Visual Novel translation status (updated on October 20th 2013)

[CFreak]

Yeah, I tried using AGTH with the Majikoi games but only the original one seemed to work well with it without crashing half a minute into the game.

I'm slowly going through the whole Kanji list but sadly it's limited how much energy I can muster for that after work, so I mostly end up doing any real progress during the weekends. I've been slacking most of the past 3 months (due to Puzzle & Dragons) but picked it back up again recently.

At least there will be a huge backlog of VNs and other Japanese games to go through at the end.

[Geckoey Lurker]

Never mind all the novels, manga and anime if you're into these, too. Although the last two are more prominent in fan-translations, especially the last one.

And I dunno for Majikoi! A, but I remember having no trouble using ITH with Majikoi! S and the original. I don't think I even had to use any user hooks for them, the habitual automatic hooks did the job.

[KoutoutekiSonzai]

https://boards.4chan.org/jp/res/11988948

[CFreak]

Huh, movement on quite a few of the projects this week, and Mangagamer seems to have a lot of projects going right now too. At least those will see a release at some point, even if it takes ages. Hopefully not all of them are sex-romps.

Still no Majikoi progress though.

[Geckoey Lurker]

At least 6 of these 16 are nukiges. The only ones I would care about in their list are Uro, Cartagra, and Bokuten.

Most people I know that cares about Majikoi gave up on the translation and started learning Japanese or turned to AGTH/ITH+Machine Translation a long time ago. Sadly, it's mostly the latter.

[CFreak]

Well, I'm not sure I can blame them. It's a hell of a time sink trying to learn Kanji. I'm just doing it because I don't have anything better to do while waiting for the next translated game to come out :v

Then again, if I had stuck with it way back when I first started with Hiragana I would have been finished years ago. The agonizingly slow rate of translations for VNs (both official and fan ones) is hardly a new thing, and I doubt it will get any better in the future.

557 of ~2000... Still a long ways off.

[Geckoey Lurker]

I certainly don't blame them, convenience is hard to not choose, even at the loss of quality, accuracy, and even with headache-inducing text. Sad is all.

I'm actually enjoying Kanji, I've just been using WaniKani alongside of using Anki for vocabulary and the rare Kanji, 今日 has been helpful with them as well, actually it's been extremely helpful with everything, really. The rest just comes from simply reading and hearing the language. Still not doing much writing or speaking, though.

I'm not sure where my Kanji count is at. I've been neglecting WaniKani a fair bit, so it only has around 300's counted in. Including the ones I input in Anki, it might go up to around 450-ish? However, I have a much bigger array of vocabulary, among these are plenty of Kanji that I actually don't know what they mean by themselves just yet, but I do know their meaning as a piece of vocabulary and that has been quite sufficient for reading thus far. I'd probably be much farther if I hadn't paused for half a year.

Anyway, indeed, this whole translation speed thing is not a new thing. It's always been like that as far as I can remember and as I've seen, unless we get a sudden boom of continuous interest in the West/in Europe for VNs, and that the Japanese companies starts showing actual interest in throwing them overseas as well, it'll probably never really change. Even more reasons as to why people pick up the language or start using MTs. At least the former has the bonus that it'll give you access to a whole new culture of entertainment (and more) without the need to wait for anyone to translate a small part of it.

[CFreak]

I enjoy Kanji practice too, for some reason, but it definitely is a time commitment and sometimes it just feels endless. I'll fire up an untranslated game every so often just to see how much further I've gotten, and well, 1/4th of the way doesn't let me understand 1/4 of the text yet :v

I miss Studio e.go! games. Theirs were some of the few with voiced protagonists, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to understand what's going on. Years of fansubs and translated VNs have imprinted a decent vocabulary of words that I have no idea how to read yet. That's actually one of the things I enjoy about Kanji study; finding out how a word I know is written.

Just need to keep at it. At a rate of a mere 5 kanji per day on average (which is very doable) I should be done by the end of the year, earlier if I can keep the average higher. This time I'm definitely sticking with it.... probably.

[Geckoey Lurker]

Honestly, Kanji learning will never end, the 2136 from the Joyo List are just the most common used ones, but by then, Kanji learning will probably have become somewhat of an habit. I'd say to try playing games that aren't story-heavy, this way you can get away with understanding not even 1/4 of what's going on, but, VNs aside, Japanese games on PC are actually a tad scarce, so you gotta rely on consoles/emulation.

Voiced protagonists are pretty nice, never mind it being helpful for reading, it can also add some additional personality to them if done right. Sadly, all there's is a couple of VNs with partially voiced protags, and I can count on my fingers the ones that are actually voiced through the entire thing.

Anyway, enjoy yourself and keep up the good work~

[KoutoutekiSonzai]

https://boards.4chan.org/jp/res/12004901

[KoutoutekiSonzai]

https://boards.4chan.org/jp/res/12023041

[KoutoutekiSonzai]

https://boards.4chan.org/jp/res/12037148

[Geckoey Lurker]

I sometimes get surprised at how fast a project springs up relative to when the VN has been released...
It's not even been three weeks since Clover Day's has been out.

[CFreak]

I'm surprised at how many projects spring up relative to how many get finished. It also makes me sad.

All Majikoi titles have been taken off the list. There's no justice in this world.

[Geckoey Lurker]

The fact that only a very small percentage of the projects ever get finished is kind of a sad reality that just needs to be endured. Let's not mention that there probably is a fair amount of projects who are never heard about that dies off on a regular basis. One of the main factors is probably that most of them are started without realizing how high of an hurdle translating a VN actually is, that and or unforeseen events happened.

As for Majikoi, I'm sadder that we lost TakaJun, far as I know he was one of the better translators we had. Alas so is life.
Wairu sparkled some hope for S and later for a brief moment, but it seems their will has either waned and or life has gotten the better of them.

Ah well. If anything, I don't remember the Majikoi games being very hard to read, so there's at least that if you're learning Japanese, or using MT.