Portal:En-literal

Welcome to the portal for the Literal English translation of the Touhou Patch Center. On this page you can see the rules and guidelines on how to translate, as well as the translation progress.

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1 March 2024

			19:49		Th09/Reimu's Scenario/en-literal‎‎ 41 changes history +2,281‎ [Yova‎ (41×)]
					19:49 (cur | prev) +65‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "But your sins aren't something small. You must repent a lot more.")
					19:48 (cur | prev) +25‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "How is it? Did you learn?")
					19:48 (cur | prev) +75‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Yes, I'll think about it after I beat you and return the flowers to normal.")
					19:47 (cur | prev) +61‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Even if you reduce your sins, you must accumulate good deeds.")
					19:46 (cur | prev) +39‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Because it's work, sin isn't an excuse.")
					19:45 (cur | prev) −2‎ Yova talk contribs
					19:45 (cur | prev) +62‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Thieves, murderes, warriors, those are also people with a job.")
					19:44 (cur | prev) +60‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "How rude! Exterminating youkai is my job, I can't help that.")
					19:41 (cur | prev) +3‎ Yova talk contribs
					19:41 (cur | prev) +60‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Ifam in charge of your judgement, it will go poorly for you.")
					19:39 (cur | prev) +174‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "And also even if you're a shrine maiden, you haven't exchanged with your god. Sometimes you turn* against your god. {{Tlnote|*牙をむく(kiba wo muku), lit. "turn claws".}}")
					19:34 (cur | prev) +61‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "You have also exterminated plenty of those who aren't youkai.")
					19:33 (cur | prev) +66‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "You have exterminated a great number of youkai for no good reason.")
					19:32 (cur | prev) +68‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "If I beat you without complaining, will everything return to normal?")
					19:32 (cur | prev) +70‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "If we leave the incident alone, it's gonna look like I'm slacking off!")
					19:31 (cur | prev) +3‎ Yova talk contribs
					19:30 (cur | prev) +29‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "It's not a problem like that!")
					19:29 (cur | prev) +10‎ Yova talk contribs
					19:28 (cur | prev) +42‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Wouldn't it be better to leave them alone.")
					19:28 (cur | prev) +88‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Also, if ghosts are gonna make flowers bloom, they can believe they're still alive......")
					19:27 (cur | prev) +70‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Is that so? Doesn't bother us, it doesn't bother you that much either?")
					19:26 (cur | prev) +5‎ Yova talk contribs
					19:26 (cur | prev) +75‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "If you know that, wasn't it a problem to do something? I can't do anything.")
					19:14 (cur | prev) +59‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "in red spider lillies reside lonely people with no friends.")
					19:13 (cur | prev) +52‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "In sunflowers reside the spirits of cheerful people,")
					19:11 (cur | prev) +147‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Flowers are personalities, in other words, they are plants that express the qualities of the soul, that's why they have good affinity with spirits.")
					19:10 (cur | prev) +75‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Are you maybe saying all these flowers are...... spirits of outside humans?")
					19:09 (cur | prev) +109‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "That's right, the ghosts right now are outside humans. Unfortunate spirits that weren't able to expect death.")
					19:07 (cur | prev) −1‎ Yova talk contribs
					19:03 (cur | prev) +85‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Spirits that lost their place go reside to flowers. That's why flowers are flowering.")
					19:02 (cur | prev) +68‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Such spirits are unstable. That's why they want a body by all means.")
					18:45 (cur | prev) 0‎ Yova talk contribs
					18:43 (cur | prev) +62‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "I can't even oay half the price. Or better, do you have money?")
					18:42 (cur | prev) +61‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Seems like you've fallen off. Alright, let me call your boss!")
					18:41 (cur | prev) +46‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Since there's too much to do, it's impossible~")
					18:36 (cur | prev) +43‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "If you beat me...... with this many ghosts,")
					18:36 (cur | prev) +56‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Come on, bring the ghosts to Higan with that giant ship.")
					18:35 (cur | prev) +52‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "I'll escort you with my Titanic. For half the price.")
					18:29 (cur | prev) +46‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Got it. If you're gonna be on my way for work.")
					18:27 (cur | prev) +44‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Do your work properly! Don't just slack off!")
					18:27 (cur | prev) +68‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "To gather the ghosts and go where~ well, I'm going to Higan. |note=?")

18 February 2024

			14:15		Th09/Reimu's Scenario/en-literal‎‎ 2 changes history +149‎ [Yova‎ (2×)]
					14:15 (cur | prev) +94‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "You probably...... didn't bring* the ghosts to Higan? {{Tlnote|*渡す(watasu), lit. "give".}}")
					14:13 (cur | prev) +55‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Then, I'll be off here...... I have work to do. |note=?")

10 February 2024

			09:54		Th09/Reimu's Scenario/en-literal‎‎ 20 changes history +1,135‎ [Yova‎ (20×)]
					09:54 (cur | prev) +22‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Aah, that's a problem.")
					09:51 (cur | prev) +83‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Ghosts. The flowers confused me, but looking closely, aren't there ghosts all over?")
					09:47 (cur | prev) +44‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Aah, ghosts, ghosts? Ghosts have multiplied?")
					09:46 (cur | prev) +110‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "I've just come to investigate why has the number of ghosts increased abnormally at the same time with flowers.")
					09:45 (cur | prev) +50‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "That's why I won't cross, I don't even have money.")
					09:43 (cur | prev) −2‎ Yova talk contribs
					09:43 (cur | prev) +72‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "if you pay the crossing fee, I can take you to a luxury cruise in Higan.")
					09:40 (cur | prev) +5‎ Yova talk contribs
					09:40 (cur | prev) +43‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "I don't often let living humans cross......")
					09:37 (cur | prev) +211‎ Yova talk contribs
					09:35 (cur | prev) +42‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "At Higan* is the Sanzu's Titanic, my ship.")
					09:30 (cur | prev) +48‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "I won't cross. I have no money, and who are you?")
					09:29 (cur | prev) +31‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "If <u>you pay</u> now, 10% off.")
					09:28 (cur | prev) +47‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "And with there being an abnormal lot of ghosts!")
					09:27 (cur | prev) +120‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "The price for crossing the Sanzu <u>river</u> is absurd, you won't be able to cross with things like shrine's offerings.")
					09:23 (cur | prev) +46‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "First warning for a human hurrying into death.")
					09:18 (cur | prev) +25‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "babbling at a graveyard?!")
					09:17 (cur | prev) +43‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "Well, I think they just celebrated flowers.")
					09:17 (cur | prev) +40‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "The abnormal amount of fairies and......")
					09:16 (cur | prev) +55‎ Yova talk contribs (Created page with "There are 2 more things that are abnormally increasing.")

What's This?

"Literal" in this context means "word-oriented"—communicating the explicit meanings of individual words and phrases rather than the implicit meaning of the text as a whole. The opposite of a literal translation is a liberal translation, which takes many interpretive liberties, paraphrasing statements to make them flow more naturally in the target language and generally making an effort to bring the writing into the comfort zone of the reader. In contrast, a literal translation makes only minimal alterations to the text in order to preserve as much meaning as possible.

Isn't That Just a Bad Translation?

It's not what most people expect from a translation; most people want the text to feel as if it was originally written in the language they're reading. But for people who are interested in the source language, it can reveal interesting details, and for people who enjoy studying text and coming to their own understandings, a literal translation provides the raw material for a more informed interpretation. Official localizations of games usually hew to the liberal approach because of its broader appeal, and that's for the best—but this isn't an official localization! We're not trying to supplant any existing standard version, only to offer a specialized alternative. There's room (and in fact, need) in the world for more than one translation: the best way to come to the fullest possible understanding of a text, short of being fluent in the original language, is to refer to multiple high-quality translations both literal and liberal.

How Does This Relate to Touhou?

From a translator's perspective, the writing of Touhou Project, particularly early Touhou Project, is capricious and unruly, full of untranslatable puns, obscure references, and weird grammatical lilts that require significant lateral thinking to communicate concisely in any language other than Japanese. The current main English translations of many of the games are the horribly messy product of years of tweaking, each wildly varying from line to line in its approach from far too literal to far too liberal. The goal of the Literal English translation project is to move the literal translations into their own version, clean them up, and annotate them for clarity, so that the main translations can be moved in a more consistently liberal direction.

For an example of why a good literal translation is valuable, consider Reimu's encounter with Remilia in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. Remilia has a line where she says that she is "fed up". This is a very clever double meaning, and it does work in both English and Japanese: the word she uses can refer figuratively to being tired of some nuisance, or it can refer literally to having eaten one's fill. Since Remilia is a vampire, she might be saying, "I don't want to fight you; I'm fed up with this BS," or she might be saying, "I don't want to fight you; I'm not thirsty for your blood at the moment." Even in this ideal scenario it is of course impossible to appreciate this clever wordplay unless the correct translation is chosen, and even if it is correct, you can appreciate the pun as ZUN's only if you can be confident that it's neither an artifact of translation nor a liberal riff on the script.

Goals

The primary goal of the project is to preserve meaning. It is impossible to do this perfectly. Even when describing the same thing, users of different languages express different information and do so in different ways. Because of this, every possible pair of languages has certain distinctive patterns of meaning damage are most likely to occur.

Meaning damage may be divided into two broad categories, loss and artifaction.

Loss

Information is lost in translation if it is communicated in the original text, but doesn't make it into the translation. If a word in the source language has no precise equivalent in the target language, nuance will be lost. Wordplay is particularly susceptible to loss: in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, one interaction between Marisa and Rumia hinges upon the visual resemblance between Rumia's physical pose and the shape of the kanji numeral 10. For a literal translation, the only solution in such a case is annotation.

Artifaction

Information can also often make its way into the translated text despite being nowhere in the original text. Such changes are called artifacts of translation. They may occur when a word in the source text has no perfect translation, or when the target language requires certain information that the source language can leave ambiguous—both very often the case between English and Japanese. Again, annotations are important, as is some means marking insertions (see below).

Conventions

Notes and Annotations

The translation should make judicious use of in-game annotations, marked up with the Tlnote template. If the annotation relates to a specific word or phrase in the line it's applied to, express it as a footnote: put an asterisk after the relevant word in the dialogue text and before the corresponding explanation in the annotation text. The annotations should be kept brief, and there shouldn't be too many for the player to take in at once.

If you want to discuss translation decisions at length, do so in a wiki comment using the |note=... markup. These will appear on the translation page, but not in the patched in game.

Insertions

Sometimes it's impossible to avoid inserting words into the translated text, for the sake of disambiguity or even elementary grammar. Because Japanese is a relatively terse language and English a relatively verbose one, Japanese-English translation requires lots of insertions.To prvent these from becoming artifacts of translation, all insertions that resulted from artifactions should be underlined. Despite these needing to be inserted most of the time, this does not apply words such as copulas (is, am, are, etc.), determiners (a, an, the, my, your, etc.), pronouns, and other short words, provided that they are not part of a phrasal expression that you are using to translate some word or phrase in the Japanese language.

For example, 「久々の仕事」 (said by Reimu in EoSD Stage 1) could be translated, "[first] job in a while". 「仕事」 is a noun meaning "job" or "work", in this context referring to something like a freelance gig. 「久々」 is a noun denoting a long period of time, and in the genitive case it expresses the sense of seeing something again after a long period of absence, hence, "first in a while". The phrase "in a while" stands in directly for the genitive 「久々の」, but the sense of first-ness is peculiar to the English expression and only incidental to the meaning of the phrase, so it's considered an insertion.

For an example of an artifact resulting in the target language needing more information from the source(mostly due to the context), 「紫の桜は、罪深い人間の霊が宿る花。」 (said by Eiki in PoFV final stage) could be translated as, "Purple cherry flowers are the flowers in which the deeply sinful people reside." in which the word equivalent to flowers next to the word cherry is nowhere to be found in the original sentence, but was added due to the context of flowers, thus this is considered an artifact of the translation.

Retentions

Similarly, it's sometimes beneficial to retain a non-English word without translating it at all. This should be done sparingly—unlike insertion, retention is rarely necessary, and when committed excessively, is the mark of a lazy translation. As foreignisms, all retentions should be italicized in accordance with standard English style. This does not apply to character names.

Words like youkai, which refer to concepts unique to Japanese culture or folklore, should be retained. Otherwise, err on the side of English: himesama means "princess", kami means "god", and so on. If a concept is uniquely Japanese but does have a commonly accepted translation, use the English term: miko means "shrine maiden".

Names and Honorifics

Full names should be kept in the same form as in the original text, with the surname first and given name second for Eastern names (e.g. "Hakurei Reimu") and vice-versa for Western names (e.g. "Alice Margatroid"). Honorific suffixes (-san, -chan, -sama, etc.), when attached to names, should be retained. Honorific epithets (ojou-sama, sensei, etc.) should be translated.

Romanization

All romanizations should adhere strictly to modified Hepburn, except that long vowels should be represented as diphthongs rather than with diacritics (Gensoukyou, not Gensokyo or Gensōkyō). Spell the nominative は as wa, the accusative を as wo, and the lative へ as e. Preserve archaic kana where they occur (Hinanawi, not Hinanai), but leave an annotation specifying the modern pronunciation.

Translations

Complete or not, translations of the games listed below are the ones with significant coverage of single or multiple sections. To see more detailed progress, go here.

TH06 The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

TH07 Perfect Cherry Blossom

TH09 Phantasmagoria of Flower View

TH19 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost