A Splatfest Review!

Recently,  Nintendo's latest popular game, Splatoon, held an event called a Splatfest! In North America, the event took place on July 4th from midnight to midnight, and the theme was Cats vs Dogs! (Dogs won, but Cats sure gave us a run for our money with how vicious they were during Turf Wars! That's okay, the prize was only an extra Super Sea Snail, anyway.)


Splatoon is a wonderful game, and I'm sure you don't need me to give you a glorious review to know how great it is---I do plan on doing a review in the future, but today is not that day! I'm just here to talk about the Splatfest.

This was the music that played in the plaza all day, and it's really good! I've been listening to it since the Splatfest, and even though that was four days ago, I'm not sick of it yet!

For the Splatfest, it was night time in the plaza and during the turf wars, vs being day like it always is, and boy did I love the atmosphere it gave off!! Here's some pics I took.

I stayed up until 2am on July 3rd--er, into July 4th, anyway, and I think I had the most fun during those two hours! I met up with three other Team Dog squids in Turf War, and with how the Splatfest runs, we were able to stick together as a team without fear of being shuffled up with the other four members playing, because those other four were Team Cat!

I know I'll never talk to these people, or even see them again, but they hold a special place in my heart as my squid squad....

(I'm "rar!", in case that wasn't obvious!!!)

You can hear me gush about those two hours of splattin' and the Squid Squad here, on my tumblr!


Overall, the Splatfest is a really fun event, and I can't wait for another one!! I think scheduling it on July 4th might not have been the best idea, though, and I also feel like it would've been better if it had lasted two days, instead of just one!! That way, especially if you have siblings, you aren't fighting over the Wii U all day, or rushing around in the game to try and get the highest rank possible. Not to mention extended hours of play tends to lead to wrist cramps!


Some other things I think it'd be cool to see in the future from Splatoon:

1) It's probably too late, but I wish they'd update the software so that the game would have a day/night cycle! It doesn't have to actually cycle through the real times of day, but if it would change just to be night, say, when the stages change at 7pm PT, that would be cool!

It doesn't have to be a party every night, either, I just think the night-time atmosphere we got from the Splatfest was really cool, and I won't lie, I don't play often at night because it seems like a Fun Daytime Game, y'know? But maybe that's just me, and maybe that's weird!


2) I wish the Squid Sisters would hold concerts!! They're obviously famous, and supposedly famous singers, but I think they only have two songs in the entire game (maybe three), and that's including this Splatfest music! A concert once a week---or even once just a month!---would be super cool.

They'd have a stage in the plaza they'd sing on, and it'd last for through one cycle of the stages, so, four hours. Their music could play during the Turf Wars, too!

At the very least, it'd be great if some of their music could play during the Turf Wars along with the usual selection of Turf War music.


Anyway!! Those are all my thoughts about the Splatfest!! It was a really great event, and I hope the next one's soon!

I'll close this up with some carefully taken pictures of Callie and Marie during their performance.

Here's to another Splatfest!!!

The first Translation Post

Today I was doing research into Job Requirements for places like Nintendo, since my dream job is video game localization. (The basic rundown is: I probably can't work at Nintendo, if I was fluent in Japanese I could apply to FUNimation right now, manga translation is all freelance??)

Anyway, in my searching, I found this article about Manga Translation and the industry and it got me thinking about a lot of things!! Translation things, anyway. I'm not here to talk about the Manga Industry.

Here's the article, if you wanna read the full thing!



Word-for-Word Translations
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The author made the comment about how, apparently, a lot of translations these days have a word-for-word translation, and even as someone who's done some amateur translation, it absolutely baffled me! Manga is a story, and just as a comic would need to have natural sounding dialogue, so would a manga, I imagine!

Here's an example they provided:

田中：　ミキさん、昼御飯に行こう？
ミキ：　田中さん申し訳ございませんまだ仕事がありますから。。。

The more literal translation (or, the translation a lot of people would apparently go with!) is:

Tanaka: Miki-san, let’s go to lunch!
Miki: Tanaka-san, I can not go, regrettably. I still have work to do

While the translation the author this article would've gone with:

Tanaka: Hey Miki, wanna go get lunch?
Miki: Sorry Mr. Tanaka, I still have a lot of work so unfortunately I must decline.

Doesn't that second translation sound a lot better, comparatively? The first one isn't necessarily wrong, it just, it doesn't feel exactly right! Especially Miki's line.


I mean, personally, I would've translated Miki's line more like:

"Sorry Mr. Tanaka, I'll have to decline, unfortunately. I still have a lot of work to do."

Because it sounds more natural, in my opinion! The author's translation seems a little stiff, and I get that politeness is the point of what Miki's saying, but there's a difference between being polite and being stiff, (if not a little stand-off-ish!)

No one really talks like that in real life, even when being polite! I mean, really, when was the last time someone you know used "must" in casual---even polite---conversation? Almost everyone says "have to" regardless of context of the conversation.

And though you don't need it, here's another way I thought of to word this:

"Sorry Mr. Tanaka, I still have a lot of work to do. I'm afraid I'll have to say no."

We're further away from the word-for-word / direct translation, but the point still gets across, and that's really all that matters!!



Complying with English Grammar
----------------------------------------------

The author of the article brought up another point on how translations also need comply to English grammar rules, and how a lot of translators, apparently, leave sentences in Japanese-word-order, as we saw with the first translation of Miki's line.

This made me think of a lot self-imposed Spanish homework I've been doing, namely, translating songs from Spanish into English. (Though never so that the English lyrics would be singable, good gravy, that's a whole 'nother task entirely!)

Spanish often---though not always---formats sentences in a different way than English's Near Standard Subject/Verb/Object order. It's often not about the Object of the sentence, though, but rather about Prepositional phrases.

For example:

• "De ti aprendí lo mejor" / "From you I learned the best"
• "En tu voz estoy perdido" / "In your voice I am lost"
• "Con fuego yo quiero jugar" / "With fire I want to play"
• "A sueños me llevaba" / "To dreams it carried me"

My English translations of these sentences sound okay, but wouldn't you agree that "I learned the best from you" or "I'm lost in your voice" or "I want to play with fire" or "It carried me to dreams" sound much, much better?

Sentences formatted another way than SVO (or, SVP) sound alright in English, of course. It's certainly not wrong to put a prepositional phrase first in an English sentence, either, we just don't do it a lot, so most of the time it sounds unnatural! I've noticed my translations sound much better when I put them in SVO order.



Anyway, those were the thoughts I had about this article when I was reading it, and I thought I better put the thoughts on this blog!

I hope to do a post on Splatoon's recent Splat Fest event soon, so keep an eye out for it, alright?

Hello yello!

Hello! My name is rar, and this is a blog for me to talk about things!!

Like, my life!!! Except my life is pretty boring, so instead, the main focus of this blog is gonna be writing stuff / translation / video games.


Why these things? Well, I write, a lot (about as much as I breathe, to be honest) and so I think I know a fair amount about writing and figured I could Share My Knowledge.

Video Game Localization is my Dream Job, and just in general, I think translation is absolutely fascinating!!! So I'll talk about it.

And I really really really love video games so I am here to talk about those things too.


I mean, maybe I'll babble about other things, but, we'll see!!! We'll see.

Check out the about page for other info -- this post is only really here because I needed a good ol' introduction post!



Random facts you may not have cared to know about me

• rar is always completely lowercase.
• I have a tumblr, if, you want to follow it?
• I'm currently working on a KH fic series known as FtPverse! (If that's not impressive to you, then consider: the fourth book, Dead Inside, is 400k words, completed in three years, and I consider it my greatest accomplishment so far.)
• I consider my aesthetic "dark atmosphere with a fantastical story." (I blame Twilight Princess for this.) (Majora's Mask also fits the description though.)
• "rar babbles" comes from a tag I started tagging my personal posts on tumblr, and, I made it the name of this blog because it Felt Right.
• I spend a lot of time making 8tracks mixes!!
• I can beat Twilight Princess in 20 hours and have played and beaten it probably more than ten times. It was a summer obsession when I was twelve.
• ¡Puedo hablar Español! Básica. I've been studying it half my life but with all the school switching I did I was never able to gather much more than basic conversational skills. (My vocab is embarrassingly small.)