User talk:Jcdietz03

Some critique

First off, thanks for your efforts. :) They have certainly not gone unnoticed.

I have a bit of advice, though. For one thing, I think you're overusing the br tag. I don't like the br tag at all and think it should very rarely be used. Usually you should either keep things on one line (which is generally the case for game text; use a space or not depending on which seems more appropriate) or put a linebreak between them. I think it was Blutorange who came up with the compromise of using bullet points for when we have multiple annotations after a translation block; I'm thinking about officially adopting that convention, which would reduce the number of instances where br would be necessary.

The other issue is I think sometimes your translation blocks are too large. I think translation blocks should generally correspond to one "screen" of game text, and only include more when the division would hurt comprehensibility. (When game text isn't clearly divided into screens with complete sentences, or the screens are too long, I typically use one sentence per block -- sometimes two if one of them is really short, or a stock phrase such as おめでとうございます.) The rationale is that smaller blocks make it easier to correlate the Japanese text with the translated text.

But in any case, 頑張って and keep up the good work! - furrykef (Talk at me) 04:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Please check out LLTVG:Sandbox for an idea for parallel-text. There is probably a better way to implement this, as I am not a programmer. If you need more info on parallel-text, please check the other wiki (though it is admittedly a bit sparse). You can check out some ja-en parallel text books here to see what they look like. I dislike looking up/down to see parallel text and prefer left/right. It is simply my preference. I am not sure about conventions used in parallel-text works, so I cannot say which convention is more commonly used. I just finished reading

Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar which uses parallel text almost exclusively as the method of instruction. Parallel text in this book uses the left-right convention.

You commented that my translated text blocks are too large. This is not in the guideline. Also, I disagree with this as a proposed guideline. When one character is talking at length, it's appropriate to have a huge block of text. I don't think it's appropriate for conversations as it is difficult to tell who is talking. If your knowledge of Japanese is sufficient, you just want to read the text and the wiki markup gets in the way of that. If your knowledge of Japanese is not sufficient, you want to refer to the translation. I think left-right parallel-text (instead of up-down) will make this type of reference easier for readers but harder for editors.

You commented that I excessively use the br tag. Guilty as charged. However, this is not in the guideline. The guideline I use when editing is that one screen of dialogue (up to three lines) per one line in the wiki. I use the current guideline as well (use br tag if a sentence ended without punctuation). The other guideline I use is that if the writer couldn't quite fit what they were trying to say into three lines, I include the extra in the previous line. Jcdietz03 21:15, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I reposted this here so we can keep the conversation in one place. Don't worry, I'll definitely see any additions here.

Parallel texts is one possibility and it would indeed justify longer passages in translation blocks. I'll have to give it some thought.

I'm surprised that the manual of style doesn't mention the "one block per screen" rule. I could have sworn that it did, but sure enough, it doesn't. I must confess I'm not convinced it's a bad rule, though maybe we can do away with it if we adopt parallel texts...

I disagree that using short blocks would make it hard to keep track of who is talking. The 'speaker' paramater to ja-en should be used whenever that might be unclear. - furrykef (Talk at me) 23:28, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Then we agree because I was trying to say that long, unbroken blocks of text make it hard to keep track of who is talking. Jcdietz03 02:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, alright then. I had a look at the sandbox, BTW, and the parallel text resulted in more of an improvement than I expected. I don't know why I didn't think of it, especially since I've seen parallel texts before. I guess I had a lot on my mind when I first devised the format (after all, I was creating a whole website here ;)) and once I had something I promptly forgot about it. So I think I'll adjust the translate2 and translate3 templates to use this format, well, right now. If it breaks something, we can just change it back. The one thing I'd change from your format is I'd still prefer using a blank line in place of br tags in most cases.

One change we could potentially make is making sure the Japanese and English sentences always line up. I'm not yet sure how we'd do this... - furrykef (Talk at me) 10:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

It's up to the editor to ensure they line up (or don't, as the case may be). In the reference linked above, the parallel text almost matches, but doesn't. Often the Japanese version is shorter because Japanese is slightly more dense information-wise than English. It's maybe only right to make huge blocks like this for intermediate level games, with a lot of text. BTW, the ja-k-en template is broken. Check The Legend of Zelda. Jcdietz03 11:56, 21 April 2011 (UTC) Ja-en with speaker tags is also broken. Check The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/ja-en Jcdietz03 13:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I've fixed it. I'm trying to figure out if I like the parallel format or not... I think maybe it makes pages look too dense sometimes... - furrykef (Talk at me) 16:58, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Mystery character

The unknown character is three times [1] ㋡。 Blutorange 20:57, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Syntax Error on Joint Edit

Sometimes I get a syntax error when someone else completes their edit before I finish mine. It does not matter if they worked on a different section than I did. Jcdietz03 02:31, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Back to non-parallel text

I've changed the translate2 and translate3 templates to be non-parallel again. I just couldn't stand the way the parallel text looked, especially when translate2 and translate3 were freely intermixed on the same page. But my eyes just couldn't get used to going over to the right for the translation. It made the whole thing rather hard for me to read. Oh well, it was a nice experiment. :) - furrykef (Talk at me) 13:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)