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7/30/2006

The weekend is over. My car is still in the shop. I basically strung my employer along all day Friday until I was just like "look, they aren't done with my car yet, I'll just see you on Monday.". Of course they didn't finish with my car on Friday, so they will be working on it Monday morning so I had to tell work I will still not be in Monday until it's ready. Of course they had to guilt trip me about it but fuck it, they can just wait. I'm pretty sure my landlord and my employer both hate me, well, mistrust me might be a better term, but I guess I mistrust them, so the feeling is mutual. I mistrust people.

I ran into another delicate spot in WtoPC. It has to so with characters introducing themselves. There is this negotiation that happens sometimes when people are first meeting about what honorific suffix to attach to a name sometimes that just has no cultural equivalent in English.

It happens that this apparent runaway stops you one night after work and you talk for a sec. She is a little blunt and gruff in her manner, but basically she says that she doesn't like getting to close to people and not to add "-chan" to her name. You correct yourself by using the more formal "-san" at which point she tells you to just to call her by her first name (which is ironically, typically an indication that two people are fairly intimate, but I don't fully get how honorifics work all the time). She then asks him what she should call him and he says that just his first name with no honorific is fine too.

Being that this doesn't translate directly I had to take small liberties and try to work something up that didn't sound really odd in English. This is what I ended up with:

I'm %n %m. Will you tell me your name?
Saori Imai.
Saori...we met at school once right? What year are you?
Sophomore. Look, I don't like getting all buddy-buddy like...
Well, at least I know your name...
I don't want a nick-name or anything either, just Saori.
Just Saori. Got it.
So, what do you go by?
Just %n is fine too.

This is still much more negotiation than would normally happen during most introductions, but I think it helps establish her character and sounds like something that could actually happen. The key I guess was introducing the idea of nick-names into it as part of her reluctance to seem overly cordial. By her saying "I don't like getting all buddy-buddy", she is further able to assert this by specifying "no nick-names", and then proceeding to confirm that he does not want to be called by a nick-name either.
3 comments

7/28/2006

I had some unexpected car trouble last night on my way home from work so I'm currently having my car worked on. In the mean time I'm doing a little translating while I wait. I was able to figure out how to set up UltraEdit to display s-jis encoded Japanese text last night which I am using to act as a "translation memory" for my current project. The "find in files" option let's me search all the files I have translated so far via the "(search) open files" option. If I open all the files I have translated, I can search them for any previously translated line or word to help keep the translation consistent. It's already been really useful and it saved me the immense trouble of formatting all my scripts into EDICT format to use as a searchable translation memory with JWPce, which would have been a horrible pain in the ass.
4 comments

7/26/2006

I just got done with work. I'm drinking a beer. Didn't get a job I recently applied for, that's ok though. WtPC marches on. Should be around 22% done. I got the script for the current days text which is a little longer than any of the previous days so far. I figure I'll be done with it no later than the weekend after next. I saw Clerks 2 the other day, it was funny as hell. I made -gasp- another update to the PSX Anime List. I found an official site that Taito apparently still hosts for it's Cosmowarrior Zero game. That is dedication. I went ahead and translated their description for the game since Sony's official page had none. I think Sony gave up on including descriptions for their game listings after a certain point. I suppose we're just lucky they have front and back box art for most of them. I'm looking at getting back into ebaying a bit, so perhaps I have a chance to start keeping tabs on game auctions again and fill in some of the remaining holes in the screen shots. Also might be adding some more games, someone emailed me forever ago with a list of additions I have only marginally researched and am still intending to add when I have the ambition to dig up descriptions for them all and translate them.
2 comments

7/17/2006

I updated my PSX Anime List with a new set of screenshots. Yay, first update in a couple of months.

I watched the new Pirates movie recently. I did not think a lot of the first one but this one was really pretty good. It was considerably darker than I was expecting and storytelling was fairly complex. What I really enjoyed was the mix of action and (dark) humor which was paced very nicely. MUCH better in that regard than Superman.

Still working on Welcome to Pia Carrot (henceforth referred to as WtPC because I am sick of typing that. Yes, I'm lazy.) That will be the continual case until at least the end of the year. I'm still enjoying it a lot which I why I can't stop blogging about it. I recently had to translate a situation where the main character is caught (I think) having just kissed another girl and is trying to explain it to his childhood crush Satomi. She knows he is hiding something but she doesn't know what. She can see it in his eyes though (she has known him for a long time).

He proceeds to make up a story about having a dream about him and her on the beach, kissing...which turns out to be a pun on the word "kissu", which can mean "garfish", so he says that they "catch a kissu" after fishing all day. I didn't explain it very well, but the pun makes sense in Japanese, it's even kind of funny in a juvenile way, at least if you consider he makes it up on the fly, and it pisses Satomi off (while saving him the embarrassment of having to explain about making out with another girl).

Anyway, it does not translate into English directly at all. I decided to come at it using the same approach, rather than try to make something completely new up, I'd just try to stick as close to the original formula as possible. I looked through a bunch of fish names, and the only thing that stuck out with a double meaning that was even remotely interesting was "sucker". I decided to go with "suckerfish" because it reminds me of Video Girl Ai. ;) So she says

"So what did you and the girl who looks like me do then?"
"Sucker..."
"Sucker...?"
"They caught a suckerfish. They fished all day and finally got a big catch!"
"W-what the-!? I don't believe you!!"
"What, you don't believe I caught a suckerfish in my dream!?"
"Grrr, don't include me in a stupid dream like that!!"
"It wasn't you, I said it was a girl who looked like you."
"Whatever. Jerk!!"

So the meaning was switched slightly from him indirectly saying they kissed but really that they caught a fish, to him calling her a sucker (for buying into the story of his dream, which was sounding romantic up until now) and saying they caught a fish. It's a little klugey but it came off better than I expected considering it stays so close to the original formula. It sounds like the juvenile sort of thing he would do just to piss her off.
2 comments

7/09/2006

This weekend was way too short. :( I slept for about 16 hours Friday night because of my general exhaustion and lack of sleep the previous 2 weeks. I'm finally sort of settled down from the week, and it's time to go back to work. It super sucks. :( Speaking of super sucking, Superman did just that. Unless you like boring, drawn out movies with no action I'd skip it.

I did pick up a little bit around the apartment and got some translating done on Welcome to Pia Carrot. I updated my projects page with a blurb about the current progress which is good but still far from done. It's about 14% done script-wise. I also posted a photoshop-ed mock-up of what the font insert could look like. I don't really know why I did that, I guess I'm just excited about the translation progress and I'm looking forward to the time when it will be real and not a fake.
5 comments

7/02/2006

Back on Days, WtoPC Progress Report, VS Cards Played, 80s Music Listend to, Bagels Eaten!

My week of overnights is over but I am still not re-adjusted to a day schedule. It's morning now and I've been up all night. I'm going to try to stay up all day if I can, we'll see.

Lot's of little things I want to blog about. I picked up some VS system trading cards to play with my friends recently. I sat down and figured out the rules with one of my friends and I just played a game with another friend who was playing for the first time last night. It's trading card game is a game made by upper deck based on the Marvel and DC universes. I'm not into comics like I used to be, but you don't have to be a hard core fan to enjoy. There are a lot of factions based on both good and evil groups of mutants (Spider-friends/Sinister Syndicate, X-Men/Hellfire Club/Brotherhood of Evil Mutants/Moorlocks, Batman/League of Assassins, etc..) you can play with each other or interchangeably, though it's better to stick to one group or another. It turns out to be a lot of fun. I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would.

I've been listening to a lot of 80s music recently. I don't know if it's a good sign that I'm indulging in childhood nostalgia, but it's kind of relaxing to listen to music that I was listening to as a child (pre-teen) some of which I've heard since then and some not.

I've been playing Resident Evil 4 a bit, I'm on probably the first chapter of the Castle. I was just able to get the more powerful pistol and rifle, I'm waiting on another shotgun and/or the mine launcher for now. Starting in on my miniatures has gotten me wanting to play some RE again. I'd like to do a set of RE4 themed figures. It's surprisingly hard to find angry villagers with torches and pitchforks. Though if I do find some it'll be pretty easy to lop of their heads and add a huge tentacle coming out. I hope to find some eventually.

I've made some substantial progress on translating Welcome to Pia Carrot. After I got over the hurdle of a 100K (translated) script with a bunch of weird ass text in it, I got a significant bit of momentum behind another 40K (translated) or so and have just today knocked out another 26K (translated). I have another 26K (untranslated) to go, and Mr. Michel had indicated that another couple blocks are ready to go when I'm done with that. This is by no means much progress in terms of the total size of the game script, but it's good progress nonetheless.

I was sitting around my apartment this morning contemplating something to eat. I was about to go to the dunkin' donuts across the street and get bagel, but I was sort of mired in apathy. The practical side of me was telling myself that it would be cheaper for me to go the grocery store, buy some bagels and cream cheese and eat it, while the other part of me still wanted to go to the dunkin' donuts. I realized to my chagrin that the real reason for my both my immediate and recent laziness around the house was mostly due to a desire to be taken care of. All I really wanted was to have someone make my food for me. Isn't that pathetic? Probably not only pathetic but also lonely and desperate. Needless to say I immediately went to the grocery store, got some bagels, came back, did some dishes, and tried in general to feel like I can should provide for myself and not be so wretched and worthless. At least less wretched anyway. ;)
2 comments

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