Censorship

[Gamer412021]

So I heard the original PS3 game was censored and that Umineko Project removes the censorship.

Does it remove it completely or is there still some stuff left? Will I miss out on any intensity of scenes or spookiness while reading this?

[vit9696]

Hello, we actually replied on this one, not sure where, but here is a quote. Hope it helps!

Below we tried to list the key points about the translation:
- The UP script is an extremely thorough translation of the PS3 game that used the original WH translation as a starting point. The changes from the original WH script are extensive and comparable to the difference between the old and new WH translations. Because it is a translation of the PS3 game, it matches up with the PS3 game, not the original PC script.
- PS3 censorship/changes were not as extensive as Higurashi's PS2 release. However, there were some impactful changes made to important parts of EP7 etc.
- There were certain lines where the (normally fairly limited) PS3 censorship was both impactful to the story and easily fixed, and for those we restored the PC version lines. This includes the previously mentioned EP7 censorship, which we went to some pains to reverse.
- The non-impactful changes, where we did not restore the PC version lines, include some trademark removals (Doraemon, Touhou references, etc.). These remain "censored" in the UP release (because it is a translation of the PS3 game, and yes, as you mention, to avoid discrepancies with the audio).
- In general, the PS3 changes were not wholly negative, and included some genuine fixes to things like the number of cousins being incorrect at the beginning of episode 1, characters referring to others by the wrong term, etc. We tried to fix censorship (where it did not interfere with the audio) but preserve fixes. In our view, there is some element of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" in restoring all the PC version lines.
- Other issues with the translation have been reported on the forums and addressed over a period of years, including a limited amount of fixes drawn from or inspired by the latest WH release.
- The WH translation patch should be 1:1 to the PC release and should preserve all the original references. However, we have not played through this patch and cannot say for sure whether any difficult edge cases have been carefully handled.

[Gamer412021]

Thanks! I do have several remaining questions.

1 - So if I understand correctly, if I use the Witch Hunt language pack at the downloads page, it would be a fully PC script with 100% no censorship? (I also appreciate that there is also the default UP translation too, giving variety of choice between the two).

2- Also is that the mangagamer script or is it the original Witch Hunt script? The one at the downloads page.

3- What about images or sounds, is there any sort of toning down or censoring there?

4- So, in general, aside from the trademarks, the intensity of the scenes is kept (violence and all)? Since you do mention "impact", but not what sort of impact you mean. Impact could mean some hint important to the story and can also mean impact of the intensity of the scene. Is the censorship based around censoring violent scenes or is it some other form of censorship?

[vit9696]

1 — No, because even though it is WH, it still needs to match PS3 lines. I guess you will happen to have more a little bit more product references, but they will simply say not what the voicing says making some stuff a bit awkward if you have a grasp of Japanese. My personal opinion is that the stuff that did not make it into PS3 is really not worth fighting for, we actually mentioned some product references in the Grimoire, where we thought it may be funny

2 — Mangagamer.

3 — There is a new OP in PlayStation 3, I do not call it censoring though. We have an ons.cfg option to enable the old one. There was a scene remade in episode 2 with a new song. But once again I would not call that censoring. For the completeness we provided the original scene in the omake.

4 — Yes, pretty much. They did not try to censor violence at all to our surprise. I would say there is no real drawback that we could not have fixed. Among the closest to what you mean there was an unpleasant alcohol scene censorship in episode 2, but we managed to preserve it in the release

[ooa]

The WH script is not a 100% match to the Steam script, however, "censorship" related issues have been largely resolved. The remaining differences are mainly things like lines being split differently, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but actually was in some cases -- WH has done some extensive editing of the script when it came to the epitaph puzzle, adding a whole ton of new lines, and I had to undo some of that. Unfortunately, the translation system UP uses only allows me to change lines, not add/remove them. I've also fixed a few small mistranslations ("George needs to be in bed by 7PM!"), typos, etc.

There's also a few situations where Alchemist and WH have parsed who's talking differently (Umineko on PC didn't have nametags originally, so you just sort of had to guess), so some translations just don't match at all. There was a particularly egregious case in EP6 where, if I were to leave the script unedited, it would have given away the culprit's identity due to a different voice saying it than what WH expected.

There was a lot of editing done in terms of formatting as well. I have preserved the grimoire entires as green in the script, and have used the UP colours for red/blue rather than the PC ones. I have adjusted the names to use UP's "small caps" feature, so you get "Eᴠᴀ" instead of "EVA". Of course, all of that is purely cosmetic, but it's still, technically, a difference.

Overall, I did my best to preserve the PC translation as much as possible, with (minor) improvements here and there, and some compromises that I had to take to squeeze it within UP's localization system. It's obviously not as heavily edited as the UP translation itself, but it's also not exactly the full PC script, tho like 95% of it is.