall, etc.).

This is not a request post, but you can make suggestions. I don't promise to snap them up, but if enough people want to know something (or if I really like the idea :D), I'll try.

( Planned projects. )

The relevant posts can be found via:
-- the general translation tag
-- Xenogears translation
-- Valkyrie Profile translation
-- (and eventually others)

(I know there's an entry on the Otogizoshi book lurking around here somewhere, but I'll have to find it.)

.

Now, as for how and why I'm doing things the way I've done them, ( I ramble. Why put in so much effort? Well... )

( As for the translation itself... (footnotes, when I skip or change things, etc.) )

It's always worth checking back on an entry once in a while, to see if corrections have been made. I've no illusions about the work I'm doing - it isn't perfect, and I will have to come back to it eventually for corrections. I can only do my best with the resources on hand at the moment.

Gods, Zephyr's history is depressing. I finally got Word to be useful, but it's notorious for causing problems when one copies and pastes from the program to just about anything else. I'll fix whatever I spot, of course. If you have a problem displaying anything, let me know via comment. :D

Also, I must say... brand really does make a difference when it comes to grape soda. There's no getting around it!

( PW p.193: Zephyr's history, Gaspar, Melchoir, Joshua Black. )

That finishes Shevat. Balthasar is somewhere else, and I don't feel like picking over his profile at the moment. That would almost obligate me to do Maria and Nikolai, and I want to stick to my list for now.

... HOWEVER, since Livejournal is down for some scheduled maintainence that I don't think was actually scheduled, I guess I'll have to do some more work. WTF, LJ. (I just know there's going to be an issue with the text I copied, and I'll have an extra long entry to painstakingly edit after this.)



( Mystina: 'from the developer's room' Q&A. )

The entire VP section was troublesome because of its conversational style. I was going to wait on posting it, but sleeping on it probably won't yield any sudden answers. And if it does, I'll make the changes tomorrow. Believe it or not, I do sleep. :p

Okay, I have to ask. For those of you who use Japanese input in Windows, how retarded does it get for you? Because there are times I can type up whatever I need, and other times when it won't register common words, whether I type them correctly or not. It is such a pain in the ass to piece words together by individual kanji just because my program can't get it together during the full moon, or whatever the hell its problem is.

I can't get it to render 'tsuzuku' either, but that might be a genuine program flaw. Dunno. Am pissed off whenever I run into the issue, regardless. :D

( Jesse: profile is more or less complete with this installment. )

Now, back to our scheduled entries. >_>

It turns out I didn't have as much on Mystina as I thought, so she'll take a bit longer. What I have now is the "From the Developer's Room" box, , which is the same section I did for Jayle. The latter's relation to the knights wasn't what I needed, so I didn't do anything with her character sketch, but I'm much more interested in the insight Mysty's section will give for her character.

That can wait until tomorrow. :p I had a Suiko-themed entry that will also have to wait. Oh well.


Edit (06.30.07): corrections made with totorojo's insight~

Edit 2 (07.20.07): silly me. Shitan says during the game - or implies, anyway, as good as - that Billy was the cause of Jesse's 'shotgun wedding.' I guess that explains the timing of his marriage. :p