Sunday, July 21, 2013

Fate/strange fake

Fate/strange fake (full): mediafire [PDF, ~11 MB]
Fate/strange fake (reduced): mediafire [PDF, ~0.5 MB]
Fate/strange fake complete collection: mediafire [zip, ~45 MB]

And with that, folks, Fate/strange fake has been completely translated. It's been over four years since Fate/strange fake was published in March 2009; more than five since the original April Fools' joke back in 2008; and about eight months since I started working on this in November 2012.

This is my first time translating a light novel in its entirety, and I think it's been a very informative experience. Mostly in terms of refining my own translation skills and English prose-writing, but also in terms of getting better with LaTeX, learning some basic image manipulation in GIMP, and so forth. LaTeX, for all its absurdity, produces beautiful output that is very difficult to recreate in any other system, and I heartily recommend its use for projects like mine (as this fine fellow has done).

A few notes about the three links you see above: the "full version" is what you should download in most cases - it's a pdf containing the light novel; nothing more and nothing less. The "reduced version" is a slightly altered pdf version of the light novel designed for viewing on low-end devices, such as early smartphones and early e-readers (it has no images and thus a smaller filesize, basically). The "complete collection" is a zip archive containing basically every file that I have that relates to Fate/strange fake, including: scans, transcriptions of the scans, the LaTeX source tree for the novel, some supplementary material from the original Fake/states night webpage, and more.

Anyway. With this, I'm pretty much done with Fate/strange fake (unless somebody spots any serious problems I introduced in between the last draft version and the final version). It's been real. I hope you all enjoyed this novel (and if you did, you should consider buying Narita Ryohgo things like the Baccano! and Durarara!! novels and manga to show your support). If you want to chat about Fate/strange fake, I'm sure the folks over at Beast's Lair would be more than happy to oblige.

And lastly: if you folks like the way I translate (or, if you like Bakemonogatari, which has some striking similarities), consider checking out my next LN translation project: Kyoukai no Kanata. I'm still working on it, but I'm releasing incremental updates as I finish segments of the novel, so you can start reading what I've finished right away.

36 comments:

  1. Thanks for your translation, it's really interesting to see what Ryohgo narita could do with the Fate universe ! Too bad this isn't a real game...

    Now I'm all the more curious for Red Dragon, the RPG/novel thing with Narita, Nasu and Urobuchi !

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  2. Awesome job. It's nice to see actual work put into light novel translation instead of horrible grammar and wonky wording.

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  3. Would you be willing to do minor requests like random Fate encyclopedia entries at all?

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    Replies
    1. In general, I'll certainly take a look at whatever thing you want translated, though if it's something boring like Fate encyclopedia entries, I probably won't actually translate it.

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    2. Hi, can I translate this novel into my language
      Many fans in my country want to read it

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  4. thank you! looking forward to read more of kyoukai no kanata owo

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  5. Oooh kind soul thank you so very much for your hardwork ( ;3;)<3<3<3

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  6. Thank you so much for your hardwork! I've been waiting for this for a long time and just remembered about this novel. I'm going to start reading it now and will look into the other works you've been working on. And again thank you very much for the work you've done!

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  7. Hey, I just powered through the last few chapters, and damn that was a fun read! The translation was easily one of the best fan-works I've ever come across, and your vocabulary and style really made it feel like another entry in the Nasuverse.

    I had a great time reading Fate/strange fake, and I think I'll probably come back to it again later. Thanks so much, Nakulas, for all your hard work! As well as food, aldeayeah, Narita Ryohgo, etc.

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  8. Links off DX can you fix please? ;_;

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    Replies
    1. This appears to have been a transient issue - the links work fine for me now.

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  9. can I translate this novel into my language
    many fans in my country want to read it in vietnamese
    is that ok with you?

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    Replies
    1. Yes, you can do whatever you want with this, including translate it into another language.

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  10. Thank you very much for this incredible translation! This was an excellent read and I was so happy to finally read on more regarding gilgamesh and enkidu's relationship. Thank you very much! Hope everything is alright with your depression issue now! if you ever need someone to hit up, email me at abishek_6@hotmaill.com and ill see how i can help! thanks again!

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  11. Thank you so much for your hard work! Would you happen to have an epub or doc file so I can read it on my ereader? If so please send it to my email at abstractaquarius@gmail.com! Thank you!

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  12. This is very enjoyable read, hard work put into it is seen clearly. Thank you very much for your time and effort put into it, it's greatly appreciated!

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  13. Thank you very much. I truly appreciate what you did, and I can't even begin to imagine the time and effort that it must have taken to translate this novel. Still, from one beginning fan of the series to another fan, I say this with all of my heart: thank you. Because of your efforts, more people will have the chance to read this novel. And in all honesty, that is a really cool and amazing thing that you did. I really hope that you feel like your work in translating this was well worth it. :D

    P.S. I was so happy when I first heard about this light novel. I absolutely love both Baccano and Durarara, so you can only imagine just how thrilled I was to find out that the author of those light novels created something in the Type Moon universe. Frankly, I was absolutely overjoyed. ^_^ So, despite the fact that you've probably gotten pretty annoyed from me saying this several times so far, thank you. It really means a lot to me and many other Type Moon and/or Fate fans that you translated this for us. (Even if you may not have been doing this for anyone but yourself, it still means a lot that we're able to read this novel due to your hard work.)

    P.P.S. I've been thinking this for a while, but maybe I should start learning Japanese so I can start reading and translating light novels, visual novels, and/or manga. If so, would you have any recommendations for me when it comes to learning the language?

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  14. Really really thank you for your translation.

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  15. Forgive me if this comes off the wrong way, but where's volume 2? This is "Fate strange fake", but I in this 42 MB file I only find stuff where an introduction of all the masters is found. There's no conclusion or anything. I try to look and can't find a translation of that volume, nor anyone really talking about it, when sites do mention the existence of a second volume.

    Sorry, I'm just really confused where it is. Clearly, with what high praise this story gets, I have trouble believing it'd be for just this introduction, even if it was great up till this point.

    I'd very much appreciate an explanation. Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. If you ever find out,please let me know I have the same question!

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  16. Thank you for this. Have you translated Fate Apocrypha?

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  17. Is this available in other formats? While I can tell you put a lot of effort into making it look nice as a PDF, it has a side effect of making other formats look like ass if I try to convert it with calibre.

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  18. is something wrong with font type of this quote in act3?:
    "What’s thIs͌ ?
    And ͕tHen—he saw som ̄ ethINg Red in frOnT of his torͨso, and he
    NOTIC̙ eD Th̘ aT iT ̿wAs in͐ facT HOlDing o̮ ntO ̜̊soMeThInG rEd,͊ ANd̊
    ̞H ̈ É̯ re͉̒ aliZeͫ d T̻ ha̞ T ́T͔̎ h͖͖ e ̞ͥT̥̒ hI̭ Ng͐ ̜̯̾ͣiT̻ ̟̒WAS h̙̒ OL̬ d̻ͧ iN ͨ gͣ ͖͒W ̤̈ As͈ Ac̺ͦ T ̮ u̾ a̭ͬ Lͭͅ Ly̿ ̣ ̗̊HIS
    ͖ͧhe̪̐ ḁ̄ r͎̆T,͔͐ ̙̆A ̩ͤ nd"

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  19. i just stumbled across this today and wanted to say thank you so much!

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  20. i have been looking for this novel for months, i am verry gratfull for your work, not only is it a long one ,but it is verry well done

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