al|together 2008 Day 0: Welcome

[ChocoEd]

We're thrilled to announce the opening of al|together 2008, the third (mostly) annual festival of amateur visual-novel translation!

Over the week of the festival, we'll be releasing 6 games, one each day, representing a unique cross-section of doujin visual novels and of different translators, in many cases with the cooperation and endorsement of the original authors.

One change for this year is an extra emphasis on treating games as literature. Along with the games themselves, we'll also be providing translator's commentaries, peer reviews, and analytical essays.

Please join us this week in celebrating the spirit of game localization, and we hope you'll also be inspired to take up the challenge of presenting a piece of your own in the after-festival phase.

http://altogether.insani.org/2008

Oh my God YES. This is going to rock.

[Asceai]

There are some out there who believe that it is necessary to create some arbitrary grading scale in order to judge translation quality. There are some out there who believe that it is perfectly okay to output a barely-readable "first-pass" translation, to be "edited" later by people who have barely any knowledge of the original text. There are some out there who believe that it is perfectly ethical to translate another person's stories without the original author's knowledge and permission.

Oh my.

Well, in any case, I'm indeed very interested by this development. And, to be honest, I am thrilled by the concept of an al|together that I won't feel any sense of obligation to take part in* - I'd much rather just look at (and cross-examine the translation quality of, naturally!) the output.

*by this I mean if it was a public al|together I'd probably _have_ to participate to show that I'm not entirely full of hot air (just mostly!), which is something I don't really want to do because I can't write a good translation to something the length of Moonlight Blue in a month, and there's nothing shorter and free I really like...

Good luck, Ed. :)

[jyuichi]

I thought we were going to have another dry year...

Profound thanks to everyone who's getting this together :)

[Magedark]

Yes I am hyped over this! Good luck and I hope this goes really well!

[Tarmin]

Excellent news! I look forward to seeing the results.

[tea panda]

I FREAKING LOVE YOU GUYS.

[nhat]

OMG awesome. Best news of the year. To be honest, should this be called al|together 2009 instead of 2008?

Originally Posted by nhat

OMG awesome. Best news of the year. To be honest, should this be called al|together 2009 instead of 2008?

The releases are happening right now? It's 2008?

For some reason I assumed that the time to translate might bleed into 09. My bad >.<

[onyhow]

Well well well...after someone dig up the topic I asked about al|together from last year, it's finally up!

Good luck!

Originally Posted by onyhow

]Good luck!

Um, why is everybody wishing insani luck, anyway? They don't need it. They've probably been sitting on those releases for at least a week ...

Originally Posted by onyhow

Well well well...after someone dig up the topic I asked about al|together from last year

I doubt they care about what any of us say, too.

Keep up the good work. By the way what do you mean by after festival phase?