The Final Frontier: Translations of Staff Talk?

[Arizona]

So near as I can tell, I've sort of mined as far as I can for interesting tidbits on who did what and whatever. I've long thought about the only thing left is actual translations of anything pertaining to the creation of Viper and Sogna in general (possibly Silence). Two things I've considered here:

One, what is even worth translating? Anything? There's the Sogna Information booklets, which sound like they could be interesting, but I don't know, maybe it's just some advertorial pablum. Perhaps the interviews that pop up in artbooks could be worthwhile.

Two, as far as translators go, anyone I know who I'd ask uhhh...I don't know how they'd react to the material. Maybe I'm underestimating them, but you can understand how I might not want to push it. There's mercenary translation work, but pros are sort of out of the question and I doubt the folks getting pocket change for translating manga/doujinshi lines like "iyaaa stop it" and "you're stirring me up" would be all that reliable accuracy wise unless they already really have an interest in the material.

Of course, I've only ever thought about it and never so much as suggested anything about it here, so yeah, putting it out there.

[JG]

So near as I can tell, I've sort of mined as far as I can for interesting tidbits on who did what and whatever. I've long thought about the only thing left is actual translations of anything pertaining to the creation of Viper and Sogna in general (possibly Silence). Two things I've considered here:

One, what is even worth translating? Anything? There's the Sogna Information booklets, which sound like they could be interesting, but I don't know, maybe it's just some advertorial pablum. Perhaps the interviews that pop up in artbooks could be worthwhile.

The credits at end of the newer Sogna games have some info in there.  I've partially translated a few of them.  Once you get the names picked off they can plugged into VNDB or Getchu and sometimes find other things they've worked on.  But becuase so many of the staff used codenames it's not entirely reliable.

I don't recall seeing anything that looked like names in the Information pamphlets, except the one for Guynarock-R, and those names were advertised everywhere.  The credits pages in the backs of artbooks might be an untapped mine.  Artists may be credited there when not credited in-game.  They might be hidden in the Info sections of the old V-series games (click the VIPER logo instead of the three game images), but these sections are freeform text and its hard to distinguish name kanji from noun/verb/adjective kanji.

Two, as far as translators go, anyone I know who I'd ask uhhh...I don't know how they'd react to the material. Maybe I'm underestimating them, but you can understand how I might not want to push it. There's mercenary translation work, but pros are sort of out of the question and I doubt the folks getting pocket change for translating manga/doujinshi lines like "iyaaa stop it" and "you're stirring me up" would be all that reliable accuracy wise unless they already really have an interest in the material.

Generally speaking, the hardest part is picking the kanji out of images.  If I have kanji, I can get names from my EDICT database.  Databases are good for translating single words, like first and last names, but not so good at translating entire sentences.  This is where you get the 'ugh' response from people when you ask for many sentences to translate.  Sentences take time and I'd only want to do a couple before I get tired of it (bettter to send it off to Google tranlsate for rough translation and manually cleanup anything it chokes on).  Single words or names are quick and dirty; I could do those all day long.

IE users can use a tool I developed some time back to obtain kanji.  Takes some practice but De Roo codes and SKIP code orientation is usually simple enough for people with no Japanese knowledge to determine the text for kanji from images.