Shinsekai Yori

[pudding321]

I wish you good luck with the project, Dusanh. It will take a lifetime to translate this and Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon.

[florza]

I wish you good luck with the project, Dusanh. It will take a lifetime to translate this and Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon.

Kara no Kyoukai isn't Horizon, pudding.

[pudding321]

I wish you good luck with the project, Dusanh. It will take a lifetime to translate this and Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon.

Kara no Kyoukai isn't Horizon, pudding.

What are you trying to say??

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index ... no_Horizon

[Mystes]

Flo meant that "Kara no Kyoukai" and "Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon" were two diff series...I guess?

[Dusanh]

Alright, Chapter 2 is now complete. Although I havn't completely finished proofreading and adding footnotes as of this post.

While looking up information I found a blog? where someone else has been posting a translation of the novel who has quite a headstart on me(4 chapters as of now). I don't know how fast he/she is working or what the quality of his/her translation is, and I don't intend to read it. (I don't want to let their decisions with regard to the translation influence mine). In any case, I'm going to assume it's at least reasonable and skip forward to Part 3 now under the assumption that this other person will continue and fill in Part 2.

I do intend to do my own translation of the whole book eventually, but Part 3 was always the section of the story I was most interested in (assuming it corresponds to what parts of the anime I think it does).

You can find the other person's work here. http://shinsekai.cadet-nine.org/categor ... ew-leaves/

Also, Thank You for the encouragement Pudding321. ^_^

[pudding321]

Alright, Chapter 2 is now complete. Although I havn't completely finished proofreading and adding footnotes as of this post.

While looking up information I found a blog? where someone else has been posting a translation of the novel who has quite a headstart on me(4 chapters as of now). I don't know how fast he/she is working or what the quality of his/her translation is, and I don't intend to read it. (I don't want to let their decisions with regard to the translation influence mine). In any case, I'm going to assume it's at least reasonable and skip forward to Part 3 now under the assumption that this other person will continue and fill in Part 2.

I do intend to do my own translation of the whole book eventually, but Part 3 was always the section of the story I was most interested in (assuming it corresponds to what parts of the anime I think it does).

You can find the other person's work here. http://shinsekai.cadet-nine.org/categor ... ew-leaves/

Also, Thank You for the encouragement Pudding321. ^_^

I was aware of the other translations on the net, but most of them, I presume, will call it quit after a few chapters. So instead of hosting their translations, I find it more productive for one to be committed to finishing the whole project.

Anyway, I don't have much opinion about your translation, but I heard you do literal translations and convert them somehow back to more English-like. It doesn't really matter, actually, as long as the translations make sense, but have you ever thought of translating them into English directly without going through the conversion process? It might make your translation progress faster. You don't necessarily have to follow my suggestion though.

[Dusanh]

I was aware of the other translations on the net, but most of them, I presume, will call it quit after a few chapters. So instead of hosting their translations, I find it more productive for one to be committed to finishing the whole project.

I'm still committed to doing the entire project, just not necessairily in the normal order. In all honesy, I was looking for an excuse to skip forward to Part 3 before continuing in order anyways.

Anyway, I don't have much opinion about your translation, but I heard you do literal translations and convert them somehow back to more English-like. It doesn't really matter, actually, as long as the translations make sense, but have you ever thought of translating them into English directly without going through the conversion process? It might make your translation progress faster. You don't necessarily have to follow my suggestion though.

I know what you mean, and I do translate in a single step on short and/or simple sentences. I'm not sure how it is for others here, but for me, the two step process is a necessity when working with more complicated sentence structures.

The reason is kind of odd and relates to the reason why I can't do real time translation at all. My mind seems to work in one language or another, never two at once. For example, If I'm speaking to someone in Japanese and they switch to English, the first few English sentences they speak will be completely incomprehensible to me, even though it's my native language. The same goes when the situation is the other way around.

When I translate, I first have to read and understand the sentence in Japanese, allowing me to choose the right possible words when writing out each one individually in English to form a literal translation that is essentially a duplicate of the sentence using English words in a Japanese grammatical structure. From there, I can switch my thinking back to English and convert the resulting literal translation into a grammatically correct(for the most part) English sentence. In some cases, despite having all the correct words in a technically correct order, the sentence will still be extremely awkward or otherwise difficult to follow, and I'll have to do a 3rd pass to convert it into English that actually sounds natural and makes sense. This 3rd step is usually needed as a result of idioms or metaphors that just don't work in English, or sentences where the word order itself, or deliberate selective word omission, is used as a literary tool in a way that is outright impossible in English.

I could, if I really wanted to, simply look up enough words to understand the Japanese sentence, and then paraphrase it into English in a single step. This would certainly be much faster, but would destroy all trace of the authors original writting style, creating something more like a retelling than a translation. I could be wrong, but I don't think any of you want that. I certainly don't when I'm reading a translation by someone else.

That ended up being a lot more than I intended to say, and probably more appropriate for a different thread. In any case, I hope it gives you some idea of my process. I've never really tried to properly explain it, and it isn't nearly as complicated as that wall of text might make it seem, at least not most of the time. >_<

[pudding321]

When I translate, I first have to read and understand the sentence in Japanese, allowing me to choose the right possible words when writing out each one individually in English to form a literal translation that is essentially a duplicate of the sentence using English words in a Japanese grammatical structure. From there, I can switch my thinking back to English and convert the resulting literal translation into a grammatically correct(for the most part) English sentence. In some cases, despite having all the correct words in a technically correct order, the sentence will still be extremely awkward or otherwise difficult to follow, and I'll have to do a 3rd pass to convert it into English that actually sounds natural and makes sense. This 3rd step is usually needed as a result of idioms or metaphors that just don't work in English, or sentences where the word order itself, or deliberate selective word omission, is used as a literary tool in a way that is outright impossible in English.

I could, if I really wanted to, simply look up enough words to understand the Japanese sentence, and then paraphrase it into English in a single step. This would certainly be much faster, but would destroy all trace of the authors original writting style, creating something more like a retelling than a translation. I could be wrong, but I don't think any of you want that. I certainly don't when I'm reading a translation by someone else.

That ended up being a lot more than I intended to say, and probably more appropriate for a different thread. In any case, I hope it gives you some idea of my process. I've never really tried to properly explain it, and it isn't nearly as complicated as that wall of text might make it seem, at least not most of the time. >_<

Please don't worry. This discusion is definitely appropriate here since this thread also helps the translators to further hone their skills and craft in translation of this project. While many would like to retain the author's writing style, and I too most of the time, it is virtually impossible to keep them all, unless the translation comes from a machine translator, which would totally crush the minds of any English reader. Think of it like this: the translation is to let fans with little to no Japanese knowledge to be able to read the story. Would the author of the novel intend his readers to appreciate his Japanese writing style instead of having a better understanding of the story?

While I don't intend to change anyone's style of translating, the result gives us some proof or hint of what the original text has gone through in the translation process. While you may reckon that you want to retain most of the content and writing styles, you should also acknowledge the fact that through two processes—literal translation and conversion—you are, in fact, losing more than less. Anyway, don't let my opinion change you yet. Try for yourself. Take a paragraph—doesn't need to be too long, probably just a few sentences—and try to translate it in your original way, and then try to read through every sentence in another paragraph (yes, translating the same paragraph will affect your thinking), memorize the meaning, directly type them out in English. Compare the two translations to see which of them make more sense. If you're indecisive, ask your friend to see which one of them works best.

More to Read: http://thenanochannel.wordpress.com/201 ... nslations/

[Dusanh]

While I don't intend to change anyone's style of translating, the result gives us some proof or hint of what the original text has gone through in the translation process. While you may reckon that you want to retain most of the content and writing styles, you should also acknowledge the fact that through two processes—literal translation and conversion—you are, in fact, losing more than less.

I think you may be misunderstanding what I mean when I call it a two/three step process. While it's true that a multi-step process(such as Japanese->Chinese->English) in which the same information is translated more than once causes an increase in the information altered and/or lost, that isn't the kind of thing I was referring to. The effect what I do has on the information is more along the lines of translating all the even numbered pages and then going back and translating all the odd numbered ones as a second step. There are multiple steps, but a given piece of information is only altered once, unless a more severe alteration is absolutely necessary for it to make sense in English.

While it may be a gross simplification, to my knowledge, most translation can be reduced to one of 4 types, which differ as a tradeoff between the attributes of Speed, Required Skill, Accuracy, and Comprehensibility.(There are in reality more factors and more methods but these will do for this discussion.) At the lowest level you have 'strictly by the book' and 'machine translations' that provide a high Speed translation at a low Skill Level, but lack Accuracy or Comprehensibility. At the middle, you have two forms that are roughly equivalent in Required Skill. One(the type I've been trying for) produces Accuracy and Comprehensibility at the cost of Speed, while the other (the one-step method mentioned in my previous post) produces a Fast and Comprehensible translation but lacks Accuracy. There is another type of one step method above all of these that lets one translate Comprehensibly and Accurately at a more reasonable Speed, but the Skill Level required for this is much much higher than any of the others, and is currently well beyond my ability for something as difficult as ShinSekai Yori. This method does not so much eliminate the individual steps of the Accuracy heavy method as relegate them to a subconscious level, which requires a very high degree of fluency to accomplish. One of my reasons for picking up a project as difficult as ShinSekai Yori is to see if I can't reach that kind of skill level given enough practice, and while I do feel that I am making progress, it's still quite a ways off.

I think that there was a misunderstanding in our previous discussion in that the the one-step method you were thinking of(I'm assuming) was the latter, while the one-step method I was thinking of is the former. I could go into much more detail if needed, but I think this should suffice to clarify the point I intended to make.

[Dusanh]

Okay, I've passed the half way point in Part 3 Chapter 3. I'm loving this chapter as least as much as I had hoped I would, and I havn't even reached the part I was looking forward to yet. For those of you who havn't watched the anime yet, Shame on You! Go do so! But I should also warn you that the above mentioned chapter contains some major spoilers.

I have been even more impressed with how good a job they did on the Anime now than I was when I started this project. Watching the end of Ep 9 and the start of 10 again after working on this most recent chapter, I noticed bunches of little details that I had missed the first time through. They seem to have stayed true to the book far more than I had expected, changing only what was necessary given the difference in media formats.

On another note, I didn't mean to kill the other discussions going on here, and (though I may regret saying this later) I'd also be happy to recieve constructive criticism anyone might have about the translation. This is my first project of such scale and difficulty and while I am firm in my commitment to my current style of translation, I am not so confident in my ability to excecute it well. So I'm open to suggestions if it seems I'm making any obvious mistakes.

Finally, does anyone know if it's possible to set up additional polls within a single thread? and if so how? I'm still conflicted on how to translate a some of the terms unique to this story and thought it might be interesting to list the various possibilities with some explanation of why each is and isn't a good match, then have people vote on which one to actually use in the final version.

[arczyx]

Finally, does anyone know if it's possible to set up additional polls within a single thread? and if so how? I'm still conflicted on how to translate a some of the terms unique to this story and thought it might be interesting to list the various possibilities with some explanation of why each is and isn't a good match, then have people vote on which one to actually use in the final version.

I don't think there is a way to do that. Replacing the current one is possible though. You also can make another thread if you want to.

[pudding321]

Finally, does anyone know if it's possible to set up additional polls within a single thread? and if so how? I'm still conflicted on how to translate a some of the terms unique to this story and thought it might be interesting to list the various possibilities with some explanation of why each is and isn't a good match, then have people vote on which one to actually use in the final version.

I don't think there is a way to do that. Replacing the current one is possible though. You also can make another thread if you want to.

[Disclaimer: not a commercial]

Ever thought of making polls on poll making websites like poll daddy?

[arczyx]

[Disclaimer: not a commercial]

Ever thought of making polls on poll making websites like poll daddy?

I think it can work, in this case. It's a bad choice if you want to make translation poll though...

[Dusanh]

Thank you for the ideas. I'm not ready to set this up just yet, but from this, it seems that the best option is probably to create a new thread and make a link to it in this one. I don't really want to be messing with an outside site.

[Dusanh]

.