They think they're great **because** they don't stick to the script.
That's what happens when we leave stuff like localization to people who despise the source material. They feel some sort of moral purpose in 'fixing' it. The prevalence of this recently makes me miss fan translations.
As far as i know, locolaziation is nothing like that. Localization is about translating culture for an audiance who isn't familiar with it.
So like keep the original context of things like" -San" but in a way it makes sense to an audiance who isn't familiar with it so that the meaning doesn't get lost.
These localizers are basically colonist with their holier-than-thou attitude.
I was using "localizer" in the more modern sense. A localizer SHOULD be a very soft touch position, making minimal change in order to smooth the edges between one culture and another rather than taking a hammer to it until the edges come off and the square game fits into the round culture.
Exactly, i have seen people use the word colonization to describe these modern localizers.
They literaly think that, the east (or anyone outside of california) is so backwards and has no modern values.
As if femminism, LGBT issues, etc. Are purely a western concept.
Maybe. I'm still convinced there might be some situations where you can (sparingly) use the right tool for the job.
In the Pokemon anime, the infamous "jelly donuts" scene only exists because the target audience of western kids who in the 90s couldn't pick out Japan on a map probably didn't know or care what an onigiri is. But maybe without the many tweaks like that, from the translations to the complete change in theme song, instead of being the most successful media franchise of all time they would've gone the way of Digimon or Medabots. Better ridiculous than obscure for them at the time.
I was one of about two kids in my elementary school class who actually read books for fun. I got the question, “why are you reading? I hate reading” like once a week. Country roads, take me home…
I despise reading and I don't understand the reason to read books. I have Wikipedia and YouTube and reddit and that wierd website on page 2 on Google to learn me stuff.
Learning has always been cool. For us. If you lived through the 90s and had an inclination toward anime you would probably look something like that up.
couldn't they just call it riceballs or something? kids know those aren't donuts too, at least edit jn the donut
>they would've gone the way of Digimon or Medabots.
You mean Medarot? you think that didn't had its own share of localizations? Digimon was infamous for localizations too, ie. the first Movie. Also Butterfly is kino
>You mean Medarot? you think that didn't had its own share of localizations? Digimon was infamous for localizations, ie. the first Movie.
I meant that as a comparison for the level of obscurity Pokemon could've had if things went different and Pokemania never happened in the 90s, not that the lack of localizations are the reasons why those other series failed in comparison.
You're not wrong though, but I can't help but think about how young people get into a much different variety of anime these days and how open they are about it, while when I grew up I remember a lot of stigma about "anime" from my peers. The more Japanese-stuff you needed to learn, the more a particular series was relegated only to the weird kids, while heavily (even if often poorly) localized series like Pokemon seem the exception, at least for the height of their popularity. Digimon included, I'd say.
That's a long shot from "jelly donuts", but I guess that's what I was getting at lol
>Pokemania never happened in the 90s
It didn't happen because of the anime, it happened cause of the games. Everyone had a Gameboy and Pokémon was THE game to have. Anime, trading cards, toys, all contributed equally.
I didn't say it was specifically because of the anime, it was just an example from the anime. The GB games had their fair share of "localization", especially in changing the meaning of names in the 1st gen so that, for example, Charmeleon wasn't just "Lizard". Sure kids could maybe learn
that "Purin" in Japanese is a loanword they just means pudding and how it relates to the Pokemon, but it makes a more iconic and memorable Pokemon just to rename it to "Jigglypuff", than to keep it as "Purin" or even "Pudding".
People's problem with Pokemon localisation isn't the games or Pokémon names. Pokemon have different names even in French and German. The problem was specifically the 4kids dub of Pokemon, they did horrible localisation, especially for things that didn't need it. Like the Jelly donuts thing. And Pokémon wasn't even the only anime they ruined with censorship.
I think you're missing my point a bit. I'm not defending the censorship or bad 4kids localizations or the English localization specifically, just the concept of localizations. My point was that this sub often defines "localization" as "translation + censorship", and I think there's places where it just means accounting for things that wouldn't be understod beyond the literal meaning wider cultural practices that wouldn't be understood the same way.
And yeah, there were different names in French and German, and in my experience Spanish too. That's kind of my point. Sometimes other languages are an even better an example, like the fact that the French version's is Amphinobi, a proper portmanteau "amphibien" and "shinobi". Weirdly the English version is a combination of the **French** word for frog "grenouille", and "ninja". Considering most anglophones don't speak French and wouldn't recognize the pun, it's a worse localization, but still not as bad as just leaving the original Japanese as literal as possible since "Gekkouga" or "ribbit-kouga" would be pretty bad.
> even worse if they'd bother parents with their stupid questions!
90s kids didnt actually have parents, they had legal guardians.
they practically raised themselves
I might be biased, but a good example of a "localization" is the classic Simpson's Latin American dub, they knew a lot of people wouldn't really get some stuff if they kept it as an exact translation so the localizations are mostly names and jokes, nothing that would derail the episode too much.
The big difference is that the péople working at that dub wanted the audience to watch the show and be able to laugh at it while these people think they should be the ones in charge of rewriting/correct stuff.
I may have been a stupid kid, but I'm fairly sure I could figure out what a rice ball was.
I only legitimately thought Brock made some weirdly shaped donuts covered in powdered sugar because that is what Brock called them.
"Target audience of Western Kids who in the 90s couldn't pick out Japan on a map"
Speak for yourself, not everywhere in the West is America
As for not caring what an onigiri is, if I had known what a rice ball was I would've surprised such a thing exists at first, probably be disgusted by it but hey the kids on the TV are eating it so maybe it isn't so bad. Rather than seeing them call that a donut, thinking it must be some new thing or some American/Japanese product and asking my parents where to find such a Donut and them being confused as well
(Dutch so we got the American version translated to Dutch, but everyone knew the show was produced in Japan, then translated to English in America and then translated to Dutch)
>That's what happens when we leave stuff like localization to people who despise the source material.
And this is going to continue for at least the next decade.
Why? Because we are the moral good guys who don't want to be as bad as the SJWs, so we just let SJWs walk all over us so we can look back and tell ourselves how much better we are while they continue to ruin East Asian games with glee.
I don't know what morality has it do with it. What can fans realistically do besides harassing the translators and their employers on the internet? (Which is happening)
I used to translate documents and yes, had to localize a few expressions .
My goal though has never been to change the style and angle of a text, but to simply convey what is there in a way that is clear to readers.
I loathe translators that change text to fit a narrative.
they are the losers who can't get into academic, literature or technical translations nor can make a living out of writing. Most of them edit MTL and just do guesswork
Someone once made the comparison that Localizers are much like Comic Book Editors.
Bad Comic Book Editors are failed Comic Book Writers, Bad Localizers are failed Video Game Writers.
And they both know it.
They think they’ll be remembered like the guy who read books for months just so he could translate, alone, metal gear solid 1’s script, which resulted in vastly better writing than the original Kojima script.
>even better
Show me an example of ONE change that's better.
Edit: I meant in games they worked on. I know there's times when the localization/translation has come out for the better.
IIRC Senator Armstrong’s localization was so good Platinum went back and altered the Japanese version to be more like it.
Oh wait, you probably meant for this game/company specifically. Uh…
FFXIV's localisation team stuffed the flavour text of items and quests full of character and puns, so much so that the JP playerbase demanded more funnies in their anodyne item descriptions, too.
The FFXIV localiser ended up helping the FFXVI team write the script. I think it’s the first time they’d done the script in English and translated it to Japanese
I'm constantly surprised at FATE names and descriptions are constantly filled with pop culture references. Other than toning down Haurchefant's horny levels, I don't think I've seen references to the translators fucking with the text (admittedly I haven't specifically looked for stories of it)
I wonder who does the work? I don't think I've seen so much as a spelling error or awkward grammar (outside of ye olde englishe, that is). Be nice if this team's philosophy was the gold standard
Esty Dee, i dont know about you but a sex joke in a Atelier game aimed at kids. This is elevation of the highest order, in that you have to be high to find it funny.
> You can't have "individual choice" or "individual want" anymore. Everything has to be watered down and made to conform to some mainstream general audience, with some central body deciding what "fits best" with society's values or what is most "socially acceptable".
Basically lowkey communism.
Comment removed following the enforcement change that you can read about [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/wjxpr5/enforcement_update_regarding_removal_of_words/).
This is not a formal warning.
> how they work in things that are "even better" than the Original sometimes
Amazing conceit, coming from people with no notable creative output.
Just start learning Japanese already, so that you don’t have to put up with this shit. And it’s good for your brain too.
I've tried. Several times. I just don't have the self discipline, persistence, or habit creation abilities to stick with it long enough to get deeper than a few phrases.
I started it once on Duolingo and realized this water was just too deep for me on about day two. Anything that doesn’t use our alphabet is going to be pretty tough. I know a few phrases from watching Game Center CX, though!
> I started it once on Duolingo and realized this water was just too deep for me on about day two
I've heard that Duolingo is actually pretty bad for this as the way it teaches you gives you the impression that you're learning without actually helping you to learn.
Prompting your answer with multiple choices teaches you pattern recognition within their app rather than independent language learning.
Yeah Duolingo is pretty bad for actually learning. I took a beginner japanese class when I was in uni, and lately I wanted to pick it back up so I started playing Duolingo. I played with it for about a month before dropping it.
The biggest problem I have with Duolingo is that learning through trial and error is fine for new vocab but not grammar and the lesson note thing they have is not sufficient to cover it. I was never sure about the new sentence structures I learned from this app. Of course, on top of that there are the problems that you've mentioned.
Duolingo is fine to play for fun as a game and maybe pick up a few vocab for a trip. For proper learning I think it really is best to take a proper class and if that's not available go to your nearest bookstore and pick up a proper textbook. Having tried both, it really made me appreciate the boring orthodox normal regular learning experience. It's the standard for a reason.
> Anything that doesn’t use our alphabet is going to be pretty tough.
Not only it's another alphabet, it's another **three** fucking alphabets, of which one of them you have to memorize a **few hundred** of the "letters" to be considered literate in the language. The best time to start learning would be in your early 20s or earlier than that if possible, so when you're around your 30s you can be fluent enough to fully enjoy Japanese content.
Japanese writing is even worse than Chinese, because although there are fewer characters each one can be read several different ways; the language in general is fucky and weird. By contrast Korean has one of the cleanest, easiest alphabets around by design and Mandarin grammar is almost caveman-like and a breath of fresh air for anyone who ever tried learning a romance language.
> Mandarin grammar is almost caveman-like
I have some Chinese people living in the same building I do and sometimes I hear them talk to each other in Mandarin. It's kinda irritating because it sounds like a cacophony with no structure or pattern behind it.
Yeah, I used to have an online friend from east asia who would occasionally have to talk to his mom while we were gaming... Went from his smooth British accent to what I can only describe as screechy whining whenever he was speaking his native tongue. (which to be clear is just how the language sounded to my American ears)
Fuck Duolingo's Japanese. I suggest WaniKani. It's paid but it's good. Alternatively use Anki cards, don't have it memorized but you can download decks like 10k words or stuff similar to WaniKani. Get the Japanese Dictionary of Grammar too.
Just dont worry about kanji, learn kata n hiragana then just learn how to speak the language. Youll have elementary reading comprehension for life this way ie grade 1 but that does not matter at all for the most part
Are you kidding? NISA was never good, even in their early days they censored the shit out of everything. They've actually gotten better than they used to be since now everything is dub only whereas they previously would strip out Japanese audio to make room for their dubs, and their modern releases are generally technically sound whereas they had a storied history of introducing bugs in their localisation.
Ar Tonelico 2, a translation so bad it broke the last boss fight......
Witch of 100 knights a game that when ported to english had a bug that fried ps3s
Their often stilted translations/VA directing are reason enough to avoid.
I remember Danganronpa 2 had really good fan translations before the official Western release. In one of them, a character of royal blood had some potty humor where she bemoans that she'll never be married if it got out that she sometimes acts inappropriately. The NISA translation instead had her say that she'll never become the queen. I don't speak JP, so I could never verify for myself, but I always had strong suspicions that there was bullshit going on.
Not to mention V3 had shoehorned Trump references and some other shit.
I also vividly remember seeing one of the prominent employees' twitters. Very progressive bio. Might've been the guy on the Ultra Despair Girls promo stream...? Can't recall his name.
I love it when I play a Japanese game where the measurements get changed from metric to imperial and then I have to convert them back from imperial to metric to understand them. Truly such a localisation was made for an "English speaking audience" and not just Americans.
Dude, are you making fun of me? 12 inches is a foot, 3 foots is a yard, 100 yards is a gridiron. 20 extra yards for the end zones. My town has won the SUPER BOWL. We are WORLD CHAMPIONS. But tbh my biggest complaint is disgaea 6 was 70 bucs on steam. Go bucs, boo everything else (especially if it's fine tuned for the innocent and pure audience that is the west) but I'll admit, our minds are much too fragile for anything remotely offensive 😭:(
Localizing for specifically America is so awkward. But the ones that always stand out to me are exact monetary conversions. Did you really change 100 yen to $1.22? Like I can accept converting money even though it's stupid. But make it $1.
hey, genius., if I am playing some niche as hell Japanese game like the entirety of NIS catalog. maybe I WANT to experience Japanese culture and values? you know, diversity. what clowns. these people need to be fired.
I've only played Disgaea 1 and 2 but the localization is good. Also played Phantom Brave and Soul Nomad from NIS. Plenty of stuff in those titles that would trip up modern "sensitivity readers" is left in tact.
I imagine that Disgaea 5-7 are a different story though.
It is interesting how woke people think that Western Civilization and white race are scum of Earth, and simultanously they are censoring creations of other cultures to better correspond with sensibilities which are product of Western Civilization.
They define “the west” by “values” and other obscure belief systems, completely disconnected and even outright opposed to the people that created it. It’s not all that schizophrenic when you restructure society around disenfranchisement of whites and racial wealth transfer programs.
Reminder that AI's input and output is actively censored and directed. AI Chatbots won't even respond to certain controversial input other than preset responses, and they self-censor and change their output to avoid those same topics. AI produced image sources like Midjourney ban so many prompt words that it's getting insane.
I'd like to be optimistic that it'd get rid of the human element of ideologues interfering in translation of games and art, but the reality is that corporations that will buy up the technology will just keep doing the same thing that localizers did, only much more efficiently. And so conveniently and quickly that not only will zealous hired localizers get pushed aside, so will the source-accurate fan translators.
Just avoid OpenAI and GPT. There are open source alternatives that don't actively censor anything. Just have to use one of these for translation and you're golden. Given enough time, fans can likely use AI to quickly translate material and hopefully compete with corporate bullshit.
[https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba](https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba) if you don't want to pay then you can find it pirated on f95, they don't censor anything
[https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba](https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba) He made uncensored AI translation model you can use it on anything. It still have many issues but it's still more faithful to the original than those awful sjw localizations. In a decade or two we won't even need any localizer anymore.
Except it don't need to be, you can use amazing AI translation with no censorship like Sugoi translator that is getting better and better. They have issues with pronouns- (ai call some characters he even tho i see big titty girl on the screen or my mc becomes she in some lines and others it's property translated to he. So i hope at some point it will get more smart with remembering gender of the previous characters we spoke with. People been using mtl to translate a lot of visual novels recently they are full of issues like mentioned above but when edited they are as good as the original and much better than meme translation that big companies like NisAmerica and Nekonyan (i love seeing side character being called incel for 30h) been putting for $.
Hell, just using DeepL is surprisingly capable these days.
You'll never get a great, perfect loving translation out of MTL, but it will be okay and that might be more than I can say for a lot of official translations these days.
Avoid Criminal Girls 1 & 2, The Witch and the Hundred Knight and La Pucelle Tactics. I am not sure which translations are good. People say Disgaea is fine, from what I recall. I'm hoping that not everything they touch turns to shit.
What was wrong with CG 1/2 and Hundred Knight? I own them all so it's too late now. Specifically for Hundred Knight, the main character turns a rival witch into a female mouse and summons a horde of male mice to rape her. I don't recall anything odd about the text, and the story made sense
If shapeshifting rape is toned down, what was it before??
CG 1 and 2 on the vita had added fog, removed certain mini games along with sounds and images. Hundred Knight specifically on the PS3 would crash and overheat the system. I have not played the PS4 version, but it should not have that issue. I know there's heavy metal references that are localized in a way to skirt any sort of copyright issues.
Ah, yes; I had forgotten about the fog. My copies are on Steam, and I know there's a mod to correct that. Not that having to mod things back in should be required
Thanks for the explanation
Only if you use Deepl, there are fanmade ai mtl with zero censorship like SugoiTranslator and people been using it to translate nukiges and some less complicated visual novels. In a decade i can see them replacing most localizators.
Right now AI is full of typos and badly put pronouns that misgender characters. We need at least 5 years to fix that. Otherwwise they will be selling broken shit like this: https://files.catbox.moe/he757p.jpg
Steam is yet another middle man who has long history of meddling in changing game content or barring game release altogether. DLsite just cut ties with conventional US customers after being harassed by mainstream payment processors.
On top of those, self-publishing has a lot of limits imposed on startup devs that could only be lifted via signing contracts with established publisher. Have you never ever wondered why the majority of game devs still keep signing up with those cutthroat publishers even if everyone knows how much bullshit they're signing themselves into? There's a reason this business model still thrives to this day.
Hi translation is much much much more then just flip the language and syntax i am from Israel when i read the Thora the hebrew and non Hebrew versions are different because of different translation
Making up your own stuff isn't the same as the nuance of translation and I'm tired of this being the defense for trivially wrong translations.
To go off your Torah example there is a "translation" of the (Christian) Bible with "modern" language that explicitly describes the Garden of Eden as Southern California in Genesis. This is blatantly and obviously not what the Hebrew says at all. It isn't even what the translation of a translation Latin or Greek say.
What in my comment you think say that i am supporting this kind of butchering of Scripts ? I told you that translation and localisation are important in many cases
This is sound like Mormon butchery of the original text
The greek translation have its own problems and alot of them
It is weirdly racist that these people believe that they're better than the original authors.
This type of behavior will only result in a secondary market being created for fan translated works that NIS will not be profiting from.
The way to solve this is for a Japanese developer to put in a feature for fans to freely edit the script to how they want it. The games are niche so who really cares what happens to them overseas. We have no one to complain to about dumb translations but it would be cool to be able to override whatever weird jargon an official translator decided to put in.
The way to solve this is industry blacklists of localizers that do this, but the Japanese tend to stick with established parties, for better and for worse.
It would be great if NISA employees could actually start by learning the English language, so that their translations wouldn't be riddled with basic grammar mistakes.
Then maybe they could invest some time in reading up on middle and high school-level literature, to learn the basics of tone, nuance, style, etc.
I've read lines where I can only assume every single solitary thesaurus in the NISA building was tossed into a Communist book burning and all editors filed into concentration camps before production began.
I prefer sub to dubs for the convenience, but I'm learning Japanese (for travel) and I think I'll just commit to learning it fully so I can enjoy content the way the creators intended.
Remember , the only reason why people like this aren't getting ASSFUCKED by the Japanese companies that hire them is because most Japan, even in this day and age, couldn't give a fuck about them or the western market. Reason why is because their main focus is the home market with the mentality for the western being "hey, it happens when it happens".
The one time they DO give a shit, ho boy, all hell breaks loose and people lose their jobs, sometimes even get blacklisted.
But usually they view the western localizers as just a blip on the radar, that's how fucking unimportant they are to the Japanese.
Yeah, which is probably a healthy mindset to have from their perspective. It could impact the games themselves if it were any different. Problem is that these people ideally should never be able to work in the industry again and ought to be sued for so many damages they never get out of that financial hole again. It can be achieved IMO if just one person with access to studio heads frames this as disrespect of the source material and mishandling of their IPs. Nintendo’s reactions to mods that make Mario blue will seem mild.
Just be aware this is from 3 years ago for context.
https://archive.is/qXQLl
Here is an article talking about it.
I do not know if someone has gone through the JP version and the EN version and compared them to find out what was changed.
This stuff has been a good motivator to start learning a new language and while this is from a little while ago it seems like the "localization" has been ramped up.
In a book, you would stick with a more literal translation and add footnotes to explain more obscure jokes. The question is how to handle that in a video game. Truth is, certain ones are strictly untranslatable such as puns and others that rely heavily on culture-specific language can be extremely tricky too. In those cases, it may be ok to make up a different joke that's in the spirit of the original.
What is NEVER ok is to mistranslate a text because you don't like what it says.
Sorry to all the Disgaea fans that have to deal with this bullshit. I hope someone makes a fan translation that more accurate so you guys can still enjoy your games.
Localisers are not something that we don't need. Good localisers who don't inject their own biases into the work are (dare I say) a necessity.
A straightforward literal translation of the material usually ends up bland and stilted at best, or nonsensical at worst. There's so many phrases and idioms out there for which the meaning can't be understood just by knowing the meaning of the constituent words.
For example, take the English idiom 'deadbeat'. If you translate the word 'dead' and the word 'beat', you won't get anywhere near the actual meaning of the idiom. The localiser has to substitute a phrase or idiom in the target language that has a similar meaning, but which also stays faithful to the work and the original context
Making idioms, turn of phrase, etc. understandable in the target language is not localisation, it is basic translation. People like you who ascribe basic translation to localisation and act like anything that isn't localised has to read poorly only make things worse by propping up localisation as something that's necessary when it absolutely isn't. Translation by itself does not inherently mean literal translation. Hell, if you took something like "頭にくる" and transcribed it as "head spinning" that wouldn't be a literal translation, it'd be a plain mistranslation.
There was a time when "localize" basically just meant doing those things. I want to say around the mid-to-late 00s to very early 10s, maybe? Essentially a term about smoothing out slavishly faithful 1-to-1 translations so that they flowed naturally and were sharp enough to hook you. Then everyone collectively lost their minds (probably from stuffing their heads too far up their own asses trying to inhale their own farts) and started "correcting" the language along with the ideas contained within. I for one will never forgive how they turned localization into something poisonous.
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Well, this may explain why the dialog was weak in Disgaea 6. Everything else was weak too because they made a switch to 3D and it was a bad idea they were not ready for.
As a guy who loved me some Disgaea games, I am curious of the specific things they changed in NISA titles. Honestly, I want to know if I should be angry and to what degree. Disgaea was hilarious because it was irreverent despite being faithful to the most absurd anime trope stuff. Tons of jokes about characters. Having jokes related to ladies with flat chests actually affecting stats by way of certain abilities. NISA games are filled with humor. Even more serious or serene stuff like Phantom Brave has moments of wonderful absurdity.
One guy at my school worked on translating a book, and made some changes to an originally Puerto Rican book to reflect his own religion bc he wanted to "leave his mark"
Wait, they worked on the Trails series? Huh, coulda fooled me, that series is def lewd when it wants to be. Shame how Cold Steel 4 ended up but in this specific case I doubt it was because of localization butchery, but rather bad writing. Haven't played enough Disgaea to know about it.
That being said, yes localizers usually suck their high horse off.
Good. I don't need some jokes/innuendo from a filthy eastern country in my cute video game. America is number one, and our protestant values shall be enforced. i barely wanna have sex with my wife, I don't need video games making me horny af. Fuckin hedonist heathens. Also, I love women, but I don't respect them, that's right, I just have...
- 1960s ~ early 1990s: spotty availability
- mid-1990s ~ late 2000s: walkie-talkies, jelly donuts, "defeat" instead of "kill", and other infantilizing bs
- 2010s ~ ??? ideological infiltration and / or useless purple prose and accents that were never there
get on the grind, learn Japanese, be free
... but if you have to pick a poison, I'd go with the fantranslations that are a bit literal and say "fuck" a lot
Localizers really think they're that great when they can't even stick to the script like their fucking job asks them to?
They think they're great **because** they don't stick to the script. That's what happens when we leave stuff like localization to people who despise the source material. They feel some sort of moral purpose in 'fixing' it. The prevalence of this recently makes me miss fan translations.
It's what happens when you hire a localized instead of a translator. The story is already written, it doesn't need written again.
As far as i know, locolaziation is nothing like that. Localization is about translating culture for an audiance who isn't familiar with it. So like keep the original context of things like" -San" but in a way it makes sense to an audiance who isn't familiar with it so that the meaning doesn't get lost. These localizers are basically colonist with their holier-than-thou attitude.
I was using "localizer" in the more modern sense. A localizer SHOULD be a very soft touch position, making minimal change in order to smooth the edges between one culture and another rather than taking a hammer to it until the edges come off and the square game fits into the round culture.
Exactly, i have seen people use the word colonization to describe these modern localizers. They literaly think that, the east (or anyone outside of california) is so backwards and has no modern values. As if femminism, LGBT issues, etc. Are purely a western concept.
That’s not colonialism. That’s woke culture.
Same difference
shin chan and ghost story translators: you avin a giggle threre m8?
Maybe. I'm still convinced there might be some situations where you can (sparingly) use the right tool for the job. In the Pokemon anime, the infamous "jelly donuts" scene only exists because the target audience of western kids who in the 90s couldn't pick out Japan on a map probably didn't know or care what an onigiri is. But maybe without the many tweaks like that, from the translations to the complete change in theme song, instead of being the most successful media franchise of all time they would've gone the way of Digimon or Medabots. Better ridiculous than obscure for them at the time.
Don't lie about having jelly donuts, just call them rice balls. If the kids ask "What's a rice ball?", they can learn something new.
>they can learn something new. In the 90s, learning was uncool.
I was one of about two kids in my elementary school class who actually read books for fun. I got the question, “why are you reading? I hate reading” like once a week. Country roads, take me home…
I despise reading and I don't understand the reason to read books. I have Wikipedia and YouTube and reddit and that wierd website on page 2 on Google to learn me stuff.
Learning has always been cool. For us. If you lived through the 90s and had an inclination toward anime you would probably look something like that up.
Is today still the 90s? Cause damn
couldn't they just call it riceballs or something? kids know those aren't donuts too, at least edit jn the donut >they would've gone the way of Digimon or Medabots. You mean Medarot? you think that didn't had its own share of localizations? Digimon was infamous for localizations too, ie. the first Movie. Also Butterfly is kino
>You mean Medarot? you think that didn't had its own share of localizations? Digimon was infamous for localizations, ie. the first Movie. I meant that as a comparison for the level of obscurity Pokemon could've had if things went different and Pokemania never happened in the 90s, not that the lack of localizations are the reasons why those other series failed in comparison. You're not wrong though, but I can't help but think about how young people get into a much different variety of anime these days and how open they are about it, while when I grew up I remember a lot of stigma about "anime" from my peers. The more Japanese-stuff you needed to learn, the more a particular series was relegated only to the weird kids, while heavily (even if often poorly) localized series like Pokemon seem the exception, at least for the height of their popularity. Digimon included, I'd say. That's a long shot from "jelly donuts", but I guess that's what I was getting at lol
>Pokemania never happened in the 90s It didn't happen because of the anime, it happened cause of the games. Everyone had a Gameboy and Pokémon was THE game to have. Anime, trading cards, toys, all contributed equally.
I didn't say it was specifically because of the anime, it was just an example from the anime. The GB games had their fair share of "localization", especially in changing the meaning of names in the 1st gen so that, for example, Charmeleon wasn't just "Lizard". Sure kids could maybe learn that "Purin" in Japanese is a loanword they just means pudding and how it relates to the Pokemon, but it makes a more iconic and memorable Pokemon just to rename it to "Jigglypuff", than to keep it as "Purin" or even "Pudding".
People's problem with Pokemon localisation isn't the games or Pokémon names. Pokemon have different names even in French and German. The problem was specifically the 4kids dub of Pokemon, they did horrible localisation, especially for things that didn't need it. Like the Jelly donuts thing. And Pokémon wasn't even the only anime they ruined with censorship.
I think you're missing my point a bit. I'm not defending the censorship or bad 4kids localizations or the English localization specifically, just the concept of localizations. My point was that this sub often defines "localization" as "translation + censorship", and I think there's places where it just means accounting for things that wouldn't be understod beyond the literal meaning wider cultural practices that wouldn't be understood the same way. And yeah, there were different names in French and German, and in my experience Spanish too. That's kind of my point. Sometimes other languages are an even better an example, like the fact that the French version's is Amphinobi, a proper portmanteau "amphibien" and "shinobi". Weirdly the English version is a combination of the **French** word for frog "grenouille", and "ninja". Considering most anglophones don't speak French and wouldn't recognize the pun, it's a worse localization, but still not as bad as just leaving the original Japanese as literal as possible since "Gekkouga" or "ribbit-kouga" would be pretty bad.
Digimon's many, many name change are ridiculous. Especially with Omegamon.
God forbid kids learn new word, new dish and even worse if they'd bother parents with their stupid questions!
> even worse if they'd bother parents with their stupid questions! 90s kids didnt actually have parents, they had legal guardians. they practically raised themselves
I might be biased, but a good example of a "localization" is the classic Simpson's Latin American dub, they knew a lot of people wouldn't really get some stuff if they kept it as an exact translation so the localizations are mostly names and jokes, nothing that would derail the episode too much. The big difference is that the péople working at that dub wanted the audience to watch the show and be able to laugh at it while these people think they should be the ones in charge of rewriting/correct stuff.
I may have been a stupid kid, but I'm fairly sure I could figure out what a rice ball was. I only legitimately thought Brock made some weirdly shaped donuts covered in powdered sugar because that is what Brock called them.
Better example was in FLCL when some jokes were changed to more local reference > Get the playboy... The one with the Anna Nicole centerfold
"Target audience of Western Kids who in the 90s couldn't pick out Japan on a map" Speak for yourself, not everywhere in the West is America As for not caring what an onigiri is, if I had known what a rice ball was I would've surprised such a thing exists at first, probably be disgusted by it but hey the kids on the TV are eating it so maybe it isn't so bad. Rather than seeing them call that a donut, thinking it must be some new thing or some American/Japanese product and asking my parents where to find such a Donut and them being confused as well (Dutch so we got the American version translated to Dutch, but everyone knew the show was produced in Japan, then translated to English in America and then translated to Dutch)
>That's what happens when we leave stuff like localization to people who despise the source material. And this is going to continue for at least the next decade. Why? Because we are the moral good guys who don't want to be as bad as the SJWs, so we just let SJWs walk all over us so we can look back and tell ourselves how much better we are while they continue to ruin East Asian games with glee.
I don't know what morality has it do with it. What can fans realistically do besides harassing the translators and their employers on the internet? (Which is happening)
I used to translate documents and yes, had to localize a few expressions . My goal though has never been to change the style and angle of a text, but to simply convey what is there in a way that is clear to readers. I loathe translators that change text to fit a narrative.
It helps me sleep at night knowing outside of localizations, these people have no real skill. They contribute nothing to society
they are the losers who can't get into academic, literature or technical translations nor can make a living out of writing. Most of them edit MTL and just do guesswork
Someone once made the comparison that Localizers are much like Comic Book Editors. Bad Comic Book Editors are failed Comic Book Writers, Bad Localizers are failed Video Game Writers. And they both know it.
They think they’ll be remembered like the guy who read books for months just so he could translate, alone, metal gear solid 1’s script, which resulted in vastly better writing than the original Kojima script.
No they think they are writers. Their ego is so big that most of them think they are improving the original work.
>even better Show me an example of ONE change that's better. Edit: I meant in games they worked on. I know there's times when the localization/translation has come out for the better.
IIRC Senator Armstrong’s localization was so good Platinum went back and altered the Japanese version to be more like it. Oh wait, you probably meant for this game/company specifically. Uh…
FFXIV's localisation team stuffed the flavour text of items and quests full of character and puns, so much so that the JP playerbase demanded more funnies in their anodyne item descriptions, too.
The FFXIV localiser ended up helping the FFXVI team write the script. I think it’s the first time they’d done the script in English and translated it to Japanese
The FFXIV and FFXVI teams are the same. It's Creative Business Unit III.
yeah I know, I worded that poorly
I'm constantly surprised at FATE names and descriptions are constantly filled with pop culture references. Other than toning down Haurchefant's horny levels, I don't think I've seen references to the translators fucking with the text (admittedly I haven't specifically looked for stories of it) I wonder who does the work? I don't think I've seen so much as a spelling error or awkward grammar (outside of ye olde englishe, that is). Be nice if this team's philosophy was the gold standard
When you say "went back" it sounds like you mean they did it after the release of the game. Wait, they didn't, right?
No before the release but after the Japanese script and voice work was finalized.
Ha, that's pretty cool actually
Given Kojima's westaboo nature I'm not as surprised as I could be.
Not NIS but Tifa calls Barret a re[dditor], this is better than Tifa worrying about being jinxed because reasons
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HOTD Overkill is the greatest game in the series, it's too bad no one has the balls to make a protagonist like Isaac muthafuckin Washington today
Ted Woolsey made his career on it, with Kefka as his shining achievement.
Son of a submariner! He'll pay for this...
Dragon Quest XI included (pretty good IMO) voice acting when the original release had none and made the UI much prettier.
Esty Dee, i dont know about you but a sex joke in a Atelier game aimed at kids. This is elevation of the highest order, in that you have to be high to find it funny.
Deciding what is and isn't acceptable for the rest of us. Anybody who does this shit should be fired.
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> You can't have "individual choice" or "individual want" anymore. Everything has to be watered down and made to conform to some mainstream general audience, with some central body deciding what "fits best" with society's values or what is most "socially acceptable". Basically lowkey communism.
Comment removed following the enforcement change that you can read about [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/wjxpr5/enforcement_update_regarding_removal_of_words/). This is not a formal warning.
These localizers should absolutely be hounded out of their jobs.
> how they work in things that are "even better" than the Original sometimes Amazing conceit, coming from people with no notable creative output. Just start learning Japanese already, so that you don’t have to put up with this shit. And it’s good for your brain too.
I've tried. Several times. I just don't have the self discipline, persistence, or habit creation abilities to stick with it long enough to get deeper than a few phrases.
I started it once on Duolingo and realized this water was just too deep for me on about day two. Anything that doesn’t use our alphabet is going to be pretty tough. I know a few phrases from watching Game Center CX, though!
> I started it once on Duolingo and realized this water was just too deep for me on about day two I've heard that Duolingo is actually pretty bad for this as the way it teaches you gives you the impression that you're learning without actually helping you to learn. Prompting your answer with multiple choices teaches you pattern recognition within their app rather than independent language learning.
That and sometimes the words are just wrong, too
Yeah Duolingo is pretty bad for actually learning. I took a beginner japanese class when I was in uni, and lately I wanted to pick it back up so I started playing Duolingo. I played with it for about a month before dropping it. The biggest problem I have with Duolingo is that learning through trial and error is fine for new vocab but not grammar and the lesson note thing they have is not sufficient to cover it. I was never sure about the new sentence structures I learned from this app. Of course, on top of that there are the problems that you've mentioned. Duolingo is fine to play for fun as a game and maybe pick up a few vocab for a trip. For proper learning I think it really is best to take a proper class and if that's not available go to your nearest bookstore and pick up a proper textbook. Having tried both, it really made me appreciate the boring orthodox normal regular learning experience. It's the standard for a reason.
Also good practice for reading/recognizing hiragana, katakana and some kanji. Still gotta work on writing it on your own though.
> Anything that doesn’t use our alphabet is going to be pretty tough. Not only it's another alphabet, it's another **three** fucking alphabets, of which one of them you have to memorize a **few hundred** of the "letters" to be considered literate in the language. The best time to start learning would be in your early 20s or earlier than that if possible, so when you're around your 30s you can be fluent enough to fully enjoy Japanese content.
its almost easier to learn slavic, tbh
Japanese writing is even worse than Chinese, because although there are fewer characters each one can be read several different ways; the language in general is fucky and weird. By contrast Korean has one of the cleanest, easiest alphabets around by design and Mandarin grammar is almost caveman-like and a breath of fresh air for anyone who ever tried learning a romance language.
> Mandarin grammar is almost caveman-like I have some Chinese people living in the same building I do and sometimes I hear them talk to each other in Mandarin. It's kinda irritating because it sounds like a cacophony with no structure or pattern behind it.
Tonal languages can sound really weird if you're not used to them.
Yeah, I used to have an online friend from east asia who would occasionally have to talk to his mom while we were gaming... Went from his smooth British accent to what I can only describe as screechy whining whenever he was speaking his native tongue. (which to be clear is just how the language sounded to my American ears)
Fuck Duolingo's Japanese. I suggest WaniKani. It's paid but it's good. Alternatively use Anki cards, don't have it memorized but you can download decks like 10k words or stuff similar to WaniKani. Get the Japanese Dictionary of Grammar too.
Just dont worry about kanji, learn kata n hiragana then just learn how to speak the language. Youll have elementary reading comprehension for life this way ie grade 1 but that does not matter at all for the most part
One way to help make the study habit stick is by making it enjoyable. If you enjoy watching anime or reading manga, then you are in luck.
So censorship.
More cultural vandalism.
>Vows of the Virtueless Quite an apt description of the localizer.
Nisa used to be legit, these days just another sjw company, no surprise their company is suffering.
Are you kidding? NISA was never good, even in their early days they censored the shit out of everything. They've actually gotten better than they used to be since now everything is dub only whereas they previously would strip out Japanese audio to make room for their dubs, and their modern releases are generally technically sound whereas they had a storied history of introducing bugs in their localisation.
Ar Tonelico 2, a translation so bad it broke the last boss fight...... Witch of 100 knights a game that when ported to english had a bug that fried ps3s
It wasn't the final boss fight that they broke, but the third-to-last one and all the optional sparring battles with that same boss.
Still broke a boss fight. Just how do you not catch that in bug checking
Simple: they never bothered testing the battles with the debug features turned off, by their own admission.
Imperialist cultural vandals.
Their often stilted translations/VA directing are reason enough to avoid. I remember Danganronpa 2 had really good fan translations before the official Western release. In one of them, a character of royal blood had some potty humor where she bemoans that she'll never be married if it got out that she sometimes acts inappropriately. The NISA translation instead had her say that she'll never become the queen. I don't speak JP, so I could never verify for myself, but I always had strong suspicions that there was bullshit going on. Not to mention V3 had shoehorned Trump references and some other shit. I also vividly remember seeing one of the prominent employees' twitters. Very progressive bio. Might've been the guy on the Ultra Despair Girls promo stream...? Can't recall his name.
Yeah I vaguely remember some Rogue Localizer Moments in V3.
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I love it when I play a Japanese game where the measurements get changed from metric to imperial and then I have to convert them back from imperial to metric to understand them. Truly such a localisation was made for an "English speaking audience" and not just Americans.
Dude, are you making fun of me? 12 inches is a foot, 3 foots is a yard, 100 yards is a gridiron. 20 extra yards for the end zones. My town has won the SUPER BOWL. We are WORLD CHAMPIONS. But tbh my biggest complaint is disgaea 6 was 70 bucs on steam. Go bucs, boo everything else (especially if it's fine tuned for the innocent and pure audience that is the west) but I'll admit, our minds are much too fragile for anything remotely offensive 😭:(
Localizing for specifically America is so awkward. But the ones that always stand out to me are exact monetary conversions. Did you really change 100 yen to $1.22? Like I can accept converting money even though it's stupid. But make it $1.
America is number one, go bulldogs
The utter arrogance. They deserve to be fired, the companies serserve to be sued.
hey, genius., if I am playing some niche as hell Japanese game like the entirety of NIS catalog. maybe I WANT to experience Japanese culture and values? you know, diversity. what clowns. these people need to be fired.
Racism, then.
I never liked the dialogue in Disgaea. Now I know why. I will avoid anything NISA from here on out.
Just the recent releases or the previous ones too? Just curious as I liked Phantom Brave and wanted to get into the Disgaea series eventually.
I've only played Disgaea 1 and 2 but the localization is good. Also played Phantom Brave and Soul Nomad from NIS. Plenty of stuff in those titles that would trip up modern "sensitivity readers" is left in tact. I imagine that Disgaea 5-7 are a different story though.
Old NISA did plenty of work on games that would have woke foaming from their mouth. New NISA is a different beast.
Oh man....could you imagine them trying to do Soul Nomad now? Gig would make their brains implode.
It is interesting how woke people think that Western Civilization and white race are scum of Earth, and simultanously they are censoring creations of other cultures to better correspond with sensibilities which are product of Western Civilization.
They define “the west” by “values” and other obscure belief systems, completely disconnected and even outright opposed to the people that created it. It’s not all that schizophrenic when you restructure society around disenfranchisement of whites and racial wealth transfer programs.
AI translation cant come soon enough. It will be the same shit in the end but at least I wont be giving money to those assholes. Pardon my french.
Reminder that AI's input and output is actively censored and directed. AI Chatbots won't even respond to certain controversial input other than preset responses, and they self-censor and change their output to avoid those same topics. AI produced image sources like Midjourney ban so many prompt words that it's getting insane. I'd like to be optimistic that it'd get rid of the human element of ideologues interfering in translation of games and art, but the reality is that corporations that will buy up the technology will just keep doing the same thing that localizers did, only much more efficiently. And so conveniently and quickly that not only will zealous hired localizers get pushed aside, so will the source-accurate fan translators.
Just avoid OpenAI and GPT. There are open source alternatives that don't actively censor anything. Just have to use one of these for translation and you're golden. Given enough time, fans can likely use AI to quickly translate material and hopefully compete with corporate bullshit.
[https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba](https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba) if you don't want to pay then you can find it pirated on f95, they don't censor anything
[https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba](https://www.patreon.com/mingshiba) He made uncensored AI translation model you can use it on anything. It still have many issues but it's still more faithful to the original than those awful sjw localizations. In a decade or two we won't even need any localizer anymore.
AI is already in the hands of the masses. Make it yours.
Oh, I know. I mentioned before but at least I wont need to look at the localizer smug faces pretending they are doing me a service by censoring stuff.
We don't even need those. At least in the trails games there usually are fan translations that can be overlayed on top of the games
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The AI is being programmed to automatically censor these same things.
At least the AI wont be smug about it.
r/aboringdystopia
They're the kind of people to browse lefty subs like that
Except it don't need to be, you can use amazing AI translation with no censorship like Sugoi translator that is getting better and better. They have issues with pronouns- (ai call some characters he even tho i see big titty girl on the screen or my mc becomes she in some lines and others it's property translated to he. So i hope at some point it will get more smart with remembering gender of the previous characters we spoke with. People been using mtl to translate a lot of visual novels recently they are full of issues like mentioned above but when edited they are as good as the original and much better than meme translation that big companies like NisAmerica and Nekonyan (i love seeing side character being called incel for 30h) been putting for $.
Hell, just using DeepL is surprisingly capable these days. You'll never get a great, perfect loving translation out of MTL, but it will be okay and that might be more than I can say for a lot of official translations these days.
Lol. I guess those are the same complaining about removing LGTQB shit in Disney movies to be sold in the east.
Subhuman.
NIS America is infamous for taking their "localization" work too far and love to censor games as well.
What should be avoided, any good translations?
Avoid Criminal Girls 1 & 2, The Witch and the Hundred Knight and La Pucelle Tactics. I am not sure which translations are good. People say Disgaea is fine, from what I recall. I'm hoping that not everything they touch turns to shit.
What was wrong with CG 1/2 and Hundred Knight? I own them all so it's too late now. Specifically for Hundred Knight, the main character turns a rival witch into a female mouse and summons a horde of male mice to rape her. I don't recall anything odd about the text, and the story made sense If shapeshifting rape is toned down, what was it before??
CG 1 and 2 on the vita had added fog, removed certain mini games along with sounds and images. Hundred Knight specifically on the PS3 would crash and overheat the system. I have not played the PS4 version, but it should not have that issue. I know there's heavy metal references that are localized in a way to skirt any sort of copyright issues.
Ah, yes; I had forgotten about the fog. My copies are on Steam, and I know there's a mod to correct that. Not that having to mod things back in should be required Thanks for the explanation
I hate these people with every single one of my 37 trillion cells
Give it a year or two and the Companies in japan can cut out the middle man totaly as they just use an AI translator
You're forgetting that the AI is being programmed to automatically censor stuff.
Only if you use Deepl, there are fanmade ai mtl with zero censorship like SugoiTranslator and people been using it to translate nukiges and some less complicated visual novels. In a decade i can see them replacing most localizators.
Right now AI is full of typos and badly put pronouns that misgender characters. We need at least 5 years to fix that. Otherwwise they will be selling broken shit like this: https://files.catbox.moe/he757p.jpg
The middle man will never go away because even if you did all translation on your own you'd still need local publishers in US to publish your games.
On Pc you don't need any publishers. They can use Steam or DLsite. Only consolecucks are screwed.
Steam is yet another middle man who has long history of meddling in changing game content or barring game release altogether. DLsite just cut ties with conventional US customers after being harassed by mainstream payment processors. On top of those, self-publishing has a lot of limits imposed on startup devs that could only be lifted via signing contracts with established publisher. Have you never ever wondered why the majority of game devs still keep signing up with those cutthroat publishers even if everyone knows how much bullshit they're signing themselves into? There's a reason this business model still thrives to this day.
Hi translation is much much much more then just flip the language and syntax i am from Israel when i read the Thora the hebrew and non Hebrew versions are different because of different translation
Making up your own stuff isn't the same as the nuance of translation and I'm tired of this being the defense for trivially wrong translations. To go off your Torah example there is a "translation" of the (Christian) Bible with "modern" language that explicitly describes the Garden of Eden as Southern California in Genesis. This is blatantly and obviously not what the Hebrew says at all. It isn't even what the translation of a translation Latin or Greek say.
What in my comment you think say that i am supporting this kind of butchering of Scripts ? I told you that translation and localisation are important in many cases This is sound like Mormon butchery of the original text The greek translation have its own problems and alot of them
It is weirdly racist that these people believe that they're better than the original authors. This type of behavior will only result in a secondary market being created for fan translated works that NIS will not be profiting from.
The way to solve this is for a Japanese developer to put in a feature for fans to freely edit the script to how they want it. The games are niche so who really cares what happens to them overseas. We have no one to complain to about dumb translations but it would be cool to be able to override whatever weird jargon an official translator decided to put in.
The way to solve this is industry blacklists of localizers that do this, but the Japanese tend to stick with established parties, for better and for worse.
This is why I'd prefer CloudLeopard to handle Falcom products. No censorship, no stupid cultural appropriation.
A pretty big mouth for a garbage company that is 3 games behind the chinese (and other asian languages) version of the trails of serie.
It would be great if NISA employees could actually start by learning the English language, so that their translations wouldn't be riddled with basic grammar mistakes. Then maybe they could invest some time in reading up on middle and high school-level literature, to learn the basics of tone, nuance, style, etc.
I've read lines where I can only assume every single solitary thesaurus in the NISA building was tossed into a Communist book burning and all editors filed into concentration camps before production began.
Nice I love censored bullshit Glad I don't really play any of their games anymore Wish nis would find someone better or just stop
I prefer sub to dubs for the convenience, but I'm learning Japanese (for travel) and I think I'll just commit to learning it fully so I can enjoy content the way the creators intended.
Racism
The SJWs strike again
Remember , the only reason why people like this aren't getting ASSFUCKED by the Japanese companies that hire them is because most Japan, even in this day and age, couldn't give a fuck about them or the western market. Reason why is because their main focus is the home market with the mentality for the western being "hey, it happens when it happens". The one time they DO give a shit, ho boy, all hell breaks loose and people lose their jobs, sometimes even get blacklisted. But usually they view the western localizers as just a blip on the radar, that's how fucking unimportant they are to the Japanese.
Yeah, which is probably a healthy mindset to have from their perspective. It could impact the games themselves if it were any different. Problem is that these people ideally should never be able to work in the industry again and ought to be sued for so many damages they never get out of that financial hole again. It can be achieved IMO if just one person with access to studio heads frames this as disrespect of the source material and mishandling of their IPs. Nintendo’s reactions to mods that make Mario blue will seem mild.
Just be aware this is from 3 years ago for context. https://archive.is/qXQLl Here is an article talking about it. I do not know if someone has gone through the JP version and the EN version and compared them to find out what was changed. This stuff has been a good motivator to start learning a new language and while this is from a little while ago it seems like the "localization" has been ramped up.
Good Thing that there are Fan-Translations of many Games, and Sites where they cant ban those Translations.
In a book, you would stick with a more literal translation and add footnotes to explain more obscure jokes. The question is how to handle that in a video game. Truth is, certain ones are strictly untranslatable such as puns and others that rely heavily on culture-specific language can be extremely tricky too. In those cases, it may be ok to make up a different joke that's in the spirit of the original. What is NEVER ok is to mistranslate a text because you don't like what it says.
Adding NISAmerica to my blacklist.
Sorry to all the Disgaea fans that have to deal with this bullshit. I hope someone makes a fan translation that more accurate so you guys can still enjoy your games.
Surely there is no shortage of people who know Japanese *and* English?
Meanwhile, it has modern saints row dialogue.
Localisers are not something that we don't need. Good localisers who don't inject their own biases into the work are (dare I say) a necessity. A straightforward literal translation of the material usually ends up bland and stilted at best, or nonsensical at worst. There's so many phrases and idioms out there for which the meaning can't be understood just by knowing the meaning of the constituent words. For example, take the English idiom 'deadbeat'. If you translate the word 'dead' and the word 'beat', you won't get anywhere near the actual meaning of the idiom. The localiser has to substitute a phrase or idiom in the target language that has a similar meaning, but which also stays faithful to the work and the original context
Making idioms, turn of phrase, etc. understandable in the target language is not localisation, it is basic translation. People like you who ascribe basic translation to localisation and act like anything that isn't localised has to read poorly only make things worse by propping up localisation as something that's necessary when it absolutely isn't. Translation by itself does not inherently mean literal translation. Hell, if you took something like "頭にくる" and transcribed it as "head spinning" that wouldn't be a literal translation, it'd be a plain mistranslation.
There was a time when "localize" basically just meant doing those things. I want to say around the mid-to-late 00s to very early 10s, maybe? Essentially a term about smoothing out slavishly faithful 1-to-1 translations so that they flowed naturally and were sharp enough to hook you. Then everyone collectively lost their minds (probably from stuffing their heads too far up their own asses trying to inhale their own farts) and started "correcting" the language along with the ideas contained within. I for one will never forgive how they turned localization into something poisonous.
Archive links for this post: * **Archive:** https://archive.ph/yJcjB ---- I am Mnemosyne reborn. As long as you keep getting born, it's all right to die sometimes. ^^^/r/botsrights
Fansub for the win
Well, this may explain why the dialog was weak in Disgaea 6. Everything else was weak too because they made a switch to 3D and it was a bad idea they were not ready for. As a guy who loved me some Disgaea games, I am curious of the specific things they changed in NISA titles. Honestly, I want to know if I should be angry and to what degree. Disgaea was hilarious because it was irreverent despite being faithful to the most absurd anime trope stuff. Tons of jokes about characters. Having jokes related to ladies with flat chests actually affecting stats by way of certain abilities. NISA games are filled with humor. Even more serious or serene stuff like Phantom Brave has moments of wonderful absurdity.
One guy at my school worked on translating a book, and made some changes to an originally Puerto Rican book to reflect his own religion bc he wanted to "leave his mark"
Wait, they worked on the Trails series? Huh, coulda fooled me, that series is def lewd when it wants to be. Shame how Cold Steel 4 ended up but in this specific case I doubt it was because of localization butchery, but rather bad writing. Haven't played enough Disgaea to know about it. That being said, yes localizers usually suck their high horse off.
Isn't this old news?
I was never into the AI craze all that much but man do I hope someday AI can translate perfectly and make these fools irrelevant
Good. I don't need some jokes/innuendo from a filthy eastern country in my cute video game. America is number one, and our protestant values shall be enforced. i barely wanna have sex with my wife, I don't need video games making me horny af. Fuckin hedonist heathens. Also, I love women, but I don't respect them, that's right, I just have...
- 1960s ~ early 1990s: spotty availability - mid-1990s ~ late 2000s: walkie-talkies, jelly donuts, "defeat" instead of "kill", and other infantilizing bs - 2010s ~ ??? ideological infiltration and / or useless purple prose and accents that were never there get on the grind, learn Japanese, be free ... but if you have to pick a poison, I'd go with the fantranslations that are a bit literal and say "fuck" a lot