'Godzilla: Monster Apocalypse' Translation

[phantomsdaydreams]

So, I coincidentally have both, A) a bunch of free time right now, and B) an insatiable desire to read the titular novel. The problem? Only a little Japanese (I'm still learning). But, I have access to Google image translate, an AI learning engine built for more accurate translations to run it through (sort of a work thing that I can abuse), a specialist degree in English and literature, and the stubbornness to persevere through the slog of process. So, I'm going to do this! Scratch that: I've already started doing this. I just finished the prologue after a solid 3 days of work. Slow-going, as you might imagine. Subjective, obviously, but you know what? Not bad. I'm kind of just putting some feelers out as to who might be interested in seeing the final result as I'm not sure I want to upload the final, edited result to the public via torrent or whatever. Please keep in mind that there will, by necessity, be a decent amount of editorial work on my part given that syntax or word choice is not machine translation's strong suit, and it will be a good while before I'm done, but is there anyone who would be interested?

All this said, this project is mostly for my own amusement and satisfaction, and being an imperfect translation, I by NO MEANS want to dissuade others from doing a more proper job of it or convince you this will be as good as a professional translation. I just wanted to read the book and thought others who, like me, are stuck with limited knowledge of the language, might enjoy the effort/ability to do so.

P.S- It's understandable that you've dropped it for the time being, but thanks for all the hard work on everything you work on here, LSD Jellyfish! You're a credit to the community! ^_^

[LSD Jellyfish]

I want to get something out of the way, I think I've addressed this before, but just to re-iterate:
While I am still working on translations of Godzilla manga, I've abandoned translating the two Godzilla novels and have for a while. There's some really basic reasons but:

The amount of time put into the project is incredibly long. At that point, It's a full time job, and honestly someone (whether it be me, or an actual professional, or you) should be getting paid for it. I realized in the same time I could be working on stuff more fans would be able to easily access, and would be quicker to translate and read (the monster king manga, the Godzilla comic stuff, etc....)

If I could translate the entire thing pretty quickly I'd already be at the level at a pro-translator and I probably wouldn't be doing this.

I just want to put that out there, so in the future I don't get accused of misleading people.

I just say go for it and use the AI and see what happens. Certainly using AI is a new frontier, for better or worse. Definitely interested.

[phantomsdaydreams]

Well, I hope I've not added to the confusion with my comment then. I certainly meant no such thing. I can understand people's enthusiasm, but I hope that everyone recognizes that these are all FAN efforts. Each project is a labor of love and done with what free time anyone has. They're not top priority. Always good to clarify though. Nothing but respect for what you do here, my friend.

Yeah, it's going to take quite a while to get through even with just machine translations, honestly. Not only am I putting each page through two different translation systems, neither of which are close to perfect in their meaning, but I'm also manually using image translate on the physical book for clarification every step of the way. All that just to have to edit and feel out the proper meaning and thought structure of each chunk afterwards (not to mention editing and fact-checking it as best I can after I've transcribed it in an understandable/adaptable way). I've only made my way up to page 25 (without polish) and I've clocked a good 16 hours already. That said, I still hope to be done before the end of the year. I'm currently shooting for November sometime if all goes well, but you never know.

P.S- The A.I handling of the translations IS more effective than many non-commercially available translators, but very prone to detection failure, so...not a perfect solution, sadly. It all more or less comes together when you sift through 4 different versions of the text and break them down piece by piece, but its a task to be sure. I hope future versions of such programs could be used in a more wholesale way.

[phantomsdaydreams]

Update #1: Just a quick one for the beginning of October. I'll keep this short and sweet. No need to bombard the board with messages. Less free time than I thought, but progress continues relatively smoothly nonetheless. Strangely, whether it was because of my inexperience with the whole process or the content itself, the first portion of the book was the hardest to translate thus far. Lots of fun story beats/lore tidbits in the book outside of basic timeline details. I think people are REALLY going to like this one.

Completed Page Count: 54/214 (1/4 Done!)

[phantomsdaydreams]

Well, 2020 hit home last month for me. Sorry, folks. Despite my best intentions and efforts, I only made it through a tiny bit of the book this month due to a loss in the family and a situation that made my current job somewhat untenable that needed to be resolved. These two things both hit right at the beginning of October. Mea culpa. I hope to bring better news next month. I'm back at it now. Some interesting geopolitics in the Hedorah chapter. Next up, Gabara!

Completed Page Count: 65/214

[Jan EnciZilla]

wow go go up!

u have all my moral support buddy