Let's Talk Translation

This is a thread I've been meaning to make for a while now, but it feels like that with the western release of Persona 5 the spotlight has once again been thrown on the quality of translations or "localizations" as a whole. Most people, for a variety of reasons, agree that the translation has some issues… to put it lightly. Most places outside of Holla Forums seem to agree that the main issue with the translation is that it reads too stilted in places, and that it needed a few more months in the oven in order to fit in another editing pass or two. Likewise, I have seen complaints about the translation being rushed on here as well - but for the most part the complaints I've seen seem to center around it being inaccurate to the original Japanese. Stuff like "wassup, Persona" and "You Jelly?" as well as the absolute butchering of Ryuji Sakamoto's name in the English dub are all common complaints, not without merit. That being said, what I want to talk about first is the complaints regarding the translation being TOO literal, and stilted, and why translations like this might be just as bad as translations that lean too far in the other direction (this, of course, being something like Fire Emblem Awakening or Xenoblade Chronicles X). For a moment I ask you to ignore all your preconceptions of what makes a good or bad translation, and as the OP image states, "Consider the Following".

To give some background: I was one of the posters that really pushed for the creation of the Nipponese Learning Threads back during the Summer of 2015. Ever since then I've been spending a damn good portion of my free time learning moonrunes. I wouldn't say I'm fluent, not even close at this point, but I do feel like over the last 2 years (or thereabouts) I've learned enough about the language to realize that something such as a 1:1 translation is impossible going from Japanese to English. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I feel like that most individuals that spend enough time learning moonrunes (actively, earnestly learning them) may begin to realize this at some point as well. The reasons for this are varied; everyone already knows that translating something is inherently going to lose some of the original meaning, but when it comes to translating Japanese this is especially difficult. Besides the technical limitations regarding how much Japanese text tends to take up space versus equivalent English text, there's also the massive issue with how Japanese tends to talk about subjects as well. Humble, Passive, Modest… there are MANY ways to say the same thing, and although the differences can be easily explained in the context of Japanese, the dynamics simply don't translate literally to another language. A good example of the tonal shifts that can arise due to the use of these expressions would have to be from Corpse Party's infamous "I'm gonna go butter up my pooper" line. It's a silly line, and seems wildly out of character. But looking at the original Japanese you'll see that the character always speaks using super polite expressions, but when it comes to that line they speak super casually and in an energetic way. The shift that Japanese players would've experienced reading that line is similar to what English players experienced, even if the line isn't a literal translation of the Japanese.

From what I can understand, translating lines based off of the meaning behind the words and not necessarily the words themselves is a common translation technique because, if done correctly (like in Corpse Party's case), the players will get the same feeling from reading the translation as if they were reading the original Japanese. You probably have heard of this technique as "punching up" translation, and companies like NoA, 8-4 and NISA have been known to abuse this idea to mess up the tone of a translation compared to the Japanese. I don't think that this means that the idea of "punching up" a translation is bad, though. Besides Corpse Party there are obviously other examples of the tactic working well to portray scenes in a way more accurate to what one could assume was the original Japanese intent.

Similarly, changing art assets (besides overt censorship, fuck censorship) can make sense as well. An example from Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time comes to mind. One gag in the original Japanese release had a washpan fall on a characters head - a common joke in Japanese culture. However, Mario being a very international series the translators took the liberty of changing the sprite of a washpan to a bucket - something I feel that most would agree is a very minor change that keeps the intent of the joke more or less the same. Much like with "punching up", changes can be either more OR less cut and dry but I'm also inclined to believe that isn't a fault of the translation technique itself but rather a fault of the translation itself or an incompatibility with a joke or reference in the translated language.

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amazon.com/dp/B01GKHJP4I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_DiI5ybRQY0D9B
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…anyways, this is going on a bit long and I don't think I've really gotten to a point yet. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel like there is a common misconception around Holla Forums that translating a game is easy, or that having a "literal" translation is something that should be aspired to. I can understand where the sentiment comes from - nobody wants to feel like the translation to a game is "lying" to them, after all - but I think that every now and then the sentiment might go a bit too far. I guess the point I'm making is that the Igor in Persona 5 is a fake and Yusuke is the traitor.

Discuss.

You fell for a meme.

If I'm enough of a weeb to spend literal years of my life dedicated to learning moonrunes I don't think I care.

I much prefer literal-sounding translations to translators taking liberties with the script.

I mean it can't be that hard after all, there's 1000's of Japanese movies with professionally-created English subtitles.

The thing that really grinds my gears though is translators removing lines because they think it's morally wrong or throwing in reddit-tier memes to be cool with the kids. I win't touch such a game with a bargepole.

Too long, didn't read.

Translations should be translations. Give me the information represented by the original author. No slang. No changes because Japanese culture has X instead of Y. Nothing. Give me the original, but in terms I can read. If I don't understand then I either care enough to look it up or its not important enough to care about anyway.

How is a bucket more international than a washpan? The joke's identical either way. That'd be like having a scene where a character steps on a rake in such a way that it hits him on the nose, and in some other country they change it to a snow shovel. The joke (that an item falls on someone's head / that a character carelessly steps on an object and it whacks him in the face) is identical in either situation, so there's no point in changing it.

I get that with all the nuances regarding honorifics, casualness of speech, etc., that there's no way to get a direct translation with the same impact, but some things seem to get changed merely for the sake of changing them. It's getting to the point lately where I think I might legitimately start preferring direct translations, including honorifics and all of that shit, because there are too many localizations that just take too many liberties with the original.

And also memes. Unless the original line is a Japanese meme, there should never be an instance where a meme is just haphazardly thrown into a game. That irks me.

I can understand that. If I had to have a choice between a meme-filled translation and a "literal" sounding one, I'd probably go with the latter as well. I'm just arguing that "literal" isn't something that should be necessarily aspired to, just as "culturalization" isn't something to aspire to either.

Right, and Persona generally does as much. One of my favorite translations was Steins;Gate, which had a freaking compendium of that shit. That being said, I'm not sure if that would work with every type of game.

At least from where I'm from, a bucket is certainly much more orthodox than a washpan. The joke is similar no matter where you go, but the point is that minor changes like that can enhance the experience even a little bit every now and then.

I agree that translators should try to go for the meaning/feel of the original text rather than be overly literal and end up sounding stilted, but I don't agree at all with changing things based on cultural context. If I'm playing a Jap game then I should expect some level of Jappery to be present.

Why does this garbage weeb trash have more than 3 threads about it up?

I'd argue that the position that Steins;Gate took on that matter was a good compromise. It translated some jokes "literally" while also changing some 2ch references to 4chan onces since they were equivalent. I'd also argue that XSEED's work on Akiba's Trip was one of the better translations I've gone through.

I'm not saying to change stuff JUST to change things, I'm just saying that there are instances where it could be good. I'd say that for the most part I'd prefer translators didn't attempt this though. It's very easy to fuck up.


This isn't necessarily a thread about Persona 5. I just used it as a springboard for discussion about translations in general. I actually didn't intend for the OP to be a Persona 5 picture (I was searching for that Bill Nye "Consider the Following" picture when I came across the OP pic and it fit, so eh).

I agree with this user. Changing things because people from a different culture might not get it isn't ok. There's a reason they put that in, and to change it to make it more international is robbing the game or movie or whatever of its cultural identity.

I understand that, I'm just saying that Mario is like Pixar or Disney, it's supposed to be international. Hell, Mario is supposed to be Italian. Changing a washpan to a bucket is so minor but has the same intent behind it that I don't necessarily see the problem with it. Like I said in my previous post, however, it's easy to fuck up so while I might defend it as a practice I don't necessarily think it should be attempted since it can have a negative impact more easily than a positive one.

See, that's what I mean by getting at the meaning. If a Japanese meme has a direct equivalent to a Western meme, then there's no reason not to change it. But if there's no counterpart, then it'd be better to leave it as is rather than sub in a different meme. Even worse is when there's a normal joke that "Western audiences wouldn't understand" and they change it to so fahnny maymay.

The problem I have is that it never needed to be changed in the first place.
The example you give isn't a big deal though. It doesn't bother me, I just don't understand why it was deemed necessary.

this series is the epitome of style over substance.

I think that much of Holla Forums doesn't really care about translations, they just want to nitpick all the little non issues. Like, back at 4burch, when the criminal girls shit was still fresh, there were people arguing that senran kagura was censored solely because they left the ages out, or how some autist was trying to "fix" paper mario the thousand year door because the alleged tranny bullshit wasn't included, while making other "improvements" like changing the name of rawk hawk into something taken from the spanish localization, or "fixing" a mistranslated sentence, despite not knowing what exactly was wrong with it in the first place.

Well, I mean, it wasn't "alleged" tranny bullshit. Vivian was actually a boy in Japan. And that's a fairly drastic character change. Every other change you mentioned sounds stupid, but I can understand the problem with completely changing a character's sex.

Go back to cuckchan with this retarded meme shit. There's a reason we left retarded shit like this and "lol Holla Forums doiesnt play videogames XDDDDDDDDD" behind when we came here.

Hotwheels should have never shilled this place on fucking reddit, or hired a fucking retard with a massive grudge for Holla Forums to redesign the site.

I suppose it depends on which line is more funny in the context of how the language is spoken. Does your soup taste like water or donkey piss?

People who prefer literal translations are just jumping for an overcorrection to cucked/meme translations. Most of you don't know how much interpretation is to be taken into account when translating something, have no idea how to write succinctly in English, and are barely literate in that most of your past reading is probably only video games which are mostly poorly written to begin with. If you want to translate effectively from Japanese to English, you need to master English in addition to Japanese.

I mean jesus fuck op your posts read like they need a fucking editor (as in someone to condense your writing) because you don't know how to express an idea in a single sentence. Whenever you aren't studying nip, brush up on your English. Read a book, or at least watch a TV show or a movie that's very dialogue driven. Even listening to real people talk will help you to interpret things from one language to another.

A translator's job is to be as accurate as possible. If there's some specific figure of speech that would become an unintelligible mess with a literal translation, then of course there should be some kind of workaround to it. But anything to do with "culturalization" is cancer. Leave the fucking rice balls alone.
You can either translate something, or mistranslate it. No half measures.

hi shill

Games shouldn't be translated to begin with. Nothing keeps out casuals like a language barrier

...

What in the goddamn

I remember reading about about the topic from ryusui, the guy who did the Breath of Fire 2 retranslation. I can't find the original right now, but here's what I remember of it.
BoF2's translation -typos aside- was actually quite faithful to the original script. He didn't aim to do a retranslation - he did a localisation. I didn't like every change he made to BoF2, but overal he did a great job, along with d4s modifying some mechanics.

You want to see some literal translations, go play the rom-hack translations people did for Snes games in the mid 2000's or so. Try playing the original Chrono Trigger retranslation (using -sama, -kun and other such tripe).

Overall, I think there is room and a need for both. The original CT retranslation was very awkward and stilted, but the technical work achieved and the increased knowledge regarding the original script and intent was valuable.
I prefer localisations personally. I want the correct tone and character to be conveyed. If there are cultural references that I and others wouldn't have a hope of understanding, they may as well be changed as long as the replacement reference lends to the atmosphere properly. Whether this happens or not is another thing, which is why I can appreciate people wanting something literal and letting their imagination fill in the gaps.

I was actually thinking about this subject some days ago but didn't want to start a thread about it because I was expecting to be shortlisted to death, so I'm glad you claim to understand Japanese whether you actually know it not.
The problem with language is that it's complicated as all fuck. It's not as simple as words being replaced by other words and reordering them to fit as a cohorent sentence. There's also tone and context involved as well, and there are words in other languages that straight up cannot be 1:1 replaced with another. So liberties need to be taken to convey those same meanings in different languages and there are people who get mad at this because "that wasn't there before!"

I'm on the phone so I can't really speak my mind right now, but I came to this revelation when I realised how dead simple Monster Hunter Stories' text was as I was running almost everything through Google translate. It didn't make me realise how different languages are, but it did make me think about why liberties are taken, and I would probably make some liberties myself if I had a chance to make a translation patch for it, since there isn't one I don't think.

This, people like to think they can become the next Woolsey but half the time they don't realize why and how their translations became a fan favourite, it's because while it deviated from the original script they never deviated from the spirit of the script itself.

I just want to say I appreciate how civil the thread has been. It feels like a breath of fresh air compared to how Holla Forums has felt recently.

I don't like localization. We want to play Japanese games about Japanese people in Japan, why ruin that? It'd be like making the Yakuza games into mafia ones.

Not only is it misrepresenting the original work its also ruining the tone and overall feel of the game.

Then by all means, go to Japan and learn Japanese. Problem solved.

heres my two cents. fuck off with the cringie shit in localization, that is all.

The point of translation is to avoid having to do that you idiot. Translation =/= localization.

Nah, fuck off. I wanted to tell you to do so in the Persona thread itself but I didn't want to derail a perfectly good thread. Literal translations are exactly what we've been asking for and that's all I continue to ask for when the alternative is whatever Treehouse has been shitting out this generation. If you find a "localization" team that can actually somehow compromise without pissing off either side and isn't shut out of the industry by faggot cliques like 8-4 then let me know. I don't think they exist anymore and I'd much rather scratch my head at an awkward line here or there than turn away from the game in disgust at my favorite characters or moments being made unrecognizable for no reason as was the case with FE Fates. I prefer this so much more to whatever censored, meme-filled alternative they considered before going this route.

I'm curious; what did you think of the NieR: Automata translation? Or the original NieR's, for that matter.

Nothing will ever beat the Adachi is the killer meme. Can someone spoil Persona 3 for me since I never bothered to play it and I've never seen any spoiler for it.

...

MC is Jesus and became a door for our sins.
…It's kinda hard to spoil, since the ending doesn't make sense without context.

why wasn't there an English PS3 release

But there was?

Yeah, both in PAL and NTSC regions. Hurry up if you're in PAL region since Deep Silver only sent out the first print and won't resupply the PS3 version.

Not in English

I asked a game shop and they said it's not coming out on PS3

Nigger it's available on Amazon RIGHT NOW.

well that's a fucking problem isn't it
Amazon doesn't exist in Australia yet

amazon.com/dp/B01GKHJP4I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_DiI5ybRQY0D9B

at least you aren't a kiwi you poor bastard

NZ here.I just order from amazon/play asia. I haven't bought a game locally for years.

why do you fucks have amazon before us

They're wrong. You will probably have a hard time finding it in retail, but check online (most places have already run out of their stock).

It's impossible to directly translate the nuances of Japanese into English without transforming it somehow. If you care that much about experiencing the original work, you should learn the language.

Most of the stores on the american amazon ship here, they're usually cheaper and take about a week for shipping.

Any good translation would be taking liberties with the script.
If you're translating word for word – you're a bad translator.
A good translator does not translate words or terms, he translates meanings.
Your job is to take the meanings from one language and impose them onto another language. Very often similar meanings are expressed with very different means in different languages, so if you're trying to make it 'look' similar to the original language – you're gonna fail.
It's even harder when it comes down to cultural things and stuff like that, because sometimes you cannot simply convert the meanings, since some meanings and ideas are simply absent in the other language.
TL;DR you actual job is not to make to look or read similar, but to FEEL similar, so that the translated text gives you the same emotional impact and subtlities (without screwing up the actual meaning) of the original. (At least when we're talking about literature and similar stuff).

If there's something weird in Japanese - it should sound weird in English. If there's some Jap meme or slang - you SHOULD put in an English meme or slang.

I am a translator myself (not from Japanese, though) and it makes me laugh how many people here completely miss the point of translating literature and other art-forms.
It's a tight rope of balance between sacrifing meaning and sacrificing the feel and the tone and the sound of the original, and you must preserve both, as ideally as you can.
Of course, it will have some hiccups just due to the fact that there are deadlines and you can't waste too much time thinking about the perfect equivalent to a sentence (I try not to spend more than 10 mins on a sentence even if I'm not completely satisfied, maybe return to it later, otherwise you're never gonna have anything done)

Agree as long as it isn't straight up changing the script because of muh chillens/wimmins/morrels. In literature, it used to be generally accepted that if you read an author translated, you didn't read him at all, especially if the author wrote in Russian. I think this can be generalized to all texts.

Another good example of a bad literal translation is FFTA2. That game is chock-full with weird phrases that map 1:1 to the way it would be said in Japanese. It's really off-putting.

I can't be fucked to read your long ass OP so I'm going to assume this is your point and you're absolutely right in my opinion. I assume it's people who don't actually speak anything but a single language and especially people who've never tried to translate large amounts of text that's in a foreign language that scream for literal translations. Often the literal translation literally doesn't make sense. However trying to change stuff like onigiri to hamburgers isn't the answer but the answer should be to translate the onigiri as onigiri and trust that the viewer/player/reader isn't a mouthbreathing redneck that can't understand people eating a ball of rice. I think the problem is less with translators and localizers and more that a lot of the audience is fucking stupid and/or assumed to be stupid. Just like people think that shit that SJWs are against actually needs to be censored to get sales or that Clinton would've won the election over Trump. In both cases it's a super vocal minority and/or a suppressed/shamed majority in a spiral of silence where no one talks out loud so everyone thinks they're the only ones thinking like that.

There is such a thing as good translation or good localization. It's just harder to do and harder to sell to uncultured swine who want culture to be a homogenized mess of diversity where nothing is unique or interesting. The worst part is that these people are vocal about it and label anyone who thinks different a racist which is the magic word to end all arguments and label somene bad. Average people respond better to things that are familiar to them and that's Facebook memes and hamburgers in the west. Immortal Technique sang "there's no diversity, because we're burning in the melting pot" in Dance With The Devil in 2001 and I think it's now truer than ever.

Who says everyone feels the same about a line of dialogue? 10 people can have 10 different interpretations of the same line.
This is bulllshit because the translator can put emphasis on a part where he deems to be the most important or downplay something else because of his personal biases.
Literary translations are not perfect but at least the traslator doesnt have a say in what I should feel right now based on his own personal opinion.

what about changing the script because the original was too boring and needed jazzing up?

Apparently, the girls va said that was exactly what the Japanese Atlus branch instructed the voice director and english va to pronounce that particular name.

You will ALWAYS feel somewhat different, even if you read a non-translated work.
The author still has intent when he's writing a book, and wants to elicit a particular feeling from you. Yes, it will vary somewhat, but if you translate as closely as the author inteded, you will have a similar effect the original had on people, even the variations will probably be similar.
Obviously it's not perfect, there is no perfect translation, but it can be close.
If you're translating a work of literature literally word-for-word - you're doing it wrong and you yourself wouldn't be reading such a work.

Case in point: Ace Attorney. Transalted literally it would lose about 90% of its charm and probably woudln't be nearly as succsessful.

Read Eugene Nida or something, it's a staple of translation.

At least they bothered to offer a free undub DLC.

Other M all over again.

There's another point, though.
Sometimes you just cannot ellicit the same responce in the same sentence.
Like, say, the sentence has a double meaning or something, and it's really important and you can't drop it, but if you try to translate it like that – it will just look tacky and be hard to read.
In that case you kind of 'store' it and then use in a completely different sentence, so the sum is still the same.
Let's say there is an original line with a meme-wordplay in it. I cannot think of any meme here which would induce a wordplay in my language. That means that I'll trasnlate it as is, but then maybe drop a meme in another line of text, where it didn't exist, so that on the whole the feel of the text remains the same (if you drop memes completely – it will be too different).

There is nothing wrong with Nick Doerr translations.

If it's better than the original, like Ghost Stories, it can work, but I would never call it a good translation. At the very least you should provide an option to switch in that case.

Has a game ever done something like that? The tales of innocence fan translation on NDS had an option for localized/translated/japanese names in romanji for artes/items etc.

None that I know of, the closest I've seen are options for the original audio.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin also did it. The plot and story is the same, but characters are fleshed out a bit more.
sage for double post

Not a translator, but I do speak nip for work related reasons. So far translating between Eng-Jpn , even near literal is not that hard as many would believe despite the cultural differences. It just takes years knowing cultures of both sides and some common sense.

Ideally for the uninitiated in nip cultures, the main reason why translation some time derails entire dialogue/scene/feels. In nip game cases, I think it is better to try to preserve the original meaning, feelings, as humanly as possible because a lot of nip game are closely tied to its culture. Unless you do it like Ace Attorney which rewrote the entire scene. Just try to keep the original feels, even if the uninitiated will not understand a little bit, that is okay because we are dealing with another entire culture altogether. And as a bonus, maybe it will spark interests in Japanese cultures and languages (or just ways of saying things) too.

So how many large text pieces, let's say a thousand words or so, do you translate in your everyday life? I don't mean read and/or paraphrase but actually write down a translation for it.

Not much to nil, like I said I am not a translator. But I often work with Japanese companies so I picked it up way back and language always comes in handy. Picked up some mangas, novels (not light novels, actual ones) too from time to time. I get the point, but my opinion still stand. It is not that hard, it just takes effort. Doing sloppy work because it is 'hard' is a poor excuse for any trades.

It might be readability. People in most countries can recognize a bucket, but I for one would have no clue what a metal washbasin would look like if I didn't already know my anime.

So is it accurate then? What's the Japanese va say?

As long as there's no DUDE DRUMPF LMAO shit, I'll be okay with it in the "I'm not buying and not caring" way. If they want to make a stiff and shitty translation out of spite, let them. We can buy non-(((AtlusUSA))) products.

Explain further.

Sure it is. The MC has Death inside him because the robot girl is bad at crisis management, and he reseals it at the end if the game at the cost of his life (?)

The fighting games have the Blue Lady working to bring him back, which is super Canon, so get ready for Persona 345- Golden is Unbreakable

Original AA is set in Japan, translated one took place in America. They rewrote entire set/scene for ease of translation/culture translation purpose I think . . . which led to some awkward things in Apollo Justice's sushi/hamburger/ramen and gangster/yakuza thing because the visuals directly contradicts that script.

I could go for Persona Q 2.

You'd have a rough time understanding nip slang. They've got some weird idioms.

Most people on Holla Forums that care about this shit know that a "literal" translation is bad. We just want the localization to stay true to the japanese version. If a character is goofy/offbeat in japanese but isn't annoying, keep him the same way in english. Don't make him a fucking memelord. It's very simple. Keep the original intent, without going off the deep end with what you think is correct. That's all I ask of localizers and very few do good localizations.

Nip slang is nigh incomprehensible even for the natives without explanation because it is made of 50% close circle memes and 50% obscure shit. But I seriously doubt any of that will made it in normal nips game (except for some niche vidya like Nep or Akiba Trip). But idioms can be understood, because it is expression that is weird not the language.


This. Bloody this. But sadly, all decent translators went to a greener pastures than translating nip vidya. And we are left with libshits with 20 hours in Japanese class in high school who just make shit on the fly. For example, FF15 original nip version and translated version, different script without any semblance of originality altogether (to add insult to injury 'Empire's alternative facts' shit when original line said NOTHING near that sort of thing, it is different conversation altogether).

Semblance of 'the original'*. Apologies, was screeching too hard.

Oh, I knew the whole "EAT YOUR HAMBURGERS APOLLO" thing and where it came from, but I didn't realize they flatout rewrote things. Neat.

That's absolutely retarded. Yes google translate tier is lousy, but changing an entire story will always be worse. People who like or want literal don't mean that sentence structures don't have to be fixed.

"Jimmy coquette a buy go"
This isn't what people mean buy literal translation. They are not against proper sentence structure.

"Jimmy went to by a croquette"
This is what people want and want to to be translated as is in multiple languages. Altering it always runs the risk of changing the meaning. Sometimes it's a minor consequence, other times it can be serious.

People read Shakespeare and Greek stories such as The Odyssey and don't need a localization or a "punch up"


Same. I have read Shakespeare and understand it. I don't need to to be changed to regular english. Same with the Iliad.


It maybe minor, but it is a cultural change. It changes on the author regards the item, the culture behind it, and it 's NOT the same as a bucket. It also robs audiences the opportunity to be exposed and learn new things. It may sound silly, but it is treating the audience as stupid and needing to be coddled which robs them of learning experiences.


And interpretation issues is why literal translation is reliable. It gives the audience a base to work off of where as a localization prevents that and possible results in permanent loss of meaning. This affects both old and new games.

Bingo


You're a shitty translator.


This is a good point. I may not feel the same way or get a joke, but at least I know what it was.


Some how did the jappanese game manage to be popular in japan. Ace Attorny was not a translation, it was a literal rewrite. A completely different story.


They are different things.