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Blog 31: How My Translation of Seraphic Blue All Began

Hi fans of Seraphic Blue!

How have you been doing in the game? Well, in any case, it's time I should share with all of you how my translation of Seraphic Blue all began.

About 5-6 years ago, I actually found out about this game called Seraphic Blue via rpgmaker.wikia.com. At that time, the wikia only had a few entries, and most of them were English releases that I was familiar with except for Seraphic Blue. So I went to check it out, downloaded it and played it. Of course, back then, I hardly understood the story.

Eventually, I completed it, taking me a whooping 120+ hours to finish (that's because I literally tried reading through the Japanese text even though I didn't understand most of the terms). During that time, though, I thought of maybe giving it a shot a translating this game despite the game being incredibly difficult to translate due to its intensive use of Kanji.

So, why did I go into Japanese translation in particular? Well, some time before this, I got into animes and became interested in the language, but of course, animes only help to understand Japanese via listening but not via reading, so I decided to self-learn Japanese myself, starting of course with the Hiragana and the Katakana. Eventually, I got a good grasp of both of them.

And why did I choose to translate a game? Well, the truth is, I wanted to feature a game here in RMN, but did not have the patience to create a game of my own, even though I graduated with a diploma in Game Design. So I figured the next best thing would be to translate a game.

And thus began my translation. My plan was to first translate the manual and all the misc. stuff like the interfaces, ability names, item names etc. before the story, since that is, after all the easiest. For that, I have to thank a particular website, Radical Discovery. That website provided lists of almost all the ability/item names, making my job easy.

So my translation went smoothly and eventually, all the misc. stuff was done. Then comes the toughest part: the story. When I first began the translation, oh, I can tell you that the intro was terrible to translate. I literally cannot understand what it was talking about lol. So most of the time, I had to crack my brain to translate. And besides the intro, the next hardest cutscenes to translate were the conversations between Ofa and Vene and the conversations between Vene and Er. Their conversations were so enigmatic and profound that I pretty much struggled with translating them. Especially since I don't understand the whole story just yet (the story, at any rate, contains a lot of forethought).

And so, when the Release Something Day (RSD) special was released and I got my first review, kumada offered to help me proofread my work. I accepted, and I have to thank him for all the help he has given me. I think, if he had not offered help to me, I probably wouldn't have gone back revising the text. That being said, as I went back to re-translating the text, I noticed just how horrible it was, so much so that I was kind of ashamed with my old work. If this game was like Romancing Walker, I probably would have gotten away with it. But this is Seraphic Blue, and the tone of the story is meant to be serious. To have a horrible translation would be somewhat of an insult to the game creator.

So thus began my re-translation, while kumada helped with the proofread. Since then, my translation skills gradually improved as I translated more. In the process, the translation goes on and off, but well, I ultimately made it.

Thinking back, I'm glad that I translated this game, so I hope that those who play this can enjoy it as much as I did in both playing and translating the game. The translation may not be perfect, but I believe I did my very best and the translation is as great as it can get. And once I embark on my next translation project (which most likely is Nocturne Rebirth), it will be of great quality :)

Well, that's all from me. See you again and have fun playing Seraphic Blue!

eplipswich

Posts

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I will definitely be looking forward to seeing Nocturne Rebirth translated! :D But this is still a grand job you did in translating this game. Keep up the kickass work mang. :D
Congrats man. I'm particullary interested in the sources you used to learn japanese. I'm finishing my carreer, and my next step is to learn japanese. To be able to translate is one of my goals. Probably i'll learn on an academy or a tutor.

So really, congratulation on your hard work.
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