I felt bored and tried translating Doki Doki Literature Club, the infamous visual novel, into Malay, though only the prologue for now. Feel free to share your thoughts and provide feedback in the comment section!
One important reminder: I don't plan to complete the full translation for the entire game anytime soon, because I merely view this as an alternative method to improve my Malay writing skills.
In order to determine the writing style in the translation, I took a look at several Malay young adult fiction novels, and decided that the narration should be mostly in the standard formal language with occassional colloquial elements where necessary, and the dialogues in informal Malay that strives to feel as natural as possible.
One major challenge while working on the translation was the pronouns used by each character. I wanted them to reflect their personalities and relationships with other characters, but it wasn't an easy task.
First of all, I let Sayori and Natsuki use "aku" and "kau" since they are more straightforward with their speech. As for Yuri, I made her use "saya" and "awak" to match her refined, timid demeanour.
But I had a hard time trying to decide on how Monika, the club president, speaks. At first, I thought she'd use "aku" and "kamu", since the latter feels more polite than "kau". And yet, after doing some online research it appeared to me that people these days rarely use "kamu" to refer to their peers, and that it's more often used by someone in a superior position to address those who are below them in social hierarchy, like a teacher calling their students or a manager calling their employees.
In the end, I went with a more flexible option: Monika would use "aku" and "kau" when conversing with the other girls, and "saya" and "awak" with the player. I'm currently considering letting her switch to "aku" and "kau" later in the game as she gets closer to the MC. Do you think this a reasonable choice? I'd appreciate your ideas on this.
Regarding the game's UI, I'm thinking of leaving most technical terms untranslated since their Malay equivalents are usually not well-established and would probably sound extremely awkward and confusing to players. This approach may upset certain linguistic purists in this sub, if there is any, but it is a choice I made after hard consideration to sacrifice purism for naturalness and accessibility. I remember watching a Malay gamer play the Upin & Ipin game and remark "Takkan benda ni pun nak translate, macam mana nak paham ni" when he adjusted the language settings to Malay and saw the UI filled with unfamiliar terminology. Nevertheless, there are some words whose Malay translations I feel are popular and widespread enough to be included naturally in the game, like "muat turun."