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Danganronpa (PSP) Fan Translation Announced, Demo Available

R

Ra1den

Member
Never thought this day would come! The mystery/thriller PSP title Danganronpa (think Phoenix Wright with more puzzle solving and action elements) is being fan translated, and they are already entering the advanced phases, having completed the initial translation. They are looking for some additional help with image editing and such. Work is also underway on the sequel!

Note--this patch is being made to work with "The Best" re-release, so you will need that one.

A demo is already available!

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Homepage of the project, Project Zetsubou:

http://danganronpa.wordpress.com/
 
I have some issues with their translation choices, having seen a far better effort from the LP group at Something Awful, but neat I guess.


And... that banner might not be the best choice.
 
EmCeeGramr said:
I have some issues with their translation choices, having seen a far better effort from the LP group at Something Awful, but neat I guess.
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I kinda agree. I just finished up reading the LP on it, and while I understand why they made some of the changes they did, I still have some issues with it.

And something about that font they're using really bugs the hell outta me.

I'm surprised (and a bit impressed) they were able to reprogram a lot of the more problematic stuff though, since I'd heard that was one of the things really holding a translation back.
 
Awesome news. They've got their work cut out for them though.
(For one brief shining moment I thought this was official :( )
 
Ra1den said:
Never thought this day would come! The mystery/thriller PSP title Danganronpa (think Phoenix Wright with more puzzle solving and action elements) is being fan translated, and they are already entering the advanced phases, having completed the initial translation. They are looking for some additional help with image editing and such. Work is also underway on the sequel!
Click to expand...
I am interested.
 
Awesome news. I've been interested in this game for awhile, so I'll be looking forward to checking it out now that translation will be available. I honestly never expected a fan translation to pop up for this.
 
I'm glad someone's trying to release a patch, but as others have said, what they shown of their translation so far pretty much pales in comparison to the translation orenronen from Something Awful did.

For example, calling Monobear "Monokuma" doesn't really make sense when kuma is literally Japanese for bear. It reminds me of this:

77867fb9ae.jpg


which kind of makes me uneasy. Also, "luckster?" Is that a term a real human being has actually used?

If a translation patch actually comes out I'll totally play it though. I loved the Something Awful LP. I love how insane and over-the-top everything is.
 
Yeah here's hoping they take the feedback regarding the translation into account. They definitely made some-less-than ideal choices.
 
"Super Duper" and the kooky translations for the titles are pretty bad choices. "Super High School Level" and the original titles are a bit dry and awkward, but they're kind of supposed to be. There's a chapter title that kind of plays off of how awkward it sounds, and the titles are supposed to be something granted by a stodgy Japanese high school, so giving the students these flavorful idiomatic vocational names is ill-fitting. "Super Duper" sounds just childish, and some of the titles are either way too obscure if you're not deep in that subculture or give the wrong impression.
 
Enjoying the localization so far. It's just the right balance of translated and true to source material.
And the graphic style/ambience is something else. Nice jazzy OST.
 
From their website:

Untranslated Names

One thing we’ve been asked a lot is why we aren’t translating certain names, like Monokuma to Monobear or Kibougamine to Hope’s Peak. The answer to that is fairly simple: it’s standard practice. There are, of course, exceptions, but we don’t feel like there’s any good reason for Danganronpa to be one of those exceptions.

Take the Ace Attorney games for example. Names are punny and playful, but usually in an indirect, abstract way. There’s no way someone who doesn’t speak Japanese is going to understand what the name Naruhodo (“I see”) contributes to the image of the main character. (Read this section of the Wiki article on the character if you want a detailed explanation.)

On the other hand, “kuma” just means “bear.” That’s a detail you can glean in about two seconds. Translating his name doesn’t contribute anything to his character. It just tells you he’s a monochrome bear, and we trust our readers are intelligent enough to figure that much out on their own.

And then there’s Kibougamine, or Hope’s Peak. Seven lines into the game, we’re told that the academy is sometimes referred to as Hope’s Academy. Its students are constantly said to be the best of the best, at the very top of their respective fields. All the information you could take from the name is spelled out in the text. At best, it’s an interesting little tidbit worth a line in the translation notes.
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are these people serious
 
t26 said:
Well there are 2 updates and they are both addressing complains on translation...
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...except that the majority of their responses are "we like it the way we had it so it's staying."

I still think Luckster sounds terrible and I disagree with their decision to keep Monokuma and Kibougamine, "standard practice" or not.
 
Zane said:
From their website:



are these people serious
Click to expand...

It is common practice... for fansubs/translations... Their aim isn't meant to be professional and it keeps it niche... I don't agree with their decision, but you know what? They are the ones doing it and for free so more power to them.
 
KojiKnight said:
It is common practice... for fansubs/translations... Their aim isn't meant to be professional and it keeps it niche...
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But that's bad. "Y'know what, this kid can't stop setting fires, but boys will be boys!"

More to the point, why shouldn't a niche thing be held to a professional standard? Both creator and consumer learns the value in doing things a tried and true, easily appreciable way instead of just masturbating, and with someone else's hand, at that.
 
KojiKnight said:
It is common practice... for fansubs/translations... Their aim isn't meant to be professional and it keeps it niche... I don't agree with their decision, but you know what? They are the ones doing it and for free so more power to them.
Click to expand...

Obviously it's their decision but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to be annoyed by it.

Re-reading that blog post about the translation criticisms, parts of it definitely come off as smug and condescending to me. Like I said earlier I'm glad a team is going through the effort of a translation patch, but I'd much rather they use orenronen's script.
 
BiggNife said:
Obviously it's their decision but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to be annoyed by it.

Re-reading that blog post about the translation criticisms, parts of it definitely come off as smug and condescending to me. Like I said earlier I'm glad a team is going through the effort of a translation patch, but I'd much rather they use orenronen's script.
Click to expand...


Oh, I wasn't meaning to imply you can't be annoyed by it, but it is in the end a free project so there is really no point in being too upset. Some translation is better than none afterall. As someone who used to do a lot of fansubbing (admittedly just as a Timer, but I got to know a lot of these types of people) I can see where they are coming from and why... and again I don't agree with it at all. It makes a translation come off as either half baked, or non-inclusive and it's (almost) always the latter. It's translating to the likes of themselves, otaku. The kind of people who look at a dubbed TV shows and scoff.

And yes, that does come off as incredibly smug.
 
BiggNife said:
For example, calling Monobear "Monokuma" doesn't really make sense when kuma is literally Japanese for bear.

which kind of makes me uneasy. Also, "luckster?" Is that a term a real human being has actually used?
Click to expand...

Luckster is an actual term, though it's more slang, IIRC.

Yeah, some of their translation stuff comes off as just plain silly. I've no issue with Monokuma, but Kibougamine?

That's just kinda stupid not to translate it, even if it is mentioned what it's known as.

(Look at it from the view of a typical person; Kibougamine comes off as weird, as opposed to Hope's Peak. Almost seems ironic, given some of their translations.)
 
Did these guys leave honorifics in the game by any chance? I absolutely loathe those in English translations. "kun" "chan" "sempai" these are things that mean nothing to an English speaker who doesn't have a background in Japanese.
 
Takao said:
Did these guys leave honorifics in the game by any chance? I absolutely loathe those in English translations. "kun" "chan" "sempai" these are things that mean nothing to an English speaker who doesn't have a background in Japanese.
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You, uh, could play the demo...


That said, no, thankfully. I don't like them either.
 
Takao said:
Did these guys leave honorifics in the game by any chance? I absolutely loathe those in English translations. "kun" "chan" "sempai" these are things that mean nothing to an English speaker who doesn't have a background in Japanese.
Click to expand...

If you are playing fan-translations of obscure Japanese games, you are very likely to have at least a basic background in Japanese, though.

I wouldn't like their choices in a professional localization, but their translation is aimed at a pretty specific audience that seems to like things the way they are. If the translators and these people are happy, I am not the one to complain. I'm just happy to be able to play the game at all.
 
wrowa said:
If you are playing fan-translations of obscure Japanese games, you are very likely to have at least a basic background in Japanese, though.

I wouldn't like their choices in a professional localization, but their translation is aimed at a pretty specific audience that seems to like things the way they are. If the translators and these people are happy, I am not the one to complain. I'm just happy to be able to play the game at all.
Click to expand...

That's seems like a far fetched assumption. I think it looks horrendous this way too.
 
Takao said:
Did these guys leave honorifics in the game by any chance? I absolutely loathe those in English translations. "kun" "chan" "sempai" these are things that mean nothing to an English speaker who doesn't have a background in Japanese.
Click to expand...

I personally love when these things are included, for two reasons:

1: Anybody can learn what they mean with 30 seconds of google research(and most people playing these games will already know what they mean to begin with). Once learned, they are easy for even non-Japanese to relate to. And there is only like 4 you need to learn!

2: They play a HUGE role in the meaning of the conversations. A ton of meaning is lost without them. I think 30 seconds of google research is worthwhile for many many hours of much better understanding of character interaction.

Now, when it comes to obscure jokes about Japanese history that almost nobody(who is not Japanese) would know, I'm all for localizing those. Way too much effort is needed and there is little payoff.

But given that such an easily translatable and understandable thing like adding san or kun or whatever can add SO much more to the understanding of the dialogue, I think they should be retained.
 
Ra1den said:
2: They play a HUGE role in the meaning of the conversations. A ton of meaning is lost without them. I think 30 seconds of google research is worthwhile for many many hours of much better understanding of character interaction.
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someone who is good at localizing can bring the proper meaning of a conversation without honorifics. leaving honorifics in is pretty lazy, in my opinion.
 
Gravijah said:
someone who is good at localizing can bring the proper meaning of a conversation without honorifics. leaving honorifics in is pretty lazy, in my opinion.
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I think the process of doing that usually sounds more awkward than just leaving the honorific in there :)

It's so easy to understand these things with such little effort, removing them and trying to compensate in other ways seems like extra work for no good reason. Whereas, to use the obscure joke example again, there is plenty of reason to localize those, since understanding them is a big problem.
 
Compare Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's PS1 localization to Persona 3's and you'll see a very good example as to why you don't need honorifics for a great script.
 
BomberMouse said:
That's seems like a far fetched assumption. I think it looks horrendous this way too.
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If you aren't generally interested in Japanese games/media, you most likely wouldn't even know the game and the translation project existed. I'm not saying that everyone is able to speak some basic Japanese, but I doubt that anyone in that group doesn't know what honorfics are.

I'm not a fan of their decisions either (and luckily they decided against the use of honorfics), but they are right that this stuff is quite common in the fansub community etc. If these are the groups they are primarly translating the game for then that's their good right.
 
they're going to release the script editor, so if (like me) you can't stand their translations and prefer the efforts of the SomethingAwful LP you can probably play it with their script at some point.

...not to mention the people over at SomethingAwful are actually working on a fan translation patch of their own (for both this game and its sequel).
 
cj_iwakura said:
Compare Persona 2: Eternal Punishment's PS1 localization to Persona 3's and you'll see a very good example as to why you don't need honorifics for a great script.
Click to expand...

Sure it can be good, but I'd argue that those same translators could have created an even better script and with less effort, should they have retained the honorifics. In fact, keep those excellent localizations exactly the same as they are now but throw in the honorifics on top of that, and I'd say that is a superior product.

Honorifics should just be thought of as part of that person's name. There is no reason these should sound strange in other languages.

I guess what I'm saying is that because of how ubiquitous and simple they are, they should be considered an exception to the rule when it comes to localizations. Fan translations only of course, one can't expect official releases to have them, but this is an area where fan translators can leverage their more flexible positions to create a better product. Especially considering that if you are going to the effort of patching a game you imported from Japan, there is a 99% chance you know what chan and kun mean without any additional research needed. Those other 1% can do a quick google search :)

skasaha said:
...not to mention the people over at SomethingAwful are actually working on a fan translation patch of their own (for both this game and its sequel).
Click to expand...

I was not aware of this....hmmm.
 
I know what the honorifics I posted mean, it just comes across as lazy, pandering to otaku, and admitting that these games aren't meant to be played by outsiders. A good translation shouldn't require the person to go spend any time searching up words that could've been translated. It's another barrier to entry to niche Japanese games that they really don't need. There are English anime dubs that use honorifics, and that feels almost hypocritical to the ambitions of an English dub.
 
Their translation is a bit weird text wise but it's quite strong on a technical level I would say. All the fonts are nice looking and overall it looks great. Must not have been an easy task especially for the anagram part of the court trial.

I find that leaving honorifics in is silly most of the time. They don't exist in English but you have other means to convey their meaning through the text. The objective of a localization is to adapt the text so it makes sense in your language after all.

The modern Persona games used them since the games take place in Japanese High School and it kinda added some special touch to the game but it would be silly to use them in another context. See the stupid Chrono Trigger fan translation with their Princess Marledia-sama and Lavos-sama.
 
Takao said:
I know what the honorifics I posted mean, it just comes across as lazy, pandering to otaku, and admitting that these games aren't meant to be played by outsiders. A good translation shouldn't require the person to go spend any time searching up words that could've been translated. It's another barrier to entry to niche Japanese games that they really don't need. There are English anime dubs that use honorifics, and that feels almost hypocritical to the ambitions of an English dub.
Click to expand...

If it were a substantial amount of words, I would definitely agree with you. However, this is 4 or 5 single-syllable words with easy to grasp meanings which are used CONSTANTLY and always part of a name. There is no complexity whatsoever to this(which I know you are aware of). I think 2 minutes of research is worth it when you're playing a game 30 or whatever hours. And of course, across all other games and anime one will partake in...those 2 minutes are well worth it. It's a win-win for everybody--easier for the translators and a more accurate(yet still understandable) translation for the players.
 
Gravijah said:
someone who is good at localizing can bring the proper meaning of a conversation without honorifics. leaving honorifics in is pretty lazy, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Maybe. However, most attempts I have seen to "translate" honorifics end up with text that is incredibly awkward in a convoluted attempt to capture the original meaning. I'd much rather just have the honorifics.
 
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