Huge Rakudai Downgrade Pt. 1

[Ionliosite]

The puppet master Or-Gaule could totally not have controlled a puppet that looks like him, right...?

Assuming Or-Gaule had puppets that looks just like him is a way bigger lead in logic than saying it's him.

I am worried you both literally don't care about being this damn careless.

How do I don't care? If I didn't care, I wouldn't even comment here.

or we don't know outright how trustworthy the provider is.

The provider is the same who makes the translations of the novels, unless you want to say we can't suddenly trust now despite doing so before.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

It doesn't matter which is bigger, but the fact that we don't know, and we can assume anything.

Oh no, you do care, what you don't care about is that this is as far as you can get from trying to be accurate.

Yes, we can't trust. Because a lot gets left behind without context. Just like Wok said comparing it to a summary of "Numbermen destroys Cauldron base with bombs". We could assume they are Tier 8-7, we could assume he was strategic about using them, but we don't know. Let's assume this was Reisen Hiraga instead of Or-Gaule, a puppet controlled from afar, so he wouldn't care about a stab in the head. And I am not saying that is the case... but it could be, and many other scenarios. But we don't know, why should we let stuff we don't know about stay? We shouldn't.

 

[Ionliosite]

Yes, we can't trust.

Ok, let's delete the verse in its enterity, because the guy who has provided absolutely all information on the verse can't be trusted.

 

[Agnaa]

Right after that sentence he said: '''''Because a lot gets left behind without context.'''''

 

[Firephoenixearl]

Especially when these summaries use the literally exact words as the translations and lack almost no detail.

And even with details forgotten let me repeat myself:

We do not give abilities or keys that aren't major events. We do not give abilities off of random words in these summaries.

So again, while minor words can change, it is not like this "Or-Gaule got stabbed in the head and continued fighting until he died from being burned" can actually change. It can be more detailed, but the event is the same. Same for ikki vs Edelweiss. We may not use the exact words, but ikki pushing her back, is not something that can change. Or Stella winning against Xiaoli, it's not like that's an event that can just be distorted from "Xiaoli crushed her" to "Stella crushed Xiaoli". So i still do not get the problem, as it would be implying that the translators are straight up lying which would mean we should erase the verse entirely as even their translations cannot be trusted.

As for that "distortion from whispers" effect, that's false equivalency. That's from the info going through many people's heads. Which is not the case when it's only 1 person.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

But it actually can. I even said how. "Numberman destroyed Cauldron's base strategicaly with boms and his power". This is what happens, literally word by word, in that chapter of Worm, just with less words.

We really don't know what is or isn't missing, and I don't think you do either unless you are the dude providing the summary.

I went and tried something for fun, checking a couple of full volumes from different light novels. Even something pretty light and not really wordy came out upwards of 50k+ words, most came above 60k words upwards to nearly 80k words. One of the Rakudai summaries totals 10k+ at most. So giving it the benefit of the doubt and saying it is on the smaller side for a LN, we are getting 20% at most of everything written in Volume 15 (the volume I used for comparison. Checked the others, not much different.)

And you wanna look me in the face and say there's most surely nothing important that could be missed in here. Press X to doubt.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

>Literally word by word

>Just with less words.

Also uhm where is that from and is that a full summary like that of Rakudai or just that line?

We know stuff may be missing, from sentences which is why we aren't giving them more than what's shown.

Just got an average Rakudai chapter and a summary. It's 10k words with 2.5k words. So about 1/4. And i want to look at you in the face and say that yes, nothing important is missing from these summaries considering it is literally 1/4. And that in summaries a lot of flowery language is cut off along with detailed explanation of the scenery and stuff like that. So instead of saying:

Henceforth i am able to ca

it says

I ca

That's why the summary is 1/4th of the actual novel because it cuts off all the flowery writing and just keeps the essence of everything that is happening. Which is why, the example i gave at the start of the thread fits almost to the letter despite being shorter, cus it doesn't cut off anything that's even remotely important to the plot (like it being freezing cold and having strong winds, because that's important for Ikki's training).

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

Yeah... no.

That isn't really convincing. None of this so far. As far as I can see, deleting the stuff is best.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

I don't see how "this isn't convincing" without any sort of argument behind it, is a counter argument to what i said, but eh.

Being 1/4th of the full novel doesn't make it any less detailed, it just makes it less flowery.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

You are asking me how a book being reduced to a fifth of it's size with the excuse "it's less flowery" is gonna convince me that nothing essential was lost.

This is ignoring that flowery doesn't mean bullshit or unimportant, and a lot of the time is where contextual info is derived from, since books by their own nature are not deadpan deliveries of information.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

Because i've given you proof of it missing 0 important info from the novels. By quoting both a scene from the novel and that same scene from the summary.

And flowery language what i mean is a noun having a dozen adjectives to make it sound prettier.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

A single instance among extremely long summaries of 17 volumes isn't really good proof.

And the "whisper effect" doesn't work on one person...? Earl, what logic do you run on? Because the first person has the complete message and should pass it completely as well, since it's "just one dude doing it", the second person should have the complete message just like the first and passes it to the third perfectly as well, because the complete message is passing through "just one person" and so on. This is demonstratively bullshit because otherwise distortion would never happen.

And you are still not the translator to speak for what was passed along effectively or not. This remains dubious at best.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

So, if i get more cases you'd be fine with it?

Completely missed what i meant. The distortion effect only happens if "the info is being passed from 1 person to another". Not when the same dude is doing stuff. If you read something and write it in a paper, there's no distortion cus there's no passing of info there. That's what i mean, there's no distortion here, because the summary is written by the same guy who's reading the novel, not being passed through 16 other people.

Why is anything "passed along" though? It's the same dude.

 

[Agnaa]

Because it is passed from the original text to the summary.

If there was no distortion here it would just be a literal translation. Admitting that it's anything but that is admitting that distortions do happen.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

It's not as much "distortion" as it is "ommiting unneeded stuff". And i've proven that, i can get more scenes if you want, where the summary has everything that's even remotely important to the story written down.

As for the "why not make a translation" well they were making translations, but everything was dropped since the series was liscenced and taken up by an official translation group which took down the series from pages like BakaTsuki, so all translations stopped from there.

And the 2nd reason is, it's easier to translate the essence rather than translating word for word along with not needing to add special font, complex punctuation, it is literally shorter etc.

 

[Agnaa]

That is still a distortion that I'm not comfortable with using for profiles, however limited the manner we use it.

Even full fan translations/official translations with context STILL need to be double-checked by our own multilingual members at times, because even the distortion of fully translating something can lead to inaccurate profiles.

Translating the essence (as a summary does) can get worse than this. It'd be usable if you had the raws for multilingual members to verify, but afaik they're not available.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

So you're saying even the fan translations are not to be trusted?

 

[Agnaa]

I'm saying that, the same with every single foreign-language verse on this wiki, we generally trust fan translations, but when it comes to extremely important statements, or ones that have a large risk of being mistranslated (I can't list these off the top of my head but I know they exist), we should have a multilingual member re-translate them.

It happens from the biggest verses with official translations, to the most niche verses with only fan translations.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

Yes, which is what we did for Ikki's Ittou Multipliers. We are not giving anything that could be messed up like that though. No abilities off of single words, only off of events, and with events, you really cannot mess up unless you want to.

 

[Agnaa]

I didn't say you weren't doing that?

• I said that even full translations need to be double-checked, so using "essence" translations seems too unreliable
• You asked if I was saying the fan translations should be disregarded
• I said that we shouldn't, we should just double-check when necessary

Examples have already been given ad nauseam about how events can be messed up due to missing context.

 

[GLHF22]

Agree with Agnaa, even official translations are sometimes inaccurate for the actual meaning of the word, because official translations often change difficult words to make people feel comfortable when reading it, however it could also make translations inaccurate but it cant be helped since they translate things to make people able to read it not to provide accurate statistics

In fact, Slime has gone throught multiple CRT and Upgrade because of inacurrate official translations, and here we are gonna use summaries?

 

[Firephoenixearl]

@Agnaa

• We double check when needed. Particularly when we're giving important abilities off of a single word, which is not what we're doing. We never "double check" for things like "did he really live or did he die there".

 

[Agnaa]

And we can't really tell if things need to be double-checked here since we're missing the context in the first place.

If a multilingual member could read the relevant novels and confirm that the events we use happened in a usable way without any extenuating circumstances (something which translators writing summaries may not necessarily note down, since what matters for our tiering may not matter to them), they'd be good to use. But until then, the unknown presence or lack of context is too much of a risk, imo.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

We do know the context, we just lack the likely insignificant details. Because what we're using is (examples):

Fu Xiaoli:

• Can copy abilities. She is shown several times using Stella's abilities and the explanation for her power in the summary. Can we really go like "ok but did she really copy abilities even though literally 3/4ths of a chapter are with her using Stella's abilites"?

• Overpowered Stella. Pretty self explanatory, you really cannot mess up beating up someone for half of a chapter.

Or-Gaule:

• Type 2 immortality: Can't really mess this up when half of that chapter was Ikki slicing him up into confetti and even a scan of him being stabbed by Ikki in the brain and still laughing.

• Getting killed by Stella

And other examples like these. You really cannot mess up factors like these when creating summaries, and we never, and i repeat never double check translations on any of the cases i mentioned above. If we do, i would actually like to see cases where scenes/moments like these get double checked by our multilingual members.

 

[Agnaa]

Do we know that "overpowering Stella" was done at base with nothing copied?

Are those really the only two things on Or-Gaule's profile that were taken from untranslated novels? Everything else, every other ability and statistic, is from translated novels? Because a lot of it seems like it depends on context and specific wording.

You really cannot mess up factors like these when creating summaries

I think you kinda can, as per examples above.

and we never, and i repeat never double check translations on any of the cases i mentioned above

Because we usually have more than just summaries; we have all the required surrounding context.

Is this discussion even worth continuing? I feel like you've already said these exact same points and had them responded to the same way multiple times already.

 

[Firephoenixearl]

It doesn't really matter though does it? I would need to recheck, but it doesn't change anything, as the stats would still scale from Stella's.

From Or Gaule's profiles:

• Immortality (Type 2, which i already explained), (Type 7, the same as type 2, it's just because this happens after he dies, so he's already dead there).

• More info on his puppetry about him having puppets all over the world (which is literally such a huge plot point, it's the reason the next antagonists came to be).

Everything else, is either from the translated stuff, or scaling from people with translated stuff.

 

[Schnee_One]

<Ikki cutting Or Gaule to bits

Excuse me how

 

[Firephoenixearl]

<Ikki cutting Or Gaule to bits
Excuse me how

By using his sword...obviously Or Gaule regends, because he has pseudo Regenerationn with his threads (Example, ikki cuts off his arm, he just ties it back in).

 

[Schnee_One]

But Ikki is literally thousands of times weaker then him, how the hell can he even cut him?

 

[Firephoenixearl]

But Ikki is literally thousands of times weaker then him, how the hell can he even cut him?

Probs me needing to fix the scaling. Or more like needing to fix Or Gaule's durability. But the scaling as a whole is really fudged up during Vermillion Empire arc. We had to dismiss some parts of scaling as outliers for it to make any sense at all.

 

[InfiniteSped]

slashing damage, obv

 

[Antvasima]

What are the conclusions here?

 

[Firephoenixearl]

Don't think there's a conclusion yet.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. No problem.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

I do believe there is a conclusion, you just don't agree with it.

Me, Ion, Ovens, HI3, Raven, Wok, Moritzva, Schro, Jacky and Agnaa and I think Tony (going off the top of my mind, is more likely he remained neutral like SleepyTB and Milly) all think this goes against the standards and is just not trustworthy at all. Not sure what Schnee thinks if he has any thoughts about this.

 

[Milly_Rocking_Bandit]

I'm nuetral on this. If it were all verified by an actual japanese speaker like GinSan, I'd be fine with it. Because there are instances where a profile has japanese scans and is completely fine because it was looked over and approved.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

Our issue is more or less that. Not only don't we have even raw screenshots of the novel, all we have is a summary that, at best, cuts the story to a fifth of it's normal size, maybe more.

 

[Milly_Rocking_Bandit]

That's a problem then.

 

[Ionliosite]

First of all, no, there hasn't been conclusion. Second, don't include me on that list, because I'm not supporting this.

 

[LSirLancelotDuLacl]

As far as I care to see, there has been, and what has been happening so far is Earl trying to find alternatives. We are extremely strict about black holes and light being light, we'd obviously be even more strict about the sources for information. I mean ****, we are strict even when we have direct scans of the source material if it feels like something is dubious, this is not even that.

I actually thought I put someone's else name instead of yours, sorry about that.