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demonvampire180writes · 2 years

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Community Guided Chapter 1

Aomine decides that in order to get even better at basketball that his best option would be to follow in Kagami's footsteps and head to the states. After graduating high school, and spending six months having English beaten in to his head by a tutor, he heads off to California. Enrolling in the same university, he and Kagami strike up friendship once again until one night, after a few too many drinks and a drunken game of one on one, the two kiss on the court. Now they're torn, unsure of how to proceed. They're not gay. There's no way. And it feels like everyone around them is homophobic except maybe their respective partners. Is there even any meaning behind the kiss in the first place? Can they traverse this new territory or will their relationship, even as friends, simply fall apart at the seams?

*** This story contains very harsh language including homophobic, transphobic, sexist and racist slurs ***

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“Hello Daiki, my name is Annie. I’m glad to meet you.” An unfamiliar face, with an unfamiliar voice, and unfamiliar accent greeted him through the glowing computer monitor. She was friendly, and bright, and wore a gentle smile as she gazed at him. And he stared back frozen like a baby dear.

“H-hello A-A-“ He stuttered, cursing himself.

“Annie.” She finished for him, speaking slowly, enunciating carefully.

“Annie.” He parroted. She nodded. “N-nice to meet you.” His tongue felt so heavy as the words fell from his lips. He wished he could rewind time so that he could go back to middle school and take his classes more seriously. Ever since he had decided that he wanted to take basketball even more seriously, and follow in Kagami’s footsteps, he knew that he would have to start focusing on developing his English skills. He’d always thought it was a waste of time, it’s not like he needed it to play basketball, but if he was going to move stateside, his basic tourist levels of the language weren’t going to cut it. So, he’d done what anyone would do and searched far and wide on the web for a tutor, trying hard to find one that was a native speaker that was also from the US. He could’ve used anyone, even someone who spoke it fluently as a second language, but he wanted to sound as natural as possible. He didn’t want to pick up on any weird vocab from someone that lived in England or Australia. Their idiosyncrasies were just too different, and he was having a hard enough time.

“Nice to meet you, too.” She spoke clearly. “Can you tell me about your experience with English?” Aomine tried hard to keep a neutral face as he listened, but he really couldn’t keep up.

“I’m sorry? Please again.” He said hopelessly.

“Of course.” She repeated the question. When he still couldn’t reply and stared blankly at her, she effortlessly switched gears and asked in perfectly fluent Japanese, “Daiki, would it be easier for you if we maybe started off with me teaching you in Japanese? There’s no problem either way. What is the extent of your English skills?” There was absolutely no judgement in her voice. A little shocked at her fluency, and complete lack of accent he couldn’t respond right away, but eventually he found his voice.

Grumbling at his own incompetence he muttered, “Isn’t it better to teach with complete immersion?”

She laughed. “That is true, but it can also be really difficult for the person learning. When I was learning Japanese, I was tossed into a classroom with almost no knowledge of the language at all. I would return to my host family every night nearly in tears because I couldn’t understand! My classmates were kind, but I would still get made fun of a lot, and I’m old enough that I didn’t have as many resources as language learners do today. I spent so much time cursing my exchange program for not having more options for those of us that were still learning. I went to language classes three nights a week, but it took me my entire three years living there to really feel like I could call myself fluent.” Aomine made a face. She put her hands up, smiling. “Don’t worry! Like I said, my resources were extremely limited and because of that, total immersion was basically the only way I could learn. You have the advantage of having access to the language 24/7. There are so many apps on your phone, and so may websites you can use for grammar help, and you can even get a tutor, like me, to teach you one-on-one!”

“I think it would be better for you to teach me in English.” He muttered, face turning pink as he rubbed at the back of his head. “I’m pretty stupid so the more I’m exposed to it the better it will be, I think.” Annie chuckled; her expression soft.

Switching back to English she replied, “You’re not stupid, Daiki. English is hard. Language is hard. So <let’s try our best.>” She pumped her first and nodded her head once in encouragement. Aomine nodded back despite only catching about a fifth of what she had said. Damn this shit is going to suck.

“Annie, I got into the college.” Aomine beamed, holding up the acceptance letter to the camera. Dear Daiki Aomine, we happy to inform you that you have been accepted to XXXX University and look forward to the coming years- Her eyes scanned the first few lines as the smile spread across her face. “Thanks to you I was able to get through the application process. Now I’ve got to get my student VISA.”

She clapped her hands. “That’s amazing, Daiki! I’m so proud of you!”

“Thanks.” He grinned back, puffing out his chest with confidence.

“Now I wonder if you can show that same amount of determination on today’s quiz.” She grinned devilishly, a light glinting in her grey-blue eyes. Aomine swallowed hard, though he tried hard to hold onto the façade of confidence.

“Easy as pie.” He said, hoping she didn’t hear the quiver in his voice. A reply never came. Instead, his screen shifted and a quiz popped up. Unable to answer even the first question, the basketball star questioned what he had gotten himself into.

Needless to say, he never spoke about that quiz again.

Aomine rarely got nervous, and even more so did he get visibly nervous. Today was an exception as he logged into the web browser for his lesson. Annie had sent him an online quiz that went over everything they had talked about in the last five months, but he hadn’t been graded on the spot. She had told him that she wanted him to really take his time and not rush things, and to think through questions that were giving him trouble. She speculated that, if the quiz had given him his grade right away at the end, he’d have gotten nervous and rushed. Well now he was nervous for a completely different reason.

Right on time, as usual, Annie’s face appeared in the right-hand corner of the screen and she could not hide her expression if she had tried. It was like she’d eaten the sun she was shining so bright, her eyes glittering like precious jewels in their sockets, a smile threatening to rip her face apart. “Daiki!” She exclaimed excitedly, slapping her hands against the desk and forgetting her composure. “Daiki, Daiki, Daiki!”

“W-what?” So startled he slipped and spoke in Japanese.

She thrust a stack of papers at the screen, so excited she could hardly hold them still enough for Aomine to see that it was his test answers. “Daiki, I think you might be some kind of genius!” She could hardly contain herself, her neutral teaching accent slipping so much that her far northern accent came out, making her difficult to understand.

“I know that, but excuse me?” He couldn’t help the jab.

She laughed, snorting. “You’re so confident in everything except your English.” She drew the papers back to reveal her face once more. “Do you know what you got on this quiz?”

“Of course not. You wouldn’t let me see it.” He huffed, scowling.

She jittered in her seat, shaking. “Guess.”

“No.”

“Guess.” She pressed.

“No.” He hated stupid games like guessing more than anything. They were a waste of time and energy.

“Ugh, you are such the spoil sport!” She grumped. “You got an eighty-seven percent. Eighty-seven. Do you even know how good that is?”

He gawked at her. Eighty-seven was a horrible score. Sure, it was passing, but that meant that he could barely hold a conversation in English. Where had he screwed up the most? He wracked his brain, trying to pull test questions from memory, but couldn’t come up with anything. There were sections that were extremely difficult but nothing that stuck out more than anything else. “Sensei, have you lost it?” He slipped in Japanese again in his disbelief.

She was grinning, wildly, at him. “Do you want to know a secret, Daiki?” He frowned, nodding. “The quiz I gave you was two levels higher than I would normally give students at what should be your level.” His eyes about fell out of his head. “We haven’t even been working together for half a year and you started off at essentially zero. You’ve grown so much in that amount of time. If I had given you the correct test, you’d have thought it was so easy that you would accuse me of looking down on you.” He flapped his mouth a few times. “Don’t try to deny it. Your attitude when you’re speaking in Japanese is like reading an open book. Your confidence is out of this world.”

He was flabbergasted. His eyes hurt from holding them open, but he was so shocked he couldn’t get them to close. His mouth gaped as he reached for words but found himself speechless. All of his struggle, all his time and effort, was coming to fruition. His hard work was paying off in big ways.

Annie spoke again, her gentle demeanor back in place. “Daiki, the test that I gave you would be something I’d give someone who had typically been studying with me for two years or more. There’s grammar on that test that I can guarantee you a majority of American students wouldn’t have gotten right. Granted, grammar was by and far your worst area, the best being vocabulary, but you still scored almost sixty-five percent on that alone. That’s why I think you might actually be a genius. Did you even realize that you can follow along in lessons perfectly fine now? I almost never have to explain things to you in Japanese anymore, even really difficult concepts.” He shook his head. “Ugh, I’m just so proud of you!” She gushed. “You’re going to be just fine over here, I know it. Until then, let’s keep studying hard, okay?” He simply nodded. Something, a sense of pride maybe, swelled in his chest. Suddenly his move stateside seemed just a little less scary.

Unsurprisingly, there were no tears. Not from him at least. Girls flocked around him as they pestered him for his Line information and email address, claiming that they wanted to keep in touch. He staved them off with bullshit excuses for awhile until he finally exploded at them, yelling that he was moving to California to pursue basketball and that he didn’t want anything to do with any of them as soon as the ceremony was over. While a few of them backed off, a few of his hardcore fans clung on, claiming that his tsundere attitude wasn’t enough to dissuade them. Finally, after God knows how long, Satsuki came to his rescue, dragging him far away from the hoards of onlookers. “Ugh, so annoying.” He grumbled, raking a hand through his hair. “All of them thinking they’re hot shit. None of them are even that sexy.” His friend laughed, wrapping herself around his arm. “Oy, get your tits off of me.”

“Nuh-uh.” She pressed her chest harder against him. “I know that you’re a boob guy.”

He retched. “It’s like having my sister’s tits on me. I’m going to throw up.” He pretended like he was going to, covering his mouth with a hand. She squeezed herself extra close one last time before letting go, her expression all smiles. “I’m going to tell Tetsuya that you cheated on him.”

“As if he’ll believe you.” She stretched her arms out behind her back, leaning forward. “So. How long do I have you for?” He heard a few soft pops as her spine aligned itself.

“Until the end of July.”

“Well then. I’ll have to get my fill of you before then.” Satsuki slapped him heavily on the shoulder before turning on her heel and heading back into the throng of students filing out of the gym, diplomas in hand.

Later that evening Annie congratulated him. “Good job, Daiki. You’re officially an adult.”

“I’m still only seventeen.”

“Close enough. How as the ceremony?” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Did you cry?”

“Of course not.” He glared at her, nostrils flaring in annoyance. She laughed, throwing her head back. “It wasn’t that funny.” He huffed.

“You’re right. But seriously, congrats. It’s so strange that you guys graduate in March. I guess it just means that you’re going to have plenty of time to study. Are you going to work in the mean time?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“What are you planning to do?” He shrugged. He’d thought about getting a part time job for awhile but he’d never bothered to look. Now that he had the time, he didn’t have a clue what he wanted to do. “You should look for something where your English will be really helpful. Something in a tourist-y area would be great.”

“You think I have the composure to work with people?” He eyed her, dubiously. She laughed again.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Think about jobs where you can use it without having to talk to people, then. I’m sure there’s something. Maybe a basic translating job. I can give you a recommendation if you need it.”

“I’ll think about it.” All he knew for sure was that the next few months were going to be long, and difficult, but deep inside his gut he felt an overwhelming sense of excitement. A new chapter was about to begin.

“Well then. Let’s get started.” Annie’s chirper voice cut through the inner monologue and their lessons began.

#aomine x kagami #aokaga #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #ao3 author #ao3 writer

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oumakokichi · 4 years

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What are the differences between the original and localization?

Hmm, that’s a very simple question with a pretty lengthy answer! I did answer some similar questions in the past, but that was a long time ago, much closer to when the localization was first released. There are probably a lot of people whose main experience with the game has only been with the localization, and who don’t really know or remember those differences anymore.

For that reason, I’m going to go into kind of a “masterlist” of things that were changed in the localization in this post. This will be very long, but I really want to explain the whole story behind the localization and its differences from the original to people who might only be hearing about this for the first time. I’m going to cover full spoilers for the game obviously, so be careful when reading!

Also, please feel free to share this post around, as I think it contains a lot of information that might be interesting to people who’ve only experienced the localization!

Before I really get into it though, I want to stipulate that the differences I’m covering in this post are mostly going to be things that I believe could’ve been handled or translated better, not every single line that was changed verbatim in the game. This is because a localization’s purpose is incredibly different from a literal translation.

Where a literal translation seeks to keep as much of the original authorial intent as possible and has the leeway to explain various Japanese terms and cultural specifics to the readers in footnotes or a glossary, a localization is usually much more targeted towards a specific target audience, usually one more unfamiliar with Japanese culture or terminology. As a result, some things in a localization are occasionally changed to make them more understandable to a western audience.

So, for example, I’m not going to fault the localization for changing Monosuke’s extremely heavy Kansai accent in Japanese to a New York accent in the English dub. It’s much easier for western players to immediately grasp that, “hey, this guy has a very specific regional accent that the other characters don’t,” and it works really well as a rough equivalent. Similarly, localization changes like changing a line here or there about the sport of sumo to be about the Jets and the Patriots also helps get the point across to players quickly and easily without having to explain an unfamiliar sport to western players in-depth before they can get the joke.

That being said… there were some liberties taken with ndrv3’s translation which I don’t believe fulfill the point of a localization, and which changed certain deliveries or even perceptions about the characters in a way that I just don’t agree with.

Let me explain first how the localization team actually worked, to people who might be unfamiliar with the process. Ndrv3 had four separate translators working on the localization. When NISA first announced that the game was being localized, these four translators introduced themselves on reddit in an AMA, where they also mentioned that they were by and large dividing up the 16 main characters between themselves, with each translator specifically assigned to four characters.

Having more translators working on a game might sound like a good idea in theory, but it’s often not. The more translators assigned to a game, the harder it is to provide a consistent translation. Translation is messy work: often there are multiple ways to translate the same sentence, or even the same word between two different languages. If a translation has multiple translators, that means they need to be communicating constantly with one another and referencing each other’s work all the time in order to avoid mistranslations: it’s difficult work, but not impossible.

However… this didn’t happen with ndrv3’s translation team. It’s pretty clear they did not reference each other’s work or communicate very well, and the translation suffers for it. I’m not just guessing here, either; it’s a fact that various parts of the game have lines completely ruined by not looking at the context, or words translated two different ways almost back-to-back. I’ll provide specific examples of this later.

Many of the translators also picked which characters they wanted to translate on the basis of which were their favorites—which, again, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but which does raise the risk of letting character bias influence your work. No work is inherently without bias; all translators have to look at their own biases and still attempt to translate fairly regardless. But because translators were assigned four characters each, this meant that while they might be really enthusiastic about translating for one character in particular, they were less enthusiastic for others. These biases do reflect in the work, and I will provide further examples as I make my list.

This system of delegation also leaves more questions than it answers. It becomes impossible to tell who translated certain parts of the game, particularly in areas where the narrator is unclear. For example, did Saihara’s translator translate Ouma’s motive video, as Saihara is the one watching it in chapter 6? Or did Ouma’s translator do it, since it’s his motive video? Who translated the parts we see at the beginning of certain chapters, where characters from the outside world make occasional comments? It’s really unclear, and I’m not even sure if the translators divvied up these parts amongst themselves or if only one person was supposed to handle them.

To put it simply, there were quite a lot of complications and worrying factors about the way the translation was divided by the team, and the communication (or lack thereof) between said translators. It’s impossible to really discuss the main problems that ndrv3’s localization has without making it clear why those problems happened, and I hope I’ve explained it well here.

With that out of the way, I’m finally going to cover the biggest differences between the original game and the localization, and why many of these changes were such a problem.

1.) Gonta’s Entire Character

To this day, I still feel like this is probably the most egregious change of the entire localization. Gonta does not talk like a caveman in Japanese. He does not even have a particularly limited vocabularly. He talks like a fairly normal, very polite high school boy, and the only stipulation is that he’s not very familiar with electronics or technology due to his backstory of “growing up in the woods away from humans.”

Gonta does refer to himself in the third-person in Japanese, but I need to stress this: this is a perfectly normal thing to do in Japanese. Many people do it all the time, and it has no bearing on a person’s intelligence or ability to speak. In fact, both Tenko and Angie also refer to themselves in the third-person in the Japanese version of the game, yet mysteriously use first-person pronouns in the localization.

I wouldn’t be so opposed to this change if it weren’t for the fact that Gonta’s entire character arc revolves around being so much smarter than people (even himself!) give him credit for. He constantly downplays his own abilities and contributions to the group despite being fairly knowledgeable, not only about entomology but also about nature and astronomy. He has a fairly good understanding of spatial reasoning and is one of the first people to guess how Toujou’s trick with the rope and tire worked in chapter 2.

Chapter 4 of ndrv3 is so incredibly painful because it makes it clear that while Gonta was, absolutely, manipulated by Ouma into picking up the flashback light, he nonetheless made the decision to kill Miu of his own accord. He was even willing to try and kill everyone else by misleading them in the trial, because he thought it was more merciful than letting them see the outside world for themselves. These were choices that he made, confirmed when we see Gonta’s AI at the end of the trial speak for himself and acknowledge that yes, he really did think the outside world was worth killing people over.

Gonta is supposed to be somewhat naïve and trusting, not stupid. He believes himself to be an idiot, and other characters often talk down to him or don’t take him seriously, but at the end of the day he’s a human being just like the rest of them, and far, far smarter and more capable of making his own decisions than anyone thought him capable of.

Translating all of his speech to “caveman” or “Tarzan speech” really downplays his ability to make decisions for himself, and I think it’s a big part of why I’ve seen considerably more western fans insist that he didn’t know what he was doing than Japanese fans. I love Gonta quite a lot, but I can’t get over the localization essentially changing his character to make him seem more stupid, instead of translating what was actually there in order to more accurately reflect his character.

2.) Added Some Slurs, Removed Others

It’s time to address the elephant in the room for people who don’t know: Momota is considerably homophobic and transphobic in the original Japanese version of the game. In chapter 2, he uses the word “okama” to refer to Korekiyo in an extremely derogatory fashion. This word has a history of both homophobic and transphobic sentiment in Japan, as it’s often used against flamboyant gay men and trans women, who are sadly and unfortunately conflated as being “the same thing” most of the time. To put it simply, the word has the equivalent of the weight of the t-slur and the f-slur in English rolled into one.

This isn’t the only instance of Momota being homophobic, sadly. In the salmon mode version of the game, should you choose the “let’s undress” option in the gym while with Momota, he has yet another line where he says, “You don’t swing that way, do you!?” to Saihara, using his most terrified and disgusted-looking sprite. This suggests to me that, yes, the homophobia was a deliberate choice in the Japanese version of the game, as Momota consistently reacts this way to even the idea of another guy showing romantic interest in him.

The English version more or less kept the salmon mode comment, but removed the use of the slur in chapter 2 entirely. Which I have… mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I am an LGBT person myself. I don’t want to read slurs if I can help it. On the other hand, I really don’t think the slur was removed out of consideration to the LGBT community so much as Momota’s translator really wanted to downplay any lines that could make his character come across in a more negative light.

This is backed up by the fact that both Miu and Ouma’s translators added slurs to the game that weren’t present in the original Japanese. Where Miu only ever refers to Gonta as “baka” (idiot) or occasionally, “ahou” (a slightly ruder word that still more or less equates to “moron”), her translator decided to add multiple instances of her using the r-slur to refer to Gonta specifically, and on one occasion, even the word “Mongoloid,” a deeply offensive and outdated term. Ouma’s translator similarly took lines where he was already speaking harshly of Miu and added multiple instances of words like “bitch” or “whore.”

To me, this suggests that the translators were completely free to choose how harsh or how likable they wanted their characters to come across. Momota’s translator omitting just the slur could maybe pass for a nice gesture, so people don’t have to read it and be uncomfortable—except, that’s not the only thing that was omitted. Instances of Momota being blatantly misogynistic or rude were also toned down to the point of covering up most of his flaws entirely. His use of “memeshii” against Hoshi (a word which means “cowardly” in Japanese with specifically feminine connotations, like the word “sissy” in English) is simply changed to “weak,” and when he calls Saihara’s trauma “kudaranai” (literally “worthless” or “bullshit”), this is changed to “trivial” in the localization.

Momota’s translator even went so far as to omit a line entirely from the chapter 2 trial, which I touched on in an earlier post. In the original version of the game, Ouma asks Momota dumbfounded if he’s really stupid enough to trust Maki without any proof and if he plans on risking everyone else’s lives in the trial if he turns out to be wrong. And Momota replies saying yes, absolutely, he’s totally willing to bet everyone’s lives on nothing more than a hunch because he thinks he’s going to be right no matter what.

This is a character flaw. It’s a huge, running theme with Momota’s character, and it’s brought up again in chapter 4 deliberately when Momota really does almost kill everyone in the trial because he refuses to believe that Ouma isn’t the culprit. But the localization simply omits it, leaving Momota to seem considerably less hard-headed and reckless in the English version of the game. If anyone wants proof that this line exists, it is still very much there in the Japanese dialogue, but it has no translation whatsoever. This goes beyond “translation decisions I don’t agree with”; omitting an entire line for a character simply because you want other people to like them more is just bad translation, period.

3.) Angie’s Religion

In the original Japanese version of the game, neither Angie’s god nor her religion have any specific names. She refers to her god simply as “god” in the general sense, and clearly changes aspects of their persona and appearance based on who she’s trying to convince to join her cult. Everything about her is pretty clearly fictionalized, from her island to the religious practices her cult does.

Kodaka’s writing with regard to Angie is already a huge mess. It feeds into a lot of harmful stereotypes about “crazy, exotic brown women” and “bloodthirsty savages,” but at the very least it never correlated with a specific religion or location in the original version of the game.

This all changed when Angie’s translator, for whatever reason, decided to make Angie be Polynesian specifically and appropriate from the real religion of real indigenous peoples native to Polynesia. That’s right: Atua is a real god that has very real significance to tons of indigenous peoples.

In my opinion, this decision was incredibly disrespectful. It spreads incredible misinformation about a god that is still very much a part of tons of real-life people’s religion, and associates it with cults? Blood rituals? Human sacrifices? It’s a terrible localization decision that wasn’t necessary whatsoever and to be quite frank, it’s racist and insensitive.

As I said, the original game never exactly had the peak of “good writing decisions” when it came to Angie; there are still harmful stereotypes with her character, and she deserved to be written so much better. But associating her with a real group of indigenous people and equating a real god to some fictional deity that’s mostly treated as either a scary cult-ish boogeyman or the punchline to a joke is just… bad.

4.) Ouma’s Motive Video

Some of the decisions taken with Ouma’s translation are… interesting, to say the least. In many ways, he feels like a completely different character between the two versions of the game. This is due not only to the translation, but also the voice direction and casting.

A lot of his lines are tweaked or changed entirely to make his character seem much louder, less serious, and less sincere than the original version of the game. Obviously, Ouma lies, a lot. That’s sort of the whole point of is character. But what I mean is that even lines in the original version of the game, where it was clear he was being truthful via softer delivery, trailing off the end of his sentences, and seeming overall hesitant about whether to divulge certain information or not are literally changed in the localization to him pretty much yelling at the top of his lungs, complete with tons of exclamation points on lines that originally ended with a question mark or ellipses.

Tonally, he just feels very different as a character. The “sowwy” speak, lines like “oopsie poopsie, I’m such a ditz!”—all of these things are taken to such ridiculous extremes that it feels a little hard to take him seriously. Even in the post-trial for chapter 4 when Ouma starts playing the villain after Gonta’s death, a moment which should have been completely serious and intense, the mood is kind of completely killed when the line is changed from him calling everyone a bunch of idiots to him calling everyone…. “stupidheads.” These changes don’t really seem thematically appropriate to me, but overall, they’re not damning.

What is damning, however, is the fact that Ouma’s motive video is completely mistranslated and provides a very poor picture of what his motivations and ideals were like. I still remember being shocked when I played the localization for the first time and discovered that they completely omitted a line stating that Ouma and DICE have a very specific taboo against murder.

Literally, this is one of the very first lines in the entire video. The Japanese version of the game makes it explicitly clear that DICE were forbidden to kill people, and that abiding by this rule was extremely important to them. By contrast, the localization simply makes a nod about him doing “petty nonviolent crimes and pranks,” without ever once mentioning anything at all about rules or taboos.

This feels especially egregious in the localization considering Saihara later uses Ouma’s motive video as evidence in the chapter 6 trial and states there that Ouma and DICE “had a rule against killing people,” despite the game… never actually telling you that. It not only skews the perception of Ouma’s character at a crucial moment, it also just straight-up lies to localization players and expects them to make leaps in logic without actually providing the facts. So it winds up sort of feeling like Saihara is just pulling these assumptions out of his ass more than anything else.

I actually still have my original translation of Ouma’s motive video here, if anyone would like to compare. Again, translation is a tricky line of work, and obviously not all translators are going to agree with one another. But I consider omitting lines entirely to be one of the worst things you can do in a translation, particularly in a mystery game where people are expected to solve said mysteries based on the information and facts provided to them.

5.) Inconsistencies and Lack of Context

As I mentioned earlier, there are many instances of lines being completely mistranslated, or translated two different ways by multiple translators, or addressed to the wrong character. This is, as I stated, due to the way the translation work was divided by four separate people who appear to have not communicated with each other or cross-referenced each other’s work.

One of the clearest examples of this that I can think of off the top of my head is in chapter 3, where Ouma mentions “doing a little research” on the Caged Child ritual, and Maki in the very next line repeats him by saying… “study?”

On their own, removed from any context, these would both potentially be correct translations. However, it’s very clear that the translators just didn’t care to look at the context, or communicate with each other and share their work. The fact that characters aren’t even quoting each other properly in lines that are back-to-back is a pretty big oversight, and something that should have been accounted for knowing that four separate people were going to be translating various different characters.

This lack of context causes other, even more hilarious and blatantly wrong mistranslations. At the start of the chapter 3 trial, there is a line where Momota mentions that he couldn’t perform a thorough investigation on his own “because Monokuma disrupted him.” In the original, Ouma responds and tells Momota that he’s just using Monokuma as an excuse to cover for his own flaws. However, what we actually got in the localization was… this.

I don’t even have words for how badly this line was butchered (though I could make several hilarious jokes about Monokuma “over-compensating”). Presumably, this happened because Ouma’s translator saw Ouma’s line without any of the lines before it or the context of what Momota was saying, had no clue who Ouma was actually supposed to be talking to, and just ad-libbed it however they could, even though it literally makes no sense and doesn’t even fit into the conversation.

There are other similar instances of this, too. For example, did you know that the scene after Saihara faints in chapter 2, just before he wakes up in Gonta’s lab, is actually supposed to have Ouma talking to him? The narrator is unnamed, but there are several lines just before Saihara wakes up where Ouma tells him “come on, you can’t die on me yet!” and keeps prodding him and poking him to wake up. This is never explicitly told to you from the text… but it becomes pretty obvious when you look at the context and see that a huge CG of Ouma looking over Saihara as he starts to wake up is the very next part of the scene.

In the localization, however, Saihara’s translator pretty clearly had no idea what was happening or who was supposed to be talking to him, because they translated those lines as Saihara talking to himself, even though the manner of speech and phrasing is clearly supposed to be Ouma instead.

I could go on and on listing other examples: Tsumugi makes a joke in the original about Miu being able to dish out dirty jokes but not being very good at hearing them herself, but it’s changed in the localization to Tsumugi saying “I’m not so good with that kind of stuff,” and a line where Momota protests against Maki choking Ouma because she’ll kill him if she keeps going is instead changed to him saying “you’ll get killed if you don’t stop!” In my opinion, the fact that this is a consistent problem throughout the whole game shows that the translators weren’t really communicating or working together at any point, and that it wasn’t simply a one-time mistake here or there.

6.) Edited CGs and Plot Points

I have made an entirely separate post about this in the past, but at this point I don’t think anyone actually knows anymore: the localization actually edited in-game CGs and made some of them completely different from the Japanese version of the game. I’m not accusing them of “censorship” or anything like that, I mean quite literally that they altered and edited specific CGs to try and fix certain problems with them and only ended up making them worse in the process.

In chapter 5, Momota gets shot in the arm by Maki’s crossbow when trying to defend Ouma, and Ouma gets shot in the back shortly afterward when attempting to make a run for the Exisals. These injuries are relevant to how they died, but they’re not actually very visible in the CGs of Ouma and Momota shown later in the chapter 5 trial.

There are a whole bunch of inconsistencies with the CGs in chapter 5 in general: Momota gives Ouma his jacket to lie on under the press, but is magically still wearing it when he emerges from the Exisal himself at the end of the trial (I like to think he snuck back into the dorms Solid Snake style to get a new one from his room before joining the trial), the cap to the antidote is still on the bottle when Ouma pretends to drink it in front of Maki and Momota, etc. None of these things really deter from the plot though, and so I would say they’re fairly unimportant.

However, for some reason, NISA decided that “fixing” at least some of the CGs in the chapter 5 trial was necessary. They did this by adding bloodstains to Momota’s arm while he’s under the press, to better show his injury from the crossbow…. and in doing so, for some completely inexplicable reason, they changed the entire position of his arm. Here’s what I mean for comparison:

This is how Momota’s arm looked in the original CG from chapter 5, shown when the camcorder is provided as evidence that it’s “Ouma” under the press.

And this is how the localization edited it to look. I can understand and even sympathize with adding the bloodstains, but… changing the entire arm itself? Moving it to be sticking out from under the press? To put it nicely, this change doesn’t make any sense and actually makes it harder to understand Ouma and Momota’s plan.

The whole trick behind their plan was that nothing was supposed to stick out from under the press, other than Momota’s jacket. They waited until the instant when the press completely covered every part of Momota’s body, arms and all, and then performed the switch to mislead people. But the edited version of the CG in the localization just has Momota’s arm sticking completely out, hanging over the side, meaning it would’ve been impossible for the press to hide every part of it and the whole switch feels… well, stupid and impossibly easy to see through in the localized version.

Again, this shows a total disregard for presenting the facts as they actually appear and actually makes things more difficult for English players of the game, because they’re not being given accurate information. I really don’t understand why these changes were necessary, or why the bloodstains couldn’t have just been added without moving Momota’s entire arm.

7.) In Conclusion

This has gotten extremely long (nearly 10 pages), so I want to wrap things up. I want to specify that my intention with this masterlist isn’t to insult or badmouth the translators who worked on this game. I’m sure they worked very hard, and I have no idea what time or budget constraints they were facing as they did so.

Being a translator is not easy, and typically translators are not very well-paid or recognized for their work. I have the utmost respect for other translators, and I know perfectly well just how difficult and taxing it can be.

I am making this list because these are simply changes which were very different from the original version of the game, and which I believe could have been handled better. Personally, I disagree with many of the choices the localization made, but that does not mean that they didn’t do a fantastic job in other places. I absolutely love whichever translator was responsible for coming up with catchphrases and nicknames throughout the game: little localization decisions like “cospox,” “flashback light,” “Insect Meet n’ Greet,” and “cosplaycat criminal” were all strokes of genius that I highly admire.

I only want to stress that the Japanese version of the game is very different. Making changes to the way a character is presented or portrayed means influencing how people are going to react to said character. Skewing the information and facts presented in trials in the game means changing people’s experience of the game, and giving them less facts to go off of. Equating fictional gods to real-life ones can cause real harm and influence perception of real indigenous peoples. These are all facts that need to be accounted for before deciding whether a certain change is necessary or not, in my opinion.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Again, feel free to share this post around if you’d like, since this is probably the most comprehensively I’ve ever covered this topic.

#danganronpa #new danganronpa v3 #dangan ronpa #ndrv3 spoilers //#ask #anonymous #this isn't meta but it's IS a comprehensive masterlist of translation comparisons #so i think it's okay to post in the tag #okay to reblog

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writingbakery · 4 years

Text

“tapewebs”; a series 🕸

hanta sero is just your regular everyday japanese-american immigrant college student, living in the heart of brooklyn. when miles morales collapses on the windowsill of his shitty one bedroom apartment, life gets.... a hell of a lot more interesting 🕷

[a spiderman! sero au one shot series, featuring class 1-A, hanta sero, miles morales, an assortment of marvel villains, & you, dear reader - the object of one tapespider’s affections ✨]

[pairing; sero x gender neutral reader 🕸]

[warnings; fluff, violence, action, angst, romance, & a lot of tape/spider puns 🕸]

“Sticky Note Origins”

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

the city is prettier up high, sero realizes. granted, he wishes he’d come to that conclusion on solid ground, without his feet nervously planted on a skyscraper ledge, but still.

every whip of wind threatens to topple him over, send him careening down into a frenzied spiral of buildings and colors until he meets concrete at the bottom - and he’s supposed to willingly jump.

he wonders if he’ll pass out before his bones meet solid mass, cracking in so many different ways the coroner’ll have to play connect the fragments until he’s a person again.

behind him, an impatient cough sounds, bringing him back to the task at hand. fuck.

you’re probably wondering how he got here. let’s rewind a week.

one week earlier

at ten pm on a friday, the city is in its prime, bustling crowds of people laughing and stumbling through the brightly colorful streets. hanta’s just trying to protect his pad thai & dumplings, hugging the greasy paper bag to his chest as he weaves in and out of the chaos.

a day full of long classes & a quiet shift at the cafe-slash-bookstore halfway between campus and his crap one bedroom apartment leaves him exhausted, shoulders hunched as he makes his way home. nobody ever sees him regardless - the city’s too big for one lanky, always tired beanpole to be much notice.

despite living in brooklyn since he was four, he’s never felt a hundred percent comfortable here - he had an accent right up until he was thirteen, still trips over certain words and customs that don’t exist back home in japan. he’s awkwardly tall, not enough to be a phenomenon but towering over all his family. he just doesn’t quite fit anywhere - too smart and plain to be popular, too boring to be with the jokesters, too awkward for the nerds. he’s been a loner all his life, and while he doesn’t mind too much, he just wishes it was a little easier to belong.

a text rolls across his phone screen as he’s shuffling songs, skipping some j-pop rock song to settle on kendrick lamar as he smiles. you. he couldn’t lie and say he was completely alone, not when he had you in his life.

you were a year younger than him but twice as smart, skipping a year ahead and landing yourself in hanta’s high school freshman english class. the pair of you had just... clicked, from the very first moment he pointed to shakespeare’s likeness on the cover and mocked “what, you egg?!”

your laughter had left him on cloud nine the entire day, and he made it his personal mission to hear that beautiful little giggle at least once a day for the rest of his life.

a lovely friendship had bloomed from there, the two of you joined at the hip - if you were somewhere, hanta was bound to follow & vice versa.

you’d even gotten into the same college, albeit for drastically different majors - he was a biochem/engineering double major, while you were an english/history double major. you were opposite but similar in so many ways, and the way you both completed each other didnt go unnoticed by sero.

you were his puzzle piece, the bits of him he’d never been able to fill easily made whole by your presence.

he could never tell you, however; your friendship was too precious to risk, especially over his dumb, emotional heart.

sending a string of laughing emojis towards the meme you sent, he jogs up the seven flights of dimly lit stairs to his tiny, one bedroom apartment - living in the city wasn’t cheap, & while the elevator was always busted at least he had a doorman, and heat that worked on occasion.

stepping into his apartment, however, he can immediately sense something is wrong; the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, a heavy silence coating the darkness. the air feels wrong, tipsy turvy like the whole place is holding its breath - like something’s on the verge of exploding, catapulting him into chaos and danger.

quietly stepping through the living room, he peeks into the kitchen and bathroom, holding his backpack out like a makeshift weapon - his $200 biology textbook finally going to good use. finding nothing in either dark room, he slowly advances towards his bedroom, carefully measuring every step. at first, the room seems perfectly normal - nothing’s been moved, and it’s just as empty as the rest of his apartment.

and then he sees the blood.

dotting his windowsill in bright, red streaks, the window itself pushed halfway open - but that’s not what stops him in his tracks, eyes so wide it hurts.

spiderman is leaning against his windowsill, covered in blood and panting heavily, one hand held up in an effort to stop hanta in his tracks.

“i need...... help,” he whispers, voice rough and low; hanta’s amazed he can still speak.

he opens his mouth to react, somehow, even steps forward to catch him before screaming like a ten year old girl at a morgue, panic setting in like cold water.

never a dull night in brooklyn.

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

once he’s made sure that spiderman - miles, as the young man bleeding all over his $12 walmart carpet supplies - isn’t going to die anytime soon, hanta’s quick to recover from his shock. bustling around his tiny kitchen to make cheap ramen and digging around in his closet to find his mini first aid kit, he’s in full fanboy mode - he’s got posters plastered wall to wall of miles morales on his bedroom walls, for gods sakes. not that he knew it was miles morales, but still.

miles morales is curled up in the fleece blanket hanta’s mom had sent him his second week at college, and he’s totally not freaking out.

he’d had to cancel his nightly facetime call with you, lying about a stomach bug - he hates keeping things from you, but this is just too big and messy and dangerous. he’ll tell you in due time, he promises himself, trying to ease the coil of guilt in his stomach.

“how did you end up on my windowsill, again?” hanta asks, gently pushing the bowl of noodles towards the injured man. he’s got his own pad thai long forgotten in the microwave, more focused on the superhero who’d gotten his ass whooped on his doorstep, so to speak.

“i told you. i’d been watching you for a while - you’re the most promising candidate i have.” miles’ voice is slick with humor, a sort of teasing confidence that’s clear even through the pain.

“which i’m still not understanding - candidate for what? blood services? biology questions? how to make $20 last two weeks??” he knows he’s being childish, too joking for the severity of the situation, but he can’t help it. the neighborhood’s - and his own - hero is sitting in front of him, eating shitty 33¢ ramen from the bodega around the corner, telling him he’s a prime candidate.

“to take the mantle.” all traces of laughter are gone now, miles leaning forward on the table to emphasize his words. “i’ve been doing this long enough to know when to quit. my body’s giving out on me - i got slammed into a wall last week and couldn’t shake the pain till yesterday. before, i’d be fine within an hour. the city needs someone new, young, willing to take the risks.”

hanta’s ears stopped listening the moment he heard quit. “me? are you fuckin’ joking?” he wheezes, coughing his way past the shock. “i get winded walking up to my apartment! an old lady beat me to the c train yesterday! a strong wind could kick my ass!”

miles is either willfully ignoring him or just can’t hear, plowing ahead with his explanation. “you’ve got the perfect build for webswinging, and you’ve got a good heart - you know when to do the right thing and when to step away. leave the rest up to me, and trust me - i know what i’m doing.”

hanta can’t believe his ears, pushing away from the table to pace around his kitchen in panic. “i don’t till you understand, you’ve got the wrong guy - there’s no way i could be spiderman!” his words are falling on deaf ears - miles is standing too, and he doesn’t seem to care about hanta’s impending panic.

“you’ve got to trust me on this, alright? meet me tomorrow, at this address - 12 pm sharp. the city needs you, hanta - hell, i need you. just have a little faith.”

hanta scoffs at that, throwing his hands in the air. “faith?! i met you an hour ago, bleeding all over my windowsill! that’s not exactly the most- hey! where the hell...” there’s nothing but a blanket, a hastily scrawled address, and an empty bowl where miles had sat, leaving hanta alone with his thoughts.

damnit.

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

hanta pushes through the crowds of people at eleven am the next morning, half asleep but wired enough to power the whole city - hell, the whole goddamned country. he’s running on no sleep, adrenaline, two redbulls & the guilt of lying to you again, his “stomach bug” keeping him from class. he’d told you he was going to visit his parents for the weekend to recover; your sweet messages in response only made him feel worse.

he’s tossed and turned over this decision a million times & yet, he’s still not sure where he stands - it’s so little information, so much responsibility in so little time. he’s still half convinced he’s being punked, if he’s honest.

and yet, somethings drawing him to the address miles had left him, something deep in his gut that tells him he needs to be there. clearly, miles had seen something he himself is woefully oblivious to, and it couldn’t hurt to find out more.

apple maps leads him to a tiny shed somewhere behind a deli & a nail salon, not too far from his apartment, and he’s completely confused. “stupid gps, probably got me lost,” he whines, leaning against the door of the shed to zoom in on his location.

the pigeons in the alley are the only ones to hear his panicked yelling as he phases right through it, tumbling all the way down a metal chute into the dark unknown.

at least, for ten seconds. he lands on a remarkably soft pad of foam, a glass panel separating him from a brightly lit, fancy looking room lined wall to wall with computers, parts and half made suits, spiderman suits. he doesn’t know where to look first.

a robotic, feminine voice brings him out of his shock, the glass panel lighting up with code and writing.

“please enter your name.” hanta is floored.

“uh.. hanta sero?” the voice trills lightly, before a red grid-like laser scans him head to toe. he’s proud to admit he only squealed in terror once.

“identity confirmed. welcome, hanta.” the panel slides away to allow him access, his careful steps alerting the rest of the room’s computers to light up at his arrival.

“you came. i knew i chose wisely.” miles comes into view slowly, limping heavily as he smiles. it’s almost familiar, like he & hanta have been friends for years; he finds it comforting.

“well, not everyday you get to be spiderman,” hanta jokes, fidgeting a little where he stands. “you gonna fit me for a suit or something?” miles just laughs, shaking his head.

“that comes later. first, we’ve got to get you bitten.”

bitten?

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

for the third time in 24 hours, hanta’s screaming like a man who’s just been told he has two days to live.

“you want me to let that thing bite me?! have you lost your mind?!”

miles sighs patiently, holding up the little glass vial to the light; inside, the spider races up and down the glass, an odd orange color to its patterning.

“it’s the only way. no offense, but i saw that lady beat you to the c train. she was like, 85.” hanta’s pouting now, crossing his arms.

“she had a cane and she was agile- hey hey! you keep that thing away from me, so help me god-“

“you’re being dramatic, it’s the size of a pea-“

“that’s a fat ass fuckin’ pea-“

“stay still-“

“i will not- ow! jesus fuck, that thing has tarantula jaws!”

miles carefully shepherds the spider back into the glass, chuckling a little. “it’ll take a moment to cause effect. the original spider was cross-bred with a more agile, lanky species - perfect for your body type. i’m hoping it’ll be most effective in your transition.”

“hoping?” hanta squeaks, staring at the red welt forming on his hand - his visions already starting to blur out, a throbbing pain traveling up his arm.

“well, it’s the first time i’m experimenting with this-“

“you used me as a guinea pig?!”

“it’s perfectly safe! my mentor-“ but hanta’s not listening anymore, the world swimming in front of his eyes before the ground rushes up rapidly to kiss his face.

god. damnit.

when he comes to, he’s wrapped in about half the blankets in brooklyn, a cold compress against his sweaty forehead. he’s burning up, and his elbows hurt for some reason - his skins gone all itchy, and he’d probably kick a pigeon for a glass of water.

sitting up alerts miles to his newly conscious state, the man quickly scanning his vitals with a smaller version of the glass panel hanta’d been fascinated with earlier. “thought you were gonna croak on me. how do you feel?”

“itchy. and my arms hurt.” hanta’s pushing off the blankets as he speaks, attempting to get comfortable - his body feels weird, like he’ll burst out of his skin at any second.

“alright, don’t panic. i need to see how it’s mutated your body. stay still.” miles’ fingers delicately press against his neck, shoulders, before jabbing at his ribs without warning. hanta’s arms shoot up on impulse, a trail of sticky, precise webbing escaping him from his...... elbows?!

“what the fuck, dude what the fuck look at my elbows, they’re all puffy and red i’m gonna die, and the coroner is gonna leak my story to the press and my moms gonna see me in the paper with fucked up elbows-“ hanta may or may not be panicking, poking at the tender, slightly swollen skin around the bends of his arms. miles just rolls his eyes, clearly amused by his antics.

“you’re not going to die. japanese tape spiders shoot webbing from the bends of their eight arms; its a thicker & stronger strain of web. clearly, your elbows are how your body has adjusted.”

“that doesn’t make it better.” hanta’s too busy staring at himself to notice the other changes at first, but slowly, they’re trickling in. heightened eyesight and hearing, an odd balance to his feet he hadn’t had a day ago, even itchier fingertips - making it easier for him to grip flat surfaces, or at least as miles says.

“come on. let’s get you a suit.”

───── ⋆🕸⋆ ─────

a week’s worth of planning & adjusting has led him right here to this rooftop, suited feet firmly balanced on the ledge. he likes his suit, thinks it’s unique - he’d modeled it after the spider who’d blessed him with these powers, orange and black and white [miles sort of thinks it’s ugly, but who cares.] he’d been in & out of the fondly nicknamed “spider-lounge”, getting fitted for his suit & honing his new abilities; he’d also been avoiding you whenever possible.

he couldn’t suck you into this world, not when he was barely comfortable in it himself; he kept promising himself he’d come clean, but the guilt’s eating him alive with every sad look & evening alone you spend.

another impatient cough brings him back to the present, miles sitting in the middle of the roof & watching hanta’s nervous stalling. “you’re going to have to jump eventually, you know,” he calls, and it takes everything in him not to turn tail and run.

he has a duty, a responsibility now, and he doesn’t take that lightly. he thinks of you, sitting in your ratty little apartment off campus and remembers that your safety is all but in his hands now; he’s got to protect the city, for your sake at least.

“i absolutely will not hesitate to kick you off this rooftop,” miles threatens, but its empty - they both know hanta needs to do this himself.

one step back, then two, the nerves racing up his spine as he prepares himself to meet cold concrete [a dramatic thought, miles would catch him far before he reaches ground. a bad knee wouldn’t stop him from that.] he says a silent prayer to every god he’s ever heard of and closes his eyes, taking a step forward into the air-

and trips over the ledge, falling ass over heels into the air. nice.

the rushing wind only heightens his panic for a moment, before one arm snaps up to blindly shoot into the air; his spider sense kicks in from there, aiming without even realizing and latching onto a nearby ledge. he swings aimlessly for a moment before finding a new ledge, then a railing; slowly, he finds a rhythm.

he’s soaring through the city before he realizes, laughing at the sharp roar of the wind in his ears - he feels like he’s flying, weightless as a bird. the only thing he can think of is you, how much you’d love this.

one day, he’ll take you webswinging. one day.

for now, he relishes in the fact that he’s one step closer to being brooklyn’s - & new york’s - new spiderman, fresh faced & determined to bring peace to the city.

he’s going to do it for you, even if it kills him.

#bnha sero #sero hanta x reader #sero hanta #spiderman au #sero x y/n #sero x you #sero x reader #bnha x y/n #bnha x you #bnha x reader #boku no hero fanfic #evywrites #tapewebs #one shot series #tapewebs series

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doxampage · 6 years

Text

Book Printing: Designing in a Multitude of Languages

Two associates of mine are a husband and wife print book production team. They do a lot of work for the World Bank and NATO, which means their publications go around the world and are printed in a multitude of languages, from English to Spanish to French to languages I’ve never head of.

This is exciting. But as I listened to one of my associates go through the process of changing a print book from one language to another, I realized just how complex a job this is.

Background on the Print Books

Periodically my associates ask me to critique and hopefully improve their layout or cover design, color usage, fonts, etc. So I have a grasp of the overall kind of work they do.

Most of the books are perfect-bound texts upwards of two hundred pages in length, with an 8.5” x 11” format (or the closest international page size). The book interiors are text-heavy, but they do include numerous charts and graphs as well as some photos.

When I was speaking to the husband (of the husband and wife team) this week, he told me how he had to remake the charts, graphs, and tables when recreating books he had initially designed and laid out in another language. He described the following steps:

He had created InDesign style sheets and “tags” for the word processing document such that importing text into an empty duplicate of the initial book design (lets say in French) would yield a “mostly-accurate” version of the new text flow, with the headlines and body copy in the appropriate fonts and type sizes.

His replacing and reflowing the text copy (let’s say in Spanish) did not include automatic, accurate formatting of “bullets” in lists. Therefore, he had to manually correct all of these in the new InDesign file.

He had to replace all of the text blocks in charts and graphs. (Keep in mind that all but one of the languages are not his native tongue.) He had to do the same for the tables. Obviously, all replacement text had to be accurately placed, which was no simple task. Keeping track of which text blocks from the original word processing file (in any number of languages not his own) had to be placed in the charts and graphs (and in which order) was challenging.

InDesign allows a designer to anchor photos and graphs to certain paragraphs. Clearly this is a benefit, since text in World Bank and United Nations print books often references graphics, making the proximity of the graphics to certain paragraphs of high importance.

That said, it often takes either more or fewer words to say the same thing in one language than in another, so (in simplest terms) my associate’s print book text will often reflow (in the InDesign file) in rather dramatic ways when he replaces text of one language with that of another. This might mean that a table or chart that was on one page spread might migrate to another, either causing a disruption in the overall page design (balance of text and graphics) or separating a graphic from its associated explanation in the text of the book.

Other languages often use other alphabets. For instance, the Cyrillic (used for such Slavic languages as Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) or Kanji alphabets (for Chinese and Japanese) don’t even vaguely resemble Engligh, and even French has certain diacritical marks or accents absent from English. All of this requires buying new software that totally remaps the computer keyboard. It also requires careful attention in reformatting print books from one language to another.

Then there are the country-specific conventions and taboos. These might be as simple as a color choice. In some countries, the color white has certain connotations, whereas in other countries the cultural meaning of the color white could be the exact opposite. Moreover, something that might be harmless in one country (even on a merely visual or graphic level) might be an insult in another country.

What You Can Learn from This Case Study?

The first thing I would learn would be to avoid this work. However, my two colleagues have been doing this happily for a long time, and they find it quite lucrative.

So if you find yourself in a similar situation, consider the following:

Proofreading is essential. It wouldn’t hurt to do it the traditional way, with one person reading the text out loud to another. After all, you can easily get hypnotized by the work and make an error without realizing it.

Make sure your client has submitted a clean word processing document. In all cases, highlight and then copy and place text. Avoid retyping text. This is where errors occur.

Expect to buy additional software to support your client’s work.

Assume that extra characters, from accents to typographic ligatures (two characters that are smooshed together) may not come across correctly in translation from the word processing document to the InDesign document (i.e., when you “place” the copy). (This means you should look for errors in places they will be most likely to occur.)

Initially, place or reflow all the copy in the book or in a chapter to see where any “anchored” graphics will fall (that is, those graphic elements that are tied to a particular paragraph). Expect to massage the design a little, making some photos larger or smaller to ensure a pleasing balance of text and graphics on the page (when compared to an edition of the same book in another language). Expect the work to be in flux for a while. Expect to make changes. However, don’t be tempted to change spacing between paragraphs and sections just to make everything fit.

Always use “style sheets” available in InDesign. This will ensure consistency and accuracy, but it will also make it easier for you to fix any errors.

Find someone who understands the cultural norms and taboos of the country of origin. If you’re transferring the overall book design and text from a French to Spanish treatment (for instance), it will help to have a colleague who understands the culture check your work (graphic treatment, cover design, color usage, and so forth).

Expect this to be really, really tedious work (as my associates have noted). They make sure they take breaks, go outside, walk around, and listen to music. Beyond their own comfort and sanity, this avoids their falling into a hypnotic state (like the highway hypnosis you slip into when driving long distances on the Interstate late at night), and hence it minimizes errors.

Expect to get paid a lot for this kind of work. Consider it hazard pay. Unless of course you like it. Then, more power to you. It is necessary and highly valued work.

Book Printing: Designing in a Multitude of Languages published first on https://getyourprintingcompanies.tumblr.com/

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