As promised earlier this week, the Steam Greenlight Page for Key's upcoming visual novel Harmonia has launched! Steam Greenlight is a service for publishers new to Steam looking to publish their games on the platform, which presents the title for the public to determine whether it should be published or
Let me be the first to offer my personal thoughts.
I’m worried. While it’s not machine TL level, the poor grammar in what we’ve seen aren’t filling me with confidence. This is very similar in quality to the planetarian iOS release, which left a lot to be desired. On top of that, why the hell are do the screenshots feature aliased font? It looks horrible. What are VisualArt’s doing? Do they really want to their newest product to be represented like this? I have no doubts that the CLANNAD translation will be up to standard, since it’s Sekai Project handling it, but I have little faith in this translation team based on what I’ve seen. I feel like they’re making a big mistake, and if this marks the future of Key’s releases in English… I’m very worried.
What do you think?
I wouldn’t call it poor grammar… It’s a bunch very simple sentences, and I’d change a lot of it, but none of it is actually incorrect.
It’s very basic, but it’s structure is pretty okay. There’s worse in your post than in those screenshots.
I’m only talking about the Steam screenshots though. I don’t know if they’ve shown off the TL previously.
Probably just forgot it. It’s not like they are final… Heck, even if it is final, you can fix that easily.
Something I don’t like about what we can see from Steam… Ugh, it doesn’t look good when there’s a lot of paragraphs in the side-bar. Eh, it’ll probably be clearer to read with voices and with the typing animation in, and there’s always modding.
I personally don’t mind. Having read the iOS translation of planetarian, while subpar, was still acceptable. Though it honestly makes me wonder why they chose to go down this path. If time were an issue, then wouldn’t mind waiting longer for a higher quality patch. If price were an issue, well, nothing we can do about that.
Almost wanted to say maybe it’s written like that on purpose because the MC is an android and just thinks/talks that way, but then I noticed that Tipi’s dialogue is like that too, so… I dunno^^
I mean it’s not even close to being unreadable, but it does kinda stand out
At first glance, I kinda liked the idea of the text presentation but upon reading it, it’s pretty annoying to read through. Contrast it to Mahoyo’s style:
Does grammar really matter ? As long as we have the idea of what they’re trying to say, then it should be fine. We should be happy that Harmonia is even being released in the west before Japan, heck, we should be happy that it’s even getting a translation.
If it’s free I don’t care about grammar as much but if I’m giving money grammar better be good.
That’s exactly the mentality that gives us subpar translations like If My Heart Had Wings where he and she are almost used interchangeably at points with run-on sentences and sentence fragments.
If it’s a fan translation then yeah it’s ok but not an official product we’re paying for.
Text is incredibly important in VNs. Key is good at making people cry. What do you need in order to make people cry in VNs? Good Rhetoric amongst other things. Grammar must not ever be an issue because faulty grammar inherently impairs the rhetoric.
Just understanding what the characters want to say isn’t remotely enough. The way they say things can make a huge difference in how much impact their words will have.
I disagree. Looks fine to me. Pretty much:
Maybe it just stands out because we’re looking at several lines at once? Instead of them appearing one line at a time like they would in-game.
Like I said before, I think we’ll just have to see. We do only have like 20 lines right now.
Also, I honestly dont remember the planetarian IOS being that bad. Although that was several years ago, so maybe Im just not remembering it.
[quote=“Pepe, post:4, topic:2149”]
If time were an issue, then wouldn’t mind waiting longer for a higher quality patch. If price were an issue, well, nothing we can do about that.
[/quote]Im not sure its really about either being an issue, necessarily. I mean, I think they could be just trying this out. It would be really cool if this turned out really well. It would save them money, and us time.
But they may very well be looking for a reaction from us, to decide whether or not this would be a worthwhile option in the future. So I do think Aspi’s right. If its quality is subpar, we should let them know. But I dont think we should overreact like this before we even see the final product.
Same thing with the text styling too really. Theyre trying out a new thing, so of course we should tell them whether we like or not. But really, that should be something that we do after we’ve experienced it in game.
Promoting your product on Greenlight which such horrible font is a bad decision either way.
Oh I wasnt talking about the font. Tbh I have no idea why thats upsetting you so much. I was referring to the positioning of the text on the side.
You know what, I hate waiting… Lets be honest this is a big improvement from doki’s little busters tl… oh wait they haven’t even got a patch out… fluffy was cool but doki… and that is why I am glad it is coming out super fast, the quality of tl and font may not be perfect (well tbh it doesn’t bother me what so ever but I have horrible grammar) but you know what, it isn’t that bad is it? Hell it is steam, maybe they will patch it a bit here and there. Doki has driven me nuts, so this looks really good to me. Hell I even read the Air beta patch… now THAT was really bad the first half. I mean you can always fix things with some fix up patch. Way better than starting from nothing.
LB is the reason why I hate waiting… it drove me nuts and still does…
What sre you talking about? The only patch for Little Busters released is the one that was completed by Fluffy. And most of the team translating LB over at Doki is from the original Fluffy team to begin with
No, I am talking about doki’s massive stalling on LB tl and poor release plan. obviously like you said, the only one released was the fluffy. Fluffy would say 100% and give us patch. Why announce Sasami route at 100% in 2013 if we don’t have it in 2015, it is meaningless. Everyone says oh it is so close, but this is the biggest stall yet. I just can’t deal with the uncertain speeds of fan translation anymore. But saying this entire game is going to be English at this set day… that it how it is suppose to be done. I can actually get hyped. I mean any game is a gamble here and there in quality when it has a set release date.
I mean when ab! came out I wasn’t really hyped at all, I was more like, okay cool but I need translation…
LB was fine. They even did some follow-up work with it. You’re talking about LBEX.
Because it was at 100%? Nothing wrong with showing progress.
And the problem with that is the same as seeing the LB anime before reading the VN. You get a suboptimal experience as your first viewing, and it can make or break the story.
If the game’s text was as is in the Steam screenshots, and there isn’t some amazing clarity-adjustment done through voices or animations, I don’t think I’d even get a copy of Harmonia.
Here I thought you were talking about the quality 
in that case, it’s a bit unfair to compare because this is an actual commercial release, whereas doki’s is a fan patch… You can’t expect consistent speed when the people are doing things of their own volition
It’s not Doki’s decision that LBEX’s fan translation hasn’t been released.
It’s true that there is a bit of animosity toward Doki after the indefinite delays that the Little Busters! EX patch has suffered. But I’ll accept your word that there is more to the story, I hope any misunderstandings can be cleared up in the future.
For now I’m just voting YES! and will buy and give feedback from there. With visual novels the text is really important. I have read light novels and other translated books that really suffer from under translation/editing and read others that were brought to life by it. Right now I guess I just want Key to feel confident that it is worth their money to invest in good English translations for their games.
