Fate/zero project staff gathering

[Strife212]

Nice work!

[Inverted]

Thank you guys for all the work over past 4 years. I could finally read it

[Goattrain]

Wow. First off, I'd like to thank everyone who worked so hard to make this available for everyone to read. I know you hear it a lot, but you can never have too much gratitude. Thanks so much, guys! I've been wanting to read this for forever, so finding this site was great. I've only read the first prologue chapter, but I'm definitely going to read it all.

Now, as I read the first chapter, I began to have some trouble reading things. Certain lines didn't make sense to me, and some word choice was awkward. So I decided to localize (I suppose that's the right word) the chapter just for my own sake.

It is not my intention to belittle anyone who worked on this or to make light of their efforts. It must have been really difficult (I mean, the small bit of work I did took me a few hours to type out, and that doesn't even include legitimate translation or anything!). All I hope to do is to improve on this already wonderful effort so that everyone out there can enjoy it a bit more. I have enclosed a copy of my attempt at this chapter, for your perusal. If it's any good, let me know, and I'll keep posting them (or editing the main work, if that's how that works), but if it's no good, or if you feel I'm just trying to stir up trouble, then by all means ignore me, and we'll all just continue on along our ways.

[Brynhilde]

Hey goattrain

Thanks for the effort! It is true that many chapters, especially Act 1, tend to have odd sentences. This is particularly obvious in Act 1 since so many editors have been through it, I don't know if it still resembled our first drafts that were posted 4 years ago. It would certainly be great if you can keep correcting all our random mistakes ^^. Though I must warn you, editing is harder than translating, and I've lost count of how many of our editors were simply lost through the cracks.

And lastly, try not to copy text from Word or other text processors. This forum likes to make it black-text. Type in the reply box instead.

[Goattrain]

So it's okay for me to replace the prologue with this? Or am I totally misunderstanding you?

[LeopardBear]

Oh, interesting. Bryn, does it still need grammar editing? I'd be very happy to work on some of that if it still needs to be done.

[Mcjon01]

And lastly, try not to copy text from Word or other text processors. This forum likes to make it black-text. Type in the reply box instead.

Selecting everything and then clicking the "Remove Format" button works too. Sometimes typing in a dedicated word processor is more convenient.

[ChronoReverse]

Just finished reading Heart of Freaks. Thanks for the translation.

One thing I noted is the Weatherby bullet. It should be 500 grain not 500 grams. If it were 500 grams, it'd be a cannon (although at 500 grain it's a cannon figuratively).

[LeopardBear]

Right, now that F0 anime is releasing, I'm finally getting back on what Bryn asked me to do a while ago and editing for English flow. Act 1, II is up.

[mewarmo990]

Hey everyone, after talking to Brynhilde I'm still working on Zero as well. Not just for English style and grammar, but also proofreading against the original Japanese text since a large part of the current English translation is of a Chinese fan translation. You can see the problems that might arise...

Anyway, I've started with Volume 2 Act 5 p1. I have to rewrite as well as slowly comb through my Japanese novel, so lots of work to do.

View current edits here. Feel free to comment on Google Docs!

The plan is to integrate the edits into the Baka-Tsuki online text as I finish each section. I want to focus on Volume 2 for now but I will eventually look into 1 and 3, and maybe 4 depending on how much work CanonRap has done.

This also means that the various fanmade PDF compilations floating around will become increasingly obsolete over time. Sorry!

[Mcjon01]

Oh, wow. Kudos to you for editing this thing. I haven't really spent much time looking at the F/Z translation, tbh, but this:

the winding state highway stretched westwards with its back towards the city's lights

...might possibly be one of the most awkward things I've ever read. Trying to conceptualize a road having a "back" is just so, so wrong somehow. And that's the very first line in that link. <_<

[LeopardBear]

Oh god that's awful.

...aaand, this reminds me that I should do some work on this also.

[mewarmo990]

Yeah, some of the older text is pretty awkward. Not only that, there are also a few lines that just don't match up with the Japanese very well all, so you know the Chinese translator must have screwed it up and our people just faithfully copied that.

For example, the old translation:

The man in front of her didn't hear Saber's words at all, and never wanted to hear them in the first place. He had come to a conclusion based on his own delusions regarding Saber, and he has no doubts toward this conclusion. Under the control of this train of thoughts, none of Saber's words can go into Caster's head.

The Japanese text:

この男は、セイバーの言葉を聞いていない。最初から聞く意図がないのだ。セイバーの素性について、既に自分 勝手な妄想を確信し、結論としている。それを覆すようなセイバーの発言には、いっさい耳を傾けようとしない 。つまりは、この応答は会話でも何でもない。ただ狂人の世迷い言につき合わされているだけの茶番劇に過ぎな いのだ。

My edit:

This man was not listening to Saber at all, and never had any intention of hearing anything she had to say. He had already come to his own unwarranted conclusions about her background, and was utterly deaf to her protests.

In other words, this had never been a conversation in the first place. She was doing nothing but playing into this farce, caught up in the ravings of a lunatic.

I briefly considered haberdashing their dialogue because that's the way it's worded in Japanese, to sound formal and archaic. However, I decided against it since it would be too much of a departure from the rest of the translation, hard to read for some people, and would take too much work anyway.

Question: By the way, what am I supposed to do for ruby text, like with the typical dual Noble Phantasm titles?

Relevant:

[Strife212]

I don't mind that road line at all, I think it works fairly well. The concept of "stretching westwards" is perfectly fine, and implies the east is the back

[Brynhilde]

Thanks for the continued work, guys.

As for ruby text, go to one of the older pages that has a ruby text NP, and just copy the codes from the 'edit' page. Should be relatively straightforward.

I'll be away till November 22nd so no internet for me then. Good work, everyone!

PS. That sentence about the road can be changed to something like 'winding away from the city's lights'?

[mewarmo990]

Thanks for the continued work, guys.

As for ruby text, go to one of the older pages that has a ruby text NP, and just copy the codes from the 'edit' page. Should be relatively straightforward.

I'll be away till November 22nd so no internet for me then. Good work, everyone!

Gotcha.

PS. That sentence about the road can be changed to something like 'winding away from the city's lights'?

Further removed to the west than Miyama town of Fuyuki, the winding state highway stretched westwards with its back towards the city’s lights. Meanwhile, an undeveloped piece of forest waited for visitors further up the road. Continuing beyond even the prefectural border, the state highway silently meandered on.

Further removed to the west than Miyama Town of Fuyuki, the winding state highway stretched westwards, away from the city lights. Ahead, an as of yet undeveloped forest awaited travelers further up the road. Continuing beyond even the prefectural border, the highway silently meandered on.

[professionalTroll]

Thankyou everyone for translating this awesome light novel. I've been wanting to read this for a long time.

[troydenite]

Hello. I'm troydenite, but you can call me troy. I had this idea for a while, but I only actually decided to create an account and act on it now. Right. Without further ado...

I'm not even sure if anyone's still here, but I decided that I'd ask anyway. The amount of work you guys put into this is amazing, and I'm really grateful, but I think that the reading experience could still be enhanced even further with proper streamlining.

I was thinking of undertaking a complete scrubbing independently - thought I'd ask permission for that, too. Hope I'm not being too annoying. Think of it as a complete rewrite/rewording in my own time. Not an official thing, just an unaffiliated side-project. Is that fine with you guys? I didn't want to do anything without permission.

I really hope I haven't necro'ed this thing and brought doom upon myself.

[Kelnish]

You want to rewrite a translation of a translation? That sounds silly.

[troydenite]

I know. But I can try, at least. I'm not trying to change the meaning, just make it flow better in English. Which means changing sentence structure and fiddling with dialogue, which goes beyond translation editing.

http://pastebin.com/f3TS2FbW Rough example of a bit of the first act of the first chapter; the polished form will be further worked on.