Committee of Zero Patch worthwhile?

[Vitameanslife]

Whoever runs the twitter handle for Committee of Zero claims the official translation "fails to capture the personality and ambiance of the original", but also complains about "untranslated Japanese" and translator notes. If I want a less liberal translation, do I apply the Committee of Zero patch or stick with the official translation?

[Seralyne]

引用自 MAELIS：

引用自 Davixxa：

Contextually it absolutely makes sense though. It's @channel that comes up with the case names. @channel will absolutely make up some memey name for it, and Manchild certainly is one that has that kind of snappy wittiness you'd expect.

No..it would still be pregnant man. If you want to go full edgy then it'd be the t word that's referred to transexual people in a harmful way. Sorry but they lost all of my credibility with that terrible explanation.

That would be absolutely tone-deaf, and has no place in 2022. Manchild makes sense given the context. Literally nothing about it implies transgender people. Especially given the context given later on. Not to mention this game takes place in 2009 in Japan. Odds are they've barely even heard of trans people at that point.

[Maelis]

引用自 Davixxa：

引用自 MAELIS：

No..it would still be pregnant man. If you want to go full edgy then it'd be the t word that's referred to transexual people in a harmful way. Sorry but they lost all of my credibility with that terrible explanation.

That would be absolutely tone-deaf, and has no place in 2022. Manchild makes sense given the context. Literally nothing about it implies transgender people. Especially given the context given later on. Not to mention this game takes place in 2009 in Japan. Odds are they've barely even heard of trans people at that point.

Yeah..it does imply transgender people..that's why they changed that in the first place, they got mad at it because pregnant men were somehow recognized in 2002 or whatever bad excuse they said. Also I'm pretty sure 2009 Japan already produced a ton of JAVs with transexual people.

[TiLT]

I played through the opening 15 minutes or so of the game just now, and as an avid book reader (I read one novel every 2-3 weeks) and someone who has played all the other mainline Science Adventure games, let me assure you that the official translation comes off as amateurish at best at first glance.

The best way to describe it would be as if you're reading a novel written by someone who has never themselves read a novel in their life. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural, the attempts at poetic prose feel random and unsatisfying, and it's hard to follow the text since it doesn't seem to fully know what it's describing.

It also doesn't seem like they were able to play the game while translating, so there are descriptions in the intro that don't match up with what's happening on the screen. Not only that, but terminology (such as "whose eyes are those eyes?") that is iconic and recurring for the SciADV series is changed for no apparent reason ("whose eyes are those?"). The impression is that the translator(s) never played any of the other games in the series. The quality of the infamous TIPs imply that the translator barely even cared about this game.

Just wait for the CoZ patch. It's not a long wait, and it will make playing the other games in the series much more rewarding since you'll actually be able to spot the connections.

As a side note, "pregnant man" is plain and uninteresting (and doesn't sound meme-like at all, which would be unlike @chan) while "manchild" is clever and appropriate for the setting. The original English case names in both Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child leave a lot to be desired, and in both cases the games make it readily apparent that the translators gave up on naming some of those cases, making them utterly incomprehensible to an English audience ("Gottsuan Death" anyone?").

[WhiteAlbum2IsAMasterpiece]

引用自 toughnails：

This article talks a lot about the localization quality, with many screenshots and examples:
https://www.kirikiribasara.com/2022/10/06/chaoshead-noah-review-a-masterpiece-marred/

I've no idea why all SciAdv games except for OG S;G are so poorly localized, it's baffling.

OG Steins;Gate was first localised by JAST USA and a bunch of freelance translators, A PC VN localizer and not by Mages themselves. That's why the quality is different. Mages don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the quality, whereas other VN focused localisers like JAST do. And as its Mages IP and they set the terms, that's what happened.

Don't blame Spike Chunsoft for this (or PQube, who published the localised console versions of SG:0 and Chaos;Child).

[Lone Wanderer]

引用自 MAELIS：

CoZ translated pregnant man to manchild. If you think that these guys are high quality then you're just dumb.

i read the blog post. pregnant man was perfect, there was 0 need to change that one.

another pozzed translation...

[Lone Wanderer]

引用自 Blanners：

Chuds picking the awful botched official TL over the CoZ patch because of a single terminology change is probably the funniest thing I've seen here

the issue isn't this single change (which is still pointless). it's that who knows how many other things are changed for political reasons. people who will consume this translation don't know japanese so CoZ could easily push their own agenda without anybody noticing.

i'm not saying that this is actually the case, but it's definitely a possibility, seeing how low their triggering-threshold is

[ATKOtter]

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

引用自 Blanners：

Chuds picking the awful botched official TL over the CoZ patch because of a single terminology change is probably the funniest thing I've seen here

the issue isn't this single change (which is still pointless). it's that who knows how many other things are changed for political reasons. people who will consume this translation don't know japanese so CoZ could easily push their own agenda without anybody noticing.

i'm not saying that this is actually the case, but it's definitely a possibility, seeing how low their triggering-threshold is

All of their choices have *reasons* behind them. Pregnant man is just a description of the thing that happens, not an actual thing people on the internet would come up with as a tongue-in-cheek name for a murder.
Manchild is evocative in multiple ways, and fits the kind of naming the murders are going for in Japanese.
It's not some "political reason". They went with it because it makes sense where a literal translation would not.

[Lone Wanderer]

引用自 Blanners：

lol, lmao even

no arguments? do you know japanese? have you read both the original and the translation side by side? obviously no, since it's not out yet.

but we definitely know that there is at least 1 politically motivated change in the script. if the person in question was a woman, i doubt it would be translated as "womanchild"...

[Read Karakuri Circus]

Wait for patch. Official TL has tons of issues.

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

the issue isn't this single change (which is still pointless). it's that who knows how many other things are changed for political reasons. people who will consume this translation don't know japanese so CoZ could easily push their own agenda without anybody noticing.

i'm not saying that this is actually the case, but it's definitely a possibility, seeing how low their triggering-threshold is

lmaoooooooo

[ATKOtter]

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

引用自 Blanners：

lol, lmao even

no arguments? do you know japanese? have you read both the original and the translation side by side? obviously no, since it's not out yet.

but we definitely know that there is at least 1 politically motivated change in the script. if the person in question was a woman, i doubt it would be translated as "womanchild"...

Womanchild isn't a snide remark people say on the internet to mock people. Changing the victim to a woman would change the entire context surrounding the situation.

[Lone Wanderer]

引用自 AlexHusky：

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

the issue isn't this single change (which is still pointless). it's that who knows how many other things are changed for political reasons. people who will consume this translation don't know japanese so CoZ could easily push their own agenda without anybody noticing.

i'm not saying that this is actually the case, but it's definitely a possibility, seeing how low their triggering-threshold is

All of their choices have *reasons* behind them. Pregnant man is just a description of the thing that happens, not an actual thing people on the internet would come up with as a tongue-in-cheek name for a murder.
Manchild is evocative in multiple ways, and fits the kind of naming the murders are going for in Japanese.
It's not some "political reason". They went with it because it makes sense where a literal translation would not.

even in their blogpost, they clearly stated that "妊娠男 literally means “pregnant man.” then there's a paragraph about 妊娠 being a pun (and it's not, it simply means "pregnancy". and as a side note, there are tons of Sino-Japanese words have "shi" as a compound). and after that there's a 100% political paragraph and that's undeniable.

also funny side note: the original blogpost didn't have the "pun" paragraph and CoZ added it later for some reason...

[Brambachacer]

Really looking forward to the patch! It sounds like they've put a lot of thought and consideration into this... and they aren't asking for a dime either.

[ATKOtter]

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

引用自 AlexHusky：

All of their choices have *reasons* behind them. Pregnant man is just a description of the thing that happens, not an actual thing people on the internet would come up with as a tongue-in-cheek name for a murder.
Manchild is evocative in multiple ways, and fits the kind of naming the murders are going for in Japanese.
It's not some "political reason". They went with it because it makes sense where a literal translation would not.

even in their blogpost, they clearly stated that "妊娠男 literally means “pregnant man.” then there's a paragraph about 妊娠 being a pun (and it's not, it simply means "pregnancy". and as a side note, there are tons of Sino-Japanese words have "shi" as a compound). and after that there's a 100% political paragraph and that's undeniable.

also funny side note: the original blogpost didn't have the "pun" paragraph and CoZ added it later for some reason...

It's almost like... they can realize something is a play on words later on, and... it *is* a play on words. Ninshin = pregnancy, shinin = corpse. Verbal wordplay is super common in Japanese.
And that's not a "political" paragraph, it's saying that something that was absurd when the game came out is no longer absurd, so a literal direct translation is not entirely accurate to the original intent, which was to make an absurd but catchy name for a murder.
Thus, manchild, an insult for young adult men, and a play on the murder itself.

[Lone Wanderer]

引用自 AlexHusky：

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

no arguments? do you know japanese? have you read both the original and the translation side by side? obviously no, since it's not out yet.

but we definitely know that there is at least 1 politically motivated change in the script. if the person in question was a woman, i doubt it would be translated as "womanchild"...

Womanchild isn't a snide remark people say on the internet to mock people. Changing the victim to a woman would change the entire context surrounding the situation.

exactly, that's why it's important to keep the victim male and calling him "pregnant man". if it was a woman, nobody would've called it "the pregnant woman incident" because that doesn't convey the fact that the baby was inserted inside her and it's not her own. by saying "pregnant man" this information is conveyed properly, since men don't have a womb (unless you count FTM people, but in the game the person in question is clearly a man).

my point is:
pregnant man incident = somebody put a baby inside a man by some gruesome means
manchild incident = somebody played nintendo switch in public?

this is LITERALLY a mistranslation, no matter how much you defend it.

[ATKOtter]

引用自 Lone Wanderer：

引用自 AlexHusky：

Womanchild isn't a snide remark people say on the internet to mock people. Changing the victim to a woman would change the entire context surrounding the situation.

exactly, that's why it's important to keep the victim male and calling him "pregnant man". if it was a woman, nobody would've called it "the pregnant woman incident" because that doesn't convey the fact that the baby was inserted inside her and it's not her own. by saying "pregnant man" this information is conveyed properly, since men don't have a womb (unless you count women who transitioned, but in the game the person in question is clearly a man).

this is LITERALLY a mistranslation, no matter how much you defend it.

It's not a mistranslation.
You do not understand what mistranslation actually means if you think making that choice is a mistranslation.
It is a decision to reflect the way internet culture influences the murders and how they're perceived by the general public.
Every single murder title is a tongue-in-cheek play on words, including this one, and not reflecting that is a real mistranslation.

Edit: Also you calling trans men women invalidates your whole point.