Well here it is, my first correlation story. Not only was this a blast to translate, I really enjoyed learning more about the characters and seeing the princes interact with each other. I would love to translate more correlation stories in the future, I just need more shards to get the keys to open them, or other people to volunteer to send me the screenshots of what I don't have!
I would have to say the most difficult part of this project was getting the character 'voices' right. In writing, it is important to give a character a unique voice, something that makes the reader go 'oh yes, this is clearly this character saying this thing' instead of making it so that you could switch around the names and lines and have anyone saying anything. That's just poor writing. Giving distinct voices to each character fleshes them out and makes them more real, and easier to imagine. Before this story, I've not had to deal with this concept too much because the characters in each story are always primarily the main character and the prince. It's easy to draw a distinction between the two of them. Sometimes there are minor characters, like butlers or siblings, but creating a unique voice for them isn't as difficult or important because they are not in the story very much and don't have the time to have a well-developed character. For example, Vairy's brother Jess isn't in Vairy's story very much, but we get enough glimpses of him and his speaking to create a shallow image of who the character is, and we don't need to spend too much time fleshing him out. Thus his voice isn't all that unique, but it doesn't really need to be. This isn't the case with these correlation stories. There are three distinct voices in addition to the main character that need to be translated in this one. I think it's helpful that I had already translated Rosso, so I knew his voice and had an idea of how he'd speak. However this was my first time with Douglas and Orion. I tried to do what I could to distinguish the lines between Douglas and Rosso, and then Rosso and Orion as these are often the pairs conversing. Sometimes this means taking a little more creative license in the translations, but I think in the end it makes a better story. It's also important to do this kind of thing with these stories because you're only reading a translation. Players who read the story in Japanese get the facial expression that change on the screen as they read, which provides other information on the events that are happening or the conversations that are taking place. This is actually a really difficult part of translating these stories in general for this game, because everything is so constrained and kept short for the sake of the game that I'm often left wanting more elaboration or more information on certain scenarios. But I guess that's what we have fan fiction for!
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