Visual Novel machine translators aren't that bad

[ChaosOpen]

There are only so many novels that fans and companies can translate per year, there are a plethora of very interesting visual novels out there that are quite good but will simply remain in Japanese and seemingly no amount of begging will change that. So, I decided to try something.

I downloaded and barely learned how a machine translator worked, it machine translates each line as they come up, they tend to be quite to bad, they tend to struggle most with pronouns, or who is saying/doing what. However, there is plenty of context and since VNs tend to be one-on-one or one-on-two conversations, it is easy to figure out. Most likely due to how Japanese is written, there are very few pronouns in Japanese, so most dialogue relies on context to figure out who they are speaking about, once you get used to that way of interpretation it becomes simpler to follow along.

while you won't get a perfect one-to-one translation, between the voice acting and the rough translation, it is quite easy to get a general idea of what is going on and enjoy the story, which in my opinion is better than never being able to read it.

Once you get used to it, it becomes a bit easier to enjoy the story. The only major drawbacks that are left by the time you're used to it are:

• Choices remain untranslated, so you basically have to use
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  and hirigana/katakana chart with a translator to figure out the two choices.
• It struggles with proper names, and some of the stuff it comes up with can make reading difficult, for example, one of the worst translated Emilia as "clothing Misako"
• Not every game works with it, the program has to "hook" the text in order to translate, this doesn't work every time and the program will never be able to translate it
• It cannot translate menus, but since 90% of menus have the same basic options, and the main menu is always laid out the same "new game>load>configure>extras>exit" it's pretty easy to get a rough idea of what you're doing(turning off background music and increasing text speed to max) simply by intuition
• Not every game works on windows 10.
• Finding copies of the game to download is a struggle and sometimes involves rather shady sites.
• Most games come as an ISO, so you need to mount and install, but I have a separate hard drive just for anime that I keep them in, however, a few files do sometimes bleed over to my main OS drive.

However, this method has allowed me to expand the number of visual novels I can read, and I suggest you give it a try, it takes some getting used to but it greatly expands your range of options if you're running out of stuff to watch or see something that looks interesting but remains untranslated.

What do you guys think?

 

[blacksaki]

Can you suggest a good translator? Which one do you use?

 

[desmosome]

Sure, you can understand what they are saying most of the time, but you lose all the charm. Personalities will be lost. Speech patterns will be lost. Everyone will sound ridiculous and you will spend all your time head cannoning what they are actually saying. I can't fap when I'm laughing at the funny ass dialogue.

 

[fidless]

It's alright for a few games, but you lose all the charm of literacy.
You can understand the context in most cases, but you lose the feel of characters.
Unfortunately, the Japanese language works differently compared to western languages and machine translators will never be perfected. That would require AI with actual near-human intelligence understanding.

Can you suggest a good translator? Which one do you use?

Google translator does the best job in my opinion. You can play games with a visual novel reader/translator, but it needs VPN as google blocks ip with 20min of use.

 

[ChaosOpen]

Sure, you can understand what they are saying most of the time, but you lose all the charm. Personalities will be lost. Speech patterns will be lost. Everyone will sound ridiculous and you will spend all your time head cannoning what they are actually saying. I can't fap when I'm laughing at the funny ass dialogue.

For some reason, some games translate better than others. A few games will read mostly like a human translation and others will be as comedically bad. However, it's between a translation or you never see the game. Most of the really freaky stuff never gets translated.

It's alright for a few games, but you lose all the charm of literacy.
You can understand the context in most cases, but you lose the feel of characters.

lol wut? While Japanese VNs are entertaining to read in a way, I wouldn't ever called them overburdened with complexity. As for characters, there are no characters, there are walking archetypes but there aren't many companies who will risk their meal ticket to take a risk.

 

[wyldstrykr]

you should use machine translators in a fan translated or official translation then compare it if its really not that bad.

 

[ChaosOpen]

you should use machine translators in a fan translated or official translation then compare it if its really not that bad.

It's not even close, what I am saying is that it is close enough to be able to understand what the characters are saying.

 

[wyldstrykr]

unless you know some or few japanese and grammar, some lines wont make sense specially negation. EX:does she draw or not?

 

[fidless]

lol wut? While Japanese VNs are entertaining to read in a way, I wouldn't ever called them overburdened with complexity. As for characters, there are no characters, there are walking archetypes but there aren't many companies who will risk their meal ticket to take a risk.

What is your statement with this?
That ALL Japanese VNs are bad and broken sentences made by machine translation are good enough for them?

It's not even close, what I am saying is that it is close enough to be able to understand what the characters are saying.

The rough pounding she’d been getting could no longer be drowned out. She felt every inch inside of her. Gone was the pain from being penetrated, and in it’s place was the purest pleasure she had ever felt.

!==

Pussy. Bang bang! Cum. Good.

Basically why "machine translations" will never be good enough to enjoy the game fully.
Being able to have a general understanding and enjoying the actual writer's work are two different things.
That's my opinion. Good only if I'm desperate to play some kind of RPGM/nukige types of games where plot matters little.
Playing proper games with that kind of "translation" is very tiring for me to play. I just don't see a point to play a butchered game.