The re-Translation

[Shinkiro]

Okay you guys. I don't know how often you get this, and I hope I'm not being a huge douche by bringing it up but .  .  .

I went to this site the other day and I was all stoked about this "re-translation". I was like "what, it was translated wrong? Wow." As I read on the site did well to bash the game's script and uphold this new translation as the big cheese.

But to be honest, after I compared all three . . .

The re translation is really weird. People say things that are completely un natural. It's like whoever re translated it tried their hardest to translate it /directly/, changing a lot of things that really should not have been changed at all.

So I was just wondering . . . does everyone really glorify this re translation?

[V_Translanka]

Which retranslation did you use, again...? Just the newest Compendium one? It's supposed to be a more literal translation, yes. What shouldn't have been changed, exactly...? Unnatural in what way? It's hard to judge what you mean when you don't really give any examples.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Well you see Shinkiro, there are multiple translations.

Of course there's the original Woosley translation, which no one thinks is bad.  I mean, Woosley is great and everyone around here recognizes that.  However, in order to grasp any parts of the translation that he may have missed the Compendium led the way for a retranslation.

The retranslation was translated from Japanese exactly - thus the reason the words seem out of order and the sentence structure seems odd and sometimes confusing.  The retranslation is a literal translation - and it shows the tiny details that Woosley may have missed, or, more likely, dropped.

There's a third translation by a Chrono fan who took the literal retranslation and just changed the structure in order for it to make more sense.  So in essence, it was a properly-organized text translation.  I haven't played this one, though, so I can't say a whole lot as far as how good it was or anything.

[Shinkiro]

Its just. The site says its just translating to give "a clearer portrayal of Chrono Trigger as intended by its Japanese creators" because the original translator missed some things. But then in the translation (the one given on this link http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Retranslation.html), there are sentences that made perfect sense in English, that followed the Japanese script just fine, but were changed into a clunky awkward sentence.

I'm sure the Japanese didn't mean for everyone to sound like robots. =/

[nightmare975]

If you don't like it, don't play it.

I'm not that big of a fan of it, I haven't finished the game since the beta. I don't plan on playing it.

[V_Translanka]

Its just. The site says its just translating to give "a clearer portrayal of Chrono Trigger as intended by its Japanese creators" because the original translator missed some things. But then in the translation (the one given on this link http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Retranslation.html), there are sentences that made perfect sense in English, that followed the Japanese script just fine, but were changed into a clunky awkward sentence.

I'm sure the Japanese didn't mean for everyone to sound like robots. =/

Doesn't that contradict itself...? Or am I missing something? So basically, you don't like the sentence structure? Yeah, in Japanese, sentence structure isn't the same as we would have it in English...THUS the LITERAL part comes to the fore.

Doctor L's re-retranslation is much more of a localization, if that's what you want, then you should probably play that one...He also went with Heaven over Sky, which I think makes sense, I guess.

If you want a link to that retranslation patch, here ya go: Doctor L's Retranslation

On a sidenote: For a sec I thought the Compendium's translation wasn't on romhacking.net anymore, but the name was just changed from Chrono Compendium to...



Neat.

[Shinkiro]

It doesn't contradict anything. I specifically quoted from this site that it said this site's translation is "a clearer portrayal of Chrono Trigger as intended by its Japanese creators". I did /not/ say anything about "literal".

And yeah. Perfectly good English was changed to robotic English. I don't want to play any translations. I'm merely pointing out that this is kind of disappointing for people who find this site and think they found something new about this game they love only to find out that its nothing but clunky, emotionless, robotic, English. Not as intended by the creators.

[Vehek]

The re-translation was for information. That's where it's "clearer".

[Kebrel]

It wasn't meant for a jolly good play through, as Vehek stated, It was made for a refrence to what it origanly said as we here do a lot of analsys on the game.

[Ramsus]

Okay you guys. I don't know how often you get this, and I hope I'm not being a huge douche by bringing it up but .  .  .

I went to this site the other day and I was all stoked about this "re-translation". I was like "what, it was translated wrong? Wow." As I read on the site did well to bash the game's script and uphold this new translation as the big cheese.

But to be honest, after I compared all three . . .

The re translation is really weird. People say things that are completely un natural. It's like whoever re translated it tried their hardest to translate it /directly/, changing a lot of things that really should not have been changed at all.

So I was just wondering . . . does everyone really glorify this re translation?

No, everyone doesn't. The only people who do are usually people who misunderstand the real intent of the re-translation -- that is, to provide a clear, literal translation of the game's original dialog for reference and analysis.

[maggiekarp]

That's why it's better to just save the retranslated script instead of the rom hack

[V_Translanka]

The part of that quote I put in bold was the part that sounded contradictory...>_>

But now I think I understand what you were trying to say there...It's a retranslation. They didn't just take Woosley's English translation & modify it to fit Japanese sentence structure or something...There's a lot of things (admittedly a lot of minute details, but details none-the-less) that are left out or changed in the original English version. Woosley's admitted as much himself to having to cut out something like 50% of the script and having to translate parts of it based solely on memory.

I did /not/ say anything about "literal".

Yeah, I know...that's why I did...>_>

I don't want to play any translations.

You obviously have to play SOME translation, unless you understand Japanese. And if you didn't, why did you try the Compendium's translation at all...?

I'm merely pointing out that this is kind of disappointing for people who find this site and think they found something new about this game they love only to find out that its nothing but clunky, emotionless, robotic, English. Not as intended by the creators.

Technically, you're wrong...It's the same sentence structure as the Japanese, even, so obviously it's EXTREMELY closer to the creators' intended product...And, unless they've read the retranslated script, it IS new...just because the presentation isn't exactly what you want (which I already provided a solution for), I don't see what you're getting at.

[nightmare975]

That's why it's better to just save the retranslated script instead of the rom hack

But isn't it better to play a game while reading a different script, than to just read?

no