Editing Talk:Clannad:Guidelines (section)

== Digits, Interjections, thinking words, shouts/screams and action words ==
I would like to clarify on some of the translation guidelines.

Firstly, do we substitute Arabic numerals on the original text for half-width digits (e.g. 20) or their English equivalents (Twenty)? If it had not been decided, I would suggest that we stick to digits for convention, clarity and conciseness. For kanji numerals, I'd rather we use English words.

In the translations I have seen, interjections were mostly substituted beautifully, but there were several crude ones, and some of those were translated in other ways for other scenarios.

May I suggest to translators and editors:

あの, ano -> Um

え, e -> Eh (repeated えs would be Eeeeh etc.)

ああ, aa -> Ya / K' / Yea / Aah (depending on context)

あ, a -> Ah

えっと, etto -> Erm / Err

っ, 'sokuon' -> ' (e.g. 「えっ？」 -> "Eh'?" , but only when the situation allows) (refer to the Yorkshire accent part on glottal stops in Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop])

For those at the end of sentences:

よ, ね, な, ぞ etc. -> huh / not? / (nothing, for when it is an integral part of the sentence, i.e. sounds awkward without it) / reflected in the sentence as 

だろう, だろ -> I wonder / I guess / right? / not? / probably / it is probable

I believe the rest have more obvious equivalents in English, and won't have much trouble integrating.

In the topic of screams, as they usually hold no meaning, might I suggest substituting them word for word (Hepburn romanization with  kana spelling) with the ー, chouon substituted for a dash, small vowels as their english equivalent (I have thought of substituting large vowels with caps, but wouldn't it lose some aesthetic quality?) and っ with a 'h' where aesthetic standards allow.

For action words that occupy a single line, may I suggest the format as per in the following example, :''もぐもぐ… *mogu mogu, munch munch''

I used the above format for action words in sentences like じっと、そこを見た during my translation draft (which was only at its third day as per this project's founding, despite that I started it near the end of December). However, I find it sloppy when nested in sentences, and I guess it also breaks the flow of the script. Please criticize this suggestions mercilessly.[[User:Jc100|Jc100]] 03:34, 6 February 2007 (PST)

: I agree with most of the conventions used above, albeit with a few minor changes:
: - 'mogu mogu' should just be 'munch, munch'
: - IRJustman and I would like to go with using just words for numbers (e.g., five), unless it comes to maybe 10-yen coins. Not like someone can say "one million yen", right, as opposed to "1,000,000 yen"?
: - screams we'll have to think about, it's kind of hard to romanize say, Sunohara's ひぃぃぃぃぃぃ！！
: - most of the stuff above is freeform, so like you said, will depend on context.
: [[User:Velocity7|velocity7]] 10:09, 6 February 2007 (EST)

: Ditto with velocity7. But I think the interjection translations should be guidelines; translators should retain free rein in using alternatives to naturalise/normalise the speech. Same goes for wild random screaming, this should be translator's call?
: More importantly, characters need to sound consistent throughout the game. Either this should be handled by QC, or translators can route-specialise. Or something; i'm new to this game.
: American English, or British English?
: --[[User:Kwok|Kwok]] 05:40, 13 February 2007 (PST)