[New Thracia 776 translation]

I think there's different messages that are present in a translation, and what we're trying to mark out with Ezra Pound might be different for the original authors, an audience, and whomever else. If we're going to appeal to namesakes, Tolstoy argued that an artistic entity was graspable by a kind of universal humanism. Ezra Pound might have had such a grasp, and though he failed the words, he did not fail the ideation behind them.

I see how one could argue this still applies to basic translation of words, but that's jumping from content to content without being charitable. I would say that the text-itself, if capable of elucidating such feeling, shouldn't need to be revised or altered, as it is self-fulfilling in that regard. When one tries to clarify it is preventing the text-itself from expressing that sense of whatever it might be, and instead is trying to redirect the audience to interpret what the translator believes is such a sense. It gets rather mucky in some ways once we fall out like this. Mostly I think the words being used are not grasping their clear referential senses, and so the muddiness emerges.

I stopped following it after Gringe would confess his errors repeatedly. Last ones I remembered was disavowing much of the Alucard significances but then shoving in Dracula-esque language to describe him, as he found the idea interesting. Another was when Gringe confessed he was rewriting script he thought was flat, and that he didn't go back to consult the original text often unless he was himself perturbed by the translation. I think a good translation would not hinge its audiences interpretations based on the translator's, as it is not the translator that is relevant to the text, but the text-itself. So when Gringe takes upon himself to measure whether the translation currently available is wonky or otherwise worth adjusting, and at times doesn't even consult what the text would be in itself, then the project is no longer interested in translation as a goal, but instead fingers on the edge of eloquence and reader entertainment. Someone once put it as "practicing their creative writing skills."

It's as the original user mentioned: it doesn't matter the quantity done well against the quantity done off if the person in question shows a willingness to ignore the quality for the opportunity of creating their own sense of being "on the mark." But as I mentioned, most of the audience really has no care for what a good or bad translation is. They merely want to be entertained, and a brash whirlwind of text can offer more in this way than to simply show the text itself. All of this talk really doesn't capture what it really is to translate something, as the method is much more nuanced than the arbitrary lines of "strays too far" against "far too conservative/literal".

I don't think you have a very clear understanding of the translation process, or how often things are rewritten or altered in the process by the translators themselves. For an example from Fire Emblem alone - NoA played up Ike and Elincia in PoR, rather than cleave to the original script. Awakening's script also sees several noted differences.

Really, the claim that 'the text shouldn't need to be clarified' evr is flat out ludicrous, especially given the differences between the Japanese and English languages and expressions therein. Certain concepts, internal references, etc. al do not translate well without an author's note at times.

At the risk of sounding rude, Celice, I feel like your view of how translation works is very, very divorced form the way the process occurs, and what the industry itself considers to be standard practice. Additionally, you are sort of snubbing the readerbase by claiming 'Oh, they just want to be entertained, they don't care about the quality of the translation.'

[New Thracia 776 translation]

i have no idea how to respond to any claim that gringe is a poor translator other than a derisive ahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh wow

i suspect this claim is borne solely of that time he slightly toned down that cath/geese support, because frankly that's the only conceivable time where gringe actively did anything resembling changing the content of the game's writing, and even then it's so minor as to make the claim laughable

I think people in game fandoms trend toward oft-unreasonably purist in their leanings, as if translating less than literally violates the sanctity of the work. This is often doubly amusing since many of the translations held up as exemplary show a fair hand of the author.

Add my voice to the chorus of those who think Gringe's command of both Japanese and English and the ability to move text between the two is pretty top notch.

[New Thracia 776 translation]

You're right on the last point, which is why fan projects like Gringe's are at best fan fictions when they absolve the original story in favor of their new writer's own creative writing practice and augmentations. But many players don't seem to care about inherent quality of translation, as much as they are in being entertained, and so many would rather sit by so long as something is thrown out and replaced with an audible guffaw. (It reminds me eerily of older English plays where the actors would not try and express emotion or idea, but make gestures like sign-language to tell the audience AND HERE FEEL SORROW or AND HERE COMES LAUGHTER.)

My mentioning of Shaya's tendency however is to explain that this text was never intended to remain in the final version of the patch, and most users following Shaya's work at the time acknowledged this. Its breaking of aesthetics partly is intentional, not in the sense to disrupt the atmosphere, but to firmly show this is an in-progress work. It's happenstance that the unfinished patch, like many other throughout the scene, simply became the lasting one by lack of progress. Your gripe remains charitable only if Shaya had intended this reference to remain throughout all development and to exist still in the final version. Rather, if I remember correctly (this is coming on seven years ago), Shaya would regularly introduce and remove text like IN AMERCA with each patch revision. IN AMERICA would be excised in the next revision and then some new reference would be made somewhere else in the text--acting as a kind of easter egg for all the playtesters of the patch.

Fans who take this out of context are creating their own apprehension with the patch, out of their own misunderstanding of its state. For all the complaint, IN AMERICA is only a few bytes to edit out. I'm surprised the community is as passive and lacking as it were to simply not fix what they dislike in one small brush of a hex editor.

You could say the same thing about major literary translations though. Scholars have fought over the opening lines of Beowulf for decades. Tolkien's now-released translation is claimed to provide 'greater insight' into his background. There really is no objectively pure translation - Translations inject a component of character into all their own. What also, do you say to things like Ezra Pound's work in Chinese poetry, where he managed to translate the intent and themes of pieces while possessing zero linguistic knowledge?

[FEIV (v0.a released)]

Minor blood in FE4, IIRC, was just there so you could combine two people's minor blood to make it major blood. Having minor blood was the same thing as having no minor blood, until you got around to formulating your generational strategy.

I could be wrong about that though. In either case, Major blood is supposed to be the good stuff, and making it boost growth rates or something would be pretty neat.

Both Minor and Major blood already give growth bonuses in FE4.

[New Thracia 776 translation]

However, we need to contextualize these out-of-place jokes. Shaya would litter these non-sequiturs between script/patch updates. They would be removed the next time a public patch were released, and there would probably be a new round of random text to take its place. They were not permanent additions. Shaya and FireLizard's work is unfinished, and it's both uncharitable and ignorant to hold to the standards of a finished translation project.

But we have equal taste to be at ends with: recently NoA has saw it profitable to use memes in their localization and advertising. Good Guy Cranky Kong took over their twitter when the last Donkey Kong game was coming out. In their latest Mario Part and several other titles, ITS OVER 9000 gets textual appearances by Bowser. There's something about a Shark Tornado in some detective game. And we weren't free of such stupid localization earlier, either. Symphony of the Night's localization renames numerous textual contents to reference Lord of the Rings just because, often screwing up an item's explanation of its purpose just for the sake of a reference. Final Fantasy IV on the GBA had several in-house jokes and references to memes from some Neogaf-esque website. Wooseley, for all his interesting choices and time constraints, would often just fuck-up text (in Chrono Trigger, there's a woman who says she hates fairs, an exact opposite of her liking them in the Japanese release). A really popular translation guy in NoE working for Enix would regularly enter late 80s pop culture references just for shits and giggles, as I've heard from some over the seas friends.

Some people seem to have this weird, unfair disposition towards in-house translation and fan translation.

In Thracia it is an issue of tone. Making zany fourth wall breaking jokes like Working Designs would do in the late 90s-early 2000s worked for them as they were releasing some fairly lighthearted games. Thracia's plot, by contrast, is much darker, and has the kidnapping, brainwashing and slaughter of children as a key component, along with themes of vengeance and oppression. They really shake up the ambience in this game.

I don't think it is ignorant to expect a quality standard in translations, even unfinished ones. If your line is mistranslated, or absent entirely, the state of the other thousand of lines of text in the script is irrelevant: That particular line is the issue. There are a number of such instances in the Thracia script, and there are even more instances of just plain awkward phrasing.

[Solum's sprites]

Thanks for that Agro I find it better like this too ^^

New version then !

Very dashing. Nice.

[FEIV (v0.a released)]

Them mugs!! My eyes bleed.

They're obvious placeholders. Pi's spriting is top notch.

[Is Xavier worth recruiting?]

If you want an early indoor lance user, you may as well just early promote Dalsin.

[Solum's sprites]

The top of his head seems a little flat It doesn't quite match up with the angle of his head. I'm also having trouble resolving the angle of his head vs the angle of his body, but I guess you could pull off that pose by craning your neck and shoulders a little.

I think it works. Tilt your head a little and adjust your shoulders toward more of a diagonal and you can somewhat approximate that pose.

[Sword of Seals VS Binding Blade]

It's arguable if the Awakening names for unlocalized things are really official. The localization team probably didn't put in as much effort since they're just cameos, and if FE6 were ever remade and localized, it's possible that they'd choose a different title.

I'd rather just stick with the current convention where we refer to Awakening's names when talking about Awakening (i.e. Seliph, Leif, Binding Blade, and FE7 being Fire Emblem), and the old names when talking about FE1-6, 12, and 7's subtitle (i.e. Celice, Leaf, Sword of Seals, and Blazing Sword).

That's a tremendous amount of conjecture. Level of effort put in does not diminish the fact that it is the recognized official translation. They've also used Binding Blade repeatedly.

That is the most confusing way possible. You are endorsing having two names for everything, and using them in different circumstances.

[New Thracia 776 translation]

backtracking a bit because i just made an amusing discovery

well... for one, a little nintendo subsidiary called intelligent systems

this is a screencap of a raw, unmodified script dump from fe4's prologue and as you can see it pretty clearly says "arvis"

Arvis sounds a bit more linguistically adjacent to the names of other members of the Jugdral cast, as well, for what it's worth. Now my (idle) curiosity is piqued, though.

Also I cannot read Arvis' dialogue in anything but that very low baritone 90s anime villian voice.

[Elibean Nights]

No, it's definitely juat a talk with Lyn and the cavs. Florina/Lyn does net you a Delphi Shield though.

I don't remember the exact order of the top of my head, but I do have a video of the chapter that has the full sequence here:youtube.com/watch?v=vwW9uCcmRpw

I think I confused myself there, since Sain<-->Florina have a conversation, I believe.

[Elibean Nights]

/insert 0% growths reference here

Harken also has better durability in spite of the HP deficit, and the Str/Spd advantage Raven might have is largely irrelevant against most HHM enemies. (Are where they are relevant, critical hits exist.)

...But to stay on topic, anyone know how to keep the Talk chain for 2xb going? All I can get is the initial Kent/Sain talk, and Sain/Florina doesn't seem to have an impact.

Florina to Lyn is the next step, I believe. It's been a couple weeks since I played it, though. It basically circles through the Cavs + Florina + Lyn at various instances. Try different combinations, and make sure you have the right patch.

[Sword of Seals VS Binding Blade]

Slightly off-topic now, but we abandoned Exaccus because it was plain wrong.

Plus Eckesachs looks cooler : D

Now if only somebody would change Tate to something more closely representing the kana... But then again, Tate's a nice name and close enough.

If it makes you feel better, the Binding Blade was possibly going to be named Hartmut (like the hero). So it would have been the Binding Blade, Hartmut.

Presumably they dropped the name so it mirrored FE3's Binding Shield.

The worst part is I always pun that name when she gets hit.

お前の力この程度か、テイト？ (Is that all you've got, Tate?)

...except it really doesn't work because it's "Thitto" instead of "Teito" (Tate) close to "Teido".

As for the sword name itself, Vincent... I feel like it's just one of those things.

Like how "Divine Dragon King" for Shadow Dragon.

ティト could be Tyto, Teito, Tate, or a couple others. Tate is probably the most aesthetically/visually pleasing to write.

[Elibean Nights]

Raven's life's purpose is to be benched since I get Harken later.

Or to kill Arcard, whichever is easier.

...Not to turn this into an FE7 optimization argument, but Raven is superior to Harken. Better growths, massively better availability with which to contribute to earlier chapters, generally better weapon ranks (except his axes may end up lower due to having to promote). Harken/Raven is an apples to oranges comparison since they exist for entirely different purposes in the game.

[Sword of Seals VS Binding Blade]

Y'know, I actually kind of like Rutoga.

On the face of it, it looks stupid compared to the awesome-looking/sounding Rutger, but thing is Rutger/Rutoga is a Bern/Sacae hybrid and it's not unusual for them to have weird looking names (Shin, Dayan, etc. not sure about Sue and Lyn though).

Kind of like the Chon'sin naming conventions in Awakening.

Now I have my doubts that the reason NOA went for Rutoga was because of that reason, but that could be a reason for us to use it.

Ugh, please no.

Aloud, it is ROO-TOH-GAH, and if you're pronouncing your Japanese correctly, you're sort of sliding through the second syllable, creating a sound more like ROOT-GAH, which is pretty on target for 'Rutger'. Rutoga is terrifyingly awkward. We might as well call Eliwood 'Eriuddo' at that point.

Furthermore, none of the Sacaeans save Uhai and Dayan have names that sound remotely like the source material of their people (Who are unmista Saka/Scythian/Eurasian nomadic tribe), so there isn't much, if any precedent or consistency. 'Guy' is lumped in with 'Sue' and 'Dayan. Elibe in general has no real established naming conventions - Lycia is ostensibly Greek, but contains a similar hodgepodge of name originas and is visually European.

Please, don't encourage poor literal translation. They went for Rutoga because whoever did it was lazy and/or new and/or bad at their job.

[Sword of Seals VS Binding Blade]

Actually, it's the "Sealed Sword".

Why don't we call it that, then?

\

That's just another synonymous translation of 封印の剣, as Shadowofchaos pointed out. Binding Blade = Sealed Sword = Sword of Seals in this case, linguistically.

[[LoL] Ultra Rapid Fire game mode]

Urgot is pretty much terrifying in this mode.

It was nice to flash back to that period of time two years ago.

I'm sad this won't stick around. After more or less giving up on League, this was the first game I played in months.

[FEIV (v0.a released)]

Yeah speaking of which, I actually decided to rebrowse the entire FoD topic because I was so damn convinced it couldn't have been Pi who made FEIV, it just HAD to be Ryrumeli. And well, after a really long examination and skype discussion, I'm definitely wrong, this ain't Ryru's work. However I find it hard to believe that Pi alone did all of this, so I still think Ryru had at least something to do with development, even if it was just a helpful word here and there.

For one thing, in FoD, the skills screen looked way better than the one in FEIV does. Much more polished, I'd say.

Not to mention FoD had tons of things this hack doesn't have, while this hack has some things FoD probably didn't.

FoD:

-Hacked in FE8

-Voice Actor Dialogue

-Halfbody Support

-Custom Text System

-Classy edits all over the place (Everything looks polished)

FEIV:

-Hacked in FE7

-Advance wars stuff (Not nominal, fairly trivial, but it's a thing)

-STR/MAG split, actually looks good too.

-Holy blood stuff

-Map HP bars

They have quite a lot of differences, and since I can't imagine Ryru actually making WORSE skill windows than he already made, I will accept that he didn't make this. I still think he had something to do with it's development though.

You act like no one has ever applied themselves to something and increased their skill level through independent labor, which is in fact, the opposite of what has occured in many instances of this community, particularly the early one.

Judging by the quality of his other work alone, Pi does not lack for the requisite determination and grit necessary to enhance himself.

[Sword of Seals VS Binding Blade]

Everyone in this topic is completely wrong.

The most accurate translation is Fire Emblem: Sword of Binding Vergil.

This is correct, absolutely, 100%.

Side note - Rutoga is also horrifyingly bad, as it is just the third katakana that make up his name with no attention paid to the actual aural characteristics (in Japanese) of what's being said.

[Elibean Nights]

Actually, there's a line of wall that Heath can go over to get in and kill Alastor. If and when I replay it, I'll take a screenshot on how it's done.

For shame, you stole Raven's life purpose away.

[New Thracia 776 translation]

oh sorry it wasn't meant specifically for you, more at the others with the active complaining. i just kinda skimmed over yours, interesting as it was :P

I AM HEREBY HEARTILY OFFENDED. WE MUST NOW KUNG-FU FIGHT. :P

In all seriousness, I enthusiastically support you guys in this, and look forward to seeing the results down the line.

[New Thracia 776 translation]

at the risk of getting snippy and control freaky, use of official names in this patch is non-negotiable. joesteve wants to use them, gringe wants to use them, i want to use them. complaints will fall on deaf ears on this one. seriously, focus your efforts on something actually important and worth complaining about

you're drastically overstating how "bad" they are anyway; the majority of them barely differ at all from what we've been calling the characters for years!

I'm not sure if this was directed at me, but never was I really decrying the usage of the official names, and I'm sorry if you mistook that for criticism? I merely find the linguistic foibles interesting. Rendering Gaelic in Japanese is even more hilarious than trying to pronounce it from a native English speaker standpoint.

For funsies, Noish's name origin (Naoise) is pronounced Knee-sha, or close thereabouts. And somehow Leif is called Leif despite him stating his full name as Lugh.

In the end, everyone should just be named Vergil.

[New Thracia 776 translation]

Ulster? ULSTER? http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=12q3bsGWch4

Don't name your characters after provinces. Oh yeah, not to forget Lachesis. Her name change doesn't make sense(but at least more sense than the Nintendo Power article[Marus]).

I prefer to download my ROMs prepatched rather than go through the bother of patching them myself anyway.

Skasaher is actually funnier than Ulster (to me at least) - Skasaher is derived from Scathach, the name of a female figure in Irish myth while Larcei/Lakche is derived from Luchtaine, a male deity. The twins have gender swapped names, essentially. Ulster at least sounds masculine in English, I suppose.

I assume a great deal of the official name changes were done to corruption the Gaelic a bit further (Or Greek, in Raquesis' case), rather than directly reference the source material (Midir->Midayle, etc.). However, some are particularly aggravating - Delmud instead of Diarmuid/Dermott drives me nuts, especially since it should be rendered closer to Jyarmuddo in romaji.

For clarity's sake (and disclosure of the position I'm speaking from), I speak Japanese and study Gaelic.

[Elibean Nights]

I very much liked killing Alastor with Heath.

Yes, HEATH.

That...shouldn't be possible?

As I recall the wall is untraversable, and thick enough that you can't spear over it.