Post by Tsai Xiaoren in Vision Ghost(Full Version) comments

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Maybe you're right.
Because I am the only one who made this game, including the translation. In addition to the fact that the text may not be smooth (I use deepl.com for a lot of it).

In many semantic expressions I do not know how to translate more properly.

For example, the two childhood friends of the main character are called cousins. In Chinese, the word eld and young are different words. But in English, they are all cousins, so the word cousin will always appear in all conversations. It looks very strange. So I've switched to using people's names instead, but it just seems so rusty.

Thank you for your suggestion, I'll think about how to make it more appropriate for the next work.

darebrained1 year ago

It's not just that, also you have points at which you have whole sentences that don't fit in well. It's not that they don't make sense but when reading it the atmosphere they generate feels off, if that makes sense.

Also when someone can see souls unless you are talking about a specific soul you use plural, so "cats and dogs can see the soul" would probably better to use "can see souls".

Hope I was of help.

Tsai Xiaoren1 year ago

Thank you very much, this is definitely helpful.
It sounds like a grammar problem, I really don't understand when to use the singular and when to use the plural, I used to get this wrong on English exams.

So, you mean you can probably understand the story, but the sentences are often inexplicable?

Tsai Xiaoren1 year ago

Let me ask you a question that has been bothering me for a long time.

If there are several cousins in the same scene, how do you refer to them separately? Do you call them by their first names or do you use the word "cousin" for all of them?

darebrained1 year ago (1 edit)

in English (and most Western languages) we generally refer to people by their first name, unless there is a larger hierarchical gap or it is in a professional/business setting. For example often when talking to your direct superior if you are working closely together, especially in smaller groups it is common to be on first name basis and within a family (or family-equivalent, which I guess is the fact for the characters) you generally use just first names or for parents mom/dad or other informal variations of that, sometimes also sis/bro for siblings but that is less common.

Calling someone by cousin, especially regular and not just as a reaction to something or when introducing them, is super uncommon in my personal experience.

On singular/plural: When you refer to a single specific item you use singular ("SS could see the soul as well" (don't have the game open RN so don't recall the text 1:1; meant the scene at the beginning when you meet her); => singular as you refer to that specific soul that is standing there), if you refer to multiple items or something non-specific you use plural (cats and dogs can see souls; => you mean they can see them, not that there is a specific soul right now they are looking at)

For example if you had a soul being surrounded by a handful of cats and dogs then "the cats and dogs could see the soul"; the "the" before both "cats and dogs" as well as "soul" indicate you mean specific cats and dogs, as well as a specific soul.

Another example is at the very start when starting the game the notice about using free-use music which you end with "the update" which is the same grammatical error, as it would refer to a specific update. (The context here as well as in most cases as far as I played - which wasn't too far, admittedly, makes it pretty clear what you meant, though.)

If the deepL translation is unclear at points tell me and I'll try to rephrase it.

Tsai Xiaoren1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

In the Chinese community, the terminology of people is a bit complicated.
Even in the case of multiple relatives. We use the combination of "person's name + relative's title" instead of just using the person's name.
I should have brought in the cultural logic of Western society when translating. But it's really difficult.
After all, my knowledge of Western society comes from various games and Hollywood movies.(and all after the Chinese translation.😁)

However, I also found a problem: I always rewrite the translation of DeepL after it has been translated. But it seems that the translation of DeepL is more in line with the western society than my rewriting, especially in grammar.

Thank you for using such a long reply to this question. I will try to avoid these mistakes in my next work.

itch.io

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