A HD version of planetarian ~the reverie of a little planet~ is now out on Steam! This marks the first time the game has been translated into a language other than English, and Key has stated that they are looking into translating it into additional languages.
`“Experience Planetarian in its full glory”
…
“I have no idea what any of this says.”
Cuz you don’t know Chinese. At least I… Too cannot read it.
The screenshots look absolutely stunning…
I just wish the game was English, hopefully they do that so I can re-experience it <3
Actually, to experience its full glory, you’d have to read it in Japanese.
As a native Chinese speaker, I have read my share of Chinese-translated VNs, but I quickly gave up on them. Mostly because the “rhythm” of the story is wrong, this is likely because Chinese is a logographic writing system that has so many independent words, something that would cost you 5 lines in Japanese might only take up one line after being translated into Chinese, which tends to make the story lose its “rhythm”. In simpler words, it’s like listening to music while trying to sing lyrics that DO NOT go with the beat. This problem really stands out if you read a voiced VN, such as Planetarian.
While in English, with a closer syllable-count to the Japanese, and a direct homophonic translation for the characters names (in Chinese-Vns, the names are straight-up kanji, and because kanji pronunciation is only about 40% similar, so most of the time, the names sound totally different) so the “rhythm” or “spirit” of the original VN is preserved better (relative to Chinese).
(no expert, would gladly hear from someone with similar or contrasting experiences)
@Nav Interesting viewpoint! Would you say that the same problem happens with this Steam release? Would love to get your input on this one (since I obviously cannot understand chinese)
I probably shouldn’t have said
> the ‘rhythm’ or ‘spirit’ of the original VN is preserved better
because I barely know Japanese (so no idea what the original VN is like)
I haven’t got the HD edition yet (because I’m juggling with quite a few things right now), so can’t say for sure, the reviews are pretty positive, saying that this translation is much more literary than the old unofficial one.
Can’t say I’m not interested, but it’s pretty damn hard being a student.
Also, after thinking for a bit, the problem about “rhythm” might mostly be the fault of the translation team, mainly being the inconsistent number of adjectives used in separate scenes. It’s like one second you’re presented with a colorful painting and the next with a black-and-white photo which looked like it survived a few fires and was from the 19th century. I know we’re reading a visual novel with visuals, but the novel part is important, too.
I am glad we made this article so we can get posts like this.
That’s interesting, so how do they go about translating names from Japanese to Chinese (I presume we are talking about Putonghua here)?
E.G. Fujibayashi 藤林 I assume the characters could mean and sound something quite different? Do you just keep the Japanese sound of the name but with appropriate different characters or make a literal translation of the characters regardless of the sound?
We just take the kanji without any regard to how it sounds in Japanese.
For your example, 藤林 is Fujibayashi in Japanese, we also see 藤林 in the Chinese version (although idk where you would find that as I never tried) but is pronounced “Tung-Ling”
Oh, and what if the character’s name isn’t fully kanji? I hear you ask. Well, I had that question too, but don’t underestimate the Chinese (lol), they find kanji that has the same hiragana to the name and stick it on.
For example, former Key artist 樋上 いたる(Hinoue Itaru). Her name いたる is hiragana, BUT 至 has the hiragana いたる, so her name became 樋上至 in Chinese. (pronounced “Tong-Shang-Jhih”)
Thanks for the explanation, I imagine this is a good pragmatic approach! I guess it might actually be more tricky for names from other languages, without Kanji to fall back on, where you just have to find the most approximate sound equivalent and use that character.
Oh yeah, just remembered, what if the character’s name is foreign, so they had to write it in katakana (which doesn’t convert to kanji)? Well, you find words that match with the sound. (Which is exactly what we do with most western names!)
E.G. 能美 クドリャフカ (Noumi Kudryavka)
Name clearly not native to Japan => it is written in katakana => no kanji can be found => 能美 庫特莉亞芙卡 (pronunciation roughly equivalent to the romaji above)
Also a native Chinese speaker here ^^ I’d say the Chinese translation of Japanese names from hiragana / kanji is actually a problem much felt by me living abroad, since people don’t usually pronounce them the Chinese way anywhere outside of China, do they? ^^’
Also, as Nav has explained with the Chinese technique of translating Japanese names, Chinese speakers don’t naturally memorize the names as romanji like people usually do in America or Europe, so writing them down in romanji for your Chinese friends wouldn’t help much, unless, of course, you happen to know how to write them in kanji. (in which case let me say this: You are awesome!)
This essentially means it is very difficult for most Chinese speakers to discuss Japanese character-related topics with their foreign friends in almost ANY language, regardless of their proficiency in that particular language. Although personally I’m very comfortable with both translations, but that’s nothing to be generalised ^^
It might come as a surprise to you, but I’ve only read Planetarian once in English, and I found it absolutely amazing! So I’m really interested to see if it feels as good in Chinese. (I’ll let you know after exam week XD)
Oh, 36RMB is an honest price for such great work.
Each to their own I guess, but what matters most is that you enjoy the VN, regardless of the language you read it in.
Looks like everybody’s trying hard not to fail lol. (exam in 30 mins)
Completely agreed.
Awesome news! Really hope this game gets translated to a lot of languages so everyone can enjoy the game just as Japanese, English, and now Chinese speakers can! ^^
(I’d so want to be able to participate in Visual Arts’s localization to Portuguese, my group have already translated the original version but a lot of requests come to the Steam version)
Planetarian HD’s files could be extracted too. Even easier, even. Key used Siglus Engine on this version, so editing the scripts is kinda easier, and since there aren’t any RLDev-ish character limitations, you can use every character possible.
But the thing is, Planetarian HD’s text is stored in a different format than normal, it seems.
I used marcussacana’s Siglus tools to extract the Scene.pck of Planetarian HD.
It did extract the files, however, especially the scenario files were empty. Maybe it’s because the files are in Chinese, I don’t know.
I reported this issue to marcussacana. He said that Key might’ve “imported” the code files into Siglus Engine, and stored them in that text.dbs file.
If there would be a hacker to crack this file format, the files may become editable.
Our group translated the standard edition too and we want to implement our translation to Steam version as well. If only VisualArt’s would notice us.
