Going forward, do you think the next releases will be much faster now? You mentioned all the text/script is translated basically, and you seem to have gotten the hang of the process in creating a patch for an episode. Is it basically like an assembly line process now where you could see yourself completing episodes 4-5 and the DLC quickly and possibly the 2nd game incredibly quickly? Just curious <3 Of course you all still have jobs and this is a hobby, but there must be a point where you guys are "on top of it" and can efficiently chug out releases in a quicker time frame as you've already been going <3
Also curious about the generality of your translators. Would you say its mostly native Japanese speakers who learned English second, or English who learned Japanese second. I'm guessing its some mixture of both working together of course though.
I can't say, this depends on too many factors. Yes, there is a translated script, but we can't insert it verbatim, since it was made by only one translator doing it as fast as she could. Our focus is on accuracy, making sure dialogue flows right and sounds in-character. This takes time, as every line is seen by at least two different translators and goes through several steps of editing.
Since Episode 3 onward is handled by a new, more efficient process, we do expect to be a little quicker - but the later Episodes are also longer. There is sort of an "assembly line", as files have a certain status level attached to them - but it ansolutely won't be "incredibly quickly". I can tell you, however, that at any given time, several Episodes are being worked on, because of the different steps they have to go through. Also, we aren't completly decided on the DLC yet (it's non-canon if that helps), but we solved most of our issues with DGS2 and we're ready to work on it (there's still some cosmetic issues, but they're being worked on).
Our translators are from different parts of the world, but none of them is a native speaker. I'm not aware of any native speaker being involved in a current JPN > ENG translation project. English is of course taught in schools in Japan, but the number of fluent English speakers is much lower than in Europe (minus the UK of course), for instance. Some of us are self-taught, some have studied Japanese at School/University. There are ways to measure proficiency, so we do know who is qualified.
