The Sprawl Trilogy and Baldr Sky

[Anonymous No.3132927]

Greetings /lit/, I come to you seeking help.

I'm currently translating a cyberpunk visual novel (Baldr Sky) that borrows a lot of ideas and concepts from the Sprawl Trilogy, and also features a lot of homages to it. I already know what the references are, but because I haven't actually read the trilogy I need some help in figuring out how certain things are phrased in the novels so I can apply them to my translation.

Would any of you be as kind as to spare me some of your time?

(I apologise if this thread doesn't belong here)

[Anonymous No.3132955]

What kinds of references OP?

I think the Ono-Sendai was a Cyberdeck or 'deck.

[Anonymous No.3133018]

>>3132955
There are throwaway references to Chiba City, Derms, Ono-Sendai and SimStims, just to name a few. Whereas AIs, Singularities, Brain Chips, Neuro-jacks, Flatlining, Arcologies, Black ICE, Avatars and Simulacra etc all form key plot points in the game.

What I'm interested in knowing however is three things.
1) How these terms are used in sentences. Like, for example:
>We normally don't need to physically jack into cyberspace.
>It's dotted with countless icons, and I can see several digital avatars flying in and out of them.
>There's no telling what kind of ICE it has been set up with.
Are these sentences consistent with how the novels use these terms? Are 'digital avatars' even a thing in the trilogy?
2) What is a Simulacrum/Simulacra in Sprawl?
3) Josef Virek's story.

Any help would be much appreciated and no, I don't mind being spoiled on the events in the novels. Thanks in advance!

[Anonymous No.3133131]

bump for interesting thread and because i know gibson gets talked about plenty here

[Anonymous No.3135332]

Someone help this guy, I want to see this.

[Anonymous No.3135453]

oh hey, the resident /jp/sie guy. Honestly speaking, even though I've read the sprawl trilogy this is so vague I can't really help you. Not to mention the fact that I forget half this shit doesn't exactly work well either

Chiba city was just a Japanese city, I think it was featured in the first chapter of Neuromancer. Ono-sendai is a prominent large corporation known for computer manufaturing. Derms are a form of recreational drug induced by patches applied rather than injected. Flat-lining is the term used to refer to brain death while on the internet (I can't remember what they use to call it), due to the "flat" responses of brain waves or something.

>We normally don't need to physically jack into cyberspace.
Works, but don't need to say "physically" because that is assumed
>It's dotted with countless icons, and I can see several digital avatars flying in and out of them.
I can't remember digital avatars, but they basically had the same idea. Gibson was writing at a time where graphics were shit and tended to view the net as a series of multicoloured nodes on a 3D grid.
>There's no telling what kind of ICE it has been set up with.
Consistent. ICE was hacker slang used to refer to defenses on the net which could induce brain-death or something

>2) What is a Simulacrum/Simulacra in Sprawl?
I can't remember this. Give me a context and maybe I'll know a bit more? Sounds like a play on the whole po-mo thing

[Anonymous No.3135459]

>>3135453
>Josef Virek
I can only remember a little of this guy. He was an obscenely wealthy corporate investor who augmented himself so much to prevent aging that the protagonist finds him inhuman. I faintly recollect he might exist in a vat, and have couriers and machines do his work for him. I seem to recollect he was involved in the art trading business, for some reason or other.

Wiki him and you'll get a better description than I ever could

[Vlad the Implyier No.3135485]

>>3133018
>Simulacrum/Simulacra

Should be roughly the same as in Baudrillard. There's probably a wiki article on it.

[Vlad the Implyier No.3135497]

>>3133018
>several digital avatars

Well, I'm not sure whether they would be called digital in the Sprawl series, it's been a while since I read it. Basically, this is also a question of how 80s the thing you are translating is in other respects. To me, 'digital' sounds a little more post-90s than for example 'virtual', but that might be an idiomatic misconception. Just translate the whole thing and post whatever questions you have here, basically I would 'sign off' on all the greentext you have posted so far.

Arcologies are huge buildings that single corporations set up for their employees to work and live in, so it is one huge building complex with housing, work, sports, schools, shops, restaurants, and cinemas, under one roof, for one corporation (potentially they could share one, but that is not the standard case). Neuro-jack is a socket on your skull, into which you plug a cable connecting your brain to the Interwebs (Cyberspace). ICE are intrusion countermeasure electronics or something like that, black ice is the stuff that is lethal. SimStim is simulated stimulus, a form of virtual reality that is more like 100% immersive television, including also smell, taste, tactile sensations and for all I know probably proprioception. The rest has been explained already.

[Anonymous No.3135506]

>>3135497
gimmie five

[Anonymous No.3135522]

To quote Burning Chrome

'Bobby was a cowboy, and ice was the nature of his game, "ice" from ICE, Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics.'

So ice is basically cyber-security.

[Vlad the Implyier No.3135565]

>>3135506
Okay... when I started playing counterstrike, I had just read neuromancer, so my internet name became Flatline (it still is in some places).

[Anonymous No.3135570]

So the Baldr Sky translation isn't dead?

[Anonymous No.3135571]

>>3135570
It's stuck on 'revising Rain scripts' for months now, but it's not quite dead.

[OP No.3135586]

Thanks for the replies, guys. The game is set far, far in the future (talking at least a century here) but from what I can see in this thread the way these terms are explained in the game are more or less the same as how they're used in the books. I just needed confirmation that I was using the terms correctly, and you guys have given me just that.

Again, thanks a ton! I'll come back in case I hit a roadblock somewhere. Here, have A Clockwork Orange.

[Anonymous No.3135590]

>>3135586
You're very welcome. Is making sure terminology use matches up with homaged works part of the revision pass?

[OP No.3135593]

>>3135590
Indeed it is, mainly because most of these terms are used really frequently in the script. Getting them wrong would've been a seriously big fuckup.

[Anonymous No.3135599]

>>3135593
Thank goodness for that, then.
About how far would you say you are with this? Retreading old ground must be quite a drag, and from what I can tell people have gotten a little antsy over looking at a static "Stalled for revisions" for a few months. Last I remember (it's been a while since I've been to /vn/ with IRL catchups to do) a couple of screenshots were posted and you were about halfway through Rain or so?

[Anonymous No.3135609]

>>3135599
I don't really want to give out an exact number because things had been really slow until recently and I don't want to get people's hopes up. I will however tell you that it's entering the later stages, and that we should be good to go in a short while.

[Anonymous No.3135616]

>>3135609
I can understand not wanting to commit to anything concrete like a number. Nevertheless that sounds encouraging.

[Anonymous No.3135620]

>>3135586
I see future graffiti is as tasteless as contemporary graffiti.

[Vlad the Implyier No.3135662]

>>3135586
So... is that the same game? One visual novel (is that the correct term?) that references Clockwork Orange and Neuromancer? That sounds awesome!

[Anonymous No.3135692]

Why don't you just read the books, OP?

[Anonymous No.3135700]

>>3135692
Well, then the translation would go even slower than it already is, and he wouldn't have time to read his Japanese literature.

[Anonymous No.3136064]

>>3135586
Clearly whoever was responsible for the development of the world in-universe was a fan of the books.

[Anonymous No.3136531]

>>3135700
do you always speak about yourself in third person?