How Well Does MTL Work?
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@terabyte My case, I’ll probably still read every line of the light novel when each update comes up, but until then, the Lite version will do to satisfy my binge obsession.
I can also handle the name issues as long as I know who is who.
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@terabyte Also... might reflect badly on me, but what is MTL? I’d like to perpetuate my addiction as soon as possible.
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@oathkeeper95 MTL => Machine Translation; basically using google translate (or other translators) on the page.
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@terabyte got it... now to find out where to find the japanese text. Don’t tell me. I wanna try and find it meself before relying on you the whole way.
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@oathkeeper95 said in Smartphone Vol. 17:
I’d like to perpetuate my addiction as soon as possible.
It hurts! The actual translation reads so badly! It hurts, but it’s worth it! I’LL PERPETUATE THIS DAMNED ADDICTION!
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@oathkeeper95 Sure, good luck. If you have troubles just send me a PM so we keep the discussion clean here 😉
@Village-Idiot Indeed, that's basically the extra content I mentioned (LN-only interludes are the main part of it though).
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@oathkeeper95 said in Smartphone Vol. 17:
@oathkeeper95 said in Smartphone Vol. 17:
I’d like to perpetuate my addiction as soon as possible.
It hurts! The actual translation reads so badly! It hurts, but it’s worth it! I’LL PERPETUATE THIS DAMNED ADDICTION!
Hahaha, so you found it. Yeah, it hurts badly reading it with MTL. There are some that can be read fairly nicely, but Smartphone is not one of them.
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@terabyte I’m actually the kind of person who can get used to things pretty easily.
Oh, but for any future addicts out there... you thought the English translation here at J-novel Club could be tough to understand... If I wasn’t a teetotaler I’d tell you to hold my beer. This stuff is a headache.I now have total respect for whatever creature god accidentally dropped a minivan of hail on top of and sent to our world with a boost to their language comprehension. You are amazing.
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@oathkeeper95 Yeah, MTL is painful. I used Google Translate on Watafuta (Starting My Second Path in Life) and thought my eyes were going to start bleeding.
P.S. When have Touya's schemes ever gone the way he planned them? The duel with Yae. Slime Castle. The list is endless.
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@paul-nebeling I mentioned before that I tried the MTL Japanese->Russian->English for Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, after reading the "nonMTL" translations used up to v18. It was supposed to be "better" because Japanese->Russian was "better understood" than Japanese->English, and Russian->English was "simple".
The first translation stripped out virtually all honorifics, and even had trouble with gender... some characters swapped gender more often than Ranma. Russian->English removed a lot of intonation that survived the first machine attack.
I got about half way through v19 and decided, "Maybe it's not so bad to wait until Yen catches up." V14 comes out before Christmas, so it will only be a few more years before they get to v19.
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@someoldguy How can you stand that ‘few more years’ though?
Oh, side note... Really dig the reference to my favorite Gender Bender.
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@oathkeeper95 Multiple ways to deal with the delay.
a. It could be "forever" (series never gets translated, or ends abruptly, like Kannagi).
b. Read other things in my collection (there's enough to keep me busy for several years).
c. Bitch about it here, even if it isn't a JNC series.
d. If I get really desperate, check the current state of Google translate.Now that I have an amazon.co.jp account, I'm getting more accustomed to Google translate as it translates the order pages, and many of these books ARE still available new. And I'm guessing I have over 500 yet-to-read books on my shelves.
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@someoldguy ... And I thought I was a bibliophile... I wish I could say ‘teach me o’ sensei’, but I reluctantly don’t have the time...
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@oathkeeper95 Bibliophile is one of the western equivalents of otaku... Just like Sherlock Holmes is English for yaoi... :)
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@someoldguy Technically yes, but in practice no. I think an Otaku would really be called a Pop Culture Fanatic because they don’t focus on books alone.
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What exactly defines a bibliophile anyways? Someone who aside from eating/sleeping/working spend atleast 70% of their free time reading? Cause if so i think id fall into that category.
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@oathkeeper95 There are specialized otaku, as well as "general" otaku.
Someone can be a car otaku, or a train otaku, with no interest in anime, unless it dealt with their particular hobby.
Getting back to the subject of this (split-off) topic...
I found that the MTL of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei was NOT "impossible" to read, because I had familiarity with the characters. I "knew" how various ones acted and spoke, and whether they were male/female, etc, so I could gloss over most of the gaffs in my mind.
But, if it were presented here as a pre-pub, the topics about what needed changing would be dozens of messages long, per section. And, if you didn't know the characters, figuring them out would be extremely difficult.
And therein lies the issue of MTL - the computers don't "understand" the book. There's a comment by the author in volume 9 of Rokujouma when he found out that it was being translated into other languages, about how they dealt with dialogs.
In Japanese, we can distinguish the characters based on how they refer to themselves. Here’s a list of how it generally works out.
Ore = Koutarou
Atashi = Sanae
Warawa = Theia
Watashi = Yurika
Waga = Kiriha
Watakushi = Ruth
Oira = The HaniwasOn top of this, the characters can be differentiated by what they’re saying and their tone. When it’s all taken together, dialogue tags to label the speaker aren’t necessary.
But a question popped into my mind the other day. How would this work in another language? Take English, for example. In English, all subjects refer to themselves as “I.” As a result, Sanae, the haniwas, and everyone else would all talk about themselves the same way. It would be impossible to distinguish them based on pronouns.
MTL does not take any of that into account, because it's working on a sentence, not a complete work.
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Anyone know what text to speech engine capture 2 text uses? I've been using that for a manga to get the gist of what is going on, and I find it helpful enough (not good or perfect by any stretch though).
I've "read" two volume 1 of light novels (ZoaHunter + Attacking the Dungeon with My Boss is OT Work) with MTL, and it worked.. ok at times, at other times you just couldn't understand anything going on for pages. It definitely works to give you an idea of what a novel is if you want to see if it's worth requesting to JNC or Seven Seas survey or something, but I wouldn't rely on it to make it through a 20 volume series. T_T
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Use both google and bing to translate, they compliment each other very well.
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The word of the day is tsundoku.
