Garrett wrote:
Yeah, I'm not gonna worry about that main dialogue right now. All the misc text and menus use that compression that I did a bypass hack for. So I'll have some screens when I get more than a few screens done.
Yep, no worries. The new dialogue space you are providing alleviates concerns about chopped speech and narrative, although it could have still been worked with fewer bytes. A writer simply condenses the story without losing coherence (creates a Reader's Digest version, if you will).
Frequently, I use a technique I learned in advanced creative writing classes of re-outlining scenes (from the translation for RPGs), and then I apply the basic concept of "economy of words" around that. Another way is my own invention for RPG stories only. I fall back on the primarily journalistic rule of "inverted pyramid". Here I simply list the impact or most climatic statement first, then follow down to the least important. I carve off those least significant bottom segments until it fits, then I rearrange everything until I regain the drama and suspense as best I can.
Follow-on editors tinkering with a writer's story can really screw it up after this point if they don't know or consider the whole body of work. One slight change can have a ripple effect and cause major disconnects all down the line. In Ro3K, however, the story is the story and it never changes. What happened as recorded in history IS the only story. DoaE is really an easy write once research notes are assembled and tabbed, scene outlines penned, the raw translation is lying side-by-side, and I have the
Chicago Manual of Style handy. Much of this I'm able to record inside my head and not be shuffling papers constantly.
The real mystery to me about DoaE-GB has always been how the warlords/generals will work in menus. Will Pinyin (English transliteration) fit the space allowed for ideographs (the Mandarin). Or will we need to leave some of the Chinese like we did in DoaE-II?
Actually, leaving one set of the Chinese instead of repeating Pinyin on the same menus worked out pretty well in DoaE-II. Doing the name in Pinyin twice would have been overkill, and people had an opportunity to compare and maybe learn a bit of Chinese. We also left the ideograph for "gold" or "money" 金 (Pinyin: jin) in the menus. Nice touch, I always thought.
Finally, my biggest worry is the archaic ideographs in the names of some warlords. Multiple readings can create a mess of confusion for us humble translators. Our call on some generals may please a group in Hong Kong while upsetting others in Singapore! I'm not sure about Communist China. Their ordinary citizens might be barred from receiving material on the internet from the free world. But that is where artifacts from the Han Dynasty are currently being unearthed at the ruins of the former Han capital at LuoYang. I would love to see this place if I was not barred from traveling to Red China.