Mahouka: Format & Style

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The_Great_Galendo
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Re: Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Format & Style

Post by The_Great_Galendo »

All right; if two of the most active contributors think that removing the excess paragraph breaks will bring more trouble than it's worth, then I'm willing to accept that now might not be the proper time to do so.

It is a change I would like to see happen eventually, though. Right now, the novels kind of read as if they were written by a fifth grader. Some of that is due to the sometimes awkward sentences like the one that Rava improved upon; some is due to the occasional spelling/grammar/syntax errors that still pop up with some regularity (I noted and fixed two just in the scene I quoted above, for instance); but some is also due to the fact that the books read as if the author had no grasp of the standard rules for paragraph and quotation usage.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'll table the matter for now, but don't be surprised if I bring it up again in another six months or so. Because eventually the number of translation checks required will taper off to a more manageable level, and then it will be time to make the novels read as smoothly in English as I assume they do in Japanese.
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Re: Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Format & Style

Post by Rava »

I wouldn't go as far to say MOST active, but anyway...

I don't think anyone would care if you made that kind of change to the Full Text versions (but larethian as the project supervisor is pretty much the final say ATM), if you were also keeping it up to date with any changes from the individual chapters. But the individual chapter versions, absolutely not.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Guest »

Before i waste my time, do you mean to keep even indirect thoughts (as in, facts explained by the narrator, but that could be argued to actually be in some charachter POV) in present tense? Because i'm seeing a lot of that in the first volume (actually, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, which adds to confusion, probably for the simple reason that there's no real agreement on which ones are POV'd and which ones are not) and honestly i find it really annoying, not to mention grammatically incorrect, as far as i know. If the narration is in past tense, so should be anything not directly said or thought by charachters, even if it is in their POV. Thoughts?
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Rohan123 »

Guest wrote:Before i waste my time, do you mean to keep even indirect thoughts (as in, facts explained by the narrator, but that could be argued to actually be in some charachter POV) in present tense? Because i'm seeing a lot of that in the first volume (actually, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, which adds to confusion, probably for the simple reason that there's no real agreement on which ones are POV'd and which ones are not) and honestly i find it really annoying, not to mention grammatically incorrect, as far as i know. If the narration is in past tense, so should be anything not directly said or thought by charachters, even if it is in their POV. Thoughts?
I agree with this guy and we should keep all narrations, and anything that is not directly said or thought by the characters, in past tense as that makes it just sound/read better in English.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Liryan »

Glad you agree :)
If that's fine, i'll keep editing those when i can just like i did for chapter 3, as i keep reading.

EDIT: alright things got even trickier. I've seen sentences completely unmarked as if from the narrator which actually directly adresses characters such as with "you". Are they just mistakes in translation, or the author's doing? Should i mark them with somethign like <<>> as direct thoughts? Or rework them as a typical narrator would say (change to 3rd person and past tense)?

Edit 2: Actually, in a few very rare cases i've seen direct thought mentioned in (). Should I use that for the rest of the chapter? For now I've been marking the more obvious cases that need editing with notes.
Last edited by Liryan on Sun Sep 15, 2013 1:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Rava »

Guest wrote:Before i waste my time, do you mean to keep even indirect thoughts (as in, facts explained by the narrator, but that could be argued to actually be in some charachter POV) in present tense? Because i'm seeing a lot of that in the first volume (actually, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't, which adds to confusion, probably for the simple reason that there's no real agreement on which ones are POV'd and which ones are not) and honestly i find it really annoying, not to mention grammatically incorrect, as far as i know. If the narration is in past tense, so should be anything not directly said or thought by charachters, even if it is in their POV. Thoughts?
I think you are seeing this in the first volume because if you take a look at the registration page, it has had the most translators working on that volume. So I don't think anyone will be really *against* someone keeping the tenses straight.
Liryan wrote:Glad you agree :)
If that's fine, i'll keep editing those when i can just like i did for chapter 3, as i keep reading.

EDIT: alright things got even trickier. I've seen sentences completely unmarked as if from the narrator which actually directly adresses characthers such as with "you". Are they just mistakes in translation, or the author's doing? Should i mark them with somethign like <<>> as direct thoughts? Or rework them as a typical narrator would say (change to 3rd person and past tense)?

Edit 2: Actually, in a few very rare cases i've seen direct thought mentioned in (). Should I use that for the rest of the chapter? For now I've been marking the more obvious cases that need editing with notes.
I think I know what you're talking about in the first edit, but do you have any particular lines in mind?

Regarding the second edit, I'm 99% sure it's added in by an unsure translator or editor and not actually in the original text. But I have no proof.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Liryan »

Ok, ok, Mari, Hanzou also has things he won't back down from."
Everyone's gaze fell towards the speaker, Mayumi.
You're hardly qualified to say that. (!)
also:
"This is not a personal fight. It's a formal match.
Mayumi said it too, didn't she?
The rule of strength is not something applied between the Course 1 and Course 2 students. Rather, it is something applied between Course 1 students themselves.
This is the very first time we are using such a method to settle things between a Course 1 and Course 2 student, you see."
I see; on the contrary, it is encouraged to settle disagreements by force if they can't be settled by words alone. (!)
(Both notes were palced by me)
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Rava »

I think it's a difference in translators then.

I'm pretty sure the original text doesn't have anything there, so some chose to use parentheses to distinguish the train of thought and others didn't.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Liryan »

That's what i thought too. The question stands though, what should i do about it? As is, it looks very weird, so i'd be for using (), but whatever the decision it should be unified in all the volumes (and i can't speak for that, having read only 3 chapters)
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by seitsuki »

The text does funky things like that, sometimes it has thoughts in (parenthesis) and sometimes it really is just unmarked first person narration. As far as I've seen there is no real pattern to it.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Liryan »

As it is, I actually noticed this problem had already been mentioned in the previous page of the thread, dating back to months ago. The thing is, no definite answer has been provided, while someone was suggesting to italicize thoughts. If there is no pattern in the original, I belieave we should agree on one, as long as it's consistent, so that I (and everyone else) knows how to edit.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Rohan123 »

Liryan wrote:As it is, I actually noticed this problem had already been mentioned in the previous page of the thread, dating back to months ago. The thing is, no definite answer has been provided, while someone was suggesting to italicize thoughts. If there is no pattern in the original, I belieave we should agree on one, as long as it's consistent, so that I (and everyone else) knows how to edit.
I think that italicizing thoughts would work fine, as that was what was being done in the Oreimo project(now complete).
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Liryan »

I went ahead to work on chapter 4, and noticed that at the end there actually is even a large passage all told from the perspective of a character that some may feel too much to italicize, so i'm still waiting before working on it (again marked with a note). If you guys think it might be bothersome to italicize that much then i'd 'suggest <<...thoughts...>> format or something similar as it helps separate thoughts from narration in the cases where they are few and sporadic (chapter 3) while also not being overly visually noisy as italicized text in long POV'd portions (chapter 4)
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by The_Great_Galendo »

Rohan123 wrote:I think that italicizing thoughts would work fine, as that was what was being done in the Oreimo project(now complete).
I also support italicizing internal thoughts. It's probably the most common way of marking direct thoughts in English. I've seen other methods, but I like italics the best.

...That being said, what I really came on here to ask is whether anyone has any objections to me changing the Japanese-standard six-period ellipses into English-standard three- or four-period ones. I'm guessing not, but before I made the changes I wanted to make sure.
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Re: Mahouka: Format & Style

Post by Rava »

The_Great_Galendo wrote:
Rohan123 wrote:I think that italicizing thoughts would work fine, as that was what was being done in the Oreimo project(now complete).
I also support italicizing internal thoughts. It's probably the most common way of marking direct thoughts in English. I've seen other methods, but I like italics the best.

...That being said, what I really came on here to ask is whether anyone has any objections to me changing the Japanese-standard six-period ellipses into English-standard three- or four-period ones. I'm guessing not, but before I made the changes I wanted to make sure.
I've been doing that on any chapter I go through. But I'm pretty sure English standard is just three.
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