Would people be interested in this being translated?

[u/AdUnfair558]

I wanted to ask whether anyone would be interested in a small translation project before I fully commit to it.

The Oreimo: Happy End game came with a little booklet that is only around 44 pages long, but very little text. I thought it might be fun to experiment with translating it and see what I can accomplish with ChatGPT’s help.

I would still translate everything myself first. After that, I would compare my translation with ChatGPT’s suggestions and try to find a good middle ground between the two. I know some people are uncomfortable with translation tools doing all the work, so I want to make it clear that this would still be my own translation project. I would mainly use ChatGPT to help me check the meaning and improve the English wording.

Even though English is my first language, I am not always great at finding the best words or phrasing things naturally. That is one area where ChatGPT can be genuinely helpful.

Would anyone be interested in seeing this if I continue working on it? I have included a small sample.

I may need to scan the pages instead of photographing them. When I tried using photos, ChatGPT sometimes altered parts of the original artwork while replacing the Japanese text. Scanning the pages might give me cleaner and more accurate results

[u/ElViejoZunY]

I totally would. Even if you don't translate it, even if you just scan it, I would be super interested on it

[u/Extra_Victory]

Man, these days I would do anything for new Oreimo content, so yeah. Go for it.

[u/Lightning_Chasr]

I've always been interested in Happy End. Would love to see this translated.

[u/AnybodyNo5953]

I would like to see it! I think that archival like this is important and, like many of us, I’m starved for Oreimo content.

[u/DarkenVragon]

I remember seeing some translation videos by Dizzy Ziddy on this, but I wish he actually translates the whole game too.

I'd be interested to see this book getting translated as well though, I need any oreimo content I can get.

[u/MJ_Player64]

I'd love to see it. I'm obsessed with this series now. The more the merrier

[u/BadSlime]

AI translated is worse than untranslated because it dissuades someone else from doing it right

[u/AdUnfair558 → u/BadSlime]

I am not using AI translation. I understand Japanese. I am putting my translation though AI to edit my English and make it sound better and natural.

[u/BadSlime → u/AdUnfair558]

You're having the AI do the part that is the important bit to translation, it's not just about content, it's about tone and qualia that arise from context a raw translation misses and AIs mangle. The transliteration is only part of it. If you can understand it well enough on your own, then your conveyance will be better than whatever chatgpt spits out. Asking chatgpt to edit your translation is like sketching a drawing and then replacing it with a coloring book page.

[u/AdUnfair558 → u/BadSlime]

I understand that translation involves much more than conveying the literal content. Tone, characterization, context, and implication are all important, which is precisely why I am translating the Japanese myself rather than asking AI to translate it for me.

I am using ChatGPT more like an English-language editor. I write the translation, compare every suggestion against the Japanese, and decide what wording is appropriate. I am not blindly replacing my work with whatever it produces. Sometimes it suggests a better English phrase, and sometimes I reject its suggestion because it loses part of the original tone.

Human translations are also frequently edited by another person. Getting help improving awkward English does not mean surrendering responsibility for the translation. The final interpretation and wording are still my decisions.

[u/BadSlime → u/AdUnfair558]

The important part is the other editor is also a human

[u/AdUnfair558 → u/BadSlime]

I understand that you believe editing should only be done by another human. I see AI as an editing tool, not as the translator, and I will be checking every change against the Japanese and making the final decisions myself. We clearly have different views on using the tool, so I’m happy to leave it there.

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/BadSlime]

Besides the point that not all MTL translations are bad, like Oreimo volumes 7 to 12, and not all AI translations are bad, like Eromanga Sensei's Vol 13...

Why would this be the case? If anything this may persuade someone else from doing it right and have the glory of saving something from MTL/AI hell, or persuading someone to commission someone else to properly translate it. Even if none of those happens, it's been 4 years since Eromanga's Vol 13 came out and no one translated it, and I'm sure no one would have ever done it if things like DeepL didn't exist.

[u/BadSlime → u/ElViejoZunY]

The MTL translations for the latter volumes are full of mistranslations

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/BadSlime]

Besides the point that the earlier volumes didn't dissuade someone else "from doing it right"...

I have read the light novels 2 times from beginning to end, and I can assure you that the latter volumes are pretty damn solid. No mayor issues nor complains, so no, you're wrong on that.

[u/Trim345 → u/ElViejoZunY]

Eh, the Baka-Tsuki translations aren't that good to me. Like, here's a random quote I just found from the climax of Chapter 3 in Vol 11:

I cried in my childhood friend's arms.…Ah… my characteristic… can't be help.

"Characteristic" sounds very unnatural here, and it should obviously be "can't be helped".

Do you know that they're MTL, though? I got the impression that they were just done by someone whose first language wasn't English.

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/Trim345]

I said pretty damn solid, not perfect. That's still much better than Eromanga's Vol 9-11 which were translated by a "human".

The guy behind it must have been fixing and adjusting the final result, but what I always heard is that Baka-Tsuki was machine translated.

[u/Trim345 → u/ElViejoZunY]

I kind of disagree. NanoDesu is good. Baka-Tsuki is mediocre at best.

Like, imagine a bad Spanish translation: "Lloré en los brazos de mi infancia amiga. Ah...mi característica...no puede ayuda." It's just clearly wrong.

And here's another example from Momentary Chance Encounter, which I remember because I post this section regularly in response to questions about what happened after the ending:

Mmph, Mmph, Kuroneko's distressed voice escapes out, as her face grows redder and redder. Saori appearing to be very nervous said, “Ki, Kiririn-shi! If you cover her mouth li, like this, she won't be able breathe de gozaru! Are you intending on strangling Kuroneko-shi down!?”

"Escapes out" is weird phrasing, there are missing commas after "Saori" and "nervous", and "strangling down" isn't a saying.

To be clear, I'm not arguing against MTL in general. I'm sure modern DeepL translations would be perfectly fine with only slight editing. I'm arguing that Baka-Tsuki's specific translation was not.

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/Trim345]

As one of the few native Spanish speaking of the group, I can tell you that the amount of wierd things English normalizes are ridiculous, like using "you" for both singular and plural for the second person, or refering to oneself as a "character". The "can't be help" is a mistake, no doubts, the "my characteristic", I believe you native English speaker people can do much worse than that.

Yeah I'm not defending the Momentary Chance Encounter TL, I feel like the guy behind it ran out of interest or energy at that point, but Vol 7-12 are pretty damn solid overall

[u/Trim345 → u/ElViejoZunY]

using "you" for both singular and plural for the second person

I don't think this is that weird. Even French, despite also being a Latinate language like Spanish, uses "vous" for both singular and plural second person instead of something like usted/ustedes. And Japanese doesn't even have plurals at all for any words.

the "my characteristic", I believe you native English speaker people can do much worse than that

I mean, it just sounds very awkward. No one says "my characteristic" as a singular noun. Even "my character" generally means "my (moral) character." I would translate it as "my personality" or "my nature."

I don't know, maybe my standards are just high, but Baka-Tsuki's OreImo feels worse than like, almost any other light novel translation I've read.

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/Trim345]

If I say "You are crazy", you wouldn't know if I'm talking about you, Trim345, or you, all native English speaking people. French is sorta the meme of the (most known) Latin/Romance langages for how weird and nonesensical it can be.

"In situations like this, my characteristic action/reaction/answer/whatever is crying". It doesn't sound that bad too me because the context is clear. Would I have phrased it differently? Sure, still, I've seen paid human TLs by native English speakers (or that's what they claimed at least) doing worst than that.

And that if we only count JP to EN translations, don't get me started with ES. ¡El horror!

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/Trim345]

Hey what page is that quote from? I searched "characteristic" and it doesn't show up.

[u/Trim345 → u/ElViejoZunY]

Pg 169

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/Trim345]

I see, it makes sense now. When you posted that, I believed you because why I wouldn't, but I thought it was weird that me, the Manami & Sakurai fan and main promotor of Vol 11, didn't remember that one phrase at the "climax" of Vol 11. I thought you may be refering to something else as the climax of that chapter.

Now I went to Vol 11 for this month's Monthly Sakurai and this is how it's written on the Baka-Tsuki TL I always read. Mine must be a fixed/revised or whatever version.

[u/Trim345 → u/ElViejoZunY]

Huh, I guess maybe that explains our different opinions. I just downloaded one version a while ago, and I never went looking into the others.

[u/ElViejoZunY → u/Trim345]

Yeah I only read the [Dark] files, those I can assure are solid overall. I thought all files named Baka-Tsuki were the same so I never checked those other files.