This translation began with my own aggravation at not understanding the story.

I had this game on my hard drive for about half a year before finally getting it to run, at which point my momentary excitement turned rapidly to irritation: I couldn’t understand a word, and clicking blindly through was about as bad as just browsing through an image gallery without having the game at all.

Especially frustrating was trying to figure out how, exactly, the mild conversation between L and Light that takes place toward the beginning of the game somehow leads to Light being tied up and all the sex that follows.

I wanted so badly to understand what was going on that I began searching for someone—anyone—kind enough to explain this scene to me.

The first people who helped me were straight Japanese guys I met online, and while most of them were more interested in talking with an American girl than in translating that relatively mild part of the story, with their help I finally managed to get the card scene translated to English.

But after translating that scene, I didn’t want to stop. So then it became a search for anyone willing to help translate through the much more hardcore yaoi scenes that followed. Some of these guys, especially the very awesome Taka, and, to the lesser extent, the sexy but exasperatingly spoiled Kei, were pretty chill about helping through some the most hardcore and explicit stuff, and we translated this way through partway into day 2.

None of these guys were actually fluent in English, but I was infinitely grateful for their patience in painstakingly explaining the meaning, line by line, which then I reworded into cleaner descriptions.

I took screen frames and added the lines in English underneath.

At that time, an average update from raw Japanese to translated frames in English could take anywhere up to eight consecutive hours. I still remember staying up an entire night and part of the morning that followed to finish work on Day 1.

We were getting only about 60 or so hits per day then when Iosane contacted me, offering help.

I was very lucky in that regard, as she is amazing with technical issues and helped me with screen captures, as well as extracting the text from the game into Word files. This made it a hundredfold easier to get help from translators, as now I was able to send them text files instead of images. We’d become good friend and I’d cried to her many times since about other assorted technical issues I had, with which she’d helped me, as well.

Over time, I was lucky enough to find help from other very awesome translators—Emiko, Akuma, Shantel, Uomaru, Hush, and Rokuemon — girls and guys who liked yaoi and who were fluent in English. This made the process much easier for me, and I had to do much less editing and rephrasing on receiving their files.

At this point, I had taken nearly 2000 images, myself, and was grateful for any help I could get in this regard—Alex and AngelVirtue have been amazing in their help, patiently taking many more images for me which I then used to add the text.

Several hundred hits per day later, we are now partway into Day After and have every intention of seeing this project through to completion—if anything, because I, personally, want to be able to read it to the end.

Many thanks to all of our readers, and especially those who took the time to write kind and encouraging letters to us; your words and gratitude mean a lot and make all the work worthwhile.
 

Of the team, who actually runs the site?

This is my (Genevieve's) domain.

Gen, are you fluent in Japanese?

No, I'm a white American girl. Like most of you, I don't actually know any Japanese, and I don't do the actual translation, myself. We have a number of amazing translators who do that.

Who actually writes the lines in English?

Regardless of the translator responsible for each part, I ultimately reword and write all the lines in English as they appear in the frames presented here.

What is the purpose of this project?

This unofficial translation exists because there is no other English translation. The goal is for English-speakers to be able to enjoy the story.

Can I link to your site?

That's fine. Just be sure to credit.

Do you get paid to do this?

No. In fact, I pay to keep my site up. I'm a full-time medical student and I do this as a hobby.

Why do you take so long to update?

Wanna try running a project like this and finding out?

May I painstakingly copy the lines from the frames here, one by one, and then present them on my website as my own fic?

I can't say that sort of thing makes me terribly happy. From my own experience, you can't really know until you go through it, yourself, what it's like to work hard and take pride in something, only to see it later refrenced to someone else, or harshly criticized, or otherwise unappreciated.

What about White Dirty Angel? Are you gonna do that one, too?

Honestly, I don't know. Probably the most challenging part for me has been finding enough translators who are willing to help, which is a near-constant search. Finding enough translators to help out with an entire second game would be hard. That said, White Dirty Angel isn't even released yet, and I'm not quite sure when it will be.

What if you don't finish this translation?

We will finish this translation.

Where can I download the original game/I downloaded the game, but why won't it run?

You mean you somehow managed to find this part of the site, but not this?

Why did you censor the penises in the frames?

Honey, they're censored in the original. I wouldn't know how to blur them out even if for some reason I wanted to.