Let's bring Visual Novel Hoshizora No Memoria to the West!

Re-translation update #3
over 5 years ago – Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 02:54:23 PM

A message from our translator:

Hello, fellow stargazers!

As I alluded to in last month's post, we have been doing a lot of work on Chinami's dialogue. My work has largely been focused on her route this month, and I wanted to take this opportunity to shine a spotlight on all the work we've been doing to give you the best Chinami possible. While no one is accusing the previous translation of lacking personality in the scenes where Chinami showed up, there are a number of points where its accuracy and faithfulness to the original Japanese could be criticized.

I've found that I run into a surprisingly delicate balancing act whenever I go to improve Chinami's lines, because I want them to convey the meaning of her words as accurately as possible without going overboard and making her sound like a robot. At the core of Chinami's character is the fact that, frankly, she's still an immature little brat, and so some leeway has to be given in writing her dialogue the way that a young girl would speak English rather than simply translating the Japanese words on a one-for-one basis. But still, I do believe that it's necessary to strike a better balance here so that her character isn't being distorted or exaggerated by an overly liberal translation. Here's a sampling of the changes I am making to Chinami's dialogue in particular as I'm working through the script.

1. Interrobangs: I am trying to standardize all the punctuation at the end of characters' dialogue, so that it matches the Japanese dialogue as closely as possible, although some care also has to be paid to make sure the usage is being used correctly with respect to English grammar. This is particularly challenging in Chinami's case because a lot of statements in her Japanese dialogue originally ended with interrobangs (?!) to imply incredulity in a statement or even just for comedic effect. In the previous translation of these lines, these sentences were often corrected so that they ended with two exclamation points (!!) instead of an interrobang, but I am reviewing each of those instances to see if a compromise can be made by slightly altering the sentence of dialogue into an incredulous question that actually justifies the use of an interrobang. Ideally the use of the interrobang will make sense grammatically as well as being accurate to the original script. Not all of these sentences will be changed back to interrobangs, but where possible I would like to hew more closely to the Japanese punctuation, so a number of changes are being made in this area.
2. 'Excessive punctuation': I am removing a lot of excessive punctuation, such as when one of Chinami's translated sentences ends with four exclamation points even though the same sentence in the Japanese version of the game only had two. I would note, however, that in a construction like 'っ!', I do count the small っ as an additional exclamation point since it increases the stress being placed on the exclamatory nature of the sentence. As always, consistency and accuracy are the name of the game here. I'm not trying to change the meaning of any sentence, but where possible I would like the translation to be as similar to the original Japanese script as possible, and this is one area where changes, inconsequential though they may seem, seem to have been introduced for no reason other than to exaggerate the silliness of Chinami's character. 
3. 'Auntie Shino': This was Chinami's particular way of addressing her aunt in the previous translation. I've decided to change this because in the original Japanese, both You and Chinami address their aunt as 'Shino-san', so this change makes the translation more consistent. I would also mention that, in my experience, the term 'Auntie' is a form of address that stands on its own, but it's not used as a title before a person's name as in 'Auntie Shino'. This is of course just my experience with the English language in my own part of the world, but to me it seems much more likely for a girl of Chinami's age to call someone 'Aunt Shino' instead of 'Auntie Shino'. As such, I've decided to change all instances of 'Auntie Shino' in the script.
4. Run-on sentences: Chinami often uses run-on sentences when she gets excited, which are often translated in very inconsistent ways. While I do like to maintain the wacky and frenetic sort of speech that is true to Chinami's character, some of the filler words ('like', 'uh', 'well', 'you see') are a bit excessive in the previous translation, and the inconsistent use of commas leaves a bit to be desired as well. I'm going to leave in the run-on sentences where they serve to illustrate Chinami's state of mind and style of speech, even when they're rather poor examples of English grammar, but I'm going to trim the edges so that they're a bit more coherent for the audience that actually has to read these long run-on sentences.
5. Random capitalization: In the previous translation, I've noticed that there are a lot of words in Chinami's dialogue that are emphasized by being written in BIG letters. While this is an easy way to get across that a word is being emphasized by the speaker, far too many liberties have been taken with random capitalized words. My approach to solving this problem has been to remove all incidences of words being written in fully capitalized letters unless there is a similar form of emphasis written in the Japanese line, such as the corresponding word being written in katakana.

As you can see, working on Chinami's route has resulted in this little brat trying my patience just as much as she tries her brother's patience in the game. These are just the most common things that I've corrected over and over again as I've gone through revising the translation, but there are also plenty of other, less common oddities in Chinami's dialogue. I remember hearing several complaints about how annoying Chinami's overbearing presence is, particularly at the beginning of the game where she features quite prominently. While part of that annoyance is intentional in the way her character is portrayed by the author, I think that another part of that frustration with her character came from the way her lines were translated. My hope is that the revised dialogue in the updated translation will make Chinami a bit more endearing.

From us at Sekai Project:

We'd like to give a quick shout out to Sol Press and their Kickstarter for Irotoridori no Sekai! It's in the final week with only five days left to hit their 85k goal! If you want to see more Favorite titles in the west we hope you'll check it out! Clicking the image should take you to their campaign, but in case you need another link just click here. See you all again next month in our next update.

Re-translation update #2
almost 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 12:46:40 AM

Today we have a message from the translator:

Hello to all of our backers. I know that a lot of you are concerned about the progress of the editing and translation checking of Hoshizora no Memoria which is currently underway. I'm sure that many fans are also eagerly awaiting the release of the fan disk, Eternal Heart. From reading your comments, I've come to understand that the most frustrating thing about this experience for all of you has been the lack of updates on the project's status. So, while it might take longer than initially planned to bring you all quality releases of Hoshizora no Memoria and Eternal Heart, I am going to ensure that at the very least we do a better job of communicating in 2019. Status updates will be posted once a month from now on.

While I'm sure a lot of you would like a concrete percentage saying how much of the work is done on Hoshizora no Memoria's re-translation, it's a little more difficult to quantitatively describe the progress when the question isn't whether any given line is translated but rather how well that line is translated. The only concrete information I can give you about our timeline is that I'm personally striving to have both the editing of Hoshizora no Memoria and the translation of Eternal Heart done by the end of 2019.

I've also prepared a list of changes which you can expect to see in the finalized scripts of Hoshizora no Memoria and Eternal Heart. As always, I am open to feedback concerning any of these points.

1. I've decided to rewrite the narration of the game in past tense. Most fiction in English is written in the past tense, and I think the game's script will be more readable if we follow that convention.
2. I am trying to clearly delineate the different kinds of lines that are present in Hoshizora no Memoria's script. For example, lines of dialogue will be written inside of quotation marks. You's internal monologues and visceral reactions will be written inside of parentheses to differentiate them from narration. Simple narration will be rendered in the past tense with no other markings. The overarching goal here is to add some extra context to the lines where meaning might have been lost in translation.
3. Chinami and Asuka's speech is being overhauled to more closely match the tone and character of their speech styles in the original Japanese dialogue. While these characters will still be interesting and colorful additions to the cast, I think that readers will appreciate it if their personality quirks aren't played up and exaggerated in a way that they were not in the Japanese version of the game.
4. A number of changes will be made to the way frequently used terms are translated. The goal here is simply to make the translation read more fluidly. For instance, Astro Circle will instead be translated as Astro Club. In the previous English translation, the contrast between circles and clubs was needlessly emphasized in a large number of lines where awkward phrases such as “club and circle activities” needed to be used. Instead of constantly emphasizing the difference between clubs and circles in places where the Japanese line did not, I've decided that the characters will simply describe their club as a club, and when the distinction is relevant (such as when the characters fear that their club will be shut down), the Astro Club will be referred to as an “unofficial club” to distinguish it from clubs that are officially recognized by the school.
5. Many other, more routine grammatical corrections will be made to the game's script. For instance, all Japanese forms of address which are used in the English translation, such as onii-chan and nee-chan, will follow the same capitalization rules as the word 'mom'. When used as a direct replacement for a name, they will be capitalized. When used as common nouns, they will not be capitalized. Small corrections like these will help the game adhere more closely to English conventions.

I hope that, by reading about the large number of changes which are being made to the entire script, you can understand why it is taking longer than we would like to revise Hoshizora no Memoria's script. I do understand your frustration, and I am personally going to work as hard as I can to bring you all a good product which will be worthy of the support you have given us.

Re-translation update #1
almost 6 years ago – Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 11:34:57 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Physical Goods Update
over 6 years ago – Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 11:09:36 PM

Hi everyone,

We have some pictures of the goods in our office in Japan. We're waiting on some more goods before we can start shipping them to the US office.

Dakimakura:

Tapestries:

Production Updates
over 6 years ago – Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 01:15:48 AM

Hello everyone,

We are happy to announce that we will be doing a TLC/edit pass to get Hoshimemo up to the quality that backers expect. Sadly, because we want everything consistent this requires us to delay working on the Fandisc (It is 33% done).

We're currently organizing a schedule for production and release and we will post it to Kickstarter as soon as it is set. 

We do apologize for taking so long to make this decision, but we feel it is the right direction to make our release the best it can be and the release you deserve.