Where to now?

Well, this has been a long time coming as I’m sure some people are aware. Basically, Hakuouki is over. I thank everyone for helping me and giving me support, but since this is being officially translated by Aksys, I don’t feel the need to get back to it.

My intent had been to maybe take a year or so off until I graduated and then return full force like I started and, after taking my Advanced Japanese courses, be able to go over my old translations and slog through the prose that was kicking my butt last time I tried. I had still intended to do this, no matter what naysayers may have thought, up until I heard that the game was being translated officially. Some people have expressed their interest in me translating the DS version, but… Honestly, I think it’s best to expend my Japanese experience in a game that is not receiving a translation on any platform. SaGa 3 is what I am looking at now if no group is already translating it. Or, I may go translate Cross Hermit or something.

I’d like to promise another Otome game, but one thing I’ve learned from Hakuouki is that, no matter how much work you put in, it will be a VERY long-term project if you do it in your spare time. Otome games have tens of thousands of lines of text and, in the case of Hakuouki (as opposed to Cross Hermit or Tokimeki Memorial), are occasionally written aimed at the high school/college crowd rather than most ‘regular’ games, which tend to be geared to be playable for all age groups (and thus use much simpler Japanese). Right now, I’ll be entirely honest with you, working a full-time job over the summers and working part-time plus 20 credits during the school-year, I don’t have the time to dedicate to do this. I thought I did – and I thought Hakuouki would be an amazing challenge for me. I’m someone who tends to do really well when thrown really tough problems, and this showed initially in Hakuouki, but as time went on I simply lost steam. People became increasingly negative, which made me feel unappreciated and made me start questioning “Why am I spending my time this way when I could go to this party I’ve been invited to? Or watch that documentary I had wanted to see?” This created a snowball effect and I resolved myself to “I’ll pick this up in a year or so when I graduate. Since no one would ever translate this niche game, I definitely will have all the time in the world to resume.” Now, surprisingly, someone has picked up the game and I lack a reason to keep translating it. I will do an otome game, but not next and not until after my doctoral work (when I can finally relax lol) most likely.

I would like to especially thank melete for all his hard work. He intended for his code to be released publicly, but I sort of fought that idea since… Well, I was selfish and wanted to be the one to release the game, to be entirely honest. Some people are going to leave me some very nasty comments for that I’m sure, but I prefer being honest over saying what’s convenient. I agreed to publish his editor on my site when the game was finished being translated, or after I was like half-done. Since the project is over for me and people MAY want to continue my work, I am posting a link to his github project page and a link to the editor itself.

Melete’s github project page: Hkki

A compiled version new as of several months ago: Here

I would also like to thank Noodles. She’s been incredibly supportive, helpful, and a breath of fresh air when I simply wasn’t feeling up to working on the project. I hope that she can help me out on whatever I decide to work on next. If not, I hope we at least keep in touch.

Thanks also to my wonderful non-English translators! It was a good ride while it lasted, but you all did really well!

Would you like to help?

So I’ve been doing 18 (9 of which are 400-level) credits and work and have done little work on the translation. I’m not abandoning it, but I *AM* officially opening it up to help. If you are interested, email me at nimuetranslations@gmail.com because I simply do not have the time that project deserves anymore. I have a pretty basic test that I wrote up for another project I worked on that I will give to you to make sure you can handle the translation work, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. My social life and school, unfortunately for my wonderful Shinsengumi friends, takes priority. Not that I don’t have ANY time, but when I realised I’d be taking 20 credits plus work next semester… I sort of came to the conclusion that I’d need some help, you know? Your name would be put on the credits alongside of mine and I’m considering changing the name of the translation group since I would no longer be the only one translating. I’m sorry for the lack of work guys! I’ve been feeling guilty reading your comments of support when I really haven’t done much ;_;.

Also, on a side note, a LOT of people have been asking about emulator stuff recently. I’ve answered a ton of emails about this, so I’ll just post it here. Desmume is really the one I use for testing. It tends to work really well!

Mmk We’re Back!!!!

Mmk guys. I know you’ve been waiting patiently, but I had 400-level Japanese classes that were eating my life as well as NEEDING to work to make rent and pay bills and I had to call a hiatus. I’ve said as much on twitter and stuff, but…. I think it’d be good to say it here too. Also, the break from the drama did me a world of good. I definitely feel the old “Hakuouki spark” again!

Translation starts up again either tonight or tomorrow and don’t worry, I’ve sort of got my time management skills to a tea (and next semester, despite taking more courses, has a much more tolerable schedule somehow) so there really won’t need to be another hiatus except maybe two weeks for midterms and finals.

Thanks for the patience and…. Stay Tuned~.

Extra Life Charity Event

A good friend of mine, also someone I’ve worked with in the past on fanlation stuff, floofy, is doing this Extra Life thing. She’s a hard core gamer… So this is kinda out of my realm. I promised I’d help her out as best I can (70 dollars in the hole, so I can’t exactly donate lol). When I brought up posting it on my blog here, she seemed into the idea. So, before I get a blissful two hours of sleep tonight, I figured I’d make a post and give you info on what’s going on and stuff ^^.

Basically, from what I can gather, this is a donation event where a bunch of people play video games and do commentary and stuff live and you donate money to them, 100% of which then gets donated to this charity called “Extra Life,” which helps children with various medical conditions (cancer’s the big one, I think). It’s a good cause. Nothing political or icky about saving kids~

Umm, I’m not sure what else to say. I’ll give you the links so you can find out more info about my friend’s group and the charity group the money goes to. So if you have any spare money or even a dollar or two you think is lying around in a coat pocket, go ahead and donate hehe ^^. If you donate, post in here, on the facebook, or tweet me or something and I’ll pass the word onto floofy. You don’t have to, but it’d make both of us feel more useful, prolly <3.

Sanctuary Crew’s Extra Life page
Donate to Sanctuary Crew’s Extra Life Event (my friend is floofy, aka Kirsten Miller on this page, but pick whoever you want, really)
Extra Life – the Charity itself

Hey everyone!

FIRST!

Like Nimue Translations on Facebook! The link is in the sidebar! ^^

Been a couple weeks. Been translating mostly on the weekends since I have SO much homework. Got a lot of the tougher sentences done today, actually. So from now on should be (relatively) smooth sailing since I’m FINALLY done that bear of an character-introductory phase x.x. What this means to you is that my next patch will, realistically, come in a month or two from today like I said in my interview.

Really, the main reason I updated was because I want people to like me on facebook… Not gonna lie lol.

Also, I will be in contact with the upcoming translators of Saga 3 (Crimson Noctural) for a possible collaboration project. Since that was my first RPG-game-thingy EVER (from my AWESOME Aunt [well, before she went crazy] who never got me stereotypical toys or anything), I really want to play the remake x.x. I mean, I’ll do so ANYWAY in Japanese, but if I can have a hand in the translation, it’d add variety and stuff to my translation work (which could actually help Hakuouki out since I sometimes go “BLEH” from burnout).

…And Okita-san is totally awesome <3.

Hakuouki Interview

Hey guys, I figured I’d link you all to the interview I recently did for “Capture 2010,” which was a project taking a look at the translators of various visual novel groups. It was fun, but… I kinda ranted a bit. I do that a lot in case you hadn’t noticed by my blog posts lol.

Read it over if you like.

http://visualnovelaer.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/hakuoki-nimue/

Expect another patch in a month or two, really. I’m doing school or working, which eats up A LOT of time, but almost every moment of my spare time (what little I have lol) is translating.

Hakuouki Update

Nope. I’m not dead. Just haven’t been posting much lately.

For those that haven’t been reading my twitter, which you all really should (it’s also to the right in the box thingy) hehe, I just moved recently and started school up again. Homework, school, and work take up a big chunk of my time ;_;. Not that I haven’t been working, but you know… These first two weeks have been kinda hectic. I feel bad for not keeping you guys informed via blog post, so thought I’d do so.

The file I’m working on right now is double the size of the prologue and I’m over half done! The first half of it is… A bear. It uses a ton of colloquial Japanese because they want to exhibit everyone’s personalities (introductions of a bunch of characters) and stuff. I’m seeing strange things like 見りゃ… Thankfully I have people I can bounce this weirder stuff off of that know colloquial Japanese better than I do. Though I tend to know formal and standard dialects better hehe. For those not in the know, りゃ=れば in Japanese (effectively a conditional). These sentences aren’t fun at all, really because there’s no way to look them up. What I end up having to do is googling for similarly conjugated verbs and either hope someone’s posted a translation (Like I’ll google 見りゃ　英語) or read a bunch of uses on forums and then figure the meaning out from context. x.x. I looked further ahead into the file and after I get through this horrible swamp of colloquial Japanese, things get pretty basic again.

Also, here’s another thing that kinda angers me. Names -_-;. Take Toshizou Hijikata. He has been referred to as “Toshizou,” “Hijikata,” “Vice-Captain,” “Tosh,” and “the person .” The last one makes me cringe. See, Japanese literature is big on locative references. I’m not sure why, but in Japan it is seen as high literature to make references to people not by name, but by location. For example, “That person over by the cup” or, to take an example from Hakuouki, “the person across from the captain.” Now, this would sound awkward in English, so it is best to figure out who that is and then write in the name instead. See, the problem is I’m terrible at spatial stuff -_-;. I’m a Verbal and Abstract reasoning girl not… That. And then people move and I get all mixed up and… Argh. I think the main reason they’re doing that here is because it’s that ‘introductory’ phase of the game, really and it just kinda makes sense here. Still, I figured I’d let you know what I’m up against.

Oh and if people want to take a look at another colloquial sentence I’ve had issues with.

「平助におじさん呼ばわりされるほど、年食ってねぇよ。……新八はともかく、俺はな」

Now, this is a pretty basic sentence until the end. What’s he trying to say with 俺はな? I mean that な kinda comes out of nowhere and is like “HEY. YOU’D THINK THERE WAS MORE TO THE SENTENCE BUT NOPE.” Is he trying to say “That’s what I’m doing” or something similar to that? I’ll have about the first 200 dialogue boxes done if I get this one figured out, so I’d like to do so x.x.

So yeah, not dead! I *AM* working and not losing steam. Just had to find my footing and stuff.

Now I’m off to read about 50 pages on “Inventing, Forgetting, Remembering: Toward a Historical Ethnography of the Nation-State,” by Takashi Fujitani from Cultural Nationalism in East Asia and “A Descent into the Past: the Frontier in the Construction of Japanese History,” by Tessa Morris-Suzuki in Multicultural Japan for my JAPN498B class.

ttyl~!

PS: Another time-sink? I’ve been watching Doctor Who x.x. I grew up watching my local Public Broadcasting and they did this thing called “Brit-Wit” when I was little. They showed Bean, Chef, Red Dwarf, Doctor Who, and then the Red/Green Show for some reason. I’m really not sure why they showed that last one (since it was Canadian and not very good)… Or why I watched it. I was a strange child (also, it was like 3AM, so I was prolly brain-dead) lol. Anyway, when I was little I grew up watching Peter Davison’s Doctor, which is kinda funny since those episodes aired like 10 years before I was born (and since I was about 10, they were re-airing them like 20 years later on public television for some reason?). I dunno why they showed them when I was little, but I loved it. He’s always been “my” Doctor~ AND he’s the one who most influence David Tennant. So… I’m trying to watch them ALL (included the reconstructed lost episodes). I’m almost done the first season with William Hartnell (just got done “Marco Polo”). I really didn’t like him much at first, but… He grows on you.

PS2: This made me go alskoadjaojosjddajalk and made David Tennant even more awesome to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szuP0oBZX4g

Hakuouki’s Meaning

Okay, apparently one of the top things people search for to get here is “What does Hakuouki mean in English?”

The kanji is: 薄桜鬼

薄 means – lightly coloured
桜 means – Sakura. This is the kanji for the word sakura. So, cherry blossom/cherry blossom tree.
鬼 means – Demon. Japanese demons are different from western ones though….

If I had to translate this in terms of meaning (it’s more of a ‘feeling’ or ‘picture’ than anything concrete meaning-wise. Japanese is filled with stuff like this), I’d say “Demons of the lightly coloured sakura blossoms.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oni_(folklore) – here’s the wiki article for the actual kanji used for ‘demon.’ Please read it to have more info hehe.

Shinsengumi’s kanji is : 新撰組

新 – New
撰 – Selection/Compilation (Like a poetry collection)
組 – A group of people.

So Shinsengumi is “A (new) select group of people,” but it is primarily the name of the group of people fighting the expansion of Commodore Perry’s trade/influence in Japan.

Look at this article for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinsengumi

Kitan is: 奇譚

奇 – Strange
譚 – Ballad

The dictionary says together they are “Mysterious story,” which makes sense.

So together, Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan is “The mysterious story of the Shinsengumi.

[German Updates] Erstes Release!

Kurz und knackig: Der erste Patch ist fertig! <3

Download der Version 0.05: Mediafire | Megaupload

Wir hoffen, ihr freut euch genauso darüber wie wir, hihi~ Kommentare sind stets willkommen! ^_^ Also dann, viel Spaß mit dem deutschen Prolog!

P.S.: Wir suchen noch Betaleser und Übersetzer. Meldet euch im Forum oder bei mir (anigaso [at] googlemail [dot] com).

A thanks, and a promise for the future

Dunno quite why I’m writing this. Maybe because I haven’t updated in awhile? Either way, I felt I had to say a couple things. Not gonna be my normal bubbly self here, because I want to be somewhat serious.

First off, thanks for waiting as long as you have. Believe it or not I’ve not had a single person complain about time or ask “WHEN WILL THIS BE DONE?” I’ve seen these questions plague other translators, and even make many of them stop translating. But you guys are either a higher calibre fanbase, or you care less. I think it’s the former, rather than the latter and I’d like to thank you all for that > .<. I know, I’m weird, but I’m an emotional person so yeah…

In terms of translation, I’ve had  kinda a rough week. After I got my prologue translation done, I hit a period of burnout. I just kinda stopped caring for a week or so. Not sure why, but yesterday everything came in full swing. I WILL finish this. This is as much for me as it is for you. I remember finding this game out. I saw on a DS forum thingy that this was the LARGEST DS game ever made. So I wanted to translate it. Then I found out it was about the Shinsengumi, which I love (especially in fiction) – and an Otome game, which means it’s a ridiculous amount of text. I wanted to ‘beat’ it so to speak. I wanted to get this done. Because, if I could translate this game, the largest DS game of all time, an otome game with more text than a novel, I could do ANYTHING. That’s the main reason I’m doing this. It just seems so perfect that the largest game HAPPENED to be about the Shinsengumi and one of my favourite genres. In short, nothing’s stopping me. This isn’t just for you – it’s for me.

I love the world and everything in it <3. Not related to my project, but true. There’s so much beauty that, no matter what happens, and no matter where we go, humans will always accomplish great works and reach for the stars. I dunno, a friend linked me to a video and I’m really proud to be a human right now <3. In all of our history and culture. No matter where you’re from, you are part of this. Everything from the Pyramids, to the building of the Eiffel Tower – we all have our collective history in it and can take pride in our ancestors and the human race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1A – please watch. It ought to make you proud to be a human too <3. In our ancestors, how far we’ve come, and what we’ve accomplished.

Okay, semi-serious rant over. Sorry for the end-bit. I’m a bit choked up after watching that video and just *HAD* to share it to people. My audience here is clearly interested in other cultures, and, I hope, can appreciate it for the celebration it is. It isn’t related but, like I said before, I’m an emotional girl and like… I dunno, I love our planet and I had to show it.

In short, if you didn’t want to read the entire thing, the translation is going well. I’m very, very happy with it so far and I’ve been making leaps and bounds towards finishing it. It won’t die.