filler wrote:
I'm going to try to remain completely modest while hopefully not causing DD to lose all confidence in my translation ability here.
... Oh BTW: Progress on Aretha II script around 57%.
Oh, good grief!! EVERYONE refers to dictionaries in hard copy, soft copy, word processors, and such. Even Faraday (who is part Japanese) referred to source materials, also Akujin. Hell, English is my native language, but when I made part of my living through writing for many years, I consulted reference materials every single day - not to mention conducting exhaustive all-source research of the subject matter at hand, whether it was my masters thesis, a magazine article, a military command history, or a photojournalism spread for an official publication.
Whenever I translate something myself, in addition to open-source tools at my disposal, I also use methodologies I learned at the Armed Forces Air Intelligence Training Center, the Defense Intelligence College, and on the job, to assemble known quantities into a variety of workable matrices - like assembling pieces of a puzzle. Soon, a picture begins to emerge. You fill in missing sections gradually, and voila - through extrapolation - about 98% of the meaning materializes. As you play through the game and observe the sights and sounds - boom! You nail it. If still in doubt, we have another translator check it. Then, everything gets vetted again - over and over - during the exhaustive beta process.
We don't have native speakers coming out of the woodwork to lay the whole exact culture in our laps, but we don't need such an overkill approach to produce a fully credible product. I've worked with many translators in my time, not just here but in a previous life, and I can tell you this. Filler and Ritchie are tops! So, if he's gonna be overly modest, I'll brag on Filler, myself. As for machine translation aids, that's exactly what they are - just aids, but these fellows deliver outstanding translations, and personally, I don't care if someone uses a Ouija board to get the job done!!
57% of Aretha-II... Oooohhh-eeee...!!