“Oh, those damn localizers!” is probably at least a partial sentiment of those who had taken offense due to the state of the released text in the official translation of Qruppo‘s Nukitashi released by Shiravune back in June. We’ve previously covered the complicated web of how the release ended up in this state in the below article and the hyperlinked discussion on Discord.
But for those who aren’t up to speed, here’s a quick rundown:
What happened to Nukitashi?
Qruppo’s Nukitashi was first localized by (now defunct) Sol Press, who paired the former To Heart 2 fan translator, Ittaku, with the editor of Chrono Clock, Puffketeer, who boasted a very aggressive editing style.
After Ittaku finished his translation of the script, the editing process appeared to introduce a number of inappropriate jokes and lingo that didn’t mesh well with the original script and the audience it was intended for. Additionally, it contained potshots aimed at readers and at-the-time major political figures (Donald Trump) and events, none of which could be located in the original Japanese script. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the script was vandalized by an editor who was less focused on the editing process and more on pushing their own agenda. This is a sentiment shared by many people involved in the community and industry.
However, we’ve heard (but have been unable to independently verify) that Shiravune was making last-second edits to the script prior to its Steam release but after the pre-release copies had been sent out. These last-second edits are not unheard of but are actually a rather common occurrence. But it does demonstrate that at least some attention was paid to the script.
The editor in question has since left the visual novel industry and doesn’t show any ambition of returning to it. We attempted to reach out for comment, but we have not received any response.
Fast forward a few months to the official release of the game, a lot of blame ended up falling on the shoulders of the translator, with the biggest push in negative publicity being a video by a highly influential drama VTuber known as Rev_says_desu which, at the time of writing, has garnered over 70,000 views. Combined with multiple negative threads on Reddit honing in on Ittaku as the sole reason for the state of the release (when in reality he appeared to have little, if any, say in any editing decisions made once he was finished with his translation), the situation has basically forced him to stay silent.
We also attempted to contact Rev_says_desu via Discord for comment, but he has not returned any of our messages.
History of the Patch
While everything above was going on, a user by the name of Yomi916 responded to a thread started by periah250 on VNDB saying that they would be interested in releasing a patch to update the script to “at least remove some of the more obnoxious cringe lingo.” The thread has some interesting discussion about the processes involved to get to the script and what should be changed , as well as some discussion on just how egregious the editing job was. Most of the informative discussion starts on Page 3 of the thread.
Two months after starting this project, Yomi916 announced that a patch was nearly complete, and only beta testing remained. People could apply to be a beta tester (Fuwanovel community members such as Yuki Konpaku were involved in the testing process) via their Discord. This stage of the process seemed to go smoothly, as less than a month later, the “Nukitashi Improvement Patch” was released.
Ultimately, the patch ends up adjusting the following:
Changelog (27th August 2023) FS changed back to SS as in the original. Honorifics added. Honorific and name order changed in the intro video. Name order changed to JP. Editing pass of whole script. Some lines retranslated. Twitch/Zoomer slang removed. British slang removed. Yiddish | AAVE removed. Cringe removed when possible and not in the original script. Some jokes changed to remove cringe and to be more accurate to the original JP script while remaining understandable in English.
What are your thoughts on this Improvement Patch? Let us know in the comments below.
The Nukitashi patch can be downloaded here, the game can be bought, in a very truncated version on Steam and as an uncensored version (mosaics still included) on Johren. Happy Replay!
