Type-Moon Wiki: What's their deal?

[Petrikow]

Though the "Universe" (宇宙, Uchū?) permits the birth of unlimited possibilities, countless Adjacent Worlds, and divergent developments of history, as the unrestricted propagation of this process would quickly exhaust the Universe's lifespan, those extraneous

Routes

Worlds

(世界ルート, sekairūto?) removed of the category of "timelines characterized by strength and stability" are periodically culled (伐採, basai?) by the existence known as the World (世界という者, Sekai to Iu Mono?, lit. "the thing called the World")[2] so as to prevent the needless expenditure of energy.[1] The facilitation of this process is referred to as the Conservation of Phenomena (事象保存, Jijō Hozon?), effected by way of a heuristic audits (集計, Shukei?) of cumulative timeline survivability (進むと可能性, susumu to kanōsei?, lit. "prospects and potential")—judging the persistence of a timeline's

Branching Potential

Parallel Worlds

(平行世界かのうせい, heikō sekaikanōsei?) across the subsequent century.

Okay, so at first I thought I was just experiencing some kind of illness induced hallucination, because how the hell does "prospects and potential" derive from 進むと可能性? Regardless, I needed to investigate the actual wiki and the helpful little source indicator they've got there. So the paragraph in question where "prospects and potential" comes up is (according to TM Wikia) this:

理屈は簡単だ。世界という者はある程度進むと可能性の統計をとり、
「次の時代の運営」に無理のない結末だけを存続させる。

And the principle behind it is simple.To a certain extent, the existence known as the World (世界という者, Sekai to Iu Mono?, lit. "the thing called the World") conducts a heuristic analysis (統計, tōkei?) of timeline survivability (進むと可能性, susumu to kanōsei?, lit. "prospects and potential"), preserving only those Outcomes wherein "the operation of the subsequent era" (次の時代の運営, Tsugi no Jidai no Unei?) isn't impossible.

So before I even start to analyze this, I spotted something funny. There's a transcription error: もの (thing) has been rendered as 者 (person). Oh, and the normal western "" style quotes have been turned into brackets. This isn't really a big deal (者 is a valid reading of もの so the transcriptor probably clicked space one too many times and never fixed it), but I suppose it's why there's this weird emphasis on "the existence known as the World"? (for the record, how it's written in-game can be seen here)

So anyway, what's going on with the text?

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"And the principle behind it is simple."

No problems here.

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"To a certain extent, the existence known as the World (世界という者, Sekai to Iu Mono?, lit. "the thing called the World") conducts a heuristic analysis (統計, tōkei?) of timeline survivability (進むと可能性, susumu to kanōsei?, lit. "prospects and potential"),"

Now here is where the weirdness begins, because the translator has for whatever reason interpreted the と here as being the 'noun-combiner' aspect of と (basically, like 'and' in English, as you can see). This, apparently makes 進む mean 'prospect'? Nevermind that, 'literally' speaking, 進む would never ever mean 'prospect'. Also, 可能性 'literally' means 'possibility', but I guess I'll be kind and consider 'potential' close enough.
Maybe the alliteration was too tempting to pass up? I get it, I get it. Even weirder, is that apparently this mean "timeline survivability", which is just some kind of non-sequitur. I've got enough headaches with my fever, so trying to reverse-engineer how this mistaken translation was born is currently beyond my capabilities.

Then there's the part with the heuristic analysis, which also sort of baffles me. "Heuristic analysis" is a technique used in programming to detect computer viruses. It essentially tries to deconstruct and analyse files so it can evaluate whether it is harmful to the machine or not. Anyway, what does this have to do with this infodump? Absolutely nothing. 統計 just means statistics. And hey, why didn't this one get a 'literal' translation in parenthesis?! I could go more into it if anyone wants, but statistics, probability, aggregates (rendered by this translator as heuristic audits), etc, are basically big themes when it comes to Fate's parallel world theory. This is for example why 事象 is used so much (such as in Pruned Event) to describe parallel worlds; they're using them in the probabilistic sense. What, did you think it was a coincidence that EXTELLA with Archimedes was what introduced this to us?

As for what this part of the sentence actually means, it's something like "Whenever the world advances by a certain degree, it collects statistics on its possibilities..." Essentially, what the と does is act as a conditional instead of as a 'noun-combiner'. If you're curious you can find information about this usage on imabi for free as part of its intermediate course.

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"preserving only those Outcomes wherein "the operation of the subsequent era" (次の時代の運営, Tsugi no Jidai no Unei?) isn't impossible."

This one isn't as interesting, but aside from the random capitalization on 'outcome' (wow, we're back on topic!), it's not too problematic. I suppose if I had to be a harsh teacher, I'd point out that 無理のない doesn't mean "[not] impossible", but more along the lines of "does not overly burden" or what not. To the translator's credit, this isn't a particularly big deal, because the point gets mostly across regardless. The point of this distinction is simply that it's not so much "impossible" for the world to preserve these timelines, so much as they would overly strain it.

So if I had to translate it... "preserving only the outcomes which do not overly burden the operation of the subsequent era."

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3/10. That's my final grade. See me after class.
Hopefully whoever it may have been that translated it has learned from this experience in the intervening years, because I wouldn't want something this amateur displayed for the whole world on the TM wikia.

[Nanaya]

They put up translations errors and their own interpretation of badly translated phrases up on the wiki or just their headcanon and don't let anyone else remove it, you tell me if it's bad or not.

I fondly remember months and months passing as I wondered when they would realize Shiki uses an out the front switchblade and would finally replace the image they had of SHIKI-Roa's knife.

[kirien]

Imagine thinking you know more than the people writing the wiki?

Anyone can write wiki though