Let's talk about localizations

Nowadays the idea of localization most of the time ends with a terrible idea of how butchered and bad written the game is going to be.
However there have been cases where localizations tend to benefit the products even when they made changes (small changes).
The first example that comes to my mind is Fire Emblem 7. Eliwood was pretty bland, submissive, shy for a Lord, with little to no personality, but on the Western version they changed his script and made him more heroic and strong changing some of the dialogues to make him a more memorable character.

But there were some other changes too, Lyndis was 15 on the japanese version and they age her up to 18 on the western version.
NoA mistaked a part of the dialogue on the final battle with Nergal, changing the dialogue which said "Ae..r" for "Aegir" (Aegir = Quintessence in Japanese while Aenir was the name of the female Ice Dragon and what Nergal meant with "Ae..r" instead of Aegir) and while the translation was on point and made more sense than a literal translation it changed some subtle meaning of what were Nergal motivations to become the villain that he was.

And this leaves me with the question, what makes a localization "good"? should localizations just try to translate everything and make no changes? A localization can try to make characters or story more memorable/likeable (if they can) without changing the plot behind it? Can they add more content or make some content better?

Transliterate everything. It's the only way to get an authentic experience.

Let's not. Just an excuse for more cherrypicking and shitposting.

I just want a straight translation. I dont care if a character is shit, it was like that in the og release, so it should be the same in the us release.

Ideally a localization should be accurate with minimal changes beyond what's needed. Mainly sentence flow and substituting jokes, figures of speech, and references that don't transition well into western languages with similar ones (and admittedly in the case of games set in a specific region of the world, leaving cultural specific things in might actually add to experience and let people learn something; one could include translators notes or something in the manual, if those were still a physical thing anyhow).

Unfortunately, a lot of the companies/teams these days (though it's not a new problem; see Working Designs) seem to think they can write better than the original script authors, and toss various stuff out, toss their own stuff in that was nowhere in the original script (or over-embellishes what was there), and at times are all too happy to censor things either because they think doing so will net them a wider audience or because they themselves are getting triggered by the content there (it seems a bit odd that with some companies like NISA, where bringing niche games over is their whole shtick, that they the very elements that make the games niche to begin with). This leaves various localizations feeling more like rewrites than translations.

I won't say that sixth and seventh gen were free from localization issues, but I'd love to be able to go back to those days compared to the shit various games have been getting slammed with lately. What was done to XCX still angers me.

Good translation necessarily come with small changes, but always to make the translated part more authentic in meaning (better than literal expression) and never because of ulterior motives or "cultural differences" or whatever (because those differences are what is to be sought and not vice versa).

This isn't even the only example, and a lot of the most interesting cases come from Nintendo. Advance Wars: DoR remains one of the games whose localisation is most curious for me. The European version had a straight-up translation of the script, as barebones and lifeless as can be. That script itself wasn't astonishingly clever - the plot and characters are good and fine, but the dialogue is the most stale delivery you could ever have conceived. The US version, however, used the dialogue as a baseline and basically rewrote that dialogue into a more nuanced version - all the characters were the same, but they were more fleshed out. The jokester character who only cracks one joke in the EU script now actually makes more regularly timed jokes. I think the best example of the script differences at work is when the main villain explains his motivations in the final battle.

The mad scientist is actually a clone of the original doctor, and because he was produced so carelessly he does not have a value for other lives. He even killed the original just to express his curiosity.
In the US version this is expressed as: "Do you have any idea what it is like? To see yourself die before your very eyes? It is fascinating."
In the EU/Japanese version: "I am but a clone. And I killed the original Doctor Stolos."

In English for the example above, a big change is made, but it's one that's truthful to the original. More so than the original script was, it can be argued.

But look at the changes made in FE: Fates. Don't look at the fact that they were changes, look at their quality. Do you see just how bad it is?

When localising, to change the dialogue is to rewrite it. In that sense, a major gamble is taken - either the localiser gives a more polished version of the script for their region, or they become a pretentious and disrespectful replacement that only think they know better than the writers whose work they are replacing. A quality rewrite that remains truthful will be able to get away with this move. A slip-up like Fates won't.

Localization requires you to change certain things in specific instances for pratical reasons.

For example, let's say they give me OP post to work with, i gotta translate it in italian.
So i look at this


And i translate it


As a translator, i had to look at the phrase, and if was badly constructed try to fix it up, then additionally i had to slightly rebuild it to make more sense in italian structurally.
On top of that i couldn't translate butchered, it would've come out as "maciullato" as the closest word i could've used, but in italian context it sounds ugly and not correct at all when referring to a concept aka a bad translation.
So i had to convey the basic idea without giving you "butchered".

By doing that, did i destroy the character of OP?
Maybe "butchered" was an important part of his way of expressing himself later on in the plot, and this small change i made for pratical reasons will end up snowballing into a lost in translation situation and his character has one detail about him changed forever for those that are reading what he's saying just from my translation.

Now all this, imagine it multiplied A MILLION FUCKING TIMES and you've got the situation you find yourself in when translating anything from japanese.
It's actually a pretty miserable job, it's easy to translate things LITERALLY and not give a single shit, but when translating a game you cna't just translate that shit like it's a bootleg anime subtitle by a small translation group, you need to give proper grammar structure and context to the translation, while at the same time keeping each character personality, and sometimes you'll have to adapt into english dialects and stereoptypes that flat out don't exist in english, in those cases you're sorta trying to inject in the next best thing.

So essentially, do all these complications justify censoring and straight up changing big chunks of video games?
Absolutely not.
And when those changes are fueled by some political agenda or excused with "the wester audience won't be able to understand this" it's completely unforgiveable.

However my point is that even the best translators out there will have to do small changes to keep shit flowing correctly in another language when translating, and sometimes, often on accident, words that could have a bigger meaning in another language end up being lost in translation even if the translator didn't intend for that to be the case.

It's a messy business, it doesn't go smoothly all the time even if you try to do a good job, the more different two languages are, the more chances you have to mess up characters inadvertently.

It depends entirely on the localizers who have to keep in mind that a 1:1 translation results in a flat, boring and nonsensical end-product (only hardcore weebs want a simple English conversion with the only changes being in grammatical structure so it isn't disjointed), but rewriting the script entirely and filling it with whatever bullshit is equally nonsensical. So you have to walk a fine line with it and, at the absolute very least, accurately convey the general gist of each piece of dialogue or bit of a story.

Liberties taken can help and help a lot, as with Kid Icarus Uprising whose US localization is flat-out better than the original JP version, but it depends entirely on what group is taking those liberties.

Anyone that has spent even a few months learning Japanese can tell you that it's literally impossible to have a 1:1 translation to English. Hell, anyone that knows more than one language period can tell you that there is no such thing as a completely perfect translation. That's why it's important to convey the meaning of the original work, and not necessarily an exact replica of the original wording.

Besides the problems with just translating from Japanese to English, there's the technical problem of actually implementing changes. It's not as simple as just swapping out text files - many times translators can't use the exact wording that they'd like, since there are problems with the text actually fitting into the game's text boxes nicely, or at all.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but there's plenty of reasons why a translation might be different in various ways. Like, as much as I dislike NISA's localization changes I also know that whatever bugs are added to their releases aren't their fault - they don't code in the new dialogue, that's the original parent company. It's not really mentioned, but Gust's games continued to be buggy (just not as game-breakingly so, usually) even after they switched to their own in-house translations. That's why most of NISA's non-NIS titles are fine, in regards to bugs.

Basically translation can be a clusterfuck.

When I think of good localizations, I think of Rhythm Heaven: Fever (funny how a Nintendo game had good localizations before). I pick that because most people don't bother translating songs because how hard it is and how easy it is to fuck up. I'm disappointed about English dub of the theme of FE: Fates (I never liked FE so don't talk to me about gameplay.). The fan dub was much better. Nintendo should accept that the western liberal media is always in the look out who don't acknowledge LGBT and keep a tighter leash NoA's translations.

Nobody has ever said that a localization wasn't literal enough with the translation. That shit is a strawman that the localization companies use as an excuse for the hack jobs that they sometimes do. What people object to, is when changes are made that lose the original meaning.

There might be a few die hard fans of the original that will bitch that you change something, but the majority of people will be pleased as long as you kept it as close to the original as possible as you possibly could, anything else is you not doing your job as a professional localizer.

I feel as though there's a difference between changing a few words here and there, and completely altering the script of a game from something with essence to "… … …" or "that's dragon for i love you xdxdXdxd"

Phoenix Wright is a great example of how to translate something and that sometimes it's okay to make a mistake in whether to transliterate or replace, as long as your heart is in the right place and you adhere to the spirit of the product.

The way the names were translated and changed reflected that the names were just puns pertaining to their character and personality. Wendy Oldbag being a windy old bag, "My, A Fey!" being a spirit medium (With "Me, a fey" becoming a ghost to boot). and so on, it easily pins down the meaning and tone and conveys a lot to english speaking audiences, enough and a similar amount to the Japanese names conveying information to the Japanese speaking audience.

I think a Translation that does this can be forgiven a few mistakes in the same way at a good friend's flaws could be forgiven. Not forgotten entirely, but serving as a source for a joke that fans can point at and laugh. I don't begrudge changing early references of Ramen to Burgers because it became part of the charm of the series. We all acknowledge "Eat your burgers, Apollo." as something the translators failed, but it actually helps fans of the series point out something funny about a series that thrives on being funny to begin with. We all realize it was a failure that they have to stick with and can't wipe away, but failures like those humanize the project as a whole and makes it easier to love.

this post sounds super gay, but tl;dr
the real issue with Translation is fans will react to your intent, and if your intent isn't to treat the series with respect, then fuck off and die.

I remember someone talking about the perfection of the name Phoenix Wright as a translation of the guy's Japanese name, too.

An even better example would be of the original Pokemon. The original Pokemon names were shit like 'blackie.' The names the translators came up with were fucking great. Like the Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam line.

I don't think there's much of an issue people take with the monster and important NPC names in Pokemon, as the western names for the monsters usually have a lot less of a bland feeling to them than the Japanese ones (though I think Magmar being "Boober" out there has a bit of a special spot in some people's hearts), and the westernized names for important NPCs generally still follow a similar theme as the meaning of the original Japanese ones; this even happens with certain player/rival default names.

The bigger issue Pokemon's had in localizations are unnecessary internet memes being shoved into dialogue at points (to my knowledge at least some of the games have had one or more goons handling the translation), and there's some censorship in them as well (though whether it's a regional case or a worldwide one depends on the circumstances).

But then your game would be in unreadable Engrish.

Direct translations aren't always good. The first Mega Man Zero game is pretty much a straight translation. Everyone uses choppy sentences, there are typos all over the place, and the plot is actually hard to make out sometimes because of this. The second game fixes this up a lot, and makes each character's dialogue actually distinct. There's still the occasional broken English "do you want to know?" being a particularly memorable example but on the whole it's better. Zero 3 completely overhauls the whole thing and rewrites dialogue, making it smoother to read while still retaining the original's feel. Mega Man Zero 3 is the ideal 'localization', staying faithful to the original while still being easy to read and natural-sounding.

The worst thing you can do is to censor, or otherwise overwrite, dialogue. Or inject memes. Looking at you, NISA.

That's Nintendo of America for you, they can ruin an already dead series if they they just will it.

Agree.

I wonder what source material translators are given? Do they get just the raw text or are there also notes included that point out cultural references, or connect related text pieces (like "this dialogue is in reference to that one two chapters ago")?

I'm sure the answer is both and entirely dependant on the company translating.

I'm sure there are a couple of fucked up translations that were the result of a lack of resources rather than talent.

Early loc work was "here's all of the text strings, even the ones that weren't used in the game. Send us back the English text for these strings, good luck. "

I'm a freelancer translator, I just translate manga, so I don't have any experience in game localization unfortunately, but allow me to lay down some of my opinions on this subject.

Changes aren't necessarily a bad thing, but you need to have a good reason to change things. I try to maintain accuracy, but I put a great focus into natural sounding translations too, so I'm not shy about changing something a bit in order to sound more natural in English. So I don't think changing "I'm going home." to "I gotta jet." is sacrilege, and I think most reasonable people wouldn't believe so either.

What pisses people off more are censorship and name changes. I'm definitely not one for censorship and I never agree with it. Fortunately I've never had to censor anything in my work. But yeah, censoring something because it may offend someone? Fuck off with that shit.

Name changes are another thing that ticks off some people. I don't like unnecessary changes either, though some are fine. Take Shin Megami Tensei for example. Some demons have a different name in Japanese than they do in the culture they originated in, like Hua Po, who is Kahaku in Japan. I think changing names to match their origin name is just fine. Changing character/item/ability names and such, well, sometimes it's fine. You have to take the author's intent into those. A name that sounds cool in Japanese might not sound so cool in English. Or say, a name based on an the Japanese pronunciation of an English word that makes since to Nips but not to English speakers. Do you keep the original name anyway? Or do you perhaps ask yourself what name you'd come up with if you based it off the English pronunciation of that word so English readers immediately understand it like the Japanese readers were meant to?

I'm rambling. Basically, I think a good localization will try to maintain accuracy as best as possible, while changing what must be changed in order to make things more natural in the target language.

As for changing characterization, I don't really like that. I've never done it myself, because they're not my characters, my job is just to translate someone else's work, not change the things I don't like.

Additionally, I don't think trying to punch up dialogue a bit is a bad thing. Japanese dialogue can be very stale indeed, and I think giving it a bit of flavor so long as you don't go too far is a bad thing. Of course, some translators/localizers punch things up too much and wreck the tone, character, or even the dialogue, so it must be done with great care.

I'm a freelancer translator, I just translate manga, so I don't have any experience in game localization unfortunately, but allow me to lay down some of my opinions on this subject.

Changes aren't necessarily a bad thing, but you need to have a good reason to change things. I try to maintain accuracy, but I put a great focus into natural sounding translations too, so I'm not shy about changing something a bit in order to sound more natural in English. So I don't think changing "I'm going home." to "I gotta jet." is sacrilege, and I think most reasonable people wouldn't believe so either.

What pisses people off more are censorship and name changes. I'm definitely not one for censorship and I never agree with it. Fortunately I've never had to censor anything in my work. But yeah, censoring something because it may offend someone? Fuck off with that shit.

Name changes are another thing that ticks off some people. I don't like unnecessary changes either, though some are fine. Take Shin Megami Tensei for example. Some demons have a different name in Japanese than they do in the culture they originated in, like Hua Po, who is Kahaku in Japan. I think changing names to match their origin name is just fine. Changing character/item/ability names and such, well, sometimes it's fine. You have to take the author's intent into those. A name that sounds cool in Japanese might not sound so cool in English. Or say, a name based on an the Japanese pronunciation of an English word that makes since to Nips but not to English speakers. Do you keep the original name anyway? Or do you perhaps ask yourself what name you'd come up with if you based it off the English pronunciation of that word so English readers immediately understand it like the Japanese readers were meant to?

I'm rambling. Basically, I think a good localization will try to maintain accuracy as best as possible, while changing what must be changed in order to make things more natural in the target language.

As for changing characterization, I don't really like that. I've never done it myself, because they're not my characters, my job is just to translate someone else's work, not change the things I don't like.

Additionally, I don't think trying to punch up dialogue a bit is a bad thing. Japanese dialogue can be very stale indeed, and I think giving it a bit of flavor so long as you don't go too far is a bad thing. Of course, some translators/localizers punch things up too much and wreck the tone, character, or even the dialogue, so it must be done with great care.

Like I mentioned, I've never done video game localization, but I've heard about the experience of some. Sometimes they get a shitload of material, like the guy who localized MGS 1 got a bunch of material to make his job easier. He got a bunch of note books I think and other things. The woman who worked on MGS2 basically got a huge game script and nothing else. That would never be good, because you just won't get the context you sometimes need in script form (then again, much of MGS2's dialogue took place in coded scenes, so it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway).

I'm almost entirely convinced at this point in the game that localization, as a term, is newspeak meant to introduce to the concept of translation bullshit that has absolutely nothing to do with translation. This new "synonymic" word serves simply to muddy the practice and sneakily slip shit like censorship, elimination of wrongthink-culture into it, memes, and fanfiction-tier rewrites.

Every single defense I have ever seen of this new horseshit term has been, at all conceptual levels, equally applicable to translation - No, changing an idiom or phrase to a more apt and understandable one in whatever target language isn't localization, you stupid shits. That's still translation. That's good translation, in fact. What you call "a straight translation," that is translating the words themselves but not the intent, is also still translation. Just a bad one.

Even in this thread, the only reasonable defense was the user saying that games have mechanical limitations, such as text string size, box size, so on and so forth. Still translation though. Other retards were putting forth shit like hamming up a characters personality to make it more dynamic and notable or whatever. This isn't translation at all. This is "localization" and it's just some fucking faggot thinking he is better than the author and making his own fanfiction version of what was already there.

It can be arguably "better" for the story and experience, but it sure as fuck isn't translation.

tl;dr. Localization is literally made up bullshit, and you should feel like a retard for even using the word. Translation or nothing.

That's why I'm not particularly fond of the term "localization". A good translation does all of the changes that are needed anyway like you said. I've worked for companies that call themselves localization companies, but I think they just use that term to try and make people realize that they do proper translations, because when I work for them I'm pretty much given free reign over the translation, and I certainly don't change ages or censor talk of sex or call raman burgers.

You've got some severe doublethink going on here. A "localization" company doing proper translations wouldn't give someone 'free reign' over the script.

Unless by "free reign" you mean it in a sense of "Translate it properly or die, but outside of that it's all you man!" Free reign would otherwise indicate permission for Ireland-tier fanfiction.

Do they still try to pretend that they take place in America? And pretend that noodles are burgers? I've never played the games in any language, but I've heard that the localizations were pretty good, setting/food stuff aside. I can kind of understand why they might want to make it seem like it takes place in America. I imagine it's because the series is supposed to be familiar to the player, so the localizers figured that they'd Americanize it a bit. I'm not sure I'd want to do that, I've never been in that position, but I can understand it I think. Still seems odd if it's pretty obviously not set in America, like Persona 1, when they still had Japanese writing all over the malls, a Shinto Shrine in the town, etc. Persona 1's PSX localization looks to be a lesson in bad localization though.

You didn't pay attention to what I wrote. I said that I've worked for companies that call themselves localization companies, but they give translators free reign, which means that they're just translation companies. I explained that I think they use the term localization for brownie points from people who don't know what it really is, not that that's what they actually are.

A good translation can help smooth out some plot-holes in the original work; Radiant Dawn had two explanations for how the Ike managed to beat the Black Knight. In Japland, it was his warp powder malfunctioning that only sent an "echo" of his spirit that was weak enough for Ike to beat. Which kinda cheats the player out of feeling accomplishment and comes out as a little too convenient, like a writer copping out.

In the localization, it's established that, after Ike told him that Greil, Ike's father and BK's former master who he'd killed earlier in the game, had his sword-arm crippled before the two dueled (This detail always existed in the original and even comes up as a plot point in Radiant Dawn), he realized he was fighting a shadow of the man he wanted to surpass, and lets Ike win so Ike can get stronger and serve as a sort of "Greil substitute".

In this way, the Localizers used details already in the story to enhance the conflict between Ike and the Black Knight and still retained the sense of being cheated out of properly ending the fight last game. THAT'S the sort of translation I fucking love.

A translation like Fates where the story's flaws are made even more apparent by the localization is something I don't like. For example, the non-Takumi Hoshidans like Hinoka and Ryoma were made much more hostile against "Nohrian Scum" and made a Hoshido-route Avatar more vengeful than a Nohr route-Avatar to try and introduce a more grey conflict, but it just made the Original Writers' Hoshido bias more apparent when Hoshido's route still has Nohr as over-the-top evil so the hostility doesn't come off as unjustified, let alone when Hoshido actually does shitty stuff and doesn't get treated as bad by the story (Like Mikoto building a barrier that mentally forces people to be peaceful or Ryoma trying to blackmail the Avatar when Elise gets poisoned)

ALSO, NO MEMES. MEMES ARE THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING LOCALIZATION

Oh and by the way


That's what I was trying to get at. There's no real guidelines, no mandates for anything except translate it well, use your own discretion.

I've put memes in translations before, but that's because there was already a 2chan meme in there anyway, so I didn't really have a choice.

That's fair, if there were memes present at the beginning. I just want to dodge games that try too hard to shovel in memes to make up for lacking in any writing ability, like Xenoblade X.

Then again, Xenoblade had worse problems.

Fuck 8-4, Treehouse, and anyone like them. When you mess with the make-up of the game itself, that's crossing the fucking line.

Kill yourself, you fucking dog.

Furthermore, Nips aren't really as autistic about plotholes as much as Americans. What you think was a 'too convenient' writer cop-out was entirely sufficient for them. Great job "localizing" their reaction of the game over to ours. Truly excellent stuff, and don't you ever let anyone take away your hard earned dunce-cap.

lets talk about parallel universes

Advance Wars Days of Ruin was literally meant only for the west, though.
Didn't they not even get a physical release in Japan?

I'm not sure if I love or hate Days of Ruin for killing Advance Wars given that modern Nintendo would probably have to censor "muh cultural appropriation" Yellow China.


honestly i think westerners are more logical than japs and it shows
most western story games are better at deep, lore-rich storylines and worse at emotion-play than jap games
meanwhile japanese games give you the same cutesy stuff you adore and you fucking cry over it and there's virtually no lore to speak of

please don't even talk about xenoblade chronicles x, oh my fucking GOD, what a fucking hideous nightmare of a game that shithole was

even without the localization it seems to have been disappointing compared to xenoblade chronicles, they literally took an "okay game" and made it G A R B A G E

every time anyone tries to defend that trainwreck i end up having to greentext a few thousand words of plotholes at them

...

Nymphia is a better name than "Sylveon"

They get nothing but the text in an excel file, most of the time.

Look up the Langrisser series some time. Then come back and tell us if the localization improved them.

Straight translation.
Include Japanese audio.

I can accept age changing. We all know how cucked our American friends are.

Yeah there's a difference between translating something and rewriting it.

Game companies are just bullshitting.

But then puns and figurative language becomes difficult to read.

I honestly feel it depends. I'm fine with things being tweaked if the original product was something uninteresting (like Kid Icarus: Uprising), but I do want the original to be visible from your changes. Basically only deviate if its absolutely necessary. Not because someone bitched about something that may or may not have been in the game, but because it would raise the enjoyment of the experience. Improving, but not erasing.

Nigger please.

Yeah OP (1) fuck the writers vision; so long as I subjectively think it's better who cares if his work gets twisted into something else.

As long it's not in the same tier of Fire Emblem Fates or Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones then it's alright for me.

It still doesn't change that those two games were badly written though

I'm curious what the response would have been had Fates been given a really good rewrite instead of the awful edit it had been. I'd still have been against it, but what would the overall response have been?

Kill yourself.

Nice meme.


I don't remember Sacred Stones having a butchered translation, but it was so long ago. What did they do?

No the localization was still shit unless they gave Lyn the bouncy ta-tas but that's one plus over several minuses, and an additional minus for dfc fans. I'd post it but iirc it's the regular sol katti attack and only the fucking crits show up on google.
Also thinking about it the end for your self insert was so open they could have ended with anyone.

Still negative.

Working designs did nothing wrong.


I don't see a problem here

Just learn japanese jackass, americunts always think the whole world needs to cater to their needs.

Probably mixed and negative responses. One hand, it maybe a good rewrite, but on the other, why the fuck would someone want to do that and sell it as the real deal?

No.

...

This is interesting. I don't mind changes to the script in localization if it uses the original as a core instead of just making up their own stuff. I do wonder how much of a change happened between the JPN and US version though. I thought the writing was pretty good overall for Days of Ruin and it's a shame that it has the reputation of killing the Advance Wars series when it was a good game and had some great ideas that needed more work. Also a larger CO list.

Im just gonna take the relative straight translation. Some small hums and whistles to make the dialogue more distinct and engaging if needed.

Its a safe route and i rather be on the same page as the original communities with characters and plot even if they're bad.

From XCX
And changing Dolls to Skells
This was all done because translation team is straight up shit in more ways than 1. Same fuckers add in sentences that were never there to express their own pathetic politics as well. Monster Hunter Generations as an example of this with the negative call to Git Gud. From which is a core fucking principle of the game. We can all agree there are variety of reasons a script an be changed. We have all agreed to this in one firm or another. But this day and age the reasons are no longer the same in the west.

Interesting tidbits for when I was recently going through Super Paper Mario. I did some side-by-side comparisons of the US dialogue with footage from a Japanese let's play of it. the villian's secretary Nastasia had the stock proper "yessir" attitude to her script originally. The localization peppered in white collar lingo (example: "Let me pencil in your brainwashing") as a play-up of her business-y demeanor, but on top of that, they added in some "Um, yeah"s into it like Bill Lumbergh from "Office Space". Personally, the Lumberghy "Yeah"s should have been toned down in places, like at more dramatic moments.

Count Bleck was a veritable juggle act of a localization. His name in Japan is Count Noir, and Noir spoken and read in Japanese contains "waru" which means "evil/sinister". He also ended most of his sentences with "waru" and laughed "waruwaruwaruwaru!" in Japanese. So NoA tried to tie all this in with the name shift to Bleck from Noir/Black so he'd laugh "bleck bleck bleck!" and end some of his lines with versions of "said Count Bleck".

Francis is surprising with some bits. Obviously the localization team had a field day writing his nerd/geek lines.Curiously enough, many lines weren't really altered, since the stereotypes align so well, including mentioning anime so much. The big change for his character was toning down the "creepy leering otaku" vibe when he has Tippi since he finds her cute. The shows mentioned from his cat maid bots were also the girly "Puni Puni Princess" variety. The US release has Francis more excited for Tippi as a lepidopterist to show off to his message board alongside his shows being every sci-fi/comic/nerd show variety, complete with various Mario references name-dropped. Basically Francis became America's idea of the ubernerd than Japan's, in the end. The "hi-technical" catchphrase is also made-up for the English version, and don't know why. The complaining line was also supposedly the original sort of dialogue in Japanese but got altered in Japan (US got the game first) to a softer otaku mantra. No clue if the spiel you can read on his computer is as harsh on the fandom in Japan. Still, I do love the added "AAAAHH!! MY GRAPHICS CARD!" line when Peach blows up his dating sim laptop from just the normal "UWAAAHH!!" scream.

Most translators are shit, but I think the real problem is that the people who need translations have generally had terrible standards. Obviously it's not possible for them to compare the translation to the original, but even when presented with evidence of the poor quality of a translation they will usually defend it to the death anyway. I can't tell you the number of arguments I've gotten into where it's become apparent that the people who don't need translations care more for the quality of those translations than a lot of the people who do need them. Why should anyone hire better translators when people will buy their shit anyway? Why should fan translators put in more effort when they can get their epeen sucked in real time over IRC for just putting in the bare minimum?

Get some standards, peasants.

In MHG's defense, the only person who said that was the quest lady, who never hunted a day in her life. I interpreted it as "you say that but you never even killed a jaggi before". The line would've stung if they changed some aspect of MHG to make it painfully easier, like if you could cancel out of any attack animation into a dodge at any time, added a traditional lock on, gave giant monsters healthbars by default, allow you to place more than one trap at a time, carry 99 of any item, or all the above.

Why am I still typing about this throwaway line

Because the translator (or editor, maybe?) decided to use throwaway dialogue to have the character spout off the person handling it's own views against the "git gud" mentality that weren't in the original dialogue, essentially using the character as a soapbox? Honestly, it just brings to mind that slew of "Why 'Git Gud" needs to die" articles that places shat out after that one journo playing nuDoom completely and utterly failed at playing the game remotely well and people rightly called him out for it.


Legends of Localizations's done a comparison of Francis' computer dialogue themselves, and yeah, about half of it is intact or only slightly tweaked, but some were changed around completely from what the Japanese script wound up going with when it released later.

Honestly surprises me a bit that NoA hasn't turned around, repurposed that now famous quip about messageboards, and directed it on twitter or something towards the people justifiably complaining about the state of localizations for games on Nintendo systems.

I'm sure your witcher has a great lore. It doesn't and you have shit taste

Intent > Meaning > Feeling >>>>>>>>>> Definition of the words used

The recipe for a good translation.

I'm not so much arguing that the change is unacceptable. More of the line that translators of today are not the same as they were. Hell it's basic chan knowledge that mgs1 script was tweaked by the translators and script was far stronger than before. It was far more okay before because the translators of the past were far less shit than they are now.

Translate the best you can. It is understandable that there are certain phrases that don't carry over, but if I am playing a Japanese game I want those references.

But first and foremost it is important to keep people from injecting their ideologies and agendas into the game. You are translating someone else's creative work. Don't make it your own like the narcissists you are, you fucking hipster commies.