Alka Translations Monthly Status Report: December 2021

Hello, everyone! Welcome to your (very short) monthly Alka update! Saito here to give you the lowdown on what happened this past month and (more importantly, in this case) what our plans are for the next one!

First things first, frankly put, this was another crazy life and slow work month for us. That’s not to say we made no progress at all, thankfully—I was able to knock out a couple Kud files, and Tsumugi’s slowly but surely moving forward!

November was largely been a period of experimentation on the RB front. As we’ve discussed in previous updates we’ve all been reduced to squeezing in bits and pieces of work on the game whenever we have time, which makes the progress sprints we pulled off toward the beginning of the project pretty much impossible.

We reached the decision a while back that we’ll need to change up our approach for this last route if we want the patch to be ready some time soon without sacrificing the quality and cohesion of the route in the process, and I believe we’re finally hitting the point where we have a workable system in place! No promises on timelines, as always, but I’m hopeful that the process we have worked out at this point will let us get back on-pace and get the patch out in a not too excruciating timeline.

Speaking of specific plans, I’ll personally have a little time off towards the later half of December and intend to use that period to take a big ol’ chunk out of Kud’s script! My personal goal is to get all of the lines that I ported to the 18+ version TL checked and proofread over the course of that period. Considering there’s over 20k of them that’s almost definitely an unattainable goal, but I’m setting my sights high because impossible challenges are just the motivation my work-addled, sleep-deprived brain needs sometimes!

That’s just about all I have to report for now! Be back a month from now to either tell you that our plans worked out and we’ve made a bunch of progress, or mope for a couple paragraphs before explaining how we’re gonna adjust things to make it happen next time! As always, thank you for your patience and understanding!

13 thoughts on “Alka Translations Monthly Status Report: December 2021

  1. Vecroza Denziba says:

    Wait, just wanted to clarify. When you said “thankfully—I was able to knock out a couple Kud files, and Tsumugi’s slowly but surely moving forward!”. Are you currently the main translator (RB and kud) and focus on both visual novel?

    Btw thanks for your hardwork after all these years. 😀

    • Translator the Saitou says:

      Nah, not exactly! I’m the only translator for Kud and I did about half of RB’s translation/TL smoothing, but at this point my involvement in Tsumugi’s route is EXTREMELY limited. I’m pitching in in what little ways I can to help move it along, but that’s primarily Log and Bazett’s domain!

      Also, thanks! The support and patience is always greatly appreciated

  2. Marie says:

    I’m sorry (I don’t want to sound arrogant) but why don’t you focus on RB to make this last push and release, instead of dividing your work between games? I’m honestly only curious about this, I don’t want to order the team to do anything, you do a great work!:D

    • Translator the Saitou says:

      Largely because of who’s best suited to/capable of working on what! At the current point in time I’m the only Alka member actively working on Kud, so I wouldn’t exactly call our attention SUPER split? RB wise, though, the big two reasons why my personal involvement with the Tsumugi route is limited are that A: there’s a point where you just have too many cooks in the kitchen and adding more people in just complicates the process further, and B: since I wasn’t the one who translated Shizuku’s route or TL smoothed the common route files, I’ve done way, waaaaay less work on Tsumugi and Shizuku’s dialogue than Log and Bazett have. I know for a fact that they’ll do a better job capturing the characters’ voices in this route than I would, so I believe that largely leaving it to them and using the time to work on Kud’s the most productive use of my time in the long term!

  3. Dwsn says:

    So, how far overall have you done with RB?
    Is Tsumugi route still at 7.8%?
    And can you tell roughly when will RB project finished? I really looking forward for the TL since i heard that RB give diffrent true ending compared to the vanilla one.
    Anyway thanks for doing this TL project and sorry dor my bad english

    • Translator the Saitou says:

      Tsumugi’s technically a little past 7.8%—we update the progress tracker every time we finish a full file, and the next file for her route’s both pretty big and something like 95% done at the moment. You’ll see that number tic up a bit as soon as the file gets through its final check!

      As for an estimate on when RB will be done, I’m afraid that all I can say is ‘as soon as we’re able’! We’re doing our best to get it out asap, but as a group we’ve decided on a policy of not announcing (or even speculating on) a release date until we’re really, REALLY sure we can make it happen. Any number of things could speed up or delay the process, and we don’t want to get people’s hopes up only to let them down by not meeting our own estimate.

  4. Colin says:

    Is there an estimated time as to when maybe we’ll see a full translation of the AA version of Kud? Or is it just up in the air?

    • Translator the Saitou says:

      It’s pretty much up in the air for the moment, and as I mentioned above in my answer to Dwsn’s question we have a policy on not making that sort of estimate until we’re REALLY sure we can make it happen, but what I can say about the AA version in specific is that I’m seriously considering prioritizing translating those portions of the game so that we can get it out prior to the 18+ patch’s release! At the moment all of the AA-exclusive content has been translated and none of the 18+-exclusive content has been touched, so tackling the rest of the shared content and getting the AA version of the patch out there early feels like it might be a solid move? Whether or not we go through with that depends in no small part on whether or not people tell us they want us to, really.

      Preemptively: yes, we WILL get an 18+ patch out even if we end up releasing the AA patch first. Mentioning that now (and every other time it comes up) because I know for a fact that some people will assume otherwise if I don’t

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