Dec/0812
Getting cultural enlightenment from translation
In my endeavors in translation of colloquial Japanese in common-day situations, I always end up stumbling over references made to literature, god deities, TV shows, and all kinds of imaginable commonplace things that your everyday Japanese person would know of if they are actually watching anime. For me, who's living over in cold Norway, I haven't had the chance to get indulged in these cultural tidbits around me while growing up and thus having a parental unit to ask about what the hell is going on and why it is funny. Instead, I have to do research with the mighty force of Google in Japanese behind me, reading up and trying to figure why it is funny or why something makes sense to say, and sometimes I end up wasting quite a lot time on it too. Not only is it on references, but on things that guys would never know of unless especially interested or if they got kids, and I have to say some of the things I have learned from translation is rather funny.
Nov/0811
New Toradora OP/ED themes’ CDs announced
Starchild's just updated their release pages with information on the coming new opening and ending themes for Toradora. According to the information posted by Starchild here, there's going to be a limited edition copy of the opening theme. There's no covers yet or anything, just some data:
New opening theme named "silky heart" - sung by Horie Yui (Minorin).
Release date: 2009/01/28.
Limited edition comes with a DVD containing the PV movie for the song.
Limited edition will cost 1890 yen, regular edition will cost 1200 yen.
Contains a total of three songs, with karaoke versions of all three - total tracks is six.
New ending theme named "orange" (orenji) - sung by Horie Yui (Minorin), Kugimiya Rie (Taiga) and Kitamura Eri (Ami).
Release date: 2009/01/28, will cost 1200 yen.
Contains a total of two songs, with karaoke version of both - total tracks is four.
The cover is going be drawn by the character designer, Tanaka Masayoshi.
Nov/0837
Radio dramas – why doesn’t anyone translate them?
A commenter reminded me of the fact that the Toradora opening single includes the opening song for the radio drama of Toradora. I don't remember ever seeing anyone translating radio dramas, and yet there are so many of them that run alongside anime or manga, which let Japanese fans get more insight, or more funnies, or whatnot that comes with the package of the dramas. Is there even a western scene for them? Why is it hard to subtitle/translate them?
Doing them as blank videos or videos with pictures on YouTube, with closed captions or subtitles, I guess would work. But that would be rather dumb too, as YouTube is shit quality. So is there a solution for it? Do we have a container of some kind that can hold music + translated text, that you can view on say, an iPod? I know my iPhone has karaoke possibilities in a very fancy format, and I've added it to some songs for the fun of it. It really works too, matches with the music and highlights what's being said just like in anime, as an overlay on top of the album cover. Is this format a standard that can be used to release to the masses?
I honestly wouldn't mind doing this for say, Toradora, but doing this would require some figuring of how to release them and how to make it possible to listen to these like a radio drama CD or whatnot would be listened to; on a music player of your choice, not like a video you sit watching like it was anime. I'd really like to hear from anyone who's tried to explore this area, as getting a radio drama translation scene up would be really coal.
EDIT: Okay, people are missing my point. I'm asking whether anyone knows of a unified, soft-sub type of format for distributing audio + text that can be used to do radio dramas. Having a format like this would ease up the process of releasing translated radio dramas, and removed the need for a video player to follow. Sure, you'd still have audio + text you read, but that'd give people the chance to either read the text OR the audio - even though the text alone would probably miss some of the point cause of the soundeffects in the dramas.
If this kind of format does exist, why isn't anyone using it? If it actually does not exist, are anyone trying to make one? This is the things I'd like to find out, while kinda polling the interest in the radio dramas so one could figure whether it is worth my time too.
Nov/0822
Toradora sidecharacters: who are they?
People have been asking me, who are these "Nanako" and "Haruta" etc that I talk about when I blog? I am of course talking about the many side-characters with no real stories on them yet, that are getting love in the novels we've yet to see. I thought I'd introduce them to you with the slight knowledge I have of them.
Nov/0817
Torapatcha
DO NOT WANT
Five episodes of toradora, four patched releases and a totalt of five patches released. I'm stunned by this, as the patches all were because of different things, every time. And then the episode five patch combined the things we had to patch for episode 2-4 in one go. At least we included a bonus in the episode five patch, finally some karaoke to go with the OP and ED.
So why does this happen? I have no idea. It feels like the show is haunted, that it somehow always has some part of if getting messed up somewhere. Is it sloppy QC? Is it sloppy TLing? It could be sloppy editing, or even the final release muxer messing up. Always something that gets overlooked, or someone forgetting something. I might just have to write out some kind of checklist for every release now just to make sure we don't have to release a patch. With every episode.
Oct/0859
gg dropped Toradora
Yeah, we did. Nobody but me was in any way interested in the show and I had to drag their weight and frustrate them out for 3 weeks straight after episode one, so we're back to dropping it. HOWEVER, I am continuing this with another group. You'll see me around with them in hopefully the same timely manner as we've been doing it so far. More to come on this.
P.S. I'm not with coal guys, I'm way coaler than that.
Oct/0826
Toradora episode 4 translation notes
I'm out before the episode this time, just since I'm so coal like that. Not too much to note about this time, so I'll be even more elaborate this time!
[09:47:28] <Daiz> looks like you guys forgot to mux the dialog font in this time.
[09:47:47] <~Alexandra> Actually Daiz we forgot the correct style after ilifin made me put in music notes for ep 3.
[09:47:56] <@taigafin> music notes were kawaii
[09:48:12] <~Alexandra> ... ilifin if you had never made me put in fucking music notes, the font would be fine for ep 4.
[09:48:16] <Daiz> where be patch
Edit (19:37 20081024): Yeah, OK: Here's a NEWER patch. (use the original unpatched file *or* remux the script from this patch into your already patched file.)
