It’s fine time we had another Translator’s Corner article. This time around, we’ll be talking about the translation of Imouto Paradise! and all the fun that entailed.
The first thing that really crossed my mind about working on Imouto Paradise! was the matter of Japanese honorifics. Some people may know that I am a fairly strong proponent of translating as much of the text as possible. Now, this isn’t the place to debate the merits of doing that but despite my stance I decided that to not leave in the honorifics in Imouto Paradise! would be impossible. No way around it.
For those that aren’t familiar with the game, Imouto Paradise! features five girls who are the little sisters of you, the protagonist and each have a way of addressing you. The English language really makes it hard to find translating equivalents of these variations so it made sense to just leave them in. You have the oldest of the girls, Aya who uses Nii-san which is workable but then you have one of the twins, Koharu, who uses Onii. All the bro-bro, big bro etc. just doesn’t seem to have the same nuance so what can you do?
Aside from the different ways each girl addresses you, their dialog also have differences as well. It was a bit of a challenge to still maintain the nuances in each of their speech patterns so that you could really appreciate the way they talk. For example, Aya being the most normal of the five has the most standard dialog. On the other hand, you have Rio who talks in a gruff manner, especially when dealing with you. Then you have someone like Michika who uses far more formal dialog than everyone else. Maintaining these differences are important in what makes the game really come to life.
Imouto Paradise! was an interesting project to tackle and although it certainly isn’t deep by any means, I think it’s still a great game. But as I’ve said before, if you love the imouto character-type, this is a must buy. However, if you absolutely hate imouto characters then this is by far the scariest game out there. You were forewarned.
–YukkuriS
loved the game to the end the trnslation was spot on for me 😀 fun game but, I am a but curious will you be translating Imouto paradise 2 some were in the future?