Talk:Format guideline

Hello, so lets kick this up, what things should we address first?

Which things should be established first?

please use the "add comment" icon above. Please scroll down for current Discussion. Pervious Discussion on related format guidelinetopics have been copied here for reference.

Volume 01, Chapter 01 Discussion

For discussion of issues solely related to Chapter 1, please see the discussion page for Chapter 1.

Suzumiya Haruhi's language

This is mostly about thelastguardian's translation of Haruhi using "kick ass". Psieye toned it down to "awesome". Although I am personally against using strong language, if this same crude language is present in the original Japanese, I won't complain keeping the "kick ass." -- Baltakatei 01:22, 19 April 2006 (PDT)

Cruzz used the word "radical" for that passage. It certainly seems the best choice but his whole style is different so perhaps "radical" isn't what we're seeking here for this translation's style. Psieye 23:44, 19 April 2006 (GMT)

I guess I'll jump in to say something. The original japanese line is:

高校にはもっとラディカルなサークルがあると思ってたのに。 Koukou ni wa motto radikaruna saakuru ga aru to omotteta no ni.

As such, I never even considered any other words except "radical". It covers both bases, and frankly I'd be willing to bet that the line is mostly referring to actual radicalness (differing from a norm).

--Cruzz 10:21, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Volume 01, Chapter 02 Discussion

The Fall of Hyperion

About this passage:

All the members are here today. Nagato Yuki sat in her usual spot, reading a hardback book about the effects of Saturn's satellites falling down. Asahina didn't have to come but still obediently arrived, sitting on a steel chair looking confused.

The original Japanese text is:

一応メンバーは揃っていた。相も変わらず長門有希は定位置で土星のマイナー衛星が落ちた とかどうしたとかいうタイトルのハードカバーを読みふくり、来なくてもいいのに生真面目に もちゃんとやって来た朝日奈みくるさんは在所なげにパイプ椅子に腰掛けている。

So far as I can tell, a better translation of the passage would be:

Anyway, all the members were here today. Nagato Yuki was in her usual spot, reading a hardback book about a minor satellite of Saturn falling down, or something like that. Asahina didn't have to come but had still obediently arrived, seated on a steel chair and looking confused.

Obviously, the book in question (as we've seen in the anime) has to be The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons -- but equally obviously, Kyon doesn't recognize it, and thinks it's about Hyperion the satellite of Saturn. This is marked by the tentative nature of his to ka doushita to ka iu taitoru.

I'm changing this passage as shown, in the body text, but I just wanted to explain why I've changed it this way. I really think that we might want to include a translator's footnote here, to the effect that we know which book is meant, but that the confusion was present in the original text, and is indisputably deliberate on the part of the author. Are we going to make footnotes? If so, this is a good place for one.

--Freak Of Nature 19:14, 19 April 2006 (PDT)

Volume 01, Chapter 04 Discussion

Once it's all over, a post-mortem will be held to review and prepare for further developments.

Post-mortem? That sort of suggests a death, although I know what is trying to be said, but it might give the wrong meaning to other people. I wonder if there is another word we could substitute this with? Would anyone like to give a suggestion? --Adelina 07:44, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

In the military, they use the term "After Action Report" (abbr. AAR). --Freak Of Nature 10:10, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

Debriefing? --velocity7 23:03, 22 April 2006 (EDT)

Review. --Freak Of Nature 02:22, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Review is already said in the sentence, but we could change that. Out of which do you think Haruhi would be the most likely to say? --Adelina 05:41, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

To be honest, I think "debriefing" fits in very well in the sentence. It also suits the quasi-militaristic secret superspy-agent-hero-fantasy world that the SOS Brigade has its roots in. "Once it's all over, a debriefing will be held to review and prepare for further developments." See? It looks good. Kudos to velocity7 for le mot juste.--Freak Of Nature 05:54, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Volume 01, Chapter 05 Discussion

For this material, please see the discussion page for Chapter 5.

Dialogue syntax issues

As you can tell from the first chapter, Kyon represses a significant amount of his thoughts during conversations. Most of these thoughts take the form of a silent aside that the other characters are not aware of. However, there are times when Kyon's inner dialogues are leaked out into the open but the parenthesis is left out. For example, in Chapter 1:

After class, Taniguchi, with his mystified face, tried to corner me. Taniguchi, you look like a total moron with that expression of yours!

"Be quiet! I don't care what you say. Anyway, just what magic did you cast?"

From what thelastguardian tells me, the lack of parenthesis is the author's style. The reason I bring this up is because a casual reader might be confused in certain places when deciding whether Kyon speaks or not. I believe the author's style should be reverted with no parentehsis added. What is your opinion?

Another issue is how place the "Haruhi said" and other such lines that directly reference to a character's line. In the current format, such lines are separated by a space. I'm of the opinion these spaces should be closed and the short commentary following a line should be closed. Already, this has been taken care of by others and myself in a few instances.

"Which is why I'm going to obtain one now," Haruhi said, like a hunter looking for its prey.

But before I start linking dialogue to commentary, what do you think? --Baltakatei 23:32, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Agreed on closing some of the linebreaks for dialogue syntax. Breaking a new line all over the place probably looks right with Japanese text, but English novels are written with "Haruhi said" descriptions and following commentaries on the same line as the dialogue (as well as further dialogue by the same person). Then again, Kyon's inner voice commentaries and asides I'd count as 'dialogue' and therefore require a change in line. For example, from Ch 2:

"I see... I understand."

What did you understand?

"I'll quit the Calligraphy Club, and join your club..." Her voice is so full of sadness. "But, I don't know what the Literature Club does."

Oh and just to clarify, I don't think we need to add any 'somebody said,' descriptions if they're not already there - as was discussed it is pretty easy to guess who's speaking what line even if we don't get "verbalised accents" (such as trademark deviations from Standard Japanese and -yo, -desu endings).

--Psieye 03:48, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

Though on second thought, "her voice is so full of sadness" and many other such descriptions feel like 'dialogue'/'monologue commentary' since this is Kyon First Perspective afterall. Mmm... maybe making a finer distinction like this would just cause more trouble. Ok, I guess only doing the no-linebreak thing with "lines that directly reference a character's line" cases would be sensible, as Baltakatei originally suggested.

--Psieye 10:42, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

Kyon's Narration Tense

Kyon's Narration Tense is something we should quickly agree on I think. I point to the small conversation that started on this in Ch 1's discussions regarding how I think we ought to first agree on what 'the present' is for Kyon's Narration. --Psieye 18:39, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

• Ahh you mean this one?

Does anybody have any clarification on this?

I think uniform past tense in the prologue sounds better for sure, but if he's not revealing foreknowledge in the rest of the chapters, then present tense would seem to be more logical.

personally I agree, i mean Kyon speak for the present, he doesn't speak with the knowledge of the future of past.

He's the vocal of the audience.

I guess with have to check with an a translator to know if he ever does start to speak with hindsight/foresight.

Onizuka-gto 19:07, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

There are certainly times when he speaks about the future, for example, from Chapter 1: "As I said, at first I felt very irritated, but later on I learned that all those people graduated from East Junior High." --Ryukaiser 20:24, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

Yes but that's an example from chapter 1, which I've already suggested as being a "Let me tell you how I got to where I am in this newly formed, I-have-no-idea SOS-dan" backstory session. So Chapter 1 should also be in past tense I think. Chapter 2 onwards (perhaps right from the start of it, thus setting 'the present' to just after Haruhi's Inspiration for a club) should be present tense narration.

Of course, if it's explicitly clear he suddenly adds in a comment from future hindsight, then we do that in past tense. But I think it's pretty clear when those happen - incidentally do they happen much beyond chapter 1?

--Psieye 03:55, 22 April 2006 (PDT)

Ah, well there you go. it gets more complicated already. i'll leave it up to you lot ^^;

Onizuka-gto 20:39, 21 April 2006 (PDT)

anything to put on the front page?

just wondering if you lot got any guides you wanna put up yet?

it looks funny with those bits at the bottom.

unless this is not necessary, then i'll remove it. it's kinda bugging me now :/

Onizuka-gto 06:05, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Hmm... it seems people are continuing to deal with the chapter-specific stuff in each chapter's Talk page so the chapter-specific discussions that were cloned above can just be moved back I guess. Regarding overall issues, well discussion seems to have stopped. For now, why not put up the points made in the Dialogue Syntax section? i.e. 1) no parenthesis for when Kyon's "inner dialgue leaks out" 2) the "no-line break for lines that directly reference a character's line"

I'd like to also put up the point of setting Kyon's narration tense with the 'Kyon is telling the story in the present from Vol 1 Ch 2 onwards, and before that he was giving backstory' rule of thumb. However, the lack of discussion on this point means we can't really put it up yet - there are valid alternate rules of thumb (e.g. most things after prologue/backstory-Ch-1 in immediate past tense) and we need to agree on one (even if that is as simple as 'whatever the original text uses').

Perhaps getting clearing the redundat chapter-specific discussions above would highlight how this has yet to be discussed?

--Psieye 08:59, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

ok. well i'll just put those two points up for now.

It'll look better with something to complain about then nothing to look at. like now.

Onizuka-gto 09:31, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Regarding the "Narration Tenses" issue: to be honest, so long as we agree to stick to a consistent Tense processing standard, I'm not really bothered with what we decide on - I tend to naturally focus more on where the English doesn't seem to flow right and what tense is being used usually doesn't register as a problem to me. So, if no further discussion happens on this, shall we just say "stick with whatever tenses the original text uses" for preservation purposes and be done with this stagnant subject? I think the translators are naturally preserving the tenses from the original text so asking them to stick with that policy seems good enough to me.

--Psieye 09:35, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Chapters with multiple Translators Conflicting

I think it's best we start discussing a solution to this, best to nip it in the buds, as this has potential to happen again.

One idea I have in the future to have a translator "declare" which chapters they will commence work actively, one only. You cannot, "reserve" a chapter or do one chapter partly only to return to complete another one. Or alternativelr you could all agree together which should do which one, and we will note it down somewhere so that everyone sticks to it.

It will be easier for Editors to standardlize the entire chapter, then to have more then one translator working, as experienced in chapter 05 (Chapter 05 Translation Issue).

But then this will reduce the efficency, as most translators work faster then others, and this could result in random chapters being completed before others. at this moment i have't thought of a solution. but from the top of my head, we could split the chapters perhaps? and have fall back agreements,meaning that if a chapter is not completyed for whatever reason, the assigned translator for that chapter will know that another agreed translator will take over. food for thought.

Onizuka-gto 10:08, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

For small groups of people, it's best to keep things simple. Your suggested system may be necessary if we had 6+ active translators or so, but until then we can make do with a much simpler system:

Create a page where translators announce the status of their work - what chapter and roughly how much of it they've translated. I'd imagine it would be most natural to work on one chapter at a time, but in case it's not... well have the translators discuss such points between themselves? Such discussion is easy in a small group like this provided necessary information (the status page) is readily available.

--Psieye 11:11, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

mmm...I suppose so.

But at this moment , there seems to be an agreement that Kinny will do Volume 01.

As for the others volumes beyond that, well that is open to debate.

Kinny and Thelastguardian favours a volume to volume approach, while i'am aware of the favouable arguments for it, i still do not believe it will ultilize the translators efficently.

however i do like your idea, it is best to show all transparency, I think it's best to inform everyone and discuss this matter.

Disptes fears that more then one translator operating one volume will yield lower quality for faster times.

There is a happy medium that i believe we can reach, too many translators perhaps but surely having a few quality translators on one volume with editors to suppport them will more then compensate for the fears of "inconsistent style" after all, isn't this the point of this page?

Onizuka-gto 11:20, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Standard English Words? i.e. "Consortium"

Just read the added contribution from kinny on Chapter 05.

noticed you used the word, "Consortium"

sounds strange, i've heard other alternatives such as The "Organisation".

"Consortium" seems to imply a planet wide group yet Itsuki mentioned it only consists of 10 known members. when put with that even "Organisation" seems a bit grand.

perhaps "brotherhood" sounds better?

Either way i think its best we agree what words we should use, and also other important ones.

Onizuka-gto 10:21, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

I vote for "Instrumentality" -- see discussion page for Chapter 5.

--Freak Of Nature 13:57, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

A couple of other standardising suggestions:

1) "Literature Club" not "Literacy Club"

2) "Class 1-5" not "Fifth Class" etc

If no other discussion is generated on these two points after 2 days, I'll put them on the Format page

--Psieye 16:04, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

I completely endorse Psieye's two points. These seem like simple and obvious standard translations.

--Freak Of Nature 16:13, 23 April 2006 (PDT)

Agreed.

--Adelina 14:25, 24 April 2006 (PDT)