Dear Devs, Visual Novels need proper English!

[Ottoeight]

Well, this is a heartfelt plea to every Author who is developing / going to develop a VISUAL NOVEL.

Guys, you need to understand that the text (dialogues and whatever) is AS important AS the pictures. It needs to be written in proper English.

You should understand that I/we need to enjoy reading it.

If English is not your native language, please ask for editors and proof-readers HERE in F95. I'm positively sure that a lot of native speakers Here in F95 are more than willing to help you for free.

I'd offer myself, but, as someone might have noticed, I'm not an English native speaker myself .

 

[Rafster]

And there are online tools for this, like Grammarly. I use it all the time, so my engrish don't become too obvious.

 

[Winterfire]

your rigt im lucy that im coffident with my english word so no typos in my game every body else not native should hire poof-readers cos not every body can be as lucy as me

 

[Ottoeight]

your rigt im lucy that im coffident with my english word so no typos in my game every body else not native should hire poof-readers cos not every body can be as lucy as me

You won me over .

Now, I'm going to grab a cup of coffee . See ya.

 

[Adabelitoo]

If English is not your native language, please ask for editors and proof-readers HERE in F95. I'm positively sure that a lot of native speakers Here in F95 are more than willing to help you for free.

Could you please tell me who would edit and proofread games for free? Could you tell where I can find people willing to spend time reading maybe thousands of lines just to catch and correct typos for free?

Because if people like that exist in this forum, I had no idea of that.

 

[stevejackhammer]

Certainly a pet peeve of mine, though I try to be understanding. When I pause to think about it, I am amazed that the writing in many games is as good as it is written by developers for whom English is a second language. Nevertheless, flaws in grammar and spelling can take you out of the immersion. It's not fair, but it's true.

 

[stevejackhammer]

... flaws in grammar and spelling ...

I should say "egregious" flaws.

 

[rnot2000]

i shouln't skip my english class :'(

 

[stevejackhammer]

i shouln't skip my english class :'(

Depends. Some English teachers don't bother with much English teaching, it seems. More like Oppression Studies 101. If so, feel free to skip it.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Could you please tell me who would edit and proofread games for free? Could you tell where I can find people willing to spend time reading maybe thousands of lines just to catch and correct typos for free?

There's few here (I know at least two), but few is the key. It's like one for a hundred game, what is obviously not enough. Plus, they'll obviously do it for games they like, and even for them, those with the worse English will not please them enough.


But, beyond the obvious Engrish problem, and in a way it join Winterfire answer, the problem lie in fact inside native English speakers authors group.

A none native speaker know that his English is limited, whatever how fluent he think he is. He also know that there's times, when he's really tired by example, where his English capabilities drop really low ; it's my case by example. Therefore, either he'll go full Engrish because he's really bad, or he'll be more cautious and pass more time doing proof reading in his own.
It's limited, but it lead to better result than (too many) native English speakers who are doing some errors, hmm, "natively". Take the classical, "there", "their", "they're", by example. A none native speaker know the difference, but will sometimes confuse them by lack of attention. Give him time to proof read, and he'll see the error by himself. A native speaker that make the error think he's writing correctly and will never correct it, whatever how many time he pass proof reading.
And it happen that, the more time I play games here, the more I found people claiming to be native speakers doing more errors than none native speakers who don't write in full Engrish. I'm sure that not being native speaker myself have a role to play. I always struggle to understand when using "whom" by example, and sometimes use a word in place of another because it's the word I would use in my native language ; what mean that there's errors that I don't see.
But in the same time, it also mean that the errors I see are the kind of errors that any native speaker should catch when proof reading himself. And they don't catch them...

 

[gunderson]

To be fair to the sorts of devs OP's talking about, the crossover point between a marginally popular Patreon porn game generating enough money for a person to live on versus not looks like someplace in a developing nation where an adequate English language education is likely at a pretty steep premium anyway. That's already the sort of person who will go on this very forum and ask people to tell them what fetishes they want to see in a game, what setting, etc., because they couldn't imagine that there's anything more to making a good game than finding the right formula of tags. Essentially, porn game development is a step above panhandling in that case and expecting anything of even passable quality from them is laughably unlikely in the first couple updates.

And in their defense, after a few update cycles many of those games that actually make it through the filter of popular opinion do eventually prioritize getting some kind of English language editing. Not all, but a decent number at least.

As to how to deal with this problem, where we can reasonably assume that they either don't have access to a decent English language education or just never gave a shit about school in the first place? Fuck, maybe just send 'em to the Purdue Owl (

You must be registered to see the links

) to get some actual practice in learning how to English reel good. It's not magic, after all. It's a skill. You wanna git good, you practice good.

But no. No, you can't just get mad enough at a person who's functionally English illiterate on the Internet that they'll go through the trouble of learning English. They'll just think you're an asshole and call you a grammar Nazi or whatever because of your unreasonable demand that the things they write be in any way intelligible.

 

[rayminator]

Well, this is a heartfelt plea to every Author who is developing / going to develop a VISUAL NOVEL.

Guys, you need to understand that the text (dialogues and whatever) is AS important AS the pictures. It needs to be written in proper English.

You should understand that I/we need to enjoy reading it.

If English is not your native language, please ask for editors and proof-readers HERE in F95. I'm positively sure that a lot of native speakers Here in F95 are more than willing to help you for free.

I'd offer myself, but, as someone might have noticed, I'm not an English native speaker myself .

There is no such thing as perfect English in this world cause not everyone speaks English.

And stop forcing them to speak or write English it's not you place to do so or mine...

 

[palmtrees89]

There is no such thing as perfect English in this world cause not everyone speaks English.

And stop forcing them to speak or write English it's not you place to do so or mine...

Sorry, that doesn't make any sense. Also, nobody is forcing anything here.

What OP is trying to say is quite simple. A promising title with great art and story can potentially turn to shit if the translation is garbage as it can totally ruin the immersion for the players. One prime example is Decent Monkey's 'Fashion Business'. The art and animations are fantastic. But the writing/translation, atleast to me, makes it mediocre at best.

 

[mickydoo]

Sorry, getting paid the big bucks we should do better.

 

[lemonfreak]

Damn right, nothing worse that seeing color, sidewalk and aluminum in my VNs

 

[Crispy Chicken]

In all honesty, I agree that visual novels should really be written well. However, I still give much respect to developers who actually try to translate their game into english (despite it being not their main language). It's true that it somewhat takes off the immersion from the game, but translators are also resources some devs can't afford, so...

Quality animations with quality writing? At the end of the day, it all comes down to whether the dev actually tries, and if the player actually understands both sides of the coin

Still, cheers to everyone.

 

[palmtrees89]

Sorry, getting paid the big bucks we should do better.

If you really do get paid the big bucks and your VN is lacking in certain areas, then yes, you probably should. If that's not the case, but your only motivation to create an enjoyable erotic VN with good renders aswell as solid writing is determined by the amount of money you'll eventually be given, then that's another issue developers might want to work on if you ask me.

If none of this applies to you or any other developer out there, and you are working to the best of your abilities, then there's nothing to argue about.

 

[mickydoo]

If you really do get paid the big bucks and your VN is lacking in certain areas, then yes, you probably should. If that's not the case, but your only motivation to create an enjoyable erotic VN with good renders aswell as solid writing is determined by the amount of money you'll eventually be given, then that's another issue developers might want to work on if you ask me.

If none of this applies to you or any other developer out there, and you are working to the best of your abilities, then there's nothing to argue about.

The thing is that non Devs cannot grasp is - .

My coding after years of learning is still borderline 6th grade python, my head will only let me understand so much, but no one ever picks up on that and says, Devs coding could do with some work.

My artwork has picked up, its still not the best, I have habit of using the same flat lighting, dodgy skins and figures that resemble Bratz dolls. It's mainly gotten better because of the 3 grand of PC upgrades I have done but in the normal course of my life wouldn't.

The story itself, well I'm old, I can tell a good "yarn" so to speak, but it's delivery is sub par, I know that, I dropped out of high school and became a roofer for my dads company, I type with two fingers looking at the keyboard, and I have fat fingers, it's not easy. Again, no one ever mentions this, or any of the above, its like, its cool, I get what he is trying to do.

BUT

Spell neither as niether and fuck me, it's almost worth making deliberate typos for attention you get.

 

[anne O'nymous]

As to how to deal with this problem, where we can reasonably assume that they either don't have access to a decent English language education or just never gave a shit about school in the first place?

Or they choose to study another language, or they never had a real use of English before, or their need for English was limited and they could deal with what they remembered from school, or... I'm sure that there's still few other possible reasons.

Fuck, maybe just send 'em to the Purdue Owl (

You must be registered to see the links

) to get some actual practice in learning how to English reel good. It's not magic, after all. It's a skill. You wanna git good, you practice good.

Is it sarcasm or some kind of simplified English ?

But no. No, you can't just get mad enough at a person who's functionally English illiterate on the Internet that they'll go through the trouble of learning English.

Or you can understand that they at least tried to speak another language, sometimes really different in structure from their own, and help them understand the reason behind their mistakes, in order for them to improve.

 

[Ottoeight]

Guys,

I'm not Joseph Conrad. I'm not Vladimir Nabokov. Most likely there are no Conrads nor Nabokovs here.

Therefore, even if my grammar were flawless (mind you: I'm writing "even if"), my script would be crap anyway.

This is what a non native English speaker Visual Novel author should do, in my humble opinion:

1. write your story in your native language;

2. make it translate by a/some native English speaker(s).

Got some money you want to throw in your game's development? spend them on it.