I´ve started to learn Japanese several years ago and I´m by no means fluent. Zero/ Azure would still be too difficult to enjoy and Eiyuden Chronicles ( 5 hours in) feels pretty comfortable, while something like Blue Reflection would be quite easy ( watched some hours of lets play before I´ve bought it) When I see all the controversy with localization nowadays, I´m so glad that I´ve just kept pushing through the difficult ( or rather time consuming) process of learning this beautiful language. I want to add, that I completely agree with Erick. Dont stop pointing out the issues. I think a good localization should respect the work of the author.
I also took the plunge into consuming more content raw in the original language a few years back. It can be a challenge at first, but I found it to be quite enjoyable even when I didn't fully comprehend everything that was being said - I just saw that as part of the adventure of picking up the language. Even now, I am not by any means perfect in my comprehension, but I have noticed marked improvements. Perhaps one day I may be able to get good enough to do my own fan-translations and create mods to fix these butchered games that I enjoy. :3
The problem is you now have small organizations who should not have any influence to begin with pushing developers in a certain direction. Dealing with bad translations is one thing but inserting social controversies bring it to a whole new level. Speak with your wallet.
@@arnowisp6244 The thing is that the people that want to censor stuff, just fearmonger the companies into following their advice, they don't have any actual power but the companies think they will sell less if they don't censor some stuff or make a more 'modern' dialogue.
I'm not a native English speaker, when I was young games that was in my language was translated lazily, it was clearly visible that the person didn't speak my language and didn't check it anything translated made sense. I switched all my games in English and learnt English by myself. My english will never be good but I saw how many english version was always weird/bad (breath of fire on snes i.e) but at least the story was understandable. Surprisingly, Nintendo Europe (game I mainly play) has started (for quite a long time now) to translate everything directly from Japanese instead of translating from translation of Nintendo of America. I've learn Japanese too (though I suck) because games I loved took years to be localised in Europe. Now when I can't play in my native language, I choose Japanese and english if I have no choice left.
This discussion over the last couple months has shown me that as much as i despise a lot of localization issues, i actually love the Unicorn Overlord writing.
In some cases that could be part of it, maybe. Part of the reason they even hire outsiders to translate their games is because they realize their own working knowledge of the languages is limited, otherwise they could just as well do it in-house. So they may just not fully grasp how butchered the end product really is. I can at least give them the benefit of the doubt in that regard.
Just a Side note. Unicorn Overlord translation makes sense at it aims to replicate Old English in the Games Medieval Fantasy Setting. Same thing for Odin Sphere. Gamers were complaining about the game translation being longer and not even thinking if the style fits the game. (Which it does)
It's easier to translate than to translate then change it up to "what's big" at the time. Still funny that fe fates is the best example of this mess where they got lazy and we didn't get all the dlc same with cutting content on top of the dot dot dot conversation. Only good thing they added was an extra few lines that honestly fixed some plot holes to the og story
Im pretty sure alot of gamers have a large backlog, so stop buying day one. Wait till black friday, prime day or cybermonday. Hell just wait a year and most games go down in price by alot, i once saw totk go from 70 to 60 in a few months if not one. And if ya wanna make a stink about it go online and convey politely why you waited to lick up said game. And if you really want to stick it to em mail your greavences to the japanese side of things and i do mean physical mail btw, itbseems the japanese dont look at social media like that in comparison to there American counterpart
I only buy used when it’s physical anyway and doing that puts no money in these people’s pocket. For digital purchases my rule is less than $10 AND 70% off. That way they hardly get much money from me at all.
For me, I dislike people who defend translations that are bad. Overall I'm glad we got games in English but would be nice if they were more accurate. Big example of crappy translations, NIS America did it for Coldsteel games and i just remember i hated the fact the english dub changed their script so the english text followed the dub, the dub aint even anything special.
I remember playing Cold Steel and someone says "Rean..." and the sub read "We love you Rean, dont go...". It's a made up example, but that was the gist of it. You needed no japanese knowledge to realize they were constantly making up shit.
Bro the translations in the Trails games are shockingly bad. I speak a bit of Japanese and when I played it the Japanese dub and the English subs were so far off it was pathetic
For jrpgs, unless the dialogue is really janky I'm usually unbothered by it (text wise). Ignorance is bliss and all. The real problem is when it's too evident that they've changed something that need not be changed. For example, I've been watching Fallout with someone that needs subs. The translator completely desconstructs metaphors as if the foreign audience does not have the brain to understand them. Character taps bunker wall "look how she sings" translated to "and how robust it is". Character says "I'll be the head and you'll be the sword" translated to "I'll be the leader and you'll be the soldiers". Why?! These are not cultural differences, you can directly translate these metaphors, they'd still make sense! I don't really see agendas going on in general, it's mostly publishers cutting corners and using AI translators or unskilled individuals that don't have their work reviewed by peers. It's appalling that fan translations, overall, are so much better than a paid-for product.
Hust translate. If the sentence doesn't form a proper English sentence then shift it slightly to work. That's it. Also Whoever is the guy that does deals between en and jp should do the translations since they already know both languages as someone has to be the middle man between the two. It'd make the locolizers lose their jobs or actually do proper translations in fear of it.
AI tranlation is a thing. Once AI learn "context" the translation would be more accurate. ROM hackers only need to extract the script, translate with AI and proof read. Then insert and that is that. You don't even need to transtale, just retranslate and give the correct context and real meaning in the original script, basically, unlocalising and just translate.
Sadly...AI never will "learn" context, the same way it can´t "learn" emotions. There´s no logical implication, tautology, conditional statement(...and so on.) that drives the computer to arrive to it. One sure can tell it to write a horror story though...the problem it doesn´t ever distance itself from horror, not even to build rapport with the characters(soon to be killed or suffer a heart wrecking disaster). I tried AI quite a bit...😒
@@mizaelaraujo True, but never in my life i would ever imagine hearing JoJo's Dio japanese VA singing pop songs in english, but AI made it possible. The tech is too new. That is why IA translate needs a human to proof read and give it context. But most of the work is done. By one person in record time. AI is amasing and scary at the same time.
Eiyuden has been a bummer. I pre-ordered it, was so hyped for Murayama's new take on Suikoden. When he passed away earlier this year, I was definitely determined to play it. I'm about 20 hours into it, and the translation isn't nonstop awful, but I definitely get hit with cringey redditspeak pretty consistently, and it takes me out of the experience. Seeing posts about how Lian isn't a magic pixie tumblr girl in the Japanese is annoying too.
If this continues to get worse as time goes on, I feel the developers will eventually speak up when some translation crosses the line or goes too far which will then force them to use other translation companies or maybe use their own in house team. I view it as a bubble ready to burst. We aren’t there yet, but it’s getting there. And when it happens and it explodes, we will see some changes for the good happening.
Yeah, the problem's been around for a very long time. I mean, good old Wrecking Designs was called that for a reason. ...only i never expected that instead of getting better as time goes by, translations would actually get _worse_
@@linkvagar2336 I can't mention it directly for some reason with the post getting Thanos snapped, but Cent Sore Ed Game Ing is a RUclipsr dedicated to documenting such stuff, so that's incorrect.
Hi Erick! Well I know you speak spanish so I'll write to you in spanish: Erick ya sabes cómo está la cosa, lo mejor que podemos hacer es no enfadarnos sino denunciar como bien has dicho con educación y objetividad y luego ir buscando alternativas para paliar esto. Afortunadamente tenemos muchos medios en nuestra disposición, pero sabiendo que esto está en todos lados ahora mismo (hasta en los anuncios de comestibles) lo mejor es estar juntos, no ceder y ayudar a los demás compartiendo las soluciones que más nos gustan ante esto. A todos nos encantan los videojuegos, juntos podemos disfrurarlos como siempre si nos ayudamos unos a otros, como en tus vídeos sugieres. ¡Un abrazo y gracias por tus vídeos!
I started typing my comment before the end of the video like a good youtube viewer should... ... but yeah. Learn Japanese. Or just point your phone at the screen and use Google Translate.
I really don't understand why it's like localizers mission to "spice" every dialogue up by changing the meaning. Most of the games that has any other language option (I'll use Chinese for this example) are usually very faithful to the original, English is the only one that has this issue. I'm an Asian, who live in Asia for my whole life. I'm also trilingual. English is my 3rd language. The only reason I stick with English instead of my native is because it's the common tongue. Every worldwide release game will have English, can't say the same for my native language. If I wrote this comment in my native, nobody would understands me except a few people. You don't even need to know basic Japanese to know that when the character said something like "はい！" in the voiced dialogue, does not translate to "Let's give them hell!" or whatever kinds of "rewrite" they've been pushing. And this is just one of the most mild example I could think of without getting too political. There are alot of things you can learn about someone personality based on the way they talk. From the way they address themselves, others, using honorifics and such. Eng "localizers" decided to turn things 180 degrees by making them cuss, and rude for some reason. Trails and Unicorn Overlord is the most recent example of games I've played that has this issue. It's a Japanese game, intended for Japanese audience, and people who enjoys Japanese related medias. Rewriting character personality, censorship/removal of certain dialogues because it doesn't fly with the localizer culture & political views shouldn't be allowed. People are saying that "Just learn Japanese bro!" Is this really the answer? Not only the "localizers" are still getting paid for butchering and destroying your beloved franchise, some Japanese devs even has adopted the whole "localization" like RGG where they admitted that they changed the script at the core level to fit with modern worldwide (read: western) audience. What's the point in playing the original Japanese version when it's just as "woke" as the worldwide version counterpart? What are we supposed to do? Pirate them. Simple as that. A good game got butchered by inept localizers should be repaid by low sales. Bigwigs only care about numbers. Make them aware that hiring a team of cheap, xenophobic, failed writers who called themselves as localizers is not the way to save production costs because of the risk of losing sales.
I'm trying to learn Japanese nowadays and my main issue is Kanji. God damn that's dumb. I can read Hiragana and Katakana just fine, but Kanji is just awful. Sigh.. long way to being able to play games in full Japanese :(
Start with easy stuff like romcom or slice of life. Fantasy, mystery or sci-fi is too difficult for a beginner. If you like to read, you can go to the website syosetu com, 小説家になろう. There you´ll find tons of light novels, just dont forget to use yomichan as a pop up dictionary. I suggest reading, because its very effective for Kanji recognition practice. Its hard in the beginning though.
The weird part about Katakana is when you run across words that are chopped up bits of other loan words to the point where they no longer resemble the original they came from. I still remember the first time I encountered スマホ ("Sumaho") and it took me way too long to realize that it meant "Smartphone." 😅
its always been an issue. companies like Sweet Baby INC are making it worse. They used to censor any religious stuff in games when i was a kid in the 90s. Or woking designs would add pop culture jokes. while i didnt mind the jokes so much it still shouldent be there. Taking out the religious stuff i always found stupid. in the case of Eiyuden Chronicle its Companies like Sweet Baby INC that are the problem. i love the game but the translation is questionable, and im forced to support a company i dont like to play a game ive been waiting on for years.
We, as consumers, have much more power than you seem to think, but the source of our power is our wallets. At the end of the day, the entire industry exists for no other reason than to serve US and OUR needs for entertainment. So the correct way to think is "no preorders unless you absolutely trust the entire chain" and "butchered localization = no buy". When you buy and power thru the mess you are sending a clear signal that this is ok. This is simply because game studios are businesses and the only language the higher ups will understand is bottom lines. So, yeah, this means you might need to skip on Eyuden Chronicle and other potential gems for a few years until they either retranslate or they become bargain bin buys. This is what sends messages. Even the Stellar Blade thing, it is not just a petition, but a campaign to cancel Playstation Plus subscriptions. If you want to change things, you have to hit where it hurts, which is the balance sheets.
I don't mind too much, but even in Final Fantasy X from 2001, the dialogue options you have to choose between differ sometimes depending on whether you play the German or US version. That's stupid, as I won't go for a dumb answer on my first playthrough, but I'd like to replay it anyway.
I started watching anime with HK fansubs on bootleg VHS tapes in the pre-Blockbuster days. If I can get the general gist of what the dialogue is trying to say I’m fine. I’m not expecting Shakespeare in my JRPG dialogue anyway. Like you said if it’s something that really bothers someone then they can learn the original language and get enough cultural context to understand the meaning behind the word choices. E.g. speaking Spanish natively I ignore any subtitles for movies or shows but leave them on for my wife who understands Spanish but doesn’t always get the cultural context that isn’t taught in language classes.
As long as people mix good translation like unicorn overload with bad translations like Eiyuden Chronicles, nothing will ever change. Also some of the developers want translations to be different from the original source. For example Final Fantasy Tactics, the war of the Lions. That video game director wanted the English strip to be the King James/ Shakespearean type dialog.
This is the norm. I believe that English speakers are just noticing this now. As a Brazilian, every single portuguese translation I face has some qwirks that I just accept as bad translation. From movies to books, from games to websites, if you are not the original language intended for that media, you will miss something in translations.
this is an issue in literary translations as well. It's so strange how people claim localizations are "necessary", why exactly would someone want to consume a foreign piece of media thats been rewritten to remove as much foreignness as possible? Here is a quote from Vladimir Nabokov on the subject that the entire industry of "localizing" should take note of. Nabokov felt a kind of curatorial protectiveness of great works in their original languages. The mortal sin of the translator, he wrote, was to sacrifice what he called “absolute accuracy ” for the sake of readability. “A schoolboy’s boner is less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its commercial interpretation or poeticization,” he wrote. “The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.” “The person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into another language,” he concluded, “has only one duty to perform, and this is to reproduce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text. The term ‘literal translation’ is tautological since anything but that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a parody.” In his lights, the labors of Garnett and many like her, measured in years spent sequestered in libraries with foreign usage guides, did not even rise to the level of translation.
Some good advice there. I don't like these awful localizations either, but I feel like if the game is good, DESPITE the localization...well, I can still have fun with the game, while still heavily criticizing and pointing out the all of the localization's screw ups. Of course, fan translation mods also help. We need Modders now more than ever.
Sure, but for me whenever I know a game has butchered the dialogue in some way I always find some myself going "Hm, I wonder if this was changed" while playing. It completely breaks my immersion. It's the same case for censorship. You never truly know if you're having the intended experience or a curated one.
the only games left is the gachas rpg that's unaffected lol, but yeah there's is always someone out there that's fighting it though, like grummz and many others. so there will be retaliation so we shouldn't worry that much
There's a real problem with a lot of games but I do wish some people would give certain give some games leeway. Translation isn't a 1:1 in most cases. Even languages close to English in their origins aren't easy. Like look at any breakdown of French to English and those languages have influenced each other other centuries. If you've spent any time learning an asian language as an English speaker then you know how difficult it can be. Now imagine you're translating a game. You need to translate writer intent, a sentence's meaning, character personalities, jokes (which rarely translate if wordplay is involved), and the list goes on. There is always a comprimise. The reason I bring this up is because the grief Unicorn Overlord got before it even dropped was crazy. The examples people were giving without realising that neither the in-game translation or the twitter thread could be considered an accurate translation. Even the one in your video @1:37 is great example. Both aren't accurate. I could again translate it as "Joseph... About me, I am fine. You should go too, and be my mother's support." But that's still not fully accurate. As there is no 1:1 translation. Both my translation and the one given in the blurb don't really capture that the sentence, depending on the tone used, miss that the sentence can be delivered in an accusatory way and/or be an order. I feel the game's translation better captures that idea. But does that mean it is more or less accurate? Unicorn Overlord still wasn't perfect. It was at times full of purple prose or flowery language but at the same time we think of that language when we depict the old English used in the medieval era. There's a lot of nuance in this conversation that just isn't known, isn't talked about, or ignored by people because we get other games that ARE terrible and do deserve our ire as a collective. I still think about that one localisation dev who openly bragged on twitter that he hated a game's plot and claimed he made his own but we never knew what game he was talking about. Those people suck and are failing to the job they were hired to do. But we shouldn't hurt the dev trying to find a way to translate that is either literal or focused on intent or some happy middle ground. Those devs should be held up as the example we expect other localisers to follow.
As long as the text is conveying the original intent, I don't mind if it's altered. But when it gets changed for no good reason, that's a problem. I'll just deal with it by not giving them my money, And I'll go on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Eiyuden Chronicle, I'll still play. I simply won't pay for it. And I'll make use of the retranslation patch that's being worked on.
I totally agree with your first paragraph, but not buy games from a genre you like is how you kill said genre. I've been starving another Trun based game. Especially since Final Fantasy has turned their backs on people like myself.
@@AntonioCunningham If they're so clueless or stubborn that the genre dies because I refuse to buy products that have been vandalized, then they deserve to go out of business. It's on their heads. Not mine.
@@Grayald I greatly disagree. That's how you kill an industry. I remember the massive dry spell of the Xbox 360/ early PS3 days were there were *no* jRPGs. That was horrible! If that's what you want then you're no better than thr pro lootbox/micro transaction people since your goal is the same. The destruction of the gaming industry.
I think the solution is for a bunch of like-minded to get together and start a new localization studio that has an upfront respect for original work policy. Try to grab the attention of a few japanese studios who have shown a concern over the issue but don't really know what to do about it. All it requires is one game and then you have a foot in. But I think they need to look away from the US. It's too entrenched in politics and would become an easy target since the existing studios would gang up and sabotage for them, not just for their beliefs, but to save their jobs. I think Australia is the ideal country. It's close to Japan and even share time zones. Online communication would be easy. And they don't really have much of an industry that could gang up on them. We just have to get used to their accents in games. It's also becoming more common with translations, sometimes dubs in other major european languages and chinese. These can be great alternatives if they're based on japanese or the first english draft written by the actual translators, before it gets tampered with. The french in FFXVI is apparently more true to the japanese version, and this includes a dub.
On the one hand, Japanese is just a fundamentally different language from English, and Asian cultural norms are reflected in the language that aren't present in English. So every translation of a Japanese script is very much a localization. It requires a translator to rethink & rephrase almost every line. So there will never be a truly "accurate" translation of any Japanese script. However, because of all that stuff I just said, Japanese -> English gives a translator a lot of license to put their "personal stamp" on a translation. So it's very tempting to take a little TOO much license. It's a delicate balance, and a difficult job.
Solid advice Erick. I'm always playing the older games by default since I don't buy anything at launch either. And I really want to avoid rewarding censorship in gaming. Vote with your wallet!
I passed on eyiden, not because of translation. But poor design. Healers are not optimized and usless and you have to use items that are scare instead. Im out, ill play beyond the beyond if i want that kind of head ache
In case of Eiyuden Chronicles, I think the localisation is due more for economics than political reasons. I think they toned down the translattion in order not to bump the rating into M which could decrease the number of sales.
I fully agree. Also, it seems to me like the team who localized it were at different skill levels. Some parts are decent and some parts are crap. I don’t see so much of a woke agenda as much as a lack of writing ability.
Localization doesn't bother me in games when they are trying to match the lips of the characters. I'm usually on the side of defending it, But... Eiyuden Chronicles has no excuse.
All these people saying don't buy/ pay for the games. Yeah, right, sink the developers, great idea. The advice of taking it with a grain of salt is actually a good one. I have a luxury of being able to play the games in japanese, but sometimes I also play in english for various reasons. Japanese is very hard to translate 100% accurately and when they're making up things I can see that a mile away. They've been always doing this. Squall's "Whatever" in Final Fantasy VIII is a famous example. Change your mindset. Look at the localizations as a way to navigating games at least. You know it's not 100% accurate, but still conveys what's important. If they push politics on you ignore it. A fan translation can also help
I was excited for Eiyuden that i go and play Suikoden 1&2. Then when it come out , and I saw some early reviews, the localisation was so horrifying that I ended up not playing it. Then months after when the update 1.1 come out i saw someone make a localisation subtitle patch on nexus mods that fix the translation to make it closer to the JP. So yeah now the game is the best i ever played.
Japanese media needs localization in order to read and sound natural and realistic, just don't change the context, don't change personalities, don't change names. Don't change lovable airhead chicks into strong womyn tropes, don't change the comic relief flamboyant characters. It's not a hard to understand philosophy.
Thanks for your chiming in on this issue. I agree with all your points, especially when it comes to learning Japanese (which is a personal goal of mine, considering some of the Japan-exclusive JRPGs I've bought to play someday like some of the 'Tales of' titles and Terranigma). I just hate this, because it's like we're returning back to the days of Woolseyism, except the lines are not nearly as charming as 'spoony bard'. It's like the US has devolved as a gaming market, or something.
This situation has me fed up. First I stopped consuming almost any Western content because of their political agendas and now it is becoming increasingly noticeable how they have been introducing the same things into Japanese products. The only thing left to do is learn Japanese, since this also happens in manga and anime. Great channel.
RGG put out a mainline game with 30 GB of pornstar FMVs last year lmao. Yakuza 7/8 contain separate sub translation track in addition to the dub. RGG (and NIS) seem to just not care what western audiences will think about the original content. I cant even find anyone else complaining about what you are hinting at.
Don’t let anyone try and tell you that you have no power. The consumer always has power, but it takes a lot of people. Simply don’t buy it. If you buy it, you support it. Petitions won’t do anything. Complaining won’t do anything. Vote with your wallet. Trash the game in reviews. Convince others to not support the game. Do whatever you can to hurt these companies in their wallet. Thats what can be done. Don’t worry about having nothing. If there is a market, someone will come for it.
There is something we can do, just stop giving these companies money. But for some reason, despite people constantly saying that we need to fight with our wallets... most of these people cave in and buy the game anyways. Just stop it. Don't do it. Have self control. I haven't bought an EA, Ubisoft, or Activision game in... I wanna say, 8+ years. I've even passed on some SE games and I'm sitting pretty. If the people complaining about the state of the gaming industry had more self control, these... modern version of the problems wouldn't exist. vote with your wallets people. I'm sure you have 100+ unplayed games in your backlog to fill the time.
unicorn overlord hurt a lot since i was so excited. During the demo i would physically cringe at least once during a cutscene due to the overwriting, and that was before i knew about the localization problem. Unfortunately, i couldnt escape the writing by switching to jp voices.
Took balls for u to speak on this btw, i respect you a ton for that. A couple other people I (used to) watch just say its a non-issue and hides comments disagreeing.
Some spaniard translations are superior nowadays compared to english localizations. Case in point 13th sentinels , unicorn overlord. Spanish is another option now to avoid bad translations.
I don't think eastern developers realize just how important localization is. I can't count how many games I've passed on solely based on poor localization. It completely ruins the immersion. You feel like you're playing a fanfiction.
Stop playing games all together... that sounds like a lack of self control but fine if you wanna buy it buy it on sale and if you buy it on steam leave a review of why you bought it so cheap.
To me it's kinda simple: i don't put money in what i don't believe it's right, if they feel the hit in their wallet, they could do better! i won't buy eiyuden chronicles even if they make it run in 60fps in my favorite console, the switch. I didn't bought baten kaitos too because of the same problem, i want the same text as a japanese can read, if they don't offer it, i won't pay for it.
The fact that there is politics even in game productuon and localization is the most toxic and the saddest thing to me. I feel like one day all of these bigwigs are gonna get there just desserts but by then we won't be there to see it and the people that will "do" know about it will have no idea how deep this matter was at the time 😢😢. It's absolutely sad. Even worse, some group of people nowadays get offended in every single thing for no bloody reason 😠.
At this point I'll just stick to the 4th gen and 6th gen era of gaming I'm still finding new games to play to this day :D especially on the PlayStation 2
The problem is that Americans don’t see people like you or me that English is the second language. They forget the whole world uses English as the common ground. And they always try to pander to an audience of Americans that doesn’t represent everyone. A more direct approach to translation would be appreciated by the whole world
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb I use "your" because "youre" is also incorrect and getting a ' is a pain on a phone. Or do you need perfect grammar on the internet snowflake?
One thing is a bad translation due to the lack of knowledge like what happened in the past. At least they were made with good intentions. Nowadays we have people changing dialogues on purpose, because they want to insert their ideas in the game. That's simply not acceptable.
To be honest if I took offense to every butchered translation. I wouldn’t play video games, read books, or watch tv shows. Folks try not to take offense to everything. One bad translation, shouldn’t dictate the thousands of good things a game has.
@@johnbazan8674 I've never seen it in any game I ever played. Chrono Trigger, FF6, Super Mario RPG, I don't remember even one example of politicized localizations. I'm not saying none existed ever, but it was probably extremely uncommon and you'd be hard pressed to list even a few games.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pbwhere's the politicization in the Unicorn Overlord and Eiyuden Chronicle localization? I'm still waiting for a single person to point it out.
Thanks a lot for point it out that huge issue, politics damage all, also videogames only because woke translators want to force the changes for themselves.
As a guy who lived through anime fansubs, you guys are mad. Spoony Bard is gay propaganda, and Chrono Cross made Harle french, gotta burn those games too.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb you never heard the line in every translation in FFiv since its release that is not even close to an accurate translation from the "good old days"
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb by the logic in this video, it sure is gay. Which is political omg someone cancel FFiv english translations it's ruined it's not authentic bakka
@@windwaker0rules Nope, the logic in this video is fine. It showed the concept of misgendering being added to the localization, that's completely different than baselessly saying spoony bard is somehow gay or something.
Actually not particularly uncommon, even in 'retro' games. Off the top of my head Breath of Fire IV removed fanservice scenes and a decapitation in the English localization, Medieval put a helmet on Daniel Fortesque to conform to cultural sensitivities at the time for their Japanese release. People are just *way* more sensitive about it these days, and there's always a million youtubers ready to stoke the flames now.
@@catoblepasomega Removing fan service and violence was common, but that's entirely different than censoring the left's pet issues, like so-called, as they say, transphobia, like in the Person 3 remake.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Censoring fanservice is exactly the sort of thing that would have right-wing gamers up in a furor if it happened today. I can easily see people getting all bent out of shape over costume alterations to 'appeal to cultural sensitivities'. As for P3, they removed the playable female character in the remake. I think there are a lot of lefties that would see a strong political statement in that choice just by itself.
@@catoblepasomega Not liking something doesn't make it a divisive political issue per se, both sides would oppose certain instances of fam service being censored. Skipping over that Persona alteration that was mentioned and vaguely complaining about the lack of a non-canon player character exclusive to a portable demake of Persona 3 is an odd deflection. Atlus just didn't wanna put the work in.
@@catoblepasomega People have (rightfully) been complaining about those instances of censorship in older games for decades now. It's just that most people didn't know about these changes in the first place until more recently, when it's easy to see the original Japanese versions of dialogue/scenes thanks to the internet.
I don't get why in most of the cases on the video when you mention a political agenda going on on the translation you show images of just some random unecessary changes that have nothing to do with politics.
So many people who are so proud of not caring about being served propaganda very weird thing to be proud of if you ask me. Something tells me if it was the other side serving propaganda they wouldn't be so quick to ssy "who cares"
These game also somehow got the worst font ever created like whoever did the job really didn't put any effort or just straight up not cut for it. Bad woke localization, censorship, and ugly fonts there's really no reason to support these people.
You might be the only one I ever saw bring up font choice, nice. I totally agree on that since a lot of the time the font they use make it hard to read especially if you are playing on something like a steam deck etc...
Dealing with Localization is a nightmare. The culture has to change in America in order for us to get faithful translations. All companies are hiring based of the wrong criteria. All we can do is complain and not buy certain games. We know for a fact a lot of localizers who work with AAA publishers are extremely liberal and don’t care the games they translate.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb all AAA Japanese Publishers have bent the knee to DEI for money. It’s sad to see and it’s obvious what is happening in gaming. It’s all a demoralizing project. Too many evil people have infiltrated the gaming industry. They hate us informed gamers, they want everyone to be a casual. Never stop complaining about games you care about.
American activists working on those games have totally convinced japanese developers that these changes are absolutly necesary in order to not be harassed and being acepted. And JP studios still believe that, and ask them to do whatever it takes. So, when confronted, activists can actually protect themselves saying 'we're told to do these changes, we are not changing things because we want, it's called localization'... yeah, bullsh*t. Japanese studios are pretty hard to convince when they decide something though, it will take some time for them to realize things are changing. Not buying is not a solution if they don't know why they don't sell and go bankrupt, like a lot of these companies would if they don't sell well ONE game, so is not that simple.
Stellar video. Yes, this is very frustrating, many games I just write off until they at least get an undub patch so I can listen for myself wtf the characters are actually saying, and use mods to fix as much as possible. Some games gets delocalization patches, and now with AI it can happens even more quickly. FE Engage got retranslated very quickly (only to get banned by Nexusmod) This is why I'm only playing certain games years, sometimes decades after they got released, on jailb/roken conoles or emulators, and the companies don't see a cent of my money when I do this, I say screw them, they don't deserves support for as long as they do this.
To not play, super stupid right?, yeah twitter I mean x...yup....Well, money is king... but even "screaming" to developers that is not the answer, they are tied if they are collaborating with a major publisher (could happen that indie studies are just grabbing the cash for DIA train, we don't know) so changing what you want your cosumers to consume...well, we have soda as an example, but not buying at launch is a huge impact, super huge impact!
Nowadays first thing I do is look for an Asia English Release. If that fails, that is when I try to see which of the EU or US resist Pandering to Woke bullshit when translating and porting the game. I can understand some typos or a bit of misconstructed sentences since RPGs tends to have a huge ammount of dialouge or a few censorship. What I cannot forgive is inserting and forcing a disgusting Woke Idealogy on something they have no claim.
I got through Breath of Fire 2's translation. I'll be honest, nothing I have played in the past decade bungled the translation to the point that I actually noticed it in the game. I'm not really seeing anything in the examples you have here that feels really egregious either. I think if you are seeing political 'oppression' in 'generic war cry' being changed to 'not as fast as I' or a character joking about a rock monster's gender and accuse these translations of trying to drive you from the hobby, then you are trying to inject politics into the games, not the other way around. This feels like some serious 'tilting at windmills' territory.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb I'm pretty sure I can easily imagine the other side of the isle making gender jokes as well, because I have seen it many times. "Did you just assume the gender of rock monster" would be closer to the template in that case if you wanted to draw attention to the fact you were making a politically charged joke, which I am not convinced the translators were. Regardless, it's a hell of a line to actually *take offence at*, since at the end of the day, the character is pointing out a valid observation, one that conveys a near identical message from the original text. ("we don't know what this is")
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Does that really change anything though? A character pointed out that they don't know anything about the rock monster in both versions, it's hard to see a political agenda in that observation just because one of them mentions gender.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb How exactly do you know what the authorial intent behind the line was? Was there an interview given by the translators recently where they mentioned the line? Are there other incidents in the game where significant emphasis is put on the misgendering of characters or creatures? Another valid interpretation of the line is that it’s a joke that pokes fun at people who try too hard to be polite and accommodating, even in situations where it doesn’t matter. To return to the idea of jousting with windmills, it’s difficult to see how that single line could constitute a political agenda unless you desperately wanted that agenda to exist in the game.
i've been replaying snes to ps2 era games since 2018 almost exclusively, f modern games and their bs dlc, microtransactions and butchered localizations. the only exception to this rule was monster hunter and YS series.
Lol, i guess you arent playing any rpgs then, if butchered localizations trigger you so much. Considering there were far more butchered localizations in the 90's than there are now.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Ys is boring and not as successful as more "butchered translations". I think it's story is boring as dogwater maybe it's the bland dialogue.
I´ve started to learn Japanese several years ago and I´m by no means fluent. Zero/ Azure would still be too difficult to enjoy and Eiyuden Chronicles ( 5 hours in) feels pretty comfortable, while something like Blue Reflection would be quite easy ( watched some hours of lets play before I´ve bought it)
When I see all the controversy with localization nowadays, I´m so glad that I´ve just kept pushing through the difficult ( or rather time consuming) process of learning this beautiful language.
I want to add, that I completely agree with Erick. Dont stop pointing out the issues. I think a good localization should respect the work of the author.
I also took the plunge into consuming more content raw in the original language a few years back. It can be a challenge at first, but I found it to be quite enjoyable even when I didn't fully comprehend everything that was being said - I just saw that as part of the adventure of picking up the language. Even now, I am not by any means perfect in my comprehension, but I have noticed marked improvements.
Perhaps one day I may be able to get good enough to do my own fan-translations and create mods to fix these butchered games that I enjoy. :3
On the same path, learning Japanese. How long have you been studying?
The problem is you now have small organizations who should not have any influence to begin with pushing developers in a certain direction. Dealing with bad translations is one thing but inserting social controversies bring it to a whole new level. Speak with your wallet.
Another thing that can happen is indie developers creating something good enough to compete with these developers AND will not censor their work
That's not their call. That's the Publisher and the country they plan to release their game in to decide.
I provide Uncensored Translations and this includes Indie Japanese Games 😊
@@arnowisp6244 The thing is that the people that want to censor stuff, just fearmonger the companies into following their advice, they don't have any actual power but the companies think they will sell less if they don't censor some stuff or make a more 'modern' dialogue.
I'm not a native English speaker, when I was young games that was in my language was translated lazily, it was clearly visible that the person didn't speak my language and didn't check it anything translated made sense.
I switched all my games in English and learnt English by myself.
My english will never be good but I saw how many english version was always weird/bad (breath of fire on snes i.e) but at least the story was understandable.
Surprisingly, Nintendo Europe (game I mainly play) has started (for quite a long time now) to translate everything directly from Japanese instead of translating from translation of Nintendo of America.
I've learn Japanese too (though I suck) because games I loved took years to be localised in Europe.
Now when I can't play in my native language, I choose Japanese and english if I have no choice left.
This discussion over the last couple months has shown me that as much as i despise a lot of localization issues, i actually love the Unicorn Overlord writing.
The problem is i think most Japanese devs are oblivious to what is going on.
In some cases that could be part of it, maybe. Part of the reason they even hire outsiders to translate their games is because they realize their own working knowledge of the languages is limited, otherwise they could just as well do it in-house. So they may just not fully grasp how butchered the end product really is. I can at least give them the benefit of the doubt in that regard.
Japan having terrible English Literacy being an Example
@@arnowisp6244 The localisers like to lie and say that a direct translation would never work but it did in the past lol
translation tech is improvong so fast that one can buy the original uncensored game and have it AI translated in real- time
True but it's annoying. It'd be great to have a PC program that runs over Steam and does it automatically.
Then watch my Uncensored Translations 😊
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Why buy on a plattform who hates japan?
@@alexlehrersh9951 Steam doesn't hate Japan any more than Sony or Microsoft seem to, probably less.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb
Steam allows sex on western games not on japan
Sony is against both so nope steam hates japan more than sony does
Just a Side note. Unicorn Overlord translation makes sense at it aims to replicate Old English in the Games Medieval Fantasy Setting. Same thing for Odin Sphere.
Gamers were complaining about the game translation being longer and not even thinking if the style fits the game. (Which it does)
Wrong. You have power of the wallet. Just don’t buy the product
There's also unpaying ways to play!
There has actually been evidence that tarnishing the reputation of a company changes their behavior.
Let's sail the seven seas, together!
You need more than that
@@tyfp3854 Aside from petitions these are about all we can do
It's easier to translate than to translate then change it up to "what's big" at the time.
Still funny that fe fates is the best example of this mess where they got lazy and we didn't get all the dlc same with cutting content on top of the dot dot dot conversation. Only good thing they added was an extra few lines that honestly fixed some plot holes to the og story
They can make DLCs with different original translations of the game.
That's a great idea.
Onlyif its free. We true fans shoulnd be scammed twice because of woke localisers
Im pretty sure alot of gamers have a large backlog, so stop buying day one. Wait till black friday, prime day or cybermonday.
Hell just wait a year and most games go down in price by alot, i once saw totk go from 70 to 60 in a few months if not one.
And if ya wanna make a stink about it go online and convey politely why you waited to lick up said game. And if you really want to stick it to em mail your greavences to the japanese side of things and i do mean physical mail btw, itbseems the japanese dont look at social media like that in comparison to there American counterpart
I only buy used when it’s physical anyway and doing that puts no money in these people’s pocket. For digital purchases my rule is less than $10 AND 70% off. That way they hardly get much money from me at all.
@@redstratus97 you’re really showing them. Good job
For me, I dislike people who defend translations that are bad. Overall I'm glad we got games in English but would be nice if they were more accurate.
Big example of crappy translations, NIS America did it for Coldsteel games and i just remember i hated the fact the english dub changed their script so the english text followed the dub, the dub aint even anything special.
I remember playing Cold Steel and someone says "Rean..." and the sub read "We love you Rean, dont go...". It's a made up example, but that was the gist of it. You needed no japanese knowledge to realize they were constantly making up shit.
Bro the translations in the Trails games are shockingly bad. I speak a bit of Japanese and when I played it the Japanese dub and the English subs were so far off it was pathetic
For jrpgs, unless the dialogue is really janky I'm usually unbothered by it (text wise). Ignorance is bliss and all. The real problem is when it's too evident that they've changed something that need not be changed. For example, I've been watching Fallout with someone that needs subs. The translator completely desconstructs metaphors as if the foreign audience does not have the brain to understand them. Character taps bunker wall "look how she sings" translated to "and how robust it is". Character says "I'll be the head and you'll be the sword" translated to "I'll be the leader and you'll be the soldiers". Why?! These are not cultural differences, you can directly translate these metaphors, they'd still make sense! I don't really see agendas going on in general, it's mostly publishers cutting corners and using AI translators or unskilled individuals that don't have their work reviewed by peers. It's appalling that fan translations, overall, are so much better than a paid-for product.
Hust translate. If the sentence doesn't form a proper English sentence then shift it slightly to work. That's it.
Also Whoever is the guy that does deals between en and jp should do the translations since they already know both languages as someone has to be the middle man between the two. It'd make the locolizers lose their jobs or actually do proper translations in fear of it.
Name one game that does that?
He already has a job. Also, it takes more than just one person to do the job.
AI tranlation is a thing. Once AI learn "context" the translation would be more accurate. ROM hackers only need to extract the script, translate with AI and proof read. Then insert and that is that. You don't even need to transtale, just retranslate and give the correct context and real meaning in the original script, basically, unlocalising and just translate.
Sadly...AI never will "learn" context, the same way it can´t "learn" emotions. There´s no logical implication, tautology, conditional statement(...and so on.) that drives the computer to arrive to it.
One sure can tell it to write a horror story though...the problem it doesn´t ever distance itself from horror, not even to build rapport with the characters(soon to be killed or suffer a heart wrecking disaster).
I tried AI quite a bit...😒
@@mizaelaraujoAI is advancing at a breakneck pace, it will absolutely be viable within 3-5 years, tops.
@@mizaelaraujo True, but never in my life i would ever imagine hearing JoJo's Dio japanese VA singing pop songs in english, but AI made it possible. The tech is too new. That is why IA translate needs a human to proof read and give it context. But most of the work is done. By one person in record time. AI is amasing and scary at the same time.
@@Golecom2 you spelt AI wrong, work harder baby.
Eiyuden has been a bummer. I pre-ordered it, was so hyped for Murayama's new take on Suikoden. When he passed away earlier this year, I was definitely determined to play it. I'm about 20 hours into it, and the translation isn't nonstop awful, but I definitely get hit with cringey redditspeak pretty consistently, and it takes me out of the experience. Seeing posts about how Lian isn't a magic pixie tumblr girl in the Japanese is annoying too.
A heartfelt thank you for making this video Erick.
If this continues to get worse as time goes on, I feel the developers will eventually speak up when some translation crosses the line or goes too far which will then force them to use other translation companies or maybe use their own in house team. I view it as a bubble ready to burst. We aren’t there yet, but it’s getting there. And when it happens and it explodes, we will see some changes for the good happening.
We need more fan translations.
☠️
@@maakasuekano776 ok?
AI translation and fan patches could maybe probably help to a degree.
@@skycloud4802
I'm doing that, all Uncensored of course! 😊
Thank goodness i speak Japanese lol, I can completely sidestep this nonsense
Yeah, the problem's been around for a very long time. I mean, good old Wrecking Designs was called that for a reason.
...only i never expected that instead of getting better as time goes by, translations would actually get _worse_
Working Design actually had passion, modern localization teams are venomous.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pbonly in your weird little conspiracy theorist mind.
@@linkvagar2336 "Censored Gaming" suggests otherwise, the RUclipsr's page is dedicate to documenting it
@@linkvagar2336 I can't mention it directly for some reason with the post getting Thanos snapped, but Cent Sore Ed Game Ing is a RUclipsr dedicated to documenting such stuff, so that's incorrect.
@@linkvagar2336 So digital posts,videos etc are no proof for you?
Hi Erick! Well I know you speak spanish so I'll write to you in spanish:
Erick ya sabes cómo está la cosa, lo mejor que podemos hacer es no enfadarnos sino denunciar como bien has dicho con educación y objetividad y luego ir buscando alternativas para paliar esto. Afortunadamente tenemos muchos medios en nuestra disposición, pero sabiendo que esto está en todos lados ahora mismo (hasta en los anuncios de comestibles) lo mejor es estar juntos, no ceder y ayudar a los demás compartiendo las soluciones que más nos gustan ante esto. A todos nos encantan los videojuegos, juntos podemos disfrurarlos como siempre si nos ayudamos unos a otros, como en tus vídeos sugieres. ¡Un abrazo y gracias por tus vídeos!
I started typing my comment before the end of the video like a good youtube viewer should...
... but yeah. Learn Japanese. Or just point your phone at the screen and use Google Translate.
I bought a cellphone stand for that purpose, lol.
I think this is good advice. I wonder if we will see a rise in fan translations. They’re not easy and take time but I appreciate that they exist.
I really don't understand why it's like localizers mission to "spice" every dialogue up by changing the meaning. Most of the games that has any other language option (I'll use Chinese for this example) are usually very faithful to the original, English is the only one that has this issue.
I'm an Asian, who live in Asia for my whole life. I'm also trilingual. English is my 3rd language. The only reason I stick with English instead of my native is because it's the common tongue. Every worldwide release game will have English, can't say the same for my native language. If I wrote this comment in my native, nobody would understands me except a few people.
You don't even need to know basic Japanese to know that when the character said something like "はい！" in the voiced dialogue, does not translate to "Let's give them hell!" or whatever kinds of "rewrite" they've been pushing. And this is just one of the most mild example I could think of without getting too political.
There are alot of things you can learn about someone personality based on the way they talk. From the way they address themselves, others, using honorifics and such. Eng "localizers" decided to turn things 180 degrees by making them cuss, and rude for some reason. Trails and Unicorn Overlord is the most recent example of games I've played that has this issue.
It's a Japanese game, intended for Japanese audience, and people who enjoys Japanese related medias. Rewriting character personality, censorship/removal of certain dialogues because it doesn't fly with the localizer culture & political views shouldn't be allowed.
People are saying that "Just learn Japanese bro!" Is this really the answer? Not only the "localizers" are still getting paid for butchering and destroying your beloved franchise, some Japanese devs even has adopted the whole "localization" like RGG where they admitted that they changed the script at the core level to fit with modern worldwide (read: western) audience. What's the point in playing the original Japanese version when it's just as "woke" as the worldwide version counterpart?
What are we supposed to do? Pirate them. Simple as that. A good game got butchered by inept localizers should be repaid by low sales. Bigwigs only care about numbers. Make them aware that hiring a team of cheap, xenophobic, failed writers who called themselves as localizers is not the way to save production costs because of the risk of losing sales.
You know Erick, there's also fan translations and retranslations too, but those are time consuming so yeah. Either way loved the video!
I'm trying to learn Japanese nowadays and my main issue is Kanji. God damn that's dumb. I can read Hiragana and Katakana just fine, but Kanji is just awful.
Sigh.. long way to being able to play games in full Japanese :(
Maybe you could play game with furigana for starters or use an app/dictionary to recognize them for you? That could be a start.
Start with easy stuff like romcom or slice of life. Fantasy, mystery or sci-fi is too difficult for a beginner. If you like to read, you can go to the website syosetu com, 小説家になろう.
There you´ll find tons of light novels, just dont forget to use yomichan as a pop up dictionary. I suggest reading, because its very effective for Kanji recognition practice.
Its hard in the beginning though.
The weird part about Katakana is when you run across words that are chopped up bits of other loan words to the point where they no longer resemble the original they came from. I still remember the first time I encountered スマホ ("Sumaho") and it took me way too long to realize that it meant "Smartphone." 😅
its always been an issue. companies like Sweet Baby INC are making it worse. They used to censor any religious stuff in games when i was a kid in the 90s. Or woking designs would add pop culture jokes. while i didnt mind the jokes so much it still shouldent be there. Taking out the religious stuff i always found stupid. in the case of Eiyuden Chronicle its Companies like Sweet Baby INC that are the problem. i love the game but the translation is questionable, and im forced to support a company i dont like to play a game ive been waiting on for years.
We, as consumers, have much more power than you seem to think, but the source of our power is our wallets. At the end of the day, the entire industry exists for no other reason than to serve US and OUR needs for entertainment. So the correct way to think is "no preorders unless you absolutely trust the entire chain" and "butchered localization = no buy". When you buy and power thru the mess you are sending a clear signal that this is ok. This is simply because game studios are businesses and the only language the higher ups will understand is bottom lines. So, yeah, this means you might need to skip on Eyuden Chronicle and other potential gems for a few years until they either retranslate or they become bargain bin buys. This is what sends messages.
Even the Stellar Blade thing, it is not just a petition, but a campaign to cancel Playstation Plus subscriptions. If you want to change things, you have to hit where it hurts, which is the balance sheets.
I don't mind too much, but even in Final Fantasy X from 2001, the dialogue options you have to choose between differ sometimes depending on whether you play the German or US version. That's stupid, as I won't go for a dumb answer on my first playthrough, but I'd like to replay it anyway.
I started watching anime with HK fansubs on bootleg VHS tapes in the pre-Blockbuster days. If I can get the general gist of what the dialogue is trying to say I’m fine. I’m not expecting Shakespeare in my JRPG dialogue anyway.
Like you said if it’s something that really bothers someone then they can learn the original language and get enough cultural context to understand the meaning behind the word choices. E.g. speaking Spanish natively I ignore any subtitles for movies or shows but leave them on for my wife who understands Spanish but doesn’t always get the cultural context that isn’t taught in language classes.
As long as people mix good translation like unicorn overload with bad translations like Eiyuden Chronicles, nothing will ever change.
Also some of the developers want translations to be different from the original source. For example Final Fantasy Tactics, the war of the Lions. That video game director wanted the English strip to be the King James/ Shakespearean type dialog.
Unicorn Overlord made unnecessary changes, but it's tolerable. It wasn't preaching or anything.
What were y guy. Lol it an othing burger lol@@JohnSmith-ff2pb
@@mikethepokemaster2012 Stroke?
@@Vulpaswhat? I was saying what is wrong wth the transltion. It is beause it a not 1:1 or it is becaue of the flower wording. a good translation.
@@mikethepokemaster2012 Because of some minor political additions.
This is the norm. I believe that English speakers are just noticing this now. As a Brazilian, every single portuguese translation I face has some qwirks that I just accept as bad translation. From movies to books, from games to websites, if you are not the original language intended for that media, you will miss something in translations.
I've become pretty adverse to preorders for these and many other issues in the gaming wold.
replaying Sega Genesis Rpgs atm (Shinning Force & Phantasy Star II)
this is an issue in literary translations as well. It's so strange how people claim localizations are "necessary", why exactly would someone want to consume a foreign piece of media thats been rewritten to remove as much foreignness as possible? Here is a quote from Vladimir Nabokov on the subject that the entire industry of "localizing" should take note of.
Nabokov felt a kind of curatorial protectiveness of great works in their original languages. The mortal sin of the translator, he wrote, was to sacrifice what he called “absolute accuracy ” for the sake of readability. “A schoolboy’s boner is less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its commercial interpretation or poeticization,” he wrote. “The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.”
“The person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into another language,” he concluded, “has only one duty to perform, and this is to reproduce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text. The term ‘literal translation’ is tautological since anything but that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a parody.” In his lights, the labors of Garnett and many like her, measured in years spent sequestered in libraries with foreign usage guides, did not even rise to the level of translation.
Some good advice there. I don't like these awful localizations either, but I feel like if the game is good, DESPITE the localization...well, I can still have fun with the game, while still heavily criticizing and pointing out the all of the localization's screw ups. Of course, fan translation mods also help. We need Modders now more than ever.
Sure, but for me whenever I know a game has butchered the dialogue in some way I always find some myself going "Hm, I wonder if this was changed" while playing. It completely breaks my immersion. It's the same case for censorship. You never truly know if you're having the intended experience or a curated one.
You should watch my Uncensored Translations 😊
@@AntiRiku
My Translations are Uncensored 😊
the only games left is the gachas rpg that's unaffected lol, but yeah there's is always someone out there that's fighting it though, like grummz and many others. so there will be retaliation so we shouldn't worry that much
Nah tr od VNs or those who cannot be released outside of japane but have a fan translation
There's a real problem with a lot of games but I do wish some people would give certain give some games leeway. Translation isn't a 1:1 in most cases. Even languages close to English in their origins aren't easy. Like look at any breakdown of French to English and those languages have influenced each other other centuries. If you've spent any time learning an asian language as an English speaker then you know how difficult it can be.
Now imagine you're translating a game. You need to translate writer intent, a sentence's meaning, character personalities, jokes (which rarely translate if wordplay is involved), and the list goes on. There is always a comprimise. The reason I bring this up is because the grief Unicorn Overlord got before it even dropped was crazy. The examples people were giving without realising that neither the in-game translation or the twitter thread could be considered an accurate translation. Even the one in your video @1:37 is great example. Both aren't accurate. I could again translate it as "Joseph... About me, I am fine. You should go too, and be my mother's support." But that's still not fully accurate. As there is no 1:1 translation. Both my translation and the one given in the blurb don't really capture that the sentence, depending on the tone used, miss that the sentence can be delivered in an accusatory way and/or be an order. I feel the game's translation better captures that idea. But does that mean it is more or less accurate?
Unicorn Overlord still wasn't perfect. It was at times full of purple prose or flowery language but at the same time we think of that language when we depict the old English used in the medieval era. There's a lot of nuance in this conversation that just isn't known, isn't talked about, or ignored by people because we get other games that ARE terrible and do deserve our ire as a collective. I still think about that one localisation dev who openly bragged on twitter that he hated a game's plot and claimed he made his own but we never knew what game he was talking about. Those people suck and are failing to the job they were hired to do. But we shouldn't hurt the dev trying to find a way to translate that is either literal or focused on intent or some happy middle ground. Those devs should be held up as the example we expect other localisers to follow.
No excuse for adding "chud".
Artist and devs care less than the consumers.
As long as the text is conveying the original intent, I don't mind if it's altered. But when it gets changed for no good reason, that's a problem.
I'll just deal with it by not giving them my money, And I'll go on a case-by-case basis.
In the case of Eiyuden Chronicle, I'll still play. I simply won't pay for it. And I'll make use of the retranslation patch that's being worked on.
I totally agree with your first paragraph, but not buy games from a genre you like is how you kill said genre.
I've been starving another Trun based game. Especially since Final Fantasy has turned their backs on people like myself.
@@AntonioCunningham Better for a genre to fade away in honor than persist in corruption. Sad to see what's happening to certain series, like Persona.
@@AntonioCunningham If they're so clueless or stubborn that the genre dies because I refuse to buy products that have been vandalized, then they deserve to go out of business. It's on their heads. Not mine.
@@Grayald I greatly disagree. That's how you kill an industry.
I remember the massive dry spell of the Xbox 360/ early PS3 days were there were *no* jRPGs. That was horrible!
If that's what you want then you're no better than thr pro lootbox/micro transaction people since your goal is the same. The destruction of the gaming industry.
@@AntonioCunningham Then the industry needs to go
I think the solution is for a bunch of like-minded to get together and start a new localization studio that has an upfront respect for original work policy.
Try to grab the attention of a few japanese studios who have shown a concern over the issue but don't really know what to do about it. All it requires is one game and then you have a foot in.
But I think they need to look away from the US. It's too entrenched in politics and would become an easy target since the existing studios would gang up and sabotage for them, not just for their beliefs, but to save their jobs.
I think Australia is the ideal country. It's close to Japan and even share time zones. Online communication would be easy. And they don't really have much of an industry that could gang up on them. We just have to get used to their accents in games.
It's also becoming more common with translations, sometimes dubs in other major european languages and chinese. These can be great alternatives if they're based on japanese or the first english draft written by the actual translators, before it gets tampered with. The french in FFXVI is apparently more true to the japanese version, and this includes a dub.
On the one hand, Japanese is just a fundamentally different language from English, and Asian cultural norms are reflected in the language that aren't present in English. So every translation of a Japanese script is very much a localization. It requires a translator to rethink & rephrase almost every line. So there will never be a truly "accurate" translation of any Japanese script.
However, because of all that stuff I just said, Japanese -> English gives a translator a lot of license to put their "personal stamp" on a translation. So it's very tempting to take a little TOO much license. It's a delicate balance, and a difficult job.
Solid advice Erick. I'm always playing the older games by default since I don't buy anything at launch either. And I really want to avoid rewarding censorship in gaming. Vote with your wallet!
I passed on eyiden, not because of translation. But poor design. Healers are not optimized and usless and you have to use items that are scare instead. Im out, ill play beyond the beyond if i want that kind of head ache
In case of Eiyuden Chronicles, I think the localisation is due more for economics than political reasons. I think they toned down the translattion in order not to bump the rating into M which could decrease the number of sales.
I fully agree. Also, it seems to me like the team who localized it were at different skill levels. Some parts are decent and some parts are crap. I don’t see so much of a woke agenda as much as a lack of writing ability.
@@fishingmule3266I agree. The irony of it all is that they tried to avoid controversies only to fall in one.
Localization doesn't bother me in games when they are trying to match the lips of the characters.
I'm usually on the side of defending it, But... Eiyuden Chronicles has no excuse.
Just wait. Fan translations will happen. And they'll cost far less.
Nobody about to buy an fan translation.
@@mikethepokemaster2012 Exactly, so it'll cost far less--zero.
So you don't buy games@@Vulpas
Nexusmods for Localization Mods Eiyuden 😊
@@mikethepokemaster2012 Only ones not woke, like Stellar Blade.
All these people saying don't buy/ pay for the games. Yeah, right, sink the developers, great idea. The advice of taking it with a grain of salt is actually a good one. I have a luxury of being able to play the games in japanese, but sometimes I also play in english for various reasons. Japanese is very hard to translate 100% accurately and when they're making up things I can see that a mile away. They've been always doing this. Squall's "Whatever" in Final Fantasy VIII is a famous example. Change your mindset. Look at the localizations as a way to navigating games at least. You know it's not 100% accurate, but still conveys what's important. If they push politics on you ignore it. A fan translation can also help
Nah, the developers will change, not sink, unless they're stubborn, in which case, oh well.
I was excited for Eiyuden that i go and play Suikoden 1&2. Then when it come out , and I saw some early reviews, the localisation was so horrifying that I ended up not playing it. Then months after when the update 1.1 come out i saw someone make a localisation subtitle patch on nexus mods that fix the translation to make it closer to the JP. So yeah now the game is the best i ever played.
Japanese media needs localization in order to read and sound natural and realistic, just don't change the context, don't change personalities, don't change names. Don't change lovable airhead chicks into strong womyn tropes, don't change the comic relief flamboyant characters. It's not a hard to understand philosophy.
Thanks for your chiming in on this issue. I agree with all your points, especially when it comes to learning Japanese (which is a personal goal of mine, considering some of the Japan-exclusive JRPGs I've bought to play someday like some of the 'Tales of' titles and Terranigma). I just hate this, because it's like we're returning back to the days of Woolseyism, except the lines are not nearly as charming as 'spoony bard'. It's like the US has devolved as a gaming market, or something.
This situation has me fed up. First I stopped consuming almost any Western content because of their political agendas and now it is becoming increasingly noticeable how they have been introducing the same things into Japanese products. The only thing left to do is learn Japanese, since this also happens in manga and anime.
Great channel.
RGG put out a mainline game with 30 GB of pornstar FMVs last year lmao. Yakuza 7/8 contain separate sub translation track in addition to the dub. RGG (and NIS) seem to just not care what western audiences will think about the original content. I cant even find anyone else complaining about what you are hinting at.
Yakuza has been changing things in the original Japanese to begin with according to the director
Hey Erick do the Spanish localization suffer from the same wokalization? I considered playing Eiyuden in Spanish
Usually Spanish just translates the English localization in the way the English should have translated the Japanese in the first place.
Spanish translations are based on English ones so ☠
I provide Uncensored Translations on everything I do, I hope I can provide what Wokalizers refuse to! 😊
Don’t let anyone try and tell you that you have no power. The consumer always has power, but it takes a lot of people.
Simply don’t buy it. If you buy it, you support it. Petitions won’t do anything. Complaining won’t do anything. Vote with your wallet. Trash the game in reviews. Convince others to not support the game. Do whatever you can to hurt these companies in their wallet. Thats what can be done.
Don’t worry about having nothing. If there is a market, someone will come for it.
There is something we can do, just stop giving these companies money. But for some reason, despite people constantly saying that we need to fight with our wallets... most of these people cave in and buy the game anyways. Just stop it. Don't do it. Have self control. I haven't bought an EA, Ubisoft, or Activision game in... I wanna say, 8+ years. I've even passed on some SE games and I'm sitting pretty. If the people complaining about the state of the gaming industry had more self control, these... modern version of the problems wouldn't exist. vote with your wallets people. I'm sure you have 100+ unplayed games in your backlog to fill the time.
Here after the recent dragon quest 3 controversy, where they straight up removed gender. And heavily censored some female characters designs.
I will just learn Japanese
unicorn overlord hurt a lot since i was so excited. During the demo i would physically cringe at least once during a cutscene due to the overwriting, and that was before i knew about the localization problem. Unfortunately, i couldnt escape the writing by switching to jp voices.
Took balls for u to speak on this btw, i respect you a ton for that. A couple other people I (used to) watch just say its a non-issue and hides comments disagreeing.
@@bdf2660There's an entire micro industry of ragebait youtubers whining about this non issue. It didn't take balls, it took a lack of braincells.
It's not a non issue. They go woke they go broke. Plain and simple. @JustForGaming_Alt-kf8lz
@@JustForGaming_Alt-kf8lz Found the leftist tourist
Some spaniard translations are superior nowadays compared to english localizations. Case in point 13th sentinels , unicorn overlord. Spanish is another option now to avoid bad translations.
Is translation issues happens to English translation only? Or does it happen to other language translation too?
At least for german it was in triange strat
I don't think eastern developers realize just how important localization is. I can't count how many games I've passed on solely based on poor localization. It completely ruins the immersion. You feel like you're playing a fanfiction.
Well. At least on PC you have mods to fix a lot of this crap. Just wait to see what the modding community does with Stellar Blade when it comes to PC.
There is a transaltion mod on nexus and basedmods that reverts the dialogue
Stop playing games all together... that sounds like a lack of self control but fine if you wanna buy it buy it on sale and if you buy it on steam leave a review of why you bought it so cheap.
To me it's kinda simple: i don't put money in what i don't believe it's right, if they feel the hit in their wallet, they could do better!
i won't buy eiyuden chronicles even if they make it run in 60fps in my favorite console, the switch. I didn't bought baten kaitos too because of the same problem, i want the same text as a japanese can read, if they don't offer it, i won't pay for it.
buy the game, but give them a bad critic about the translation
Amen brother. It might take years, but we'll win eventually.
Stop spending money on it or you are supporting it.
There are many games out there, if you want to play the latest thing, that's a YOU problem.
Like?? Something that isn't rpg? Yeah I did that and it was awesome to try something out of your usual kinds of game.
The fact that there is politics even in game productuon and localization is the most toxic and the saddest thing to me. I feel like one day all of these bigwigs are gonna get there just desserts but by then we won't be there to see it and the people that will "do" know about it will have no idea how deep this matter was at the time 😢😢. It's absolutely sad. Even worse, some group of people nowadays get offended in every single thing for no bloody reason 😠.
I agree completely
At this point I'll just stick to the 4th gen and 6th gen era of gaming I'm still finding new games to play to this day :D especially on the PlayStation 2
The problem is that Americans don’t see people like you or me that English is the second language. They forget the whole world uses English as the common ground. And they always try to pander to an audience of Americans that doesn’t represent everyone. A more direct approach to translation would be appreciated by the whole world
Damn. That Francesca dialogue/writing is giving me that modern day internet speak cringe with the unnecessary caps lock on words and slang.
Step 1. Learn Japanese
Step 2: Still get outraged because you are all babies.
@@windwaker0rulesStep 3, improve your grammar so you don't type like a baby.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb I use "your" because "youre" is also incorrect and getting a ' is a pain on a phone. Or do you need perfect grammar on the internet snowflake?
@@windwaker0ruleslol. Maybe, next time take your time.😜
@@doniarts happy baby, I fixed it. Do you want a bottle?
I just hope they don't butcher trails through daybreak
Why don't you just play the fan translated version?
@@vert3823 Because I want the switch version to play on the go
@@vert3823that requires a good PC, so it’s impossible for a console gamer
One thing is a bad translation due to the lack of knowledge like what happened in the past. At least they were made with good intentions.
Nowadays we have people changing dialogues on purpose, because they want to insert their ideas in the game. That's simply not acceptable.
To be honest if I took offense to every butchered translation. I wouldn’t play video games, read books, or watch tv shows. Folks try not to take offense to everything. One bad translation, shouldn’t dictate the thousands of good things a game has.
Politicization was almost never an issue in the not so distant past.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pbit was an issue. But the without social media, it wasn’t very vocal
@@johnbazan8674 I've never seen it in any game I ever played. Chrono Trigger, FF6, Super Mario RPG, I don't remember even one example of politicized localizations. I'm not saying none existed ever, but it was probably extremely uncommon and you'd be hard pressed to list even a few games.
No it wasnt not like this @@johnbazan8674
@@JohnSmith-ff2pbwhere's the politicization in the Unicorn Overlord and Eiyuden Chronicle localization?
I'm still waiting for a single person to point it out.
Thanks a lot for point it out that huge issue, politics damage all, also videogames only because woke translators want to force the changes for themselves.
I want to learn Japanese to experience the original experience
I switched to retro jrpgs a couple months ago so I don’t mind boycotting lol
As a guy who lived through anime fansubs, you guys are mad.
Spoony Bard is gay propaganda, and Chrono Cross made Harle french, gotta burn those games too.
What are you even talking about lmao I never heard that about spoony bard in ff4
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb you never heard the line in every translation in FFiv since its release that is not even close to an accurate translation from the "good old days"
@@windwaker0rulesBut it's not what you said it is, and wasn't political in nature to my understanding.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb by the logic in this video, it sure is gay. Which is political omg someone cancel FFiv english translations it's ruined it's not authentic bakka
@@windwaker0rules Nope, the logic in this video is fine. It showed the concept of misgendering being added to the localization, that's completely different than baselessly saying spoony bard is somehow gay or something.
Alterations happened a lot, but it was typically not political in nature. Not buying is an option.
Actually not particularly uncommon, even in 'retro' games. Off the top of my head Breath of Fire IV removed fanservice scenes and a decapitation in the English localization, Medieval put a helmet on Daniel Fortesque to conform to cultural sensitivities at the time for their Japanese release. People are just *way* more sensitive about it these days, and there's always a million youtubers ready to stoke the flames now.
@@catoblepasomega Removing fan service and violence was common, but that's entirely different than censoring the left's pet issues, like so-called, as they say, transphobia, like in the Person 3 remake.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Censoring fanservice is exactly the sort of thing that would have right-wing gamers up in a furor if it happened today. I can easily see people getting all bent out of shape over costume alterations to 'appeal to cultural sensitivities'. As for P3, they removed the playable female character in the remake. I think there are a lot of lefties that would see a strong political statement in that choice just by itself.
@@catoblepasomega Not liking something doesn't make it a divisive political issue per se, both sides would oppose certain instances of fam service being censored.
Skipping over that Persona alteration that was mentioned and vaguely complaining about the lack of a non-canon player character exclusive to a portable demake of Persona 3 is an odd deflection. Atlus just didn't wanna put the work in.
@@catoblepasomega People have (rightfully) been complaining about those instances of censorship in older games for decades now. It's just that most people didn't know about these changes in the first place until more recently, when it's easy to see the original Japanese versions of dialogue/scenes thanks to the internet.
I don't get why in most of the cases on the video when you mention a political agenda going on on the translation you show images of just some random unecessary changes that have nothing to do with politics.
"Did you just assume their gender" type stuff is obviously identity politics.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pbnot always, anime uses the trope of "girl is actually a boy" all the time.
@@windwaker0rules What's that have to do with what I said?
It doesn't. These crybabies literally think everything is "politics" because they have no life outside the internet.
@@deatman5843 projection
So many people who are so proud of not caring about being served propaganda very weird thing to be proud of if you ask me. Something tells me if it was the other side serving propaganda they wouldn't be so quick to ssy "who cares"
Of course, but they can't even conceive of such a scenario and will just lie if they even entertain the hypothetical and say they'd be fine with it.
"everything my crybaby ass doesn't like is propaganda" - a very smart guy. Opened your third eye yet, brother?
@@deatman5843 Says the teary eyed wokie lol
@deatman5843 dude I watch quantum of conscience I'm literally crazy. My 3rd eye has been open for 15 years at this point lol
@@deatman5843 Define woman
These game also somehow got the worst font ever created like whoever did the job really didn't put any effort or just straight up not cut for it.
Bad woke localization, censorship, and ugly fonts there's really no reason to support these people.
You might be the only one I ever saw bring up font choice, nice. I totally agree on that since a lot of the time the font they use make it hard to read especially if you are playing on something like a steam deck etc...
@@doniarts right? These localizers is just so inept yet so many people are defending them, it's weird.
pointing it out is not enough, BOYCOTT!! or buy 2nd hand
Dealing with Localization is a nightmare. The culture has to change in America in order for us to get faithful translations. All companies are hiring based of the wrong criteria. All we can do is complain and not buy certain games. We know for a fact a lot of localizers who work with AAA publishers are extremely liberal and don’t care the games they translate.
Saddest thing is Nintendo allows this. NoJ has to be aware of what NoA is doing to their games.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb all AAA Japanese Publishers have bent the knee to DEI for money. It’s sad to see and it’s obvious what is happening in gaming. It’s all a demoralizing project. Too many evil people have infiltrated the gaming industry. They hate us informed gamers, they want everyone to be a casual. Never stop complaining about games you care about.
@@RosaryFGC Ugh... I hope Stellar Blade causes a ripple effect.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb #FreeStellarBlade
American activists working on those games have totally convinced japanese developers that these changes are absolutly necesary in order to not be harassed and being acepted. And JP studios still believe that, and ask them to do whatever it takes. So, when confronted, activists can actually protect themselves saying 'we're told to do these changes, we are not changing things because we want, it's called localization'... yeah, bullsh*t. Japanese studios are pretty hard to convince when they decide something though, it will take some time for them to realize things are changing.
Not buying is not a solution if they don't know why they don't sell and go bankrupt, like a lot of these companies would if they don't sell well ONE game, so is not that simple.
None of this actually happens lmfao. Just pulling conspiracy theories out of your ass
@@deatman5843 Except there's a RUclipsr dedicated to recording these things, Cen Sored Game Ing, so nice try I guess?
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Nobody knows or cares about who or what that supposedly is.
@@deatman5843 Nice try, have a nice day, pick someone else next.
@@HIROSENNPAII Yeah, nice try pulling stuff that didn't happen out of your ass, dude.
I'll have to watch this.
Stellar video. Yes, this is very frustrating, many games I just write off until they at least get an undub patch so I can listen for myself wtf the characters are actually saying, and use mods to fix as much as possible. Some games gets delocalization patches, and now with AI it can happens even more quickly. FE Engage got retranslated very quickly (only to get banned by Nexusmod)
This is why I'm only playing certain games years, sometimes decades after they got released, on jailb/roken conoles or emulators, and the companies don't see a cent of my money when I do this, I say screw them, they don't deserves support for as long as they do this.
To not play, super stupid right?, yeah twitter I mean x...yup....Well, money is king... but even "screaming" to developers that is not the answer, they are tied if they are collaborating with a major publisher (could happen that indie studies are just grabbing the cash for DIA train, we don't know) so changing what you want your cosumers to consume...well, we have soda as an example, but not buying at launch is a huge impact, super huge impact!
True
With wallet.
How to deal with modern localization:
Stop being lazy and learn Japanese. Then import. There you go.
They saterted to westernise the original games
So your option is only kicking down the bucket
I'm normally not an advocate for piracy... but...
Nowadays first thing I do is look for an Asia English Release. If that fails, that is when I try to see which of the EU or US resist Pandering to Woke bullshit when translating and porting the game. I can understand some typos or a bit of misconstructed sentences since RPGs tends to have a huge ammount of dialouge or a few censorship. What I cannot forgive is inserting and forcing a disgusting Woke Idealogy on something they have no claim.
I got through Breath of Fire 2's translation. I'll be honest, nothing I have played in the past decade bungled the translation to the point that I actually noticed it in the game. I'm not really seeing anything in the examples you have here that feels really egregious either. I think if you are seeing political 'oppression' in 'generic war cry' being changed to 'not as fast as I' or a character joking about a rock monster's gender and accuse these translations of trying to drive you from the hobby, then you are trying to inject politics into the games, not the other way around. This feels like some serious 'tilting at windmills' territory.
It's admittedly not an especially egregious case, but it's clearly political, only one side of the aisle is concerned over so-called misgendering.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb I'm pretty sure I can easily imagine the other side of the isle making gender jokes as well, because I have seen it many times. "Did you just assume the gender of rock monster" would be closer to the template in that case if you wanted to draw attention to the fact you were making a politically charged joke, which I am not convinced the translators were. Regardless, it's a hell of a line to actually *take offence at*, since at the end of the day, the character is pointing out a valid observation, one that conveys a near identical message from the original text. ("we don't know what this is")
@@catoblepasomega I'm saying it wasn't intended as a joke.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Does that really change anything though? A character pointed out that they don't know anything about the rock monster in both versions, it's hard to see a political agenda in that observation just because one of them mentions gender.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb How exactly do you know what the authorial intent behind the line was? Was there an interview given by the translators recently where they mentioned the line? Are there other incidents in the game where significant emphasis is put on the misgendering of characters or creatures?
Another valid interpretation of the line is that it’s a joke that pokes fun at people who try too hard to be polite and accommodating, even in situations where it doesn’t matter. To return to the idea of jousting with windmills, it’s difficult to see how that single line could constitute a political agenda unless you desperately wanted that agenda to exist in the game.
i've been replaying snes to ps2 era games since 2018 almost exclusively, f modern games and their bs dlc, microtransactions and butchered localizations. the only exception to this rule was monster hunter and YS series.
Ys series sucks
@@windwaker0rulesThat's why it's on its 10th entry and everyone likes the series 😂
Lol, i guess you arent playing any rpgs then, if butchered localizations trigger you so much. Considering there were far more butchered localizations in the 90's than there are now.
@@linkvagar2336 Except the nature of the localization issues were different, they weren't overtly political and obsessed with identity politics.
@@JohnSmith-ff2pb Ys is boring and not as successful as more "butchered translations". I think it's story is boring as dogwater maybe it's the bland dialogue.