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

[Samu-kun]

Whooooo. I hope lots of good stuff come our way soon. =3 And this should be some added encouragement for us to work harder too.

[DaFool]

al|together 2005 was most influential in many ways (and not just because of Narcissu). I can safely say that a significant number of Ren'Py projects were made by creators who were first exposed to al|together pieces.

I'm not sure about treating them all as 'literature' though. I fished for reactions from my mother who is a literature major (a Masters) regarding True Remembrance and she just said ' it reads like it's written by a teenage girl.'

The problem is that the freeware scene doesn't have many places to go... a problem that plagues BOTH the Jp and English projects. On one end of the scale is the commercial overhyped 4ch/2ch weeaboo-ness, while on the other end are all the 'respectable' mediums of mainstream literature and film. Not too otaku-centric to be placed on one end while not too UN-otaku-centric to be placed in the other. Oh dear.

Still, although we know about this since we all read Gemot (don't we all ^_^) the gesture of posting here is appreciated.

[Seung Park]

I'm not sure about treating them all as 'literature' though. I fished for reactions from my mother who is a literature major (a Masters) regarding True Remembrance and she just said ' it reads like it's written by a teenage girl.'

A bit of a misunderstanding here.

We are not trying to say "look, these pieces are literature". They are not; that would be an insult to both dead-tree literature and to all the interesting nuances that novel games can utilize that dead-tree literature cannot. What we are saying is that all these pieces have "literary" qualities that drew our attention to them. Whether you see them or not -- whether you think they exist or not -- doesn't really matter to us; the fact is that these small voices said something interesting to us, the translators, that made the translation process worthwhile.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather treat these pieces with "too much" respect ...

... on one end of the scale is the commercial overhyped 4ch/2ch weeaboo-ness ...

... because personally, I don't like the alternative at all.

And maybe I'm a fool for that.

So be it.

[Blue Lemma]

I say if it's entertaining, who cares how it's written? Aren't the story and entertainment value the main criteria on which VNs should be judged and appreciated? (Well, they are in my opinion )

Personally, I think a lot of "classic literature" is overrated and simply has inertia behind it. Someone way back said it was good and taught it, so the next generation learned it was a classic who taught the next generation it was a classic... and so on. Don't get me started on what I think of The Good Earth >_<
Not to say all classics are like that and don't have merit, but it's almost like you're not free to make up your own mind on them and dislike them. If you say there's something wrong with a classic, people retort that there's something wrong with YOU.

Er, anyway, I'm looking forward to all the 2008 al|together games