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A Light Novel Worth Reading


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Also to be fair, playing a video game can be done without understanding the story.

 

Reading a book, even a light novel, is something that requires reading and as such requires a higher competency. As someone who really only speaks one language I wholly understand the desire to have something you can fully understand.

 

Anyway, Overlord rules.

in the most recent chapter, Ainz, an undead lich, starts using a special ability to summon angels to guard him, which royally freaks everyone in the city out because everyone assumed that as an undead he wouldn't have any sway over angels.

 

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True, but a game is a lot more than just story, and a lack of story can leave the game clearly missing something. Even platformers give you hints that you otherwise "need" to play the game effectively. The, what, three or four word hints that you get as to a star's location in Super Mario 64? Nope. Found most of them through sheer (brute) force of exploration and dumb luck. Including the one where you have to launch yourself out of a cannon at a piece of otherwise insignificant level geometry in Whomp's Fortress. Oh, and that rabbit that appears in the basement? Took me two or three tries to figure out which option saved the game after grabbing him and his star.

 

I know. I had to read multiple books in German, and through nothing but sheer force of intuition and guesswork I managed. Misery loves company, unfortunately.

 

 

Depends. I've played Atlus games, so rest assured, I've seen some really non-holy angles...

 

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Now there where and still are games where you don't need to understand any language to play and enjoy them.

But then there also games that need you to understand a story by reading or hearing and base what you do in the game on that.

Our beloved Academagia is a game belong to the 2nd category.

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As someone who's got years of experience playing games that might as well have been entirely in Japanese: Academagia requires fluency in English. And considering the monumental pain in the rear that creating a translation would be, that is not negotiable.

 

Is it even possible to translate the game into, say, Japanese, actually? UI aside theoretically you could mod every last piece of text to translate it (along with discovering the elixir of eternal life necessary to complete such a task), but would the game/mod tools even support Japanese characters?

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I couldn't even begin to guess how many pages worth of text there is in Academagia. I mean adventures, events, lores, descriptions for nearly everything, spell/ability/action names, some fluff text here and there...that'd take a professional team working full-time, at least. No clue how long it'd take them, though.

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I'm sure it would be possible then. I just remember the encoding issue where the accented e wouldn't display properly. Japanese and chinese characters are beasts for a computer to handle. which is why I learned to read hirogana and katakana from an old sfc game. I now own that DBZ game and have fond memories. Since I know the story so well already It was a lot easier to decipher.

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It's just a nerve of mine that people will not read/play through something in English and instead wait for a translation. In this country you didn't get that choice way back when because practically no games were translated. Everything from Super Mario Brothers to Pokémon everyone here played through entirely in English, usually trial and error brute-force style, because nothing was translated and the kids those games were marketed towards didn't understand a word of it at the time. Of course that situation, during which most kids develop a coherent if not near-fluent understanding of English entirely on their own, got even worse in middle school when we got German and French classes as our intended third and fourth languages, as well as Latin as a fifth language if you were one of those "bright" students, but teachers couldn't provide an answer when they were asked "why can't we just speak English?" It ended up, I imagine unintentionally, painting the relevant countries as being populated by lazy individuals who were spoiled out of having to learn a language other than their own, and we were saddled with picking up both of their slack.

 

The truth, of course, is that those classes are simply part of the curriculum, which teacher don't have any say over...but try telling that to an angsty teenager. Besides which, even if they agreed that English should just be a standard second language the German and French teachers likely wouldn't advocate a policy that'd obsolete their job. In addition, while our games weren't translated back then there also weren't shoddy translations, or language-exclusive bugs/missing features. Unless the game was utter rubbish to begin with, but, well, that's it's own problem. And these days games marketed towards kids who shouldn't be expected to speak a second language yet are actually translated occasionally. Best part? Those kids will still learn English just as well and effectively the same way as their seniors did, because of the Internet being much more widespread and accessible...and just as English-dominated as our games were way back when.

 

As you said yourself unlike your country French and German enjoy enough "prestige" that one can live with knowing only his or her own native language and not really missing much.

 

Admittedly for such nich game such as Academagia one has to understand more than basic English but as I said even in the number of Gamer who are interested is so low that it does not really matters otherwise someone would have probably made a fan translation already.

 

As for learning another language, well if you never had any interest over those culture I understand that it would you find it useless just like any other schorlarly topic one find uninteresting.

 

Me personally I regret not taking Japanese when I had the chance as I find myself often limited by English. Fortunatly there is the fan translation but there are still mangas and games that I would probably not play because again too niche to find enough support to be translated.

 

I also had time when I wish I had knowledge of Russian or Chinese but far less often than Japanese.

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As you said yourself unlike your country French and German enjoy enough "prestige" that one can live with knowing only his or her own native language and not really missing much.

 

Admittedly for such nich game such as Academagia one has to understand more than basic English but as I said even in the number of Gamer who are interested is so low that it does not really matters otherwise someone would have probably made a fan translation already.

 

As for learning another language, well if you never had any interest over those culture I understand that it would you find it useless just like any other schorlarly topic one find uninteresting.

 

Me personally I regret not taking Japanese when I had the chance as I find myself often limited by English. Fortunatly there is the fan translation but there are still mangas and games that I would probably not play because again too niche to find enough support to be translated.

 

I also had time when I wish I had knowledge of Russian or Chinese but far less often than Japanese.

At least for game developers I think it's less "prestige" and more "which of those three counties is the smallest on this map? Okay, nix that translation and start working on the other two, I've got a profit margin to look after". And honestly, I wouldn't say that you can get by with one language in this day and age (well, one non-English language). English still dominates the internet, and while some boards have special non-English language subboard(s) you're still going to miss or have to wait for a translation if you don't understand English.

 

Is "if it's popular enough, someone'll make a translation for it" the status-quo in France? 'Cuz damn, envy levels rising.

 

Fair point. I've never been a fan of travelling abroad already, and...eh...honestly I can't recall my language classes teaching even a piece of culture, or anything else of the sort. Though even if it did, point A would likely make point B moot anyway.

 

Definitely been in that situation before myself. I mean I've got years of experience playing games without being able to read anything, so one would think it's less of an issue for me, but those were before and during the days when Super Mario 64 was considered the pinnacle of technical achievements and gaming experiences. In addition, Europe was denied most actual RPGs that came out during that era, and English-speaking counties in general were denied more text-heavy games like visual novels. I've never played through a FF game without being able to read any text, mainly for lack of any chance to (by the time FF7 was released I spoke basic English, and I never had a PS1 anyway), and these days that's just about the only type of game I care to play.

 

Never found myself missing those languages, personally, though I imagine if I looked around more I would.

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At least for game developers I think it's less "prestige" and more "which of those three counties is the smallest on this map? Okay, nix that translation and start working on the other two, I've got a profit margin to look after". And honestly, I wouldn't say that you can get by with one language in this day and age (well, one non-English language). English still dominates the internet, and while some boards have special non-English language subboard(s) you're still going to miss or have to wait for a translation if you don't understand English.

 

Is "if it's popular enough, someone'll make a translation for it" the status-quo in France? 'Cuz damn, envy levels rising.

 

 

 

By "prestige" I meant a mix of population size, economical power and available translators. (which is probably why classes of French are good from my POV)

Which makes translations more attractive than not in most cases.

 

Pretty much. To be honest the first times I had to invest myself seriously in the English parts of internet was when I was looking for mods for my favourites games and there again many were translated.

 

Now it's pretty much for walktroughs, youtube videos and some rare games such as Academagia. It's not like the first 2 don't exist in French but it's often less complete than English.

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Ah, okay, makes sense. I mean, really makes sense. Nix a translation in this country and, according to Wikipedia, you stand to lose 10% of your potential audience due to the language barrier. This before factoring in that no translation is the status-quo here, so it'll likely not even end up being that scary. Germany and France, though? 36% and 61% respectively, and even than they both have a greater English-speaking audience just through sheer force of population numbers. Why Geography class never bothered to mention that but felt the need to tell me where I can find Laos on a map I'll never understand.

 

Been there, done that since Super Mario Brothers. I pretty much had taught myself English by the time I was, what, nine? It took another year or four before I could hold a simple conversation without getting stuck or making people cringe at my absolutely atrocious attempt at something resembling an English accent, but afterwards I could pretty much be dropped off in Great Britain and survive, language wise. Not necessarily hold out gracefully, but...survive. And that didn't make me the biggest prodigy, either. I had classmates that read through the first Harry Potter book, entirely in English, by the time I was still fiddling with the "Duke" Tree as opposed to the "Deku" Tree. Also, "Hurlian Shield". OoT is a difficult game to play with only a half-complete grasp of English, at best, but at least it allows you to imagine Link as being the oft-drunk offspring of a tree-dad that rules over his vast vineyard with noble grace and title :). Sure did much to explain my less than stellar play.

 

I...don't recall ever being in a situation where I needed something like that translated since becoming fluent in English. Unless I needed it translated to English. I mean there's the occasional word or sentence I don't understand, but that's hardly limited to just English.

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  • 10 months later...
  • 8 months later...
  • 3 months later...

Season 2 is officially over. It was a little fast paced, and the first half was an adaption of the weakest of the books, but, overall it was pretty good. Especially since the last episode was my favorite part of the whole story.

 

Despite the end of season 2, I'm still psyched up! Why? Well..

Season 3 this summer! Adapting the best volumes, it's almost unheard of that this studio would do a 3rd season, so rejoice! haha!

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  • 1 year later...

Because this thread is up again I think its fine to post about 2 other series I read recently:

https://j-novel.club/s/crest-of-the-stars/ A SF series that was already translated some years back but the publisher didn't survive. Still I think its a great story with a focus on personal interaction especial between the 2 main actor.

https://j-novel.club/s/infinite-dendrogram/ A VRMMO story that I personal think is a good read especial how the main actor manage it again and again to overcome enemy way stronger then him.

 

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