Tenra Bansho Development Journal

How The Sausage Is Made Translated

Wow, it’s been about 4 years since I started this project, the translation and release of Tenra Bansho Zero in English. At the time, I thought it would just take about 2 years tops to knock this thing out from Start to Publish. 4 years later, and I’m on the last run of text, finishing the last of the rules sections and prepping it for layout. One thing that this work has taught me, is a new-found respect for the amount of time and care that goes into a well-translated project.

I’ve translated tech documents, manga, business emails and websites, and by far the hardest project of them all has been Tenra Bansho Zero. I believe that this is because of two reasons:

1) At first I thought my job was to simply translate from Japanese to English. As time progressed, it became clear that my job expanded: I had to rewrite whole sections from scratch, preserving the intention of the original author. I had to collapse lots of sidebars and supplemental text into sections of the main text. I had to not just translate rules that were complicated, like the rules behind crafting a magical shiki spirit or yoroi armour, but I had to understand the rules back and forth: Sometimes that alone took hours or even days to fully grasp. I had to clarify play and rule examples. I had to add a lot of supplemental text for a Western audience, in order for the game to be understood by the same “New to RPGs” audience in the West as it was understood by that same target market in Japan.

It was a lot more work than I imagined. Normally I can crank through about “one page an hour” of dense text, depending on the source material. With Tenra, though, adding in the amount of re-writing, understanding, and research involved, it was more like “one paragraph an hour” in some places, “one column an hour” in others. I realized that “one section” of the book usually required 1-2 full weekends of reading, writing and translation to complete. The project forced me to reset my expectations for translation, more than any other project.

2) I care about the source material! This can be a real pain for translators. Sure, I have a small (read “very small”) financial stake in the success or failure of this project, but more than that, I’m very proud of this game. I got pulled into Tenra Bansho Zero because of the pretty art, and ended up becoming absolutely fascinated by the theater-like structure and rules. I feel like I’m putting in as much work into translation as the original authors put into writing the book. Those nigh-obsessive “The final work must be PERFECT!” reactions of my brain creep up in every page, every paragraph, every sentence. I’ve often gone back to reread and re-edit sections I’ve earlier translated once, twice, and evern five or more times. Too bad this wasn’t a simple business project that I could wrap up and fire off when I was done: I manufacture those translations. In the case of Tenra Bansho, I’m crafting the translation.

Official release dates became as if writ on water as one, then the next one, broken or bent. I realized that the game book required more written content to be easily playable. I folded in a lot of content from the original supplement book. I’ve also had to omit or cut out other text from the core book that I intended to include earlier (like the full Replay that appears in the supplement book) in order for this project to emerge, and not simply be “in progress” forever.

But in the end, I think it will be worth it. Tenra Bansho Zero will be complete soon, very soon. I’ve seen the rough layout sketches that Team Burning Wheel have put together, and they are incredible. I don’t know if the English release of this game in the US will create the kind of gaming revolution that it did in Japan (as White Wolf’s Vampire RPG in the early 90s brought all sorts of new players in RPGs, Tenra did the same for new players interested in anime and manga over in Japan in the late 90s and early 2000s), but it will be frighteningly fun to run and play. Folks in the RPG scene who already like anime or manga will surely find something of interest. And I hope it makes the rounds at local anime conventions, and perhaps generate interest in folks receptive to roleplaying in those communities. Getting the book in print is only the first step.

Pre-Orders

Eventually, the writing will be finally done (at a guess, 4-8 weeks). Layout will be finished from there. I’ll find some printers and get some print proofs. Then I’ll open the game up to pre-orders.

Pre-Ordering is an interesting mess, one that until recently I never got involved with. I would often see announcements, like “Game X is Coming Soon, We Are Now Taking Pre-Orders!”, and be confused by what exactly they were asking for. “The game is going to come out eventually anyway, so why don’t I just wait until it’s out and then buy it then, even if I’m positive that I want to buy it?” Some companies would even start taking pre-orders before the work is even finished, or before it’s ready to print, only to be delayed months/years.

Pre-Orders on the small-press level represent something else: It represents how much money the publisher will have to print their first print run. It’s no secret that the more copies you can have printed at once, the cheaper each copy will be. You could find a printer to print 100 copies of your book for $16/copy, where they would only charge $9/copy to print 1000 copies of the book. And I’ll be honest, I’m shooting for at least 1000 copies of the book for this first run.

At a guess of about $10/book (full color), not including shipping fees and tarriffs, 1,000 copies will cost $10,000 USD. The traditional model for small press publishers is, of course, to take out a loan against their house or car in order to fund that print run. Tenra will be no exception. The more pre-orders I can secure directly (when the time comes), the less money I’ll have to pay from my own pocket up-front for that first print run. If pre-orders go well, then perhaps a few hundred more copies of the book could be ordered at the reduced price. It’s a delicate balance.

The only problem I’ve found with pre-orders is that, even knowing the above and “wanting to support the small press publisher”, you’re paying the full price of the book up front, only to wait a few weeks/months for those orders to be fulfilled and sent.

To that end, I think Luke Crane (of Burning Wheel) does pre-orders right. When he takes pre-orders of his games, the pre-order copies usually are limited, and come with something “extra”. When they sold Burning Empires, they upped the price a little, but each copy came with a limited signed art print from the author of the original comic. The recent pre-orders of the Mouse Guard RPG each came with a free full-color comic.

To that end, I’m currently deciding what extras I could add to a pre-order of Tenra Bansho Zero. Optimally, the extras will be something special, that will help the buyer get a little more out of the game: A free supplement. Some limited-run items. Play aids. I have a few ideas which I’m currently looking into, we’ll see how they work out. With 100-200 pre-orders, I could fund much of the initial print run without worrying about losing my car, so that’s a plus. We’ll see how this works out in the coming months.

Playing the Game

I’ve been running an extended game of Tenra Bansho with my weeknight gaming group. I’ll post more about our adventures and surprises in the upcoming weeks.

For now, I gotta get back to the books: There’s translatin’ to be done!