Alka Translations Monthly Status Report: January 2020

Hi all! A Happy New Year to everyone. This is intended to be the first entry of a monthly staff blog post I’ll be writing up for everybody sometime each month. The purpose of these is that we want to be as transparent as we can be with everyone. We want to make sure you guys are always aware of the positives and the negatives that we’re going through. A lot of groups, either due to NDAs or their own lack of communication, tend to just stay silent and then suddenly tell people stuff. We don’t wanna do that. If you guys are caught by surprise by something we say, then we were just as much caught by surprise about the information too.

So with that in mind, here’s where we’re at as a group! Regarding Summer Pockets, due to the delay of the official English release and the complete unpredictability of Steam’s review process getting it out in any sort of close time frame, we’re at least resuming work on the Kamome route, since we’d already begun. If the Kamome patch is released before the official localization comes out, at that point, we will assess where everything is and keep our ears to the ground. With the release seemingly incredibly close, we do understand that fan translations can potentially be harmful to official sales. So we won’t start on Alka & Pocket unless we have substantial reason to believe the official release is still a long ways off. Obviously, as soon as any new information develops, we’ll be sure to let you all know!

Now, onto the other project. Angel Beats. You guys may have heard of it. We’re translating it to English! The translation work is officially underway, with the first couple text files being completed. However, we’re going to be operating a bit differently with Angel Beats! Due to it being a shorter length VN than Summer Pockets, as well as us being much more confident in our work thanks to the feedback you’ve all given us with Summer Pockets, we will not be releasing Angel Beats in the form of partial patches like we’ve been doing with Summer Pockets. This was always the plan, but now we have an actual technical reason for it. The files are a mess, and so many are interlinked in so many different ways that for our first theoretical partial patch to be “complete” we’d have to translate like 60% of the files already, at which point why not just crush through the rest and release it all at once. The testers that have dutifully made our Summer Pockets patches mostly typo free and a pleasant, smooth read, will be getting their own partial patches, meaning the testing & editing process will also hopefully take less time than they have in the past! Now that we’ve got an efficient system in place thanks to our experiences with Summer Pockets, this translation for Angel Beats should not take nearly as long as Summer Pockets has taken us. The optimist in me says we’ll have it out by summer, but the realist in me will only commit to the year 2020, and I’ll narrow it down for you guys once we’re knee deep in work and have a much better idea of our pace and what needs to be done.

Lastly, I want to introduce the new members of the gang. As our translator August and editor Turbos will be taking a much deserved break, they’ll be shifting into more advisement roles for Angel Beats as they finish up Summer Pockets. With that in mind, I’d like to give a shout out to Translator the Saitou, as they’re gonna be our translator for Angel Beats, as well as Kitaro, who’s gonna be helping me out with the editing process!

That’s all I’ve got to report for January. If anything significant develops, I’ll let you guys know here or on Twitter. If not, then I’ll catch you guys in February! Here’s another sneak peek in the meantime. Bye for now!