Because we weren't able to read every paragraph of Zakogdo's document, he has agreed to share it in full for those who want to read it all in context. Here is the link: drive.google.com/file/d/1SgGD-Zyyn2RZudcUVRnDm09pjpSFOe8p/view?usp=drive_link Also, time codes: 1. Intro (0:00) 2. Why Are We Doing This? (1:22) 3. How Did Zakogdo Learn Japanese? (20:00) 4. What Are Our Blindspots In This Conversation? (23:45) 5. How Have We Misrepresented You? (48:15) 6. What Points Have We Made That You Would Like To Rebut? (1:18:20) 7. What Does A Successful Translation Look Like To You? (1:44:10) 8. What Do You Think Is The Solution To All Of This? (1:52:15)
"Did you know? You can climb up there from the backyard of that house." ---> "Well slap my ass and call me a bum-kin! You can git on up there from the back garten! That's what my pal Jerry calls the garden!" example is killing me 🤣 (and that is pretty much sum up the sad current state of today's localization.)
I'll admit to something shameful: I said verbatim in response to Zakogdo's Unicorn Overlord thread: "If this is how somebody thinks about localization, they have got to be illiterate". That is clearly not the case, and my sharp dismissal of that point of view was out of turn. Resonant Arc is a weekly reminder to be thoughtful about what you say and the assumptions you make.
As someone who worked as videogame translator, I want to add something, which also happens more often than some people might think: sometimes the developers change some texts last minute without ever telling the localization team or it is like "we made some changes to the story, could you please check them till tomorrow evening?" and it's several hundred lines. So these are also ways "misstranslations" can happen. Not saying, that it is this way here, but still. There are for sure some rogue translators out there, but that is not the "norm"
Oddly I don't even think it's "mistranslation" specifically that has caused all this ruckus. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and just making up entire sentences of dialogue that the localizer thinks is better. Just straight up not translating anything but adding in their own made up text.
@@Hugsloth In other words: Working Designs styled "I'll just make it better" localizations are alive and well even if it's not as blatant as it used to be.
I always respect when someone shows a willingness to listen and learn. It's something I think most people struggle with, and I do believe we are getting worse at it because of the divisive and toxic arguments people have online. This channel is such a bright beacon in a foggy sea of cynicism that is the Internet.
I can’t remember who but I listened to someone speak about the veil of cynicism to parade as an intellectual. If you just have a cynical attitude towards everything you can fool yourself into thinking you’ve cracked the code. I think a lot of people do this online to feel a sense of superiority.
I really appreciate this episode and dialog. Not because I'm passionate about localization or the political shifts in the industry, but because of your approach to having dialog and shared understanding. It's a struggle. A HUGE struggle. But you guys approached it in an incredibly healthy and positive way and promoted that same level of care and growth as you yourselves pursue it. It is a shining example and I want to promote it if for no other reason than i think the entire planet could benefit from a desire to improve our communication and understanding, particularly with those we disagree with. I've been pursuing it for near a decade and still have not become so well versed in it and have much to improve on, but this has really inspired me and I'm incredible impressed (in multiple senses of the word). Thank you for this series and discussion, as well as your approach.
long time viewer, infrequent commenter, just want to say i’m loving this (resonant) arc of the pod - thanks for your measured and mature approach to all these topics
Slightly Unrelated but when discussing 'looking the enemy in eye' I think you'd love Vinland Saga if you watched/read it, Mike. It's an antiviolence story told from the POV of a Viking. The conclusion you're arriving reminds of me of the main character, Thorfinn.
Mature, open, patient and growth-minded people- bless you all. This is such a fruitful and informative discussion. Props to Zakogdo's self-reflection and getting the chance to have a platform to speak. Love the work, chaps
What a wonderfully considerate conversation on such a prickly topic. I _love_ your dedication to extending olive branches, not brandishing pitchforks. I think you two are doing amazing work in this space and I sincerely hope your message, if not your voices, reaches as wide an audience as possible. I look forward to revisiting this conversation with Alex a week from now.
I agree with the sentiment expressed when you were considering the "X wasn't built in a day" line, but I don't know if that was a good example to use because cultures often independently arrive at similar sayings due to how history and societies often go through similar growing-pains as it were. For example, in Norwegian we have the saying, "to fluer i en smekk"(translit, "two flies on one swat"), which naturally is equivalent to "two birds with one stone", which also exists in Japanese as 「一石二鳥」 It's natural to assume almost any culture would find a saying to express this idea because the ideal of efficiency and accomplishing two things at the same time is unlikely not to be discovered or considered laudable in almost any human society. Similarly, the idea expressed with "rome wasn't built in a day" has been expressed, even in English, in innumerable ways over the ages. "it takes time to build castles" "small strokes fell big oaks" "a thousand-mile journey begins with the first step" Now, you could make the same argument for any of these - that they are "earthly" idioms and expressions - and that we therefore shouldn't use them(do oaks exist in this fantasy world? Why would they?), but I think in the case of sayings like these, making minor alterations while retaining a close facsimile of the original form is both serviceable and shouldn't invite a feeling of disconnect. "[Insert fantasy city] wasn't built in a day" is hardly a concept or idea so culturally contingent that we cannot imagine it arising independently in another culture or country, because we have to presume that it's a sentiment anyone might invent if the fictional world has any great cities on its surface =P I also greately value creating and communicating a new and unique cultural language for fictional works set in alien worlds, but the balance point to this is a recognition of the constraints of the language you're fundamentally writing in. Small flourishes like recontextualizing an English word to be an epitaph in your fantasy world is simple. Creating a new saying that has poetic flavor but is also recognizable and legible in English on the other hand, can be a tall order, and inadvertently invite confusion when done by a lesser writer. I don't hold it against someone to settle for a path of less resistance here, and opt for a saying with minor tweaks whose use won't confuse the audience over getting creative.
It should be noted that regardless of writing quality hearing a cultural expression, even in your own language, is always confusing the first time you hear it. Learning the cultural context around it and how well it sums up the feeling is what determines how quality the saying is.
Yeah, I think the phrasing is fine, as long as it is consistent with the way the people in-game speak. Xenoblade is typically really good about immersing you with dialogue that makes a lot of sense given their world and situations, but there are a small handful of times it loses the plot. For example, there is an instance of the phrase "get off your high horse." We all know what this means coloquially, but in Xenoblade language, what the hell is a horse? Horses don't exist in the world. They should have said "high ponio," or for alliteration, "grand garaffa," or something like that. The point is that it's hard to be perfectly consistent in fantasy worlds. Not everybody can be Tolkien.
I'm from Spain. When Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out, the localisation team said that instead of basing the subtitles on the English translation, they used the original Japanese as reference. It was seen as a big step in improving the quality and faithfulness of our subs, but the problem came when you combined the Spanish subs with the English dub, because Square never makes a Spanish dub of their games (it wouldn't be cost worthy according to them, which would be a topic worthy of debate by its own right. We Spanish speakers have lost count of the number of times we get excited because a Japanese game or property is finally, officially arriving in our countries only to discover it's only in English or worse, several other languages, but none of them Spanish). You have to play FFVII Rebirth with English dub and Spanish subs to see it. I don't exxagerate when I say almost all of the dialogue was different all the time. I spent 100 hours reading subtitles that were saying something different from what I was hearing in English. A lot of people had to change the subtitles to the South American version, which were based around the English dub, because it's so jarring it becomes unplayable for some. In my case, I found keeping both translations morbidly fascinating and an interesting exercise in trying to get a more complete understanding of the same thing from two different ways of explaining it, but I can't imagine any scenario in which the end product isn't a failure in this aspect, regardless of the original intention of the Spanish localisation team. It tainted what should have been a great achievement for us, finally getting to translate the game from the original Japanese. The obvious solution would be making a Spanish dub, of course, but if that was an option this wouldn't have happened in the first place. I admit I genuinely don't know what I would do to try to make the situation better. (Sorry for any possible grammar mistake, second language and all)
You're basically describing the same problem English releases have always had with dual-audio. Take a series like Danganronpa, for example. Their localization team was riddled with Tumblr-addicted westerners who got way too emotionally attached to the individual characters, and started changing the scripts left and right to appease Tumblr's sensitivities or match their own personal preferences. So every game would have the butchered EN script, with JP audio immediately revealing a dissonance in their tones. Even the unique aspects of the game's world (like prodigies being called "Super High School Level" or "SHSL") had to be dumbed down for the West (they're just "Ultimates" now even though that's not what SHSL meant).
Voy a asumir que hablas español pero igual voy a escribir en ingles (?) That same problem always happens with Square Enix, i don't know about FF10 but it goes back to OG FF12 i believe, where you don't have a choice but to hear US dub and read subtitles in spanish based on the JP version and obviously it's really bad.
I'm having a similar experience in reverse in Genshin Impact. Due to the voice actor strike, only a few characters are voiced in cutscenes now, so I switched to the Japanese dub which I can understand slightly, and while the translation is not horrible, a lot of the time the intent is completely different. And even comparing some of the voices, certain characters have much more unique personalities, where in the English dub, while there are some great performances, you could probably group personalities into like four variations per body type/age range to the point some characters are known as a nation or element variant of another character. It's disheartening.
On the subject of having an alternate translation available as an option, this already exists! River City Girls Zero (from a pretty cool beat em up series) is at least one game I'm aware of that has implemented this and it goes a long way to show good faith and understanding for those of us who would prefer LESS creative license from localizers. This way, nobody can truly be disappointed. There is no good faith reason to be upset at an additional option for something you aren't forced to use in a game. I wish more games would take this approach in the future, I know it's more work but it would be very appreciated. You might even find some people discovering they changed their mind about what translation they prefer after having this choice offered to them.
Lots of thoughtful and nuanced points made by you guys as expected. Zakogdo also pleasantly surprised me in that regard. Looking forward to hearing from Mr. Smith again too; next week can't come soon enough.
I was highly critical of your initial interview with Alex Smith. While I still have many disagreements with some of your views, I appreciate you two having on a critic with differing views and for the most part fairly representing him (especially as he isn't physically there to defend himself). Frankly, I am probably most appreciative of you cutting to the heart of the matter that many localization critics have had their concerns continually dismissed and told they don't matter. Another commenter on this video put it better than I could when he said that most critics would be satisfied if industry professionals simply said something like, "hey you guys aren't crazy, that egregious example floating around is bad and could've been done better." I know this channel is mainly about video games but the latter point of my previous paragraph is particularly pervasive in anime/manga localization. There are so many industry professionals that seem to refuse to even acknowledge faults whether it's by their peers or themselves. It's gotten to the point that fans have had to contact the original Japanese rights holders due to the localizers' ignoring their concerns. I would point to what happened to the manga, "I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl." The titular friend is an effeminate male who in the localization was turned into a transgender girl. The title was never meant to stray into topics like transgenderism with the author herself in an interview stating that the lead was not questioning his gender identity. However, localizers decided that their own interpretation of the story was more important with industry peers even justifying it by stating that they had consulted other trans people about it. While all well and good, they did not consult the original author and did not accurately represent her work. Fans were livid at the changes and in particular with the publisher Seven Seas for allowing this with the added context that they had just gotten caught outright erasing paragraphs in their translations of light novels.
Sounds like this is the bad apples they’re referring to no? Thanks for the example but this is about the majority of games published by large companies. It’s unfortunate that this example and others that were shared were rogue translators but I feel like they are few and far between when compared to stuff like Eiyuden Chronicles, Unicorn Overlord, etc.
I know that such people do not represent all localizers, however many of them *are* friends, and nepotism *does* occur. But I have to say, I can think of few professions more packed with unwarranted self-important smugness. The way they carry themselves on twitter, they see themselves as cultural TSA agents that can open and fiddle with any piece of media that they take issue with before allowing it through.
@AnguishXA the problem is the so called good apples rarely if ever call out the bad apples. The "good apples" also then mock you for daring to theorize that there are bad apples in the industry.
Yeah, these types of examples are rarely seen in the video game localization realm. I feel like the angry mob has taken to attacking every translator for the crimes of a few, which turns people against them. That's the point that Mike was trying to make.
You should really tell people not to send death threats at all and not just ask them not to send it to the wrong people. Sending death threats is not a behaviour any civilised society should tolerate and no one should receive it no matter how passionate people are on a subject.
I just want to say how important it is you guys are doing this. Looking in the comments is actually great to see. You guys are directly facilitating genuine debate and discussion that is too often not being allowed to happen thanks to the current climate of the internet.
I am really impressed with Mike's introspection and his sort of apology to the guy he criticized about having an opinion he didn't agree with. It's a move in the right direction and it shows that people on all sides of beliefs and cultural backgrounds can learn from their mistakes and grow as people. Mike you're a good man well done. Casen keep an eye on Mike, he's a good one.
Great video! However, a few points for self reflection. I feel that all the "equivalent" discussion was taken too literally and missed the point. I'm pretty sure they meant "as close to the original that also has a well done localization." Basically an "Authentic" cuisine point. Rogue Translators greater point continuing to be missed. Mike actually portrays the instinctual behavior here that is missing from the localization scene. Time after time in this video Mike calls out the incorrect/immoral behavior of the people online that take things way too far in criticizing translators. Calling out bad actors and bad work and reiterating the goals of a movement IS the commendable thing to do. This is exactly what isn't being done, at a perceivable degree, by the translation/localization industry. When the egregious examples of actual rogue translation or simply bad work done by a team aren't acknowledged and professionals/companies that do these things remain undiscussed it gives off an aura of corruption even if it doesn't exist. A lot of time was spent acknowledging the influence consumer feedback has, but we need to acknowledge that FAR more powerful is the opinion and review of peers. It's sometimes annoying/embarrassing to do but calling out the bad actors and bad products in your own field is vital. Localizers are in a position of Authority to the vast majority of consumers. They determine a large portion what is conveyed to the viewer. When an Authority is perceived as being ineffective at setting proper internal standards a cascading breakdown in trust. When left with silence from professionals when these things happen then it often presumed, incorrectly or not, that there is at best ignorance/indifference or at worst some sort of agreement/collusion with the bad actor. I'm not saying its right, but it is what happens. We've also seen what happens when those rare bad actors stick around in Hollywood or other artistic industries, but it is also way more common for that behavior to be called out and for critique of peers work to happen in the open. On the subject of "bad" work we know every other director/writer's often critical opinion about Marvel movies, but a localizers critical opinion on a game is incredibly rare. We rarely even know if there even are standards/ethics even being discussed in the broader industry or if each localizer/group is an island unto themselves. TLDR: Most people on the critical side just want to hear from localizers: "These egregious examples are indeed bad. You aren't crazy!"
If you frame what's going on in terms of rogue translators or bad actors you're never going to achieve your goal. The underlying driver of these decisions is always "what can we sell more of?". The decisions to change things in ways you don't like are decisions made in the good faith belief that there are more people that will like them (and thus buy the product) than won't, and that the product will be more successful. If you keep looking for an enemy in those terms you're going to keep punching at fog, and all people will see of you is that you're throwing punches and that's going to be wholly counterproductive because it will not win friends or influence people.
Mike has acknowledged there are some instances of rogue translators going way out of line, but when talking about localization as a general industry, those instances, as far as we know, are statistically negligible. Maybe 0.5% of all localizations have something akin to that. It's not some widespread movement to destroy Japanese culture, just a handful of arrogant dicks who hate the thing they are supposed to be working on. I understand being angry at them, but the passion of your anger should be proportional to the size of the problem. The bigger problem, as RA and Zakogdo seem to have agreed on, is that marketing departments and coporate hierarchies do more damage than individual actors.
@@jacobmonks3722 Agreed an incredibly small minority, but incredibly prominent in the discussion. I have always acknowledged RA for their nuance. My point is that that localization industry PR would benefit massively from localizers also calling out these bad examples. Knowing that the industry has standards and ethics is very reassuring when bad behavior occurs.
@@quintec45i ageee bad examples should be called out , but if you call out every example you run the risk of being tuned out, so its important to call it out only when you are 100% sure the behavior is the behavior you are describing. If you call a translator out and it turns out they only did what they were told to do, you run the risk of calling too many of them out and then you get a boy who cried wolf situation where when there actually is a bad actor nobody will listen.
It’s funny that Casen brought up there being hundreds of translations of the Iliad, Odyssey, etc. My wife is a Classical literature teacher/scholar, and she got super excited recently about a new translation of the Iliad that came out just last year. Additionally, this translation is an interesting example. It’s a less “literal” translation that goes out of its way to be more poetic or even “sing-songy”. The Iliad is an Epic Poem and would have originally been recited aloud, but due to translation and also different norms in poetry in our time and culture, you wouldn’t pick up on that just by reading (If you’ve ever read the Psalms in the Bible in English you’ll get what I mean here. Just reading them it doesn’t feel like they are songs that were literally sung). So this new translation my wife got intentional deviated from being literal in order to capture more of the spirit of the original work. She has mentioned that the more poetic writing also helps her teenage students get into it more, because the text is less dry and “boring”.
I really hope you guys are able to get different people in the translation and localization industry on the podcast and not just the same guy. They might share jobs but the experience of translators can be vastly different, and one translators perspective will never be the complete puzzle. That being said, I enjoy the way you're tackling this subject. Keep up the videos.
@@ResonantArcThanks for the reply. I honestly didn't even consider the fact that NDA's would get in the way of them discussing that stuff, but it's a good point. Hopefully it's able to eventually happen one day.
@@ResonantArc There are a few who I know outside the industry now who either work in different fields or some who actually moved to Japan. I could try to outreach if you're interested but I know you all already have jam-packed schedules. I do agree though we probably should get more representation (from both sides) of this discussion because I absolutely want to see this "sub-genre" of videos from you all continue about the localization standards, trends, and practices as of yesterday and today continue.
@@ResonantArc Just have them in silhouette with a voice modulator to protect their identities, obviously. This is a solved problem. :p As a bonus, it'd give the episode a very mysterious vibe.
@@ResonantArc I remember reading a book about Chrono Trigger and Ted Woosley was pretty open about discussing his time with the game, have you tried reaching out to him?
This topic has really developed here! Kudos for your willingness to listen to both sides. Your videos discussing localization really deserve a more fully thought out comment than this, but considering the circumstance and some other comments, I wish to make a quick & dirty comment regarding people who you might be interested in inviting to the discussion. 1. Clyde Mandelin: an industry veteran who's been promoting better understanding of localization through various means such as his Legends of Localization website and books (the latter are physical-only, so the most I've read came form his free samples.) He's kinda disappeared from social media, but I feel he'd really bring up lots of interesting points. 2. Michael, also known as PoltFan69, of the Japan Day Tripper RUclips channel: a bilingual currently working and living in Japan who has done the arduous task of critiquing Valkyria Chronicles' localization bit by bit and is now doing the same for Valkyria Chronicles 4. This level of effort is more often than not the minimal requirement for understanding why seemingly benign changes might be better not being made at all; and as a bonus, he's also rather firm in his stance that "localization" is a must, just that it has been abused to justify questionable edits. (honorable mention to his brother, Dan aka DoublePerfectKO, who's also trying to demonstrate what FFXIV is like in Japanese) Thanks again for your endeavor!
Really appreciate the time dedicated to this issue. I doubt it's a big item on the budget in comparison to the other aspects of developing and marketing a game so I feel like it never gets much attention, but poor localizations can really sour a customer's experience, so thank you for spending your time on this. The discussion about equivalent experience vs. the unique experience we get from engaging with a foreign work around 1:33:15 was an interesting topic I had never thought about before. If the creator didn't want their work to feel foreign or have noticeable aspects of Japanese culture in it, then the purist/faithful side I'm on wouldn't really align with their intent. I'd always kind of assumed I was on the creator's side in wanting to see their way of phrasing and expressing ideas, but that may not always be the case. Regardless of the author's intent however, I think I do still prefer the localization to be as faithful as possible to the original writing. I wouldn't want a world where Kafka had a localization team on "Amerika" to more accurately portray American culture, even if that was his desire. It's a fascinating work of art because he'd never been and could only use his perceptions of America from afar. Thanks again for your time on this topic and I look forward to any further discussions on it.
God this channel is fantastic. Keep doing the clickbait titles please, if it helps the channel grow its for sure worth it. We need to get back to this type of discourse instead of the grift wars that are dominating gaming convos nowadays.
I worked on a high profile game launch and watched three localizers tackle the impossible task of localizing 6M+ lines of dialogue and story on an MMO in six months. The game won a bunch of awards but was lacking (surprise, surprise) in localization. There's are so many factors along the way that impact localization, and I'm glad we're getting into the deeper nuances. I happen to be on the side that thinks extra censorship is affecting game (and other media development) is unfortunate and restricts creative vision and authentic expression. I think it's our differences that enrich our culture and teach us to exist with one another, and that we should be able to see them as they are.
What 'factors along the way' causes them to shoe-horn in references to modern social politics during a medieval setting? Is there a specific 'factor' that prompts them to add internet buzzwords where none existed in JP? The only way 'factors along the way' impact localization would be in how long the translation takes. AI translation will render that aspect a non-issue instantly, so now all localizers have to defend their profession in the future is that they either promise to be more natural sounding (while maintaining a similar level of accuracy) or they take the accurate AI translations and just rephrase some lines slightly to sound more natural. Inevitably their job WILL be overtaken within a few years, unless they make a serious case for the value of their changes to the scripts.
One thing I'd like to add about the translator blocking Zakogdo on twitter or whatever the platform was, memebers of the localisation teams usually work under a non-disclosure agreement, and so are not allowed to talk about the specifics of their work process, even if they'd have wanted to. On a side note, I wonder how many of the people who prefer more faithful translations are non-native English speakers who carry over this preference because that's how the localisations are done in their native langauge's culture. That would be the case for me at least, as most games (and especially jrpgs) are not being translated into Polish, I play in English. But because the tendency in my culture is to stay faithful to the source material, I get put off when I recognise the 'anglicisation' (for a lack of better term) of a non-English medium. I believe that would make a good argument in favour of the more 'literar' approach to localisation -that a significant percentage of players are not English natives and that English just serves as a lingua franca for them to experience the game. Considering this, opting for a less 'culturaly localised' translation might pay off as it would be more approachable to a wider audience. I know that because I'm not an English native, I might misunderstand the linguistic or cultural connotations of the English localisation. Still, it seems to me that the tendency to adapt everything to the translated langauge's culture is way more common in English than in other languages. German is way more precise and lower-context language than English, and yet German translations of specifcially Square Enix games are generally more accurate to the original (although I'm sure some people would still complain that they're not accuarte enough), an the faithfulness does not come at the cost of 'aesthetic' or beauty of the language itself. I guess what I want to say is that the current tendency in the English game localisation is not the only option, and it would be cool to see the translators or developers willing to be a little more experimental and introduce alternative localisation strategies.
Xenoblade was the clear winner from Operation Rainfall. 1 out of 3 ain't bad, but NoA knew what they were doing, from a business perspective, by not localizing the other two games until the uproar. edit: Actually, looking at sales figures, The Last Story was a success, too. Pandora's Tower was "favorable" but somehow I just don't see it ever being considered for a re-release.
@@blossom357 The Last Story having been forgotten after how hyped it was at the time makes me think Sakaguchi doesn't have enough dirt on people in the industry. He's the Del Toro of video games, people love his work, but they are basically all stuck to their original releases and even his new ones have trouble finding a platform.
@@ProxyDoug I'm a sucker for digital distribution so I'm not quite sure what you mean with del Toro. Some of his stuff was inducted into Criterion recently, right? Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite movies, so if I had the money to buy every movie I wanted, it would definitely be first on my list.
@@blossom357 Del Toro famously gets denied by studios despite having a big following among fans. Stuff like trying for year to produce The Hobbit, the third Hellboy and Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness and not succeeding.
@@ProxyDoug Dang... The Hobbit would have been fascinating under him. I had no idea he was treated this way. I'd looked at his filmography before and had this impression of, to use a gaming analogy, he reminds me of WayForward: doing the occasional "shovelware" to do what he really wants to do later. Turns out that isn't quite true, then.
I thank you for your sacrifice and hard work during Operation Rainfall, because the Xenoblade Chronicles Trilogy are my favorite games of all time. Looking forward to playing Xenoblade X on switch
Appreciate how you guys are bringing in a bunch of different perspectives on this. Edit: The strategy of pestering Nintendo's customer service that you mentioned with Project Rainfall is the same thing the customer service for a publisher of audiobooks directly told me I should do if I wanted more Wheel of Time books re-recorded with Rosamund Pike. That and buying the audiobooks when they come out, of course.
I speak Japanese (lived in Japan for a few years), and I've played UO multiple times. There are issues with UO's localization (some very minor mistranslations, some intentional changes to lines in order to downplay some aspects of the character in Japanese), but it's a pretty poor example of a "bad localization." I've noticed much bigger issues in other games, especially in older games (that get a pass for being translated a decade or two ago). That said, I do worry about localizers who gloat about "fixing" aspects of the game that they don't agree with.
I wouldn’t say it’s bad, but it is flawed. Some character motivations, especially in the beginning of the game, can be mistakenly inferred as one thing when they were really intended as something else
@@kvltovpersonality6290 It's been a while, but I recall a few of those. The biggest one was the debacle with Raenys' ring scene (the first one I saw, as it happens), which they decided to make romantic in English but failed to change the non-romantic ending. I'll concede that was more than just a "very minor mistranslation," per my original comment, but I can still see how a localizer would make that mistake. There are plenty of things Japanese don't say outright because they can be inferred from context, and the localizer probably thought that was what was going on here -- all the context clues point to Alain proposing, so they didn't bother to check the ending and see if it actually was a proposal. I still stand by the idea that it's not a bad localization overall, though.
Another incredible video where you give further context and add to the discourse of translation, really looking forward to this and your next video. Thank you for covering this and I really hope Zakogdo responds or even joins live for further discussion. Keep it up.
Oh, man. I hope that Alexander O. Smith rebuttal goes into Final Fantasy Tactics specifically. I know quite a few people who think the PSP script takes too many creative liberties and I've heard arguments that can go either way - sometimes feels like total nostalgia for PS1, sometimes feels like they actually have a point. I would have to set aside my preferences for the PSP script, because what if the PS1 script IS more accurate in some or most cases? That would just end up being the truth, regardless if I think the PSP script is better.
Regarding the Xenoblade Chronicles anecdote, I just want to point out that the game was released in pal territories 1 year befote USA got it, so we would have got it in the west anyways, just not in USA, which is not the whole west. I just wanted to point that out cause even you guys are some of the more open minded and culturally rich people among your US youtube/gamers peers, sometimes the us-centric mindset slips in. Cheers fron Spain, I love your podcast.
The game was even in english already, the language also spoken in the usa. I played the european bersion of the game in english by importing a d modding my wii. I think the american version even uses the exact british translation
Ah great you bring this up, yeah, Americans tend to think there's only two places on earth, America and everything in isolation that isn't america. Very sad, they even mentioned "I've been to Europe and other places", but they seem to not have learned to think of including this in their view on "The West" (which itself is a stupid term to use.)
Mike, i got Unicorn Overlord because of your review. I adore that game. I used to play Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen as a kid and ive never found a game that had similar gameplay. Ive completed nearly 4 playthroughs of UO at this point and I wish they would create more games like it. Cavalry is king!
I'm in the process of writing my own book(s) and creating video games based on those worlds, and I intend to keep a "translation notes" type of record along with each scene, in the rare future where my book(s) get translated into other languages, so the meaning that I'm intending will be retained. Character names in my book(s) are important, and hold etymological meaning (They have birth names, given names, taken names, and family names - birth/family names are the most similar to our naming conventions in our world, while the others have most of the meaning derived from their accomplishments or other events)... and sometimes there is wordplay at work that plays off those meanings in how characters interact with each other. Names sometimes change during the book(s) to reflect these meanings. As an autistic person, I sometimes find it difficult to identify sarcasm and the intended tone or subtext of interactions, so my "translation notes" will contain that clarification as well... and I'll likely have these notes available to the public for those who would like such clarification "from the author's own mouth"... that is lacking in past works that are currently being adapted into other forms of media so horribly.
One fact you omitted about Operation Rainfall was that those 3 games were already being translated for a UK audience. That's why they all have UK dubs. So it was a push for NOA to publish a NOE product. Either way, Xenoblade's long-term success I think is largely attributed to USA sales
Gonna ruffle some feathers by saying this but I genuinely believe "I've received death threats" is a complete non-argument because 1. Why is it the other person's fault? 2. Who says only they did, and not also the person that's being accused of causing them? 3. It's the internet and strangers will do this just to get a rise out of you 4. There's almost never any proof of it anyways 5. Frankly, I only ever see people pull it as a conversation-ender when they're running out of arguments
Great podcast guys. One note I wanted to make was in regards to the developers/corporations going to third parties or even having inside teams to let them know what other cultures would find offensive so that they can remove it from the games. The frustrating thing to me is that it kinda feels like the 80s and 90s all over again in that they are going to the wrong people for that advice and it is causing them to change and remove far too much. I was much more offended at the idea that Japanese developers chose to water down their games or decrease their game's difficulty back in the 90s than I ever would be about a story that tackles heavier themes or just simply puts a cross on a building. It came across as them not thinking that we simple westerners could handle such complex ideas. I think the reasoning behind changes now are different than they were then, but the result is the same, I don't want to be treated with kid gloves, give me the full and authentic experience. One example recently is Cid in the FF7 Remake series. It seems from his appearance so far that he is not going to be the same grouchy asshole that he was in the original and I expect his treatment of Shera will be greatly toned down. I don't have a problem with this because I want to see Shera get slapped around, but because it detracts from Cid as a character and the growth that he goes through in the original. At least the way I saw the original, Cid's abusiveness was never celebrated or promoted. He was an unlikable character when you first met him and you weren't supposed to like him. He only cared about himself and his dream of going to space and took his anger out on anyone and everyone when that dream fell through, especially Shera since he blamed her and, because she sadly blamed herself as well and for some reason loved him and stuck around, she was the only person who would put up with him to take his crap. Obviously though through the later events (going to over simplify here) he realized that he was wrong, that Shera was trying help and loved him, that he loved her, and then feels what would have to be an immense amount of guilt for how he treated her and how much of a shitty person he had been. My concern for the remakes is that so far Cid seems like a pretty normal and calm guy and that when we reach Rocket Town he's just gonna be mildly rude to Shera and then when the realization happens it won't carry the same weight and it'll feel like something Cid can just be like "my bad" about. I suppose tying this all out I am starting to realize that I see in Cid a bit of a reflection of my grandfather who had struggled with alcohol while my dad was growing up and similarly had treated his family very poorly, but much like Shera loved Cid despite this, my dad still loved his father. Thankfully my grandpa eventually did realize what he was doing to his family and spent the rest of his years trying to make things right, or as right as he could. Obviously there's a lot more to the story and unlike Cid in FF7 there were some relationships in my grandpa's life (namely my grandma and aunt) that were too far gone but the point is that we aren't supposed to see Cid or my grandpa as role models. We are supposed to see them as cautionary tales so that we can avoid going down the road they did or at the very least if we are going down that road, seeing their stories can hopefully get us to pull our heads out of our asses and stop. Don't be Cid. Learn from him so that you can be better than Cid.
Great video, it's good to se this message being pushed on a non toxic manner. On the video it was mentioned "it is hard for such examples to come by" (meaning woke injections, politics, modern jokes, tiktok language, etc), but they're not. That's the problem, in my two cents, Eiyuden Chronicles was destroyed by the localization, characters turned queer for no reason, modern jokes, modern terms, angry woman calling men "chuds" "are you sure is a he?" when none of that was there, not to mention the horrible response from such "localizers". It is not your opus to modify and inject your thoughts, be professional, translate and be paid for it.
One thing you have to learn when trying to convince people is that you can't use a source the other views as tainted/compromised, and linguistic choice a source uses matters a hell of a lot. If they use terms and phrasing used by their ideological opposnents, it will be viewed as a bad actor or enemy propaganda.
@@laylaalder2251 But the terms ans phrasing that are seen as "propaganda" are so broad now. Are we not allowed to use the term 'pronouns' now, for example? That's a fundamental part of grammar!
@@jordanetherington1922 I think we all can tell when someone is using "pronouns" is simply referring to the grammatical structure, and prrcisely 0 people are complaining about that usage
@@jordanetherington1922 are your pronouns type A or type B? Jokes aside, propaganda is more something like the controversy of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. "Something Something Patriarchy" it's like the worst example, for it being super blatant. But something more hidden are the ways pronouns are either removed or changed to completely rewrite something i.e. "I transformed my Childhood friend into a girl" had to be completely pulled from the shelves by the publisher after backlash.
Me personally I'm generally fine with localization if at least it serves the purpose of getting the dialogue that was originally said in japanese across to whatever audience is reading/listening. But the minute that localization starts doing things like warping dialogue for like censorship reasons (which I'm never a fan of), up in the air reasons like dialogue in Fire Emblem for characters just getting gutted for no reason, or in cases like in anime, as an addendum, inserting dialogue for political jab reason in a scene that was never there originally or even warranted, then we got problems. I've seen this happen like way to long for me to ignore.
Remember back in late 2017, the original English localization of Falcom's Ys VIII was criticized heavily by fans, and the CEO of NIS America responded to the complaints by announcing that the translation would be improved. NIS completely rewrote the English translation, including re-recording all the dialogue, and released that patch a few months later in January 2018. So it is possible to create the changes you want to see... But only if the complaints are well articulated and convincing, AND reach the right people. (The people who make the big decisions, not the individual translators). But complaints that are hostile in tone are just going to get filtered out as "hate mail" by the community managers and won't make thier way up the chain of communication at all.
Yep. The moment you become hostile about anything in life you lose your chance of getting what you want. This is true about things in daily life too, like at a restaurant or at a hotel. I live by a simple rule, dont act in any way online to people that I wouldnt act in person.
That's an unfair expectation of unity and organisation to put on people, I'd say only making them afraid (literal terror) applied by small, representative numbers of people can be effective.
@@el_oh_ell Well, for example, calling for someone's job to be replaced by AI if they don't concede to specific demands is coming at the conversation with unnecessary hostility.
I think one of the most interesting part of the debate is the outright refusal to accept things on both sides 😂. You have some who are on the anti localization side who firmly believe that 50% of localizers are bad faith actors pushing agendas. The other side firmly believes it's impossible for them to exist at all. Just find this part of the discussion interesting and humours.
Same reason why our politics is divided into two and neither side can understand each other. More people from our society is attaching themselves to morality according to their belief, rather than reasoning. Once you start arguing morality and virtue, you are stuck there, because you dealing with absolutes. There is no room for compromise, convincing, or understanding since you are looking at things under good and evil, and evil cannot be tolerated.
Another bad aspect of localizations this video and zakogdo's docuent don't cover is when certain already English words are changed seemingly arbitrarily. The Kiseki/Trails series by Falcom and localized by NISA is full of these. A character's title "ソードメイデン" (Sword Maiden) is changed to "Beauty's Blade" for seemingly no reason. A dungeon called 逆しまのバベル has the English name "Reverse Babel" directly underneath it in the Japanese version, yet the localized version changes it to "Retributive Tower". These aren't complicated, controversial or difficult-to-translate terms, nor does it help convey any meaning that could be lost in the original language, they're already English words that don't require any translating whatsoever. It's not translation or even localization at this point, it's just the English team making up completely new names to replace the original names with purely for the sake of leaving their own mark on the series.
That literally happens with all games. Yakuza localizations also change what is being said on the screen, a LOT, yet nobody comments on this. The fans are extremely selective, doesn't make any sense. Btw this also isn't something new.
@@FredMaverik I think you're misunderstanding the point, I'm specifically referring to when the names of proper nouns are already in perfect English (either in plain English text or using katakana) and then changed anyway in the English localization, not dialogue changes. It's not a new practice but that doesn't make it good.
I think this issue is a case by case kind of thing. 1) Some English loan words sound cool to a Japanese person, but actually sound kind of lame in certain English speaking regions. 2) Sometimes a script changes hands between multiple Japanese to English translators and they might not even be aware that the original source for a word in the script was an English loan word so they try to change what they see on the draft to better fit the context of the scene. 3) Regrettably sometimes there are multiple rounds of machine translation that are used and words might get changed despite them already having been properly translated previously. This is something that is for sure a major problem. The English translation for Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth I'd be willing to bet money relied a lot on machine translation.
@@TheShmish. Because what sounds cool in English from the perspective of a Japanese speaker and what would sound cool in actual English is very different. Example: Xenoblade 2 the finally form of Hana (Poppi) is Judgement Day Mode. That's English right? So that should carry over. But the core of that name is the fact that Hana's form names are JS, JK, and JD which are abbreviations of elementary school, high school, and college. So I have no idea how you would translate that but they came up with Alpha, QT, and QT pi. Same for the character Zeke. In Japanese his title is Zeke The Ultimate Genbu which would be pretty gibberish in actual English so it was changed to Zeke Von Genbu Bringer of Chaos which not only fits the character, but is a cool title.
46:45 The Inklings were all about this point about culturally embedded meanings of words. Owen Barfield wrote his big book Poetic Diction about this. C. S. Lewis writes a section, I think it’s in Surprised by Joy, about the meaning of the Greek word for ship, and how that meaning was far richer and distinct before the English word for ship ever came along.
If someone could clarify for me, why exactly is this a big issue? I dont know a second language full disclosure. But when I play a game, I just judge it by whether the writing and story is good or not. Whether it resonates with me or not. And sometimes that pulls in translated games, and the translation itself into the category of writing and resonance-even though it's different technically. I feel like if there is all this doubt and skepticism as to whether or not the story is faithful or direct and, therefore, whether or not we can take any meaning from the story and its themes... well, I personally would just turn to playing games written in English. Plenty of great games and great stories out there to enjoy that simply don't have this short-coming. Like Red Dead Redemption 2 (which I'd love you guys to play one day and hear your thoughts on it.) Its certainly interesting, but people are really hopped up about this and im not sure why. I suppose one answer is "well, we like these games. This is what we want to play." Im just a bit lost on why having a perfectly translated rendition of writing is a game-breaker considering theres so much art out there that doesnt have this isssue.
Is basically that, a good localization is the maintain the dialogue and ideas as faithful as possible to the original language, while changing some things to better fit the local language. The problem of the localization lies when the localizers try to editorialize the story to better fit their interpretation of the story and characters.
@Machiroable ahh ok. Editing would be bad especially if you weren't hired to edit. Do we know that some localizers are changing them intentionally? Or could one of the problems be maybe a lack of funding/no market, considering anime and Japanese culture aren't big in the west yet? Apart from its "cult" fanbase at least.
It's not a big issue, it's something people have always discussed online, but modern social media can make even the most niche topics explode in terms of views
@@RalphNC09 It's certainly intentional, and often political. I personally value a good story over an accurate localization, but we often get worst of both worlds, localizations that are inaccurate and bad. Poor localizations aren't new, and are sometimes good, like Chrino Trigger's, but now we're getting low quality stuff and sometimes it's a political sermon.
Around 44:05 Casen says "there should be tons of things that people do that you don't agree with, and instead of trying to change it so that everything aligns with you [...] maybe accept it, and maybe try to learn from it." This is absolutely a valuable lesson about discourse in general, and might be the crux of the entire episode. However, Casen seemed to be saying it specifically as an argument for one side, when it could apply equally to both. Also consider the possibility that this mindset is exactly how some (surely not all, but some) of these changes have happened. Maybe the original creators listened to a different point of view, learned from it, and decided that it was a worthy change for their art, or even that it made their art better. After all, we heard straight from Alex last time that, these days, localization is usually done in direct communication with, or even requires approval from, the original creators. Maybe some games would have been better off without any external influence, but then again, maybe there's a game you now love that, without any such influence, you would have found utterly mediocre or objectionable. Publishers and yes, even developers, want their games to sell so they can make more games! They're trying to provide what most people seem to be buying. If you find that doesn't align with what you want, it's not a slight against anyone, and it doesn't mean there's some evil force at play, it probably just means you're not dead center in the target-audience Venn diagram. If that feels frustrating, I can understand. Maybe when you found anime or JRPGs, it was fringe culture, and now you're still on the fringe, but the content isn't.
1:17:01 This statement has a few ways to interpret it, and depending on which one it actually means heavily changes my agreement with it: If the meaning is supposed to be: "A good translation can create cultural references in the real world" (for example memes), OR "A good translation localizes cultural references already in the script, so that they are internally coherent within the setting, and make sense in the target language" I would generally agree. If the meaning is: "A good translation creates cultural references from inside the setting or drawing from real world, when such references are NOT in the original script", I very much disagree. From what I've seen, a big sentiment for us who have been critical of game and other media localization recently, is that we feel that localizers have been overstepping their roles, and are crossing into writers territory. The scriptwriters work has already been done. The story and characters have been written, and we want to experience them as they were written. Now the localizers job is to convey that script to audiences in a different language. I do get that it's not always easy, and a literal word to word translation doesn't always work, but veering too far from the original doesn't sit well with me. A good thoughtful episode nevertheless. Many good arguments and thoughts, even if I didn't agree with every single one that was made. TL;DR If there's already a cultural reference in the script, feel free to localize it to suit the target audience while keeping the meaning and tone of the line as close to original as possible, but do not insert one if the original script doesn't have it.
Only 30 minutes in, but the problem with assuming the intentions of localizers is that localization is very much a trust-based service. You are catering to customers that, by the nature of the service, cannot quality check it themselves. They have to trust that localization is correct and faithful. And just anything built on trust, like a bowl of m&ms, if you think one is poison, you don't want to touch the whole thing. So I disagree that any kind of reaction shy of criminal, can be dismissed as overblown because you don't know how much media a given consumer is starting to question once they get the idea that some of the translations are unfaithful.
Localization may have been a purely trust-based service in the past. Like back when Alex O. Smith worked on games like FFX. But in the 2nd half of this episode, Patreon member David (Japanese to Spanish translator for Nintendo) explains that there are shared documents between the original Japanese writers and the Localization teams where they go back and forth on proposed changes to the Japanese version and they get approval to make the change for whatever language. So there is an open line of communication in the localization process with the JP devs and/or publishers now. It's much less trust-based and more collaborative than in the past. Or at least that seems to be the case at Nintendo of Europe.
@@stanm4410 I find it strange to reconcile that with the reports that modern non-english localizations stray less than their English counterparts on the same media. And you still have to trust that this collaboration is totally equitable. Given that NA branches hold so much more power than those in other countries, there is still room for concern.
@@Oliander712 Are you sure? Because for certain if you play Japanese games in Korean or Chinese, you're getting a different translation. Even playing games translated from English to Japanese has a lot of difference. This is a kind of hysterical paranoia.
@@stanm4410 We know, that the Pokemon first Gen Spanish Translation was a complete lack of conversation aside from the translators being given names for moves without context. The english localization aside which is another can of worms.
Honestly, rather than waiting for another year or two until somebody finally translates Xenosaga DS and Lunar: Walking School for Saturn, I have decided to simply learn Japanese))
I personally have no problems with the changes made in localization, as easy to read well written language is the highest priority for me. There have been many fan efforts to retranslate older games. There are a plethora or ff6 and chrono trigger fan retranslations, and many of them are directly competing with eachother for accuracy. There are also examples of transformative translations that are praised such as the way Estelle is re-written in Xseeds Trails in the sky. There are also polarizing examples like anything from working designs, but some love the humor and charm injected into those translations
Sand is actually a good base for a buildings footings. It is stable and excellent at draining water. Its clay you need to be wary of. It has high water retention which causes destructive levels of movement in your building
@@rjfink We have some low standards for politicians these days, don't we? What a time it is when just the act of calmly talking and listening is seen as a boon to your platform.
@@jacobmonks3722 To say that the bar is low for us would be an understatement, the bar is at the center of the earth and rather than simply walking many politicians grab a shovel the second they get a chance to speak.
Can we listen to their policies before voting them in for the most powerful position in the world? Becoming US President shouldnt be popularity contest, but here we are...
@ResonantArc 2:02:23 Even without recording a new set of voice lines for a more literal translation, I don't think you realize how much time and money it would cost a company to produce a new set of subtitles. It's not only the translation and the editing, it's also the whole QA process amongst other things. This is especially true for text heavy titles, but such an endeavour would be deemed unjustified extra costs for no substantial additional revenue.
As a Japanese person, I found and interpreted the points on "colonization" very differently. The vibes of the video is that there is an homogenization of western culture and influence that is destroying the eastern roots of many of these countries; which is true. The position you take is that this is universally a bad thing because it robs the opportunity to learn about other cultures and self reflect on what you would consider norm. I think what is missing in this sentiment are the people who live, in let's say, Japan and there's a bit ignorance to the lived experience for the locals. It reminds me of an interaction I had with a Japanese colleague where we talked about the moral zeitgeist shifting between the different eras of Showa (1926-1989), to Heisei (1989-2019), to Reiwa (2019~). Each era is distinct in its approach and we recognised how people who live in Reiwa (as in currently), would be apprehensive towards some of the things that happened during Showa (school bullying, bad mannerism of cigarette smoking, terrible work-life balance, etc.) - it's somewhat akin to Boomer vs Gen Z talk in the west, but that's between two generational people. This occurs to the person i.e. person who lived through Showa, now feeling apprehensive about the things that happened during then. Many of the qualities that they like about Reiwa are precisely of western influence and Japan's attempt to modernise their core values to be more globalized and acceptable to the world (work life balance is better without 終身雇用 permanent employment being the norm, for example). If Japan kept its ways that were unique to itself, which leaned towards a one-for-all environment where individuality and autonomy was considered unsavory, it may have developed a stark contrast to western cultures. But not everyone in Japan wanted this, some like the globalisation and the realisation that there is a world outside of Japan and the moralities are being updated to a western standard. Thus this sentiment that "colonization" is an universal bad thing is I feel somewhat misguided - it's akin to asking cultures to keep to their conservative ways and not embrace new ideas, in an attempt to create more total world diversity for the benefit of tourists
What sucks is that criticism of localization has become a political issue. A few crazy people with power in the industry are admittedly and proudly changing scripts wholesale because they believe their work is better. When these people are called out for this, they point to whatever political topic the shoehorned in and call their critics bad people for not wanting that, dodging the actual argument. I know that these are only a small fraction of the whole industry, but them being really loud and claiming to speak for everyone else only makes things worse.
After watching the entire video I just appreciated the very balanced discussion especially in this setting where Zakogdo isn't here in person to rebuttal or share his thoughts. I'm still unmoved as far as translations go and maybe I'm just lucky with the games I find myself playing (jrpg wise) to not really experience the worst end of it to where I can't really see the alternative "Hey lets min max make this as faithful as possible by a group of people in America for most languages"(realistically). Also the fact that he still hasn't played Unicorn Overlord is just wow to me, its a great game play it! I'm surprised such a post was even made in detail before finishing the damn thing! I also loved how facetious Casen was being as I'm in agreement with a lot of the counter points he brought up and again Mike's points were fantastic as well. Great stuff guys as always looking forward to next time as well!
How would you even know that changes happened in the translations to your JRPGs? Isn't the fact that you haven't found a single bad translation either an admittance to not truly being immersed in the genre or not having a critical eye for the writing in the first place.
I get all the corporate nonsense involved in translation work and how it might go against the will of some translators. These guys are like us, wanting the translations to be as faithful as possible. Then you got the other end of the spectrum, the people who actively believe that the text they are translating is boring and needs some extra spice for shits and giggles. I still remember the scene of Trails in the Sky FC Chapter 3 in which Estelle, Joshua and Tita visit Elmo village to fix a broken pump. In the Japanese version, Estelle is merely commenting on the unpleasant smell (of sulfur in the air). In the English translation, they inserted a fart joke in the conversation ("Joshua, did you...?"), making Estelle seem extra childish and juvenile. You can't tell me that some exec at XSeed told the translators to add random jokes and pep up literally every conversation, considering the freedom they had during translation (for example with the chest messages). As Alexander O. Smith said in his interview, direct feedback from the original Japanese creators is very uncommon. If that is the case for Square Enix, a literal JRPG giant, then it's sure as hell not happening with a smaller company such as Nihon Falcom. How are we supposed to give feedback in cases like these, where "voting with your wallet" just signals disinterest in the franchise to its original developers?
Well sometimes, if a company is too stupid to figure out why their game is not selling well, then they deserve to go bankrupt. At the end of the day, only thing fans can do is vote with their wallet and complain online, and former is a lot more powerful than latter.
You have to also consider that in the case of Falcom, those early localizations are actually very popular. The target audience has to be considered, and you can bet there will be huge complaints if, for example, the dialogue when you open chests isn't kept in the FC remake localization. It's the translation the die hard fans experienced, and they don't want it changed.
Well, Alex O. Smith was talking about direct feedback from the JP devs being rare back in the 90's and early 2000's. When he was working on FFX and FFXII. The industry has changed now. In this episode their Patreon member David mentioned at one point that his Spanish localization team has a shared spreadsheet with the JP devs where they collaborate and discuss changes they want to make. So it sounds like there is way more oversight on the translation and localization process these days than there was in the past. But it's also possible that the JP devs are just deferring to the localization team on most of the requested changes. Thinking that they probably know best since they know the other language/culture better. Who knows.
@@neidhardt8093 Yeah, the localisations are favored by the "I don't speak a single word of Japanese, but I think the localisation is pretty good" crowd. I don't want to take that joy away from them, but I strongly believe those early players would've been fine without characters whose altered lines are borderline slapstick comedy material, too.
@@dudemcguy1227 I think that it's still a pretty rare occurrence these days, but that is only my gut feeling. Only the absolute minority of Japanese devs (and by that, I mean a really really miniscule amount of people) are going to know about "very US-specific social issue X" and why localiser Y - who may or may not spend way too much time on social media - thinks it is absolutely critical to tone down scene Z because of it. Most devs are just way to busy pumping out new games. Even those developed with multiple languages in mind - FFXIV for example - are not safe. The English script has often been criticised for inaccuracies and vagueness that left the meaning of certain situations up for player interpretation, an issue that isn't present in the more literal German and French translations.
Something you guys have missed in all these talks and both sides have missed on IMO is the lack of silence. Both the americans and japanese are bad for this for difference reasons. Mostly ive noticed it in anime but its in video games too. Americans like to add or extend a line to fill silence. Like panning over a scene to be dramatic (this is mostly in kids shows but not always). While the Japanese insist on moaning and groaning when a facial expression is enough. I feel ps2 era japanese games were the best as they had less budget to add these moans and groans but my god it is painful nowadays. I cant stand most jrpgs anymore and i used to live for them
That's your personal opinion, and your choice. That doesn't mean they have to change anything about it, you just have to accept the media just isn't for you.
Full disclosure, I have my ears in the Culture War -- I follow channels that are dedicated to fighting the Culture War. I also happen to be a conservative-leaning gamer & geek/nerd (we're more common than the media makes us out). I believe what you gentlemen are doing to be quite admirable. If only more people & channels had your integrity, gentlemen. Kudos.
As a former culture war/ outrage media consumer: I agree what’s being done here is admirable. Leaving my own anecdotal experience behind, I have to mention that I firmly believe watching culture war / outrage media will slowly consume more and more of your brain and rot it from the inside out. I challenge all of my fellow nerds who are addicted to the vicious news cycle to take a break for a few weeks stop posting on X for a few weeks and really take a step back. When you return to the front lines of that content you see it for the circus that it really is.
@@L337Koala I am doing that as we speak. It definitely gets overwhelming, and some in the Culture War are doing so in bad faith. Right now, I am strictly watching hobby channels and gaming channels like Resonant Arc, “I Finished a Video Game,” Maximilian_DOOD, etc.
Great video, I loved your sentiments at about 15:00 where we can listen to each other and find parts of the truth in each other. I'll always feel conflicted about translations. I love that things can come to where I am, and I do want them to mostly be true to the source but also appropriate for the audience it's coming to. However there is always issues that can arise, either from accident or bad faith, or even other positions in the company focusing on profits. Also changing characters almost entirely can occur. I'll always think of how poorly thought out the line "Men come and go but ladies stick together" from Valkyria Chronicles 4 was. Do I have an issue with girl power? Not at all! But it was said to some one who was a recent widow.... and I think something truer to the original intention would have been much better, and less ignorant of what had just happened. Not a slam to VC games at all, I love them.
Just for the record, Xenoblade Chronicles WAS being released in Europe, but not the US. To add salt to the wound, the English translation already existed for the British release.
great episode. And, even though I am 100% in agreement with your position, I can respect and understand Zakogdo point of view as stated in the letter. Glad he responded even if not in person (very understandable) and glad you gave space to show his response. Since I am vehemently against the "rogue" translator idea but Mike opened the door to their occurrence I can concede that they can happen in 2 cases: A small line lost in the middle of 1M+ lines translation project from a disgruntled employee? sure but anything significant will not go unnoticed by the editor. And even in the case Mike mentioned about small team on obscure anime: That will only fly if the creators do not care about it. That too can happen , for sure. And you can even blame the translator but nothing will change if the creators don't know or don't care about it.
So I've watched the whole thing now, also it kinda sounds like at times you make it out as if Zakogdo instigates hate against individuals, which certainly is not the case, as you said it's that 1% of individuals who take it way too far and are just crazy.
The thing to remember as well is that they're coming into this conversation late. This has gone one at least a decade prior and the localizer response to perfectly polite questions about certain localizations has amounted to basically "fuck you, learn japanese". So it's small wonder many have run out of niceness.
@@neidhardt8093 Yes, this didn't begin with venom from the people asking for changes. Though judging by your tone I doubt you're speaking in good faith either.
Thank you for this discussion arc, I've been following it with great interest and you're also super civil about the subject and people involved. I wonder how you and Zakogdo feel about translations *from* English *into* Japanese. I'm talking about video games produced in the West, like Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, the Witcher etc. I guess that everyone chooses their own hill to die on, but I imagine that if someone is a translation "purist", then they must hold the same high standards no matter which pair of languages are involved. Or is this specific translation direction (Japanese -> English) special to you?
Oh that's a good example! The latter is IMO much more poetically pleasing, but the former conveys a religious perspective of the speaker that the latter just does not. I don't know where these lines come from, but on their face this is a difficult decision. I would need to see more of the tone of the scene and the personality of the speaker.
@@razmeanie4519actually the line is "tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I" so both lines have a religious context. If your faith has wronged you that indirectly is telling you to blame your god. So it is not a good example of a new cultural reference in the slightest. The difference is simply concise vs flowery/indirect.
1:09:20 it looked like he included sound files to that. Did the voices seem like an outburst? What about the physical recoiling that zakogdo mentioned, was that there in the scene?
I mentioned this in the Tactics Ogre podcast, but in the mid 2000s, when there hadn't been a remake of the game yet, in my childish naivety I would email square-enix asking for a remake....... hey, it came about eventually, with a new translation and everything! I'd love to take some credit for it hahha it was my own operation rainfall.
Mike, did you ever finish Unicorn Overlord? Think you mentioned in a previous video how you got busy but wanted to dive back into it. Also, Casen did you ever play through it?
Mike I hope you get to invite Michael Christopher Koji Fox from the FF14 team. He is an amazing localization lead and can provide more perspective on these topics. Cheers
@@neidhardt8093it literally has everything to do with localisation. Thr people localising the game don’t think the original content is suitable so changed it to be more fitting.
@mrbubbles6468 its not the people localizing the game that made the decision. It came from square enix japanese executives who want a kid friendly rating for the game. The localizers just do what they are told in that case. The reason those changes happen is because the japanese executives in japan dont want a mature rating im the west so they tell hori what he cant do with his game. Its certainly an issue but again the localizers are not the ones driving the issue.
I went through a similar episode with Gyoro and Ururun when I played the PSP version of Star Ocean 2 after the PSX version. I got suprised by the name change, so I went like "wait, didn't they have different names?" I looked it up and then went "oh I guess that makes sense". P.S. I still prefer the Japanese names XD
your blindspot section made me think about the recent Dragon Quest 3 remake news and the developers not understanding why they have to use type a or type b instead of male or female. then your read people comments on social media and most i have seen blame the western culture for this and other changes in games. Casen your point about movies is spot on.
As someone who is bilingual, the truth is that no two translators will translate a book exactly the same. There is a lot of subjectiveness in translation. This is why I am a lifelong language learner. To get the full context and understanding, there is no substitute for reading it natively. That said, I've found that modern translations love taking a looot of liberty with their translation. Older translations tended to be more literal, sometimes to a fault. But modern translations sometimes go off the entire other end.
translators insert meaning that is not there in the original for their own ideological purposes. Imagine if they'd done this with Xenogears and every Christian theme.
It's amazing how you're trying to have a nuanced take and people are still shrieking at the shadows from the hole they put themselves in. It's frustrating.
@@EricWalkerswildride You can give a hundred translators a foreign book to translate, and if they are all at the same level of translation skill, they should all logically wind up with the same book with the same content, with only occasional differences in sentence structure, not completely different stories with different characters who act different from the untranslated book. Untranslated and localized characters, especially Japanese ones, almost always speak like entirely different people, having their vocabulary stuffed with FUCKs and SHITs and sociopolitical buzzwords straight off Twitter. What anti-localizer people want is incredibly simple: what the text says, but in english, not slang-english, not Twitter-english, not "punched up" idiom-riddled english, just english words equivalent or close enough to equivalent, to what the JP script says. This is not hard. Manga scanlators have been able to do this for decades, as have other foreign media translators. The reason English localization becomes like it does, is because the localizers themselves publicly proclaim on twitter that they WANT to change things, that they NEED to change things, that they change things deliberately to piss off fans. Yet translations from other countries have little-to-none of these issues! Weird isn't it!
On the context words in culture part: You can use something as simple as American English and British English as well, there are some words in both that are spelt exactly the same but have totally different meanings depending on if it was used in an American English way or a British English way so it is never as simple as just translating words like you said even for English. On reading subtitles in films while listening to it in the source language: Gonna have to issue a sharp criticism of the way you phrased this, this is only possible for normal people but people with disabilities like dyspraxia would find this nigh impossible to do. I have a brother who has this and he always needs to use text-to-speech to read stuff out to him, he needs to use it for simple articles, his own written work etc and when he can't do it like codex entries within a game he simply has to skip them because his processing power and the way dyspraxia works makes it not possible for him to take in the information unless someone reads it out to him. A better way to phrase it would be to say it in a way that most people barrier to it isn't hard but take into knowledge that for some people who have processing troubles relating to disabilities it's not something they can do. While it might seem like a nitpicky thing to criticise, for people with disabilities (I have epilepsy myself) it is something major for us even a little bit of acknowledgement means a lot.
The Hundred Heroes translation was just bad, it had at point way to modern vernacular, enough spelling and grammar mistakes that I was annoyed, the runeshard numbering was wrong in the german version, some item etc. descriptions were bad, same with the flow between speech bubbles because they often enough lost the meaning in some. And whatever was the thing then you recruited Goldsmid.
English version had a lot of changes as well. Perrielle's personality is very different in Japanese vs English (where they tried to make her sound like an overly sassy girlboss). Lots of points where I could mentally tell the subs and JP didn't line up at all
52:45 I wonder, if Zakogdo is only concerned with creating an "equivalent experience", why does he take issue specifically with Metaphor's translation of "many races intermingling in the city" making use of the word "diversity" -- a term commonly used to describe exactly the phenomenon occurring in the story, even going back to 1966 Star Trek and Spock's adage "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations", suggesting a vast comingling of races and species? English speakers are very well-equipped to take the correct meaning from this term as it relates to the in-game scenario. The translation is the equivalent experience of the Japanese text. It's almost as though he has a mysterious issue with the specific word "diversity", for some reason I'm sure is very intellectually honest. This entire "equivalent experience" premise is surely not a smokescreen for some other cause. Ironically, there is a dangerous naivety in many attempts to pursue the wisdom advocated for by Hegel. The same mistake is often made by people inspired by pop culture depictions of enlightenment -- to use Star Trek again, they see a paragon of reasoning like Jean-Luc Picard trying his virtuous best to grasp all perspectives, and take the wrong lesson that all perspectives are equally valid, and that intellectualism is the process of arbiting between them in perpetuity. They miss the crucial part where Picard, or Hegel, can ultimately recognize that a perspective can be dishonest or even outright evil. Small grains of truth are often weaponized by bad faith actors, and being overly credulous to them is a fast track down a very bad path. Giving them too much credibility in an attempt to be enlightened and fair is counterproductive to those very principles. One can acknowledge the issues represented by that grain of truth on their own terms, as part of an independent analysis with its own intellectually honest aims. Whether it be Weimar-era talking points like "disproportionate representation in bank ownership", 2014's "ethics in game journalism", and now "malpractice in game localization", and in whichever form this manifests next, there will always be some kind of disingenuous attempt to co-opt vulnerable audiences into extreme positions. The legitimacy offered to those attempts by those who consider themselves rational third parties is a big part of how they accelerate, ultimately, into disaster. Another gem from Zakogdo's feed is when he highlighted a particular case of extreme translation malpractice, where one game translated the original Japanese text calling a character "Lolicon!" into "Pervert!". Clearly, the original insult is a much less serious accusation in colloquial Japanese than it is in America, and it would be absurd for English-speaking audiences had it been transliterated the way Zakogdo seems to want. Therefore, the translation was an equivalent experience, but for some reason Zakogdo really wants this exact kind of thing to remain "uncensored". And yet, in the example of fiction set in period France by a Japanese author: If it communicates something to Japanese audiences using a contemporary Japanese gesture, in order to communicate the equivalent to a French audience, it would demand alteration to the equivalent French gesture. The philosophy that localization should demand the audience "meet the original culture halfway" is incompatible with the defense that he only advocates for "an equivalent experience." But even then, he seems very selective about the cases in which he wants the experience to be equivalent. Don't mention "diversity", even if it's equivalent. Do mention "lolicon", even if it's not equivalent. Localize in a way that makes audiences understand the original intent, but also preserve cultural idiosyncracies that obfuscate intent. Forgive me if I'm confused about what this person actually wants, because in its incoherence, it seems to exist largely in service of reactionary outrage. Grains of truth aside.
Personally I feel this has to do with another aspect of the culture wars, control of words themselves. Words are having their definitions warped and outright changed to mean completely different things than they did even just a few years ago. An entire generation now believes racism means prejudice plus power and therefore you cant be racist to someone in the historical majority, when racism literally means discrimination and prejudice based on someones perceived race/skin color and can happen to anyone. I too sometimes feel a reactionary distaste to the word diversity but as I played the game it is used as it should and it is incredibly refreshing after only seeing it used in the completely hollow HR and twitter sense. It makes having honest and fruitful discussions infinitely harder.
I mean he himself showed how stupid those complaints are. The changing of the characters in Star Ocean 2's PSP port was actually a better translation, but that didn't stop him from trashing on that translation until he "knew better". It's almost like the baseline should be a basic curiosity for why things turned out the way they did. His idea of a translation would be so fundamentally horrific. If his past self was unwilling to understand a Japanese wordplay joke, what makes him think a mass market of equally illiterate people would go for it? Which translator was correct? The one who did the literal names and lost the joke or the one who "censored" the names to correctly convey the joke?
@@TheXBOXLIVEPARTY The idea of prejudice + power isn't to redefine racism in such a way that certain kinds of racism don't count. It just makes it clear that racism carries more concerning implications when directed from the powerful against the powerless. Racism towards said majority existing amidst a historically persecuted minority isn't good, but it can be understandable. More importantly, it won't result in any systemic harms that put vast numbers of people at risk, the way racism from the other direction does. Disingenuous actors will deliberately try to conflate the two things, and the idea of Prejudice + Power helps us to differentiate them. Fox News Host saying he's a victim of racism because it's frowned upon for him to quote rap lyrics... probably not the same thing as, say, a Rwandan having some unkind rhetoric about the Dutch who perpetrated unimaginable suffering in their country. Which, in turn, is also not the same thing as Adolf talking about the blood of the nation being poisoned. Power and history does matter. Nevertheless, it's irrational and wrong to discriminate against someone on the basis of their race, nation, whatever. It's just that things should be understood in their context.
Because we weren't able to read every paragraph of Zakogdo's document, he has agreed to share it in full for those who want to read it all in context. Here is the link: drive.google.com/file/d/1SgGD-Zyyn2RZudcUVRnDm09pjpSFOe8p/view?usp=drive_link
Also, time codes:
1. Intro (0:00)
2. Why Are We Doing This? (1:22)
3. How Did Zakogdo Learn Japanese? (20:00)
4. What Are Our Blindspots In This Conversation? (23:45)
5. How Have We Misrepresented You? (48:15)
6. What Points Have We Made That You Would Like To Rebut? (1:18:20)
7. What Does A Successful Translation Look Like To You? (1:44:10)
8. What Do You Think Is The Solution To All Of This? (1:52:15)
Just a quick question: is there a way to see attachments mentioned in Zakogdo's document?
"Did you know? You can climb up there from the backyard of that house." ---> "Well slap my ass and call me a bum-kin! You can git on up there from the back garten! That's what my pal Jerry calls the garden!" example is killing me 🤣 (and that is pretty much sum up the sad current state of today's localization.)
Havent watched the whole podcast, but that was a very eloquently presented interview
I'll admit to something shameful: I said verbatim in response to Zakogdo's Unicorn Overlord thread:
"If this is how somebody thinks about localization, they have got to be illiterate".
That is clearly not the case, and my sharp dismissal of that point of view was out of turn.
Resonant Arc is a weekly reminder to be thoughtful about what you say and the assumptions you make.
Beautiful self-awareness, here. Good on you, bud
I love this. People "arguing" in the internet in good faith. Blows my mind.
As someone who worked as videogame translator, I want to add something, which also happens more often than some people might think: sometimes the developers change some texts last minute without ever telling the localization team or it is like "we made some changes to the story, could you please check them till tomorrow evening?" and it's several hundred lines. So these are also ways "misstranslations" can happen. Not saying, that it is this way here, but still. There are for sure some rogue translators out there, but that is not the "norm"
Oddly I don't even think it's "mistranslation" specifically that has caused all this ruckus. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater and just making up entire sentences of dialogue that the localizer thinks is better. Just straight up not translating anything but adding in their own made up text.
@@Hugsloth In other words: Working Designs styled "I'll just make it better" localizations are alive and well even if it's not as blatant as it used to be.
I always respect when someone shows a willingness to listen and learn. It's something I think most people struggle with, and I do believe we are getting worse at it because of the divisive and toxic arguments people have online. This channel is such a bright beacon in a foggy sea of cynicism that is the Internet.
Amen
I can’t remember who but I listened to someone speak about the veil of cynicism to parade as an intellectual. If you just have a cynical attitude towards everything you can fool yourself into thinking you’ve cracked the code. I think a lot of people do this online to feel a sense of superiority.
I really appreciate this episode and dialog. Not because I'm passionate about localization or the political shifts in the industry, but because of your approach to having dialog and shared understanding. It's a struggle. A HUGE struggle. But you guys approached it in an incredibly healthy and positive way and promoted that same level of care and growth as you yourselves pursue it. It is a shining example and I want to promote it if for no other reason than i think the entire planet could benefit from a desire to improve our communication and understanding, particularly with those we disagree with. I've been pursuing it for near a decade and still have not become so well versed in it and have much to improve on, but this has really inspired me and I'm incredible impressed (in multiple senses of the word). Thank you for this series and discussion, as well as your approach.
Can we just appreciate how well Casen can act as himself?
This channel is probably one of the most informative out there in all of gaming.
long time viewer, infrequent commenter, just want to say i’m loving this (resonant) arc of the pod - thanks for your measured and mature approach to all these topics
You channel is a gift. Thank you for always being thoughtful and genuine.
Slightly Unrelated but when discussing 'looking the enemy in eye' I think you'd love Vinland Saga if you watched/read it, Mike. It's an antiviolence story told from the POV of a Viking. The conclusion you're arriving reminds of me of the main character, Thorfinn.
I've been meaning to read Vinland Saga for the longest time. It's probably time to prioritize that!
@@ResonantArc Let me know when you start! It's a *damn* good Manga/Anime.
A podcast discussing Vinland Saga from either of you guys would be FIRE!
@@RokkouA1holy crap please let that happen. I would looooove to see their video game analyzing skills expand to certain manga/anime.
@@daigo12865 They've analyzed cowboy bebop and princess mononoke and some others already
Mature, open, patient and growth-minded people- bless you all. This is such a fruitful and informative discussion. Props to Zakogdo's self-reflection and getting the chance to have a platform to speak. Love the work, chaps
What a wonderfully considerate conversation on such a prickly topic. I _love_ your dedication to extending olive branches, not brandishing pitchforks. I think you two are doing amazing work in this space and I sincerely hope your message, if not your voices, reaches as wide an audience as possible. I look forward to revisiting this conversation with Alex a week from now.
I agree with the sentiment expressed when you were considering the "X wasn't built in a day" line, but I don't know if that was a good example to use because cultures often independently arrive at similar sayings due to how history and societies often go through similar growing-pains as it were.
For example, in Norwegian we have the saying, "to fluer i en smekk"(translit, "two flies on one swat"), which naturally is equivalent to "two birds with one stone", which also exists in Japanese as 「一石二鳥」
It's natural to assume almost any culture would find a saying to express this idea because the ideal of efficiency and accomplishing two things at the same time is unlikely not to be discovered or considered laudable in almost any human society.
Similarly, the idea expressed with "rome wasn't built in a day" has been expressed, even in English, in innumerable ways over the ages.
"it takes time to build castles"
"small strokes fell big oaks"
"a thousand-mile journey begins with the first step"
Now, you could make the same argument for any of these - that they are "earthly" idioms and expressions - and that we therefore shouldn't use them(do oaks exist in this fantasy world? Why would they?), but I think in the case of sayings like these, making minor alterations while retaining a close facsimile of the original form is both serviceable and shouldn't invite a feeling of disconnect.
"[Insert fantasy city] wasn't built in a day" is hardly a concept or idea so culturally contingent that we cannot imagine it arising independently in another culture or country, because we have to presume that it's a sentiment anyone might invent if the fictional world has any great cities on its surface =P
I also greately value creating and communicating a new and unique cultural language for fictional works set in alien worlds, but the balance point to this is a recognition of the constraints of the language you're fundamentally writing in.
Small flourishes like recontextualizing an English word to be an epitaph in your fantasy world is simple. Creating a new saying that has poetic flavor but is also recognizable and legible in English on the other hand, can be a tall order, and inadvertently invite confusion when done by a lesser writer.
I don't hold it against someone to settle for a path of less resistance here, and opt for a saying with minor tweaks whose use won't confuse the audience over getting creative.
It should be noted that regardless of writing quality hearing a cultural expression, even in your own language, is always confusing the first time you hear it. Learning the cultural context around it and how well it sums up the feeling is what determines how quality the saying is.
Yeah, I think the phrasing is fine, as long as it is consistent with the way the people in-game speak. Xenoblade is typically really good about immersing you with dialogue that makes a lot of sense given their world and situations, but there are a small handful of times it loses the plot. For example, there is an instance of the phrase "get off your high horse." We all know what this means coloquially, but in Xenoblade language, what the hell is a horse? Horses don't exist in the world. They should have said "high ponio," or for alliteration, "grand garaffa," or something like that.
The point is that it's hard to be perfectly consistent in fantasy worlds. Not everybody can be Tolkien.
@jacobmonks3722 do you know what the original japanese used for the high horse line?
@@jacobmonks3722
Excellent example.
@hian good points, but just to note you wrote “two stones, one bird” instead of 「一石二鳥」
I'm from Spain. When Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out, the localisation team said that instead of basing the subtitles on the English translation, they used the original Japanese as reference. It was seen as a big step in improving the quality and faithfulness of our subs, but the problem came when you combined the Spanish subs with the English dub, because Square never makes a Spanish dub of their games (it wouldn't be cost worthy according to them, which would be a topic worthy of debate by its own right. We Spanish speakers have lost count of the number of times we get excited because a Japanese game or property is finally, officially arriving in our countries only to discover it's only in English or worse, several other languages, but none of them Spanish).
You have to play FFVII Rebirth with English dub and Spanish subs to see it. I don't exxagerate when I say almost all of the dialogue was different all the time. I spent 100 hours reading subtitles that were saying something different from what I was hearing in English. A lot of people had to change the subtitles to the South American version, which were based around the English dub, because it's so jarring it becomes unplayable for some. In my case, I found keeping both translations morbidly fascinating and an interesting exercise in trying to get a more complete understanding of the same thing from two different ways of explaining it, but I can't imagine any scenario in which the end product isn't a failure in this aspect, regardless of the original intention of the Spanish localisation team. It tainted what should have been a great achievement for us, finally getting to translate the game from the original Japanese.
The obvious solution would be making a Spanish dub, of course, but if that was an option this wouldn't have happened in the first place. I admit I genuinely don't know what I would do to try to make the situation better.
(Sorry for any possible grammar mistake, second language and all)
You're basically describing the same problem English releases have always had with dual-audio. Take a series like Danganronpa, for example. Their localization team was riddled with Tumblr-addicted westerners who got way too emotionally attached to the individual characters, and started changing the scripts left and right to appease Tumblr's sensitivities or match their own personal preferences.
So every game would have the butchered EN script, with JP audio immediately revealing a dissonance in their tones. Even the unique aspects of the game's world (like prodigies being called "Super High School Level" or "SHSL") had to be dumbed down for the West (they're just "Ultimates" now even though that's not what SHSL meant).
Why did you even use the crappy dub instead of original?
Voy a asumir que hablas español pero igual voy a escribir en ingles (?)
That same problem always happens with Square Enix, i don't know about FF10 but it goes back to OG FF12 i believe, where you don't have a choice but to hear US dub and read subtitles in spanish based on the JP version and obviously it's really bad.
Cool it with the antisemitism
I'm having a similar experience in reverse in Genshin Impact. Due to the voice actor strike, only a few characters are voiced in cutscenes now, so I switched to the Japanese dub which I can understand slightly, and while the translation is not horrible, a lot of the time the intent is completely different. And even comparing some of the voices, certain characters have much more unique personalities, where in the English dub, while there are some great performances, you could probably group personalities into like four variations per body type/age range to the point some characters are known as a nation or element variant of another character.
It's disheartening.
"Do not build your foundation on sand." Edgar of Figaro: "Hold my beer".
**cider
On the subject of having an alternate translation available as an option, this already exists! River City Girls Zero (from a pretty cool beat em up series) is at least one game I'm aware of that has implemented this and it goes a long way to show good faith and understanding for those of us who would prefer LESS creative license from localizers. This way, nobody can truly be disappointed. There is no good faith reason to be upset at an additional option for something you aren't forced to use in a game. I wish more games would take this approach in the future, I know it's more work but it would be very appreciated. You might even find some people discovering they changed their mind about what translation they prefer after having this choice offered to them.
Lots of thoughtful and nuanced points made by you guys as expected. Zakogdo also pleasantly surprised me in that regard. Looking forward to hearing from Mr. Smith again too; next week can't come soon enough.
I was highly critical of your initial interview with Alex Smith. While I still have many disagreements with some of your views, I appreciate you two having on a critic with differing views and for the most part fairly representing him (especially as he isn't physically there to defend himself). Frankly, I am probably most appreciative of you cutting to the heart of the matter that many localization critics have had their concerns continually dismissed and told they don't matter. Another commenter on this video put it better than I could when he said that most critics would be satisfied if industry professionals simply said something like, "hey you guys aren't crazy, that egregious example floating around is bad and could've been done better."
I know this channel is mainly about video games but the latter point of my previous paragraph is particularly pervasive in anime/manga localization. There are so many industry professionals that seem to refuse to even acknowledge faults whether it's by their peers or themselves. It's gotten to the point that fans have had to contact the original Japanese rights holders due to the localizers' ignoring their concerns.
I would point to what happened to the manga, "I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl." The titular friend is an effeminate male who in the localization was turned into a transgender girl. The title was never meant to stray into topics like transgenderism with the author herself in an interview stating that the lead was not questioning his gender identity. However, localizers decided that their own interpretation of the story was more important with industry peers even justifying it by stating that they had consulted other trans people about it. While all well and good, they did not consult the original author and did not accurately represent her work. Fans were livid at the changes and in particular with the publisher Seven Seas for allowing this with the added context that they had just gotten caught outright erasing paragraphs in their translations of light novels.
Sounds like this is the bad apples they’re referring to no? Thanks for the example but this is about the majority of games published by large companies. It’s unfortunate that this example and others that were shared were rogue translators but I feel like they are few and far between when compared to stuff like Eiyuden Chronicles, Unicorn Overlord, etc.
I know that such people do not represent all localizers, however many of them *are* friends, and nepotism *does* occur. But I have to say, I can think of few professions more packed with unwarranted self-important smugness. The way they carry themselves on twitter, they see themselves as cultural TSA agents that can open and fiddle with any piece of media that they take issue with before allowing it through.
@AnguishXA the problem is the so called good apples rarely if ever call out the bad apples. The "good apples" also then mock you for daring to theorize that there are bad apples in the industry.
Yeah, these types of examples are rarely seen in the video game localization realm. I feel like the angry mob has taken to attacking every translator for the crimes of a few, which turns people against them. That's the point that Mike was trying to make.
@@rdrouynriv and you dimissing concerns is also exactly what he talked about. You're part of the problem.
I appreciate you guys helping teach conflict resolution more people need these kinds of skills
You should really tell people not to send death threats at all and not just ask them not to send it to the wrong people. Sending death threats is not a behaviour any civilised society should tolerate and no one should receive it no matter how passionate people are on a subject.
Videos like these are why I love your channel. I'm so glad you're gave this topic a much needed voice. Please keep doing content like this.
I just want to say how important it is you guys are doing this. Looking in the comments is actually great to see. You guys are directly facilitating genuine debate and discussion that is too often not being allowed to happen thanks to the current climate of the internet.
I am really impressed with Mike's introspection and his sort of apology to the guy he criticized about having an opinion he didn't agree with. It's a move in the right direction and it shows that people on all sides of beliefs and cultural backgrounds can learn from their mistakes and grow as people. Mike you're a good man well done. Casen keep an eye on Mike, he's a good one.
Great video! However, a few points for self reflection.
I feel that all the "equivalent" discussion was taken too literally and missed the point. I'm pretty sure they meant "as close to the original that also has a well done localization." Basically an "Authentic" cuisine point.
Rogue Translators greater point continuing to be missed. Mike actually portrays the instinctual behavior here that is missing from the localization scene. Time after time in this video Mike calls out the incorrect/immoral behavior of the people online that take things way too far in criticizing translators. Calling out bad actors and bad work and reiterating the goals of a movement IS the commendable thing to do.
This is exactly what isn't being done, at a perceivable degree, by the translation/localization industry. When the egregious examples of actual rogue translation or simply bad work done by a team aren't acknowledged and professionals/companies that do these things remain undiscussed it gives off an aura of corruption even if it doesn't exist.
A lot of time was spent acknowledging the influence consumer feedback has, but we need to acknowledge that FAR more powerful is the opinion and review of peers. It's sometimes annoying/embarrassing to do but calling out the bad actors and bad products in your own field is vital.
Localizers are in a position of Authority to the vast majority of consumers. They determine a large portion what is conveyed to the viewer. When an Authority is perceived as being ineffective at setting proper internal standards a cascading breakdown in trust.
When left with silence from professionals when these things happen then it often presumed, incorrectly or not, that there is at best ignorance/indifference or at worst some sort of agreement/collusion with the bad actor. I'm not saying its right, but it is what happens.
We've also seen what happens when those rare bad actors stick around in Hollywood or other artistic industries, but it is also way more common for that behavior to be called out and for critique of peers work to happen in the open.
On the subject of "bad" work we know every other director/writer's often critical opinion about Marvel movies, but a localizers critical opinion on a game is incredibly rare.
We rarely even know if there even are standards/ethics even being discussed in the broader industry or if each localizer/group is an island unto themselves.
TLDR: Most people on the critical side just want to hear from localizers: "These egregious examples are indeed bad. You aren't crazy!"
If you frame what's going on in terms of rogue translators or bad actors you're never going to achieve your goal.
The underlying driver of these decisions is always "what can we sell more of?". The decisions to change things in ways you don't like are decisions made in the good faith belief that there are more people that will like them (and thus buy the product) than won't, and that the product will be more successful.
If you keep looking for an enemy in those terms you're going to keep punching at fog, and all people will see of you is that you're throwing punches and that's going to be wholly counterproductive because it will not win friends or influence people.
Mike has acknowledged there are some instances of rogue translators going way out of line, but when talking about localization as a general industry, those instances, as far as we know, are statistically negligible. Maybe 0.5% of all localizations have something akin to that. It's not some widespread movement to destroy Japanese culture, just a handful of arrogant dicks who hate the thing they are supposed to be working on. I understand being angry at them, but the passion of your anger should be proportional to the size of the problem. The bigger problem, as RA and Zakogdo seem to have agreed on, is that marketing departments and coporate hierarchies do more damage than individual actors.
@@jacobmonks3722 Agreed an incredibly small minority, but incredibly prominent in the discussion. I have always acknowledged RA for their nuance. My point is that that localization industry PR would benefit massively from localizers also calling out these bad examples. Knowing that the industry has standards and ethics is very reassuring when bad behavior occurs.
@@quintec45i ageee bad examples should be called out , but if you call out every example you run the risk of being tuned out, so its important to call it out only when you are 100% sure the behavior is the behavior you are describing. If you call a translator out and it turns out they only did what they were told to do, you run the risk of calling too many of them out and then you get a boy who cried wolf situation where when there actually is a bad actor nobody will listen.
@@EdreesesPieces Agreed.
It’s funny that Casen brought up there being hundreds of translations of the Iliad, Odyssey, etc.
My wife is a Classical literature teacher/scholar, and she got super excited recently about a new translation of the Iliad that came out just last year.
Additionally, this translation is an interesting example. It’s a less “literal” translation that goes out of its way to be more poetic or even “sing-songy”.
The Iliad is an Epic Poem and would have originally been recited aloud, but due to translation and also different norms in poetry in our time and culture, you wouldn’t pick up on that just by reading (If you’ve ever read the Psalms in the Bible in English you’ll get what I mean here. Just reading them it doesn’t feel like they are songs that were literally sung).
So this new translation my wife got intentional deviated from being literal in order to capture more of the spirit of the original work. She has mentioned that the more poetic writing also helps her teenage students get into it more, because the text is less dry and “boring”.
Would these translations, well, translate more in gaming terms or even movie terms as new adaptations of the original?
I really hope you guys are able to get different people in the translation and localization industry on the podcast and not just the same guy. They might share jobs but the experience of translators can be vastly different, and one translators perspective will never be the complete puzzle.
That being said, I enjoy the way you're tackling this subject. Keep up the videos.
I have tried to reach out to other industry professionals currently working, but NDAs often hamper their ability to speak publicly about this issue.
@@ResonantArcThanks for the reply. I honestly didn't even consider the fact that NDA's would get in the way of them discussing that stuff, but it's a good point. Hopefully it's able to eventually happen one day.
@@ResonantArc There are a few who I know outside the industry now who either work in different fields or some who actually moved to Japan. I could try to outreach if you're interested but I know you all already have jam-packed schedules.
I do agree though we probably should get more representation (from both sides) of this discussion because I absolutely want to see this "sub-genre" of videos from you all continue about the localization standards, trends, and practices as of yesterday and today continue.
@@ResonantArc Just have them in silhouette with a voice modulator to protect their identities, obviously. This is a solved problem. :p
As a bonus, it'd give the episode a very mysterious vibe.
@@ResonantArc I remember reading a book about Chrono Trigger and Ted Woosley was pretty open about discussing his time with the game, have you tried reaching out to him?
This was so well done. Fantastic work, guys. Thanks for covering this
This topic has really developed here! Kudos for your willingness to listen to both sides.
Your videos discussing localization really deserve a more fully thought out comment than this, but considering the circumstance and some other comments, I wish to make a quick & dirty comment regarding people who you might be interested in inviting to the discussion.
1. Clyde Mandelin: an industry veteran who's been promoting better understanding of localization through various means such as his Legends of Localization website and books (the latter are physical-only, so the most I've read came form his free samples.) He's kinda disappeared from social media, but I feel he'd really bring up lots of interesting points.
2. Michael, also known as PoltFan69, of the Japan Day Tripper RUclips channel: a bilingual currently working and living in Japan who has done the arduous task of critiquing Valkyria Chronicles' localization bit by bit and is now doing the same for Valkyria Chronicles 4. This level of effort is more often than not the minimal requirement for understanding why seemingly benign changes might be better not being made at all; and as a bonus, he's also rather firm in his stance that "localization" is a must, just that it has been abused to justify questionable edits.
(honorable mention to his brother, Dan aka DoublePerfectKO, who's also trying to demonstrate what FFXIV is like in Japanese)
Thanks again for your endeavor!
Really appreciate the time dedicated to this issue. I doubt it's a big item on the budget in comparison to the other aspects of developing and marketing a game so I feel like it never gets much attention, but poor localizations can really sour a customer's experience, so thank you for spending your time on this. The discussion about equivalent experience vs. the unique experience we get from engaging with a foreign work around 1:33:15 was an interesting topic I had never thought about before. If the creator didn't want their work to feel foreign or have noticeable aspects of Japanese culture in it, then the purist/faithful side I'm on wouldn't really align with their intent. I'd always kind of assumed I was on the creator's side in wanting to see their way of phrasing and expressing ideas, but that may not always be the case. Regardless of the author's intent however, I think I do still prefer the localization to be as faithful as possible to the original writing. I wouldn't want a world where Kafka had a localization team on "Amerika" to more accurately portray American culture, even if that was his desire. It's a fascinating work of art because he'd never been and could only use his perceptions of America from afar.
Thanks again for your time on this topic and I look forward to any further discussions on it.
Oh hell yeah, I've been waiting for this to drop.
I'll watch the whole thing. Next week too! Those videos are great!!!
God this channel is fantastic. Keep doing the clickbait titles please, if it helps the channel grow its for sure worth it. We need to get back to this type of discourse instead of the grift wars that are dominating gaming convos nowadays.
I worked on a high profile game launch and watched three localizers tackle the impossible task of localizing 6M+ lines of dialogue and story on an MMO in six months. The game won a bunch of awards but was lacking (surprise, surprise) in localization. There's are so many factors along the way that impact localization, and I'm glad we're getting into the deeper nuances.
I happen to be on the side that thinks extra censorship is affecting game (and other media development) is unfortunate and restricts creative vision and authentic expression. I think it's our differences that enrich our culture and teach us to exist with one another, and that we should be able to see them as they are.
What 'factors along the way' causes them to shoe-horn in references to modern social politics during a medieval setting? Is there a specific 'factor' that prompts them to add internet buzzwords where none existed in JP? The only way 'factors along the way' impact localization would be in how long the translation takes. AI translation will render that aspect a non-issue instantly, so now all localizers have to defend their profession in the future is that they either promise to be more natural sounding (while maintaining a similar level of accuracy) or they take the accurate AI translations and just rephrase some lines slightly to sound more natural.
Inevitably their job WILL be overtaken within a few years, unless they make a serious case for the value of their changes to the scripts.
@@Hugslothtry reading AI translations of webnovels. It's shit.
One thing I'd like to add about the translator blocking Zakogdo on twitter or whatever the platform was, memebers of the localisation teams usually work under a non-disclosure agreement, and so are not allowed to talk about the specifics of their work process, even if they'd have wanted to.
On a side note, I wonder how many of the people who prefer more faithful translations are non-native English speakers who carry over this preference because that's how the localisations are done in their native langauge's culture. That would be the case for me at least, as most games (and especially jrpgs) are not being translated into Polish, I play in English. But because the tendency in my culture is to stay faithful to the source material, I get put off when I recognise the 'anglicisation' (for a lack of better term) of a non-English medium. I believe that would make a good argument in favour of the more 'literar' approach to localisation -that a significant percentage of players are not English natives and that English just serves as a lingua franca for them to experience the game. Considering this, opting for a less 'culturaly localised' translation might pay off as it would be more approachable to a wider audience.
I know that because I'm not an English native, I might misunderstand the linguistic or cultural connotations of the English localisation. Still, it seems to me that the tendency to adapt everything to the translated langauge's culture is way more common in English than in other languages. German is way more precise and lower-context language than English, and yet German translations of specifcially Square Enix games are generally more accurate to the original (although I'm sure some people would still complain that they're not accuarte enough), an the faithfulness does not come at the cost of 'aesthetic' or beauty of the language itself.
I guess what I want to say is that the current tendency in the English game localisation is not the only option, and it would be cool to see the translators or developers willing to be a little more experimental and introduce alternative localisation strategies.
They need to bring The Last Story and Pandoras Tower back again to current consoles.
Xenoblade was the clear winner from Operation Rainfall. 1 out of 3 ain't bad, but NoA knew what they were doing, from a business perspective, by not localizing the other two games until the uproar.
edit: Actually, looking at sales figures, The Last Story was a success, too. Pandora's Tower was "favorable" but somehow I just don't see it ever being considered for a re-release.
@@blossom357 The Last Story having been forgotten after how hyped it was at the time makes me think Sakaguchi doesn't have enough dirt on people in the industry. He's the Del Toro of video games, people love his work, but they are basically all stuck to their original releases and even his new ones have trouble finding a platform.
@@ProxyDoug I'm a sucker for digital distribution so I'm not quite sure what you mean with del Toro. Some of his stuff was inducted into Criterion recently, right? Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite movies, so if I had the money to buy every movie I wanted, it would definitely be first on my list.
@@blossom357 Del Toro famously gets denied by studios despite having a big following among fans. Stuff like trying for year to produce The Hobbit, the third Hellboy and Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness and not succeeding.
@@ProxyDoug Dang... The Hobbit would have been fascinating under him. I had no idea he was treated this way. I'd looked at his filmography before and had this impression of, to use a gaming analogy, he reminds me of WayForward: doing the occasional "shovelware" to do what he really wants to do later. Turns out that isn't quite true, then.
I thank you for your sacrifice and hard work during Operation Rainfall, because the Xenoblade Chronicles Trilogy are my favorite games of all time. Looking forward to playing Xenoblade X on switch
Appreciate how you guys are bringing in a bunch of different perspectives on this.
Edit: The strategy of pestering Nintendo's customer service that you mentioned with Project Rainfall is the same thing the customer service for a publisher of audiobooks directly told me I should do if I wanted more Wheel of Time books re-recorded with Rosamund Pike. That and buying the audiobooks when they come out, of course.
Xenoblade Chronicles DID have a European/Oceania release, before Operation Rainfall, with no plans for a North American release.
I speak Japanese (lived in Japan for a few years), and I've played UO multiple times. There are issues with UO's localization (some very minor mistranslations, some intentional changes to lines in order to downplay some aspects of the character in Japanese), but it's a pretty poor example of a "bad localization." I've noticed much bigger issues in other games, especially in older games (that get a pass for being translated a decade or two ago).
That said, I do worry about localizers who gloat about "fixing" aspects of the game that they don't agree with.
I wouldn’t say it’s bad, but it is flawed. Some character motivations, especially in the beginning of the game, can be mistakenly inferred as one thing when they were really intended as something else
@@kvltovpersonality6290 It's been a while, but I recall a few of those. The biggest one was the debacle with Raenys' ring scene (the first one I saw, as it happens), which they decided to make romantic in English but failed to change the non-romantic ending. I'll concede that was more than just a "very minor mistranslation," per my original comment, but I can still see how a localizer would make that mistake. There are plenty of things Japanese don't say outright because they can be inferred from context, and the localizer probably thought that was what was going on here -- all the context clues point to Alain proposing, so they didn't bother to check the ending and see if it actually was a proposal.
I still stand by the idea that it's not a bad localization overall, though.
Another incredible video where you give further context and add to the discourse of translation, really looking forward to this and your next video. Thank you for covering this and I really hope Zakogdo responds or even joins live for further discussion. Keep it up.
Fantastic video! Very compassionate and wise takes, balanced. Great education on the backfire effect too!
Oh, man. I hope that Alexander O. Smith rebuttal goes into Final Fantasy Tactics specifically. I know quite a few people who think the PSP script takes too many creative liberties and I've heard arguments that can go either way - sometimes feels like total nostalgia for PS1, sometimes feels like they actually have a point. I would have to set aside my preferences for the PSP script, because what if the PS1 script IS more accurate in some or most cases? That would just end up being the truth, regardless if I think the PSP script is better.
Regarding the Xenoblade Chronicles anecdote, I just want to point out that the game was released in pal territories 1 year befote USA got it, so we would have got it in the west anyways, just not in USA, which is not the whole west. I just wanted to point that out cause even you guys are some of the more open minded and culturally rich people among your US youtube/gamers peers, sometimes the us-centric mindset slips in. Cheers fron Spain, I love your podcast.
The game was even in english already, the language also spoken in the usa. I played the european bersion of the game in english by importing a d modding my wii. I think the american version even uses the exact british translation
Ah great you bring this up, yeah, Americans tend to think there's only two places on earth, America and everything in isolation that isn't america. Very sad, they even mentioned "I've been to Europe and other places", but they seem to not have learned to think of including this in their view on "The West" (which itself is a stupid term to use.)
Mike, i got Unicorn Overlord because of your review. I adore that game. I used to play Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen as a kid and ive never found a game that had similar gameplay. Ive completed nearly 4 playthroughs of UO at this point and I wish they would create more games like it. Cavalry is king!
I'm in the process of writing my own book(s) and creating video games based on those worlds, and I intend to keep a "translation notes" type of record along with each scene, in the rare future where my book(s) get translated into other languages, so the meaning that I'm intending will be retained.
Character names in my book(s) are important, and hold etymological meaning (They have birth names, given names, taken names, and family names - birth/family names are the most similar to our naming conventions in our world, while the others have most of the meaning derived from their accomplishments or other events)... and sometimes there is wordplay at work that plays off those meanings in how characters interact with each other. Names sometimes change during the book(s) to reflect these meanings.
As an autistic person, I sometimes find it difficult to identify sarcasm and the intended tone or subtext of interactions, so my "translation notes" will contain that clarification as well... and I'll likely have these notes available to the public for those who would like such clarification "from the author's own mouth"... that is lacking in past works that are currently being adapted into other forms of media so horribly.
One fact you omitted about Operation Rainfall was that those 3 games were already being translated for a UK audience. That's why they all have UK dubs. So it was a push for NOA to publish a NOE product. Either way, Xenoblade's long-term success I think is largely attributed to USA sales
This is the kind of dialgue the country needs.
Gonna ruffle some feathers by saying this but I genuinely believe "I've received death threats" is a complete non-argument because
1. Why is it the other person's fault?
2. Who says only they did, and not also the person that's being accused of causing them?
3. It's the internet and strangers will do this just to get a rise out of you
4. There's almost never any proof of it anyways
5. Frankly, I only ever see people pull it as a conversation-ender when they're running out of arguments
Great podcast guys. One note I wanted to make was in regards to the developers/corporations going to third parties or even having inside teams to let them know what other cultures would find offensive so that they can remove it from the games. The frustrating thing to me is that it kinda feels like the 80s and 90s all over again in that they are going to the wrong people for that advice and it is causing them to change and remove far too much. I was much more offended at the idea that Japanese developers chose to water down their games or decrease their game's difficulty back in the 90s than I ever would be about a story that tackles heavier themes or just simply puts a cross on a building. It came across as them not thinking that we simple westerners could handle such complex ideas. I think the reasoning behind changes now are different than they were then, but the result is the same, I don't want to be treated with kid gloves, give me the full and authentic experience.
One example recently is Cid in the FF7 Remake series. It seems from his appearance so far that he is not going to be the same grouchy asshole that he was in the original and I expect his treatment of Shera will be greatly toned down. I don't have a problem with this because I want to see Shera get slapped around, but because it detracts from Cid as a character and the growth that he goes through in the original. At least the way I saw the original, Cid's abusiveness was never celebrated or promoted. He was an unlikable character when you first met him and you weren't supposed to like him. He only cared about himself and his dream of going to space and took his anger out on anyone and everyone when that dream fell through, especially Shera since he blamed her and, because she sadly blamed herself as well and for some reason loved him and stuck around, she was the only person who would put up with him to take his crap. Obviously though through the later events (going to over simplify here) he realized that he was wrong, that Shera was trying help and loved him, that he loved her, and then feels what would have to be an immense amount of guilt for how he treated her and how much of a shitty person he had been. My concern for the remakes is that so far Cid seems like a pretty normal and calm guy and that when we reach Rocket Town he's just gonna be mildly rude to Shera and then when the realization happens it won't carry the same weight and it'll feel like something Cid can just be like "my bad" about.
I suppose tying this all out I am starting to realize that I see in Cid a bit of a reflection of my grandfather who had struggled with alcohol while my dad was growing up and similarly had treated his family very poorly, but much like Shera loved Cid despite this, my dad still loved his father. Thankfully my grandpa eventually did realize what he was doing to his family and spent the rest of his years trying to make things right, or as right as he could. Obviously there's a lot more to the story and unlike Cid in FF7 there were some relationships in my grandpa's life (namely my grandma and aunt) that were too far gone but the point is that we aren't supposed to see Cid or my grandpa as role models. We are supposed to see them as cautionary tales so that we can avoid going down the road they did or at the very least if we are going down that road, seeing their stories can hopefully get us to pull our heads out of our asses and stop. Don't be Cid. Learn from him so that you can be better than Cid.
Great video, it's good to se this message being pushed on a non toxic manner.
On the video it was mentioned "it is hard for such examples to come by" (meaning woke injections, politics, modern jokes, tiktok language, etc), but they're not.
That's the problem, in my two cents, Eiyuden Chronicles was destroyed by the localization, characters turned queer for no reason, modern jokes, modern terms, angry woman calling men "chuds" "are you sure is a he?" when none of that was there, not to mention the horrible response from such "localizers".
It is not your opus to modify and inject your thoughts, be professional, translate and be paid for it.
One thing you have to learn when trying to convince people is that you can't use a source the other views as tainted/compromised, and linguistic choice a source uses matters a hell of a lot. If they use terms and phrasing used by their ideological opposnents, it will be viewed as a bad actor or enemy propaganda.
@@laylaalder2251 But the terms ans phrasing that are seen as "propaganda" are so broad now. Are we not allowed to use the term 'pronouns' now, for example? That's a fundamental part of grammar!
@@jordanetherington1922 I think we all can tell when someone is using "pronouns" is simply referring to the grammatical structure, and prrcisely 0 people are complaining about that usage
@@-Monad- But Japan has the same concept. An okama like Mama from Ai the Sominum Files would be ask to be referred to as feminine.
@@jordanetherington1922 are your pronouns type A or type B? Jokes aside, propaganda is more something like the controversy of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. "Something Something Patriarchy" it's like the worst example, for it being super blatant. But something more hidden are the ways pronouns are either removed or changed to completely rewrite something i.e. "I transformed my Childhood friend into a girl" had to be completely pulled from the shelves by the publisher after backlash.
Imagine politicians being this open minded and willing to evolve. Commendable!
Me personally I'm generally fine with localization if at least it serves the purpose of getting the dialogue that was originally said in japanese across to whatever audience is reading/listening. But the minute that localization starts doing things like warping dialogue for like censorship reasons (which I'm never a fan of), up in the air reasons like dialogue in Fire Emblem for characters just getting gutted for no reason, or in cases like in anime, as an addendum, inserting dialogue for political jab reason in a scene that was never there originally or even warranted, then we got problems. I've seen this happen like way to long for me to ignore.
Remember back in late 2017, the original English localization of Falcom's Ys VIII was criticized heavily by fans, and the CEO of NIS America responded to the complaints by announcing that the translation would be improved.
NIS completely rewrote the English translation, including re-recording all the dialogue, and released that patch a few months later in January 2018.
So it is possible to create the changes you want to see... But only if the complaints are well articulated and convincing, AND reach the right people. (The people who make the big decisions, not the individual translators).
But complaints that are hostile in tone are just going to get filtered out as "hate mail" by the community managers and won't make thier way up the chain of communication at all.
I wish more people would understand this, that hostility only muddies the water and obscures whatever valid point is being made.
Yep. The moment you become hostile about anything in life you lose your chance of getting what you want. This is true about things in daily life too, like at a restaurant or at a hotel. I live by a simple rule, dont act in any way online to people that I wouldnt act in person.
That's an unfair expectation of unity and organisation to put on people, I'd say only making them afraid (literal terror) applied by small, representative numbers of people can be effective.
@@dudemcguy1227 the definition of hostile has changed almost as much as the definition of literally.
@@el_oh_ell Well, for example, calling for someone's job to be replaced by AI if they don't concede to specific demands is coming at the conversation with unnecessary hostility.
I think one of the most interesting part of the debate is the outright refusal to accept things on both sides 😂. You have some who are on the anti localization side who firmly believe that 50% of localizers are bad faith actors pushing agendas. The other side firmly believes it's impossible for them to exist at all. Just find this part of the discussion interesting and humours.
Same reason why our politics is divided into two and neither side can understand each other.
More people from our society is attaching themselves to morality according to their belief, rather than reasoning.
Once you start arguing morality and virtue, you are stuck there, because you dealing with absolutes. There is no room for compromise, convincing, or understanding since you are looking at things under good and evil, and evil cannot be tolerated.
Another bad aspect of localizations this video and zakogdo's docuent don't cover is when certain already English words are changed seemingly arbitrarily. The Kiseki/Trails series by Falcom and localized by NISA is full of these. A character's title "ソードメイデン" (Sword Maiden) is changed to "Beauty's Blade" for seemingly no reason. A dungeon called 逆しまのバベル has the English name "Reverse Babel" directly underneath it in the Japanese version, yet the localized version changes it to "Retributive Tower".
These aren't complicated, controversial or difficult-to-translate terms, nor does it help convey any meaning that could be lost in the original language, they're already English words that don't require any translating whatsoever. It's not translation or even localization at this point, it's just the English team making up completely new names to replace the original names with purely for the sake of leaving their own mark on the series.
That literally happens with all games.
Yakuza localizations also change what is being said on the screen, a LOT, yet nobody comments on this.
The fans are extremely selective, doesn't make any sense. Btw this also isn't something new.
@@FredMaverik I think you're misunderstanding the point, I'm specifically referring to when the names of proper nouns are already in perfect English (either in plain English text or using katakana) and then changed anyway in the English localization, not dialogue changes. It's not a new practice but that doesn't make it good.
@@FredMaverik whats with the weird badfaith argument?
I think this issue is a case by case kind of thing.
1) Some English loan words sound cool to a Japanese person, but actually sound kind of lame in certain English speaking regions.
2) Sometimes a script changes hands between multiple Japanese to English translators and they might not even be aware that the original source for a word in the script was an English loan word so they try to change what they see on the draft to better fit the context of the scene.
3) Regrettably sometimes there are multiple rounds of machine translation that are used and words might get changed despite them already having been properly translated previously. This is something that is for sure a major problem. The English translation for Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth I'd be willing to bet money relied a lot on machine translation.
@@TheShmish. Because what sounds cool in English from the perspective of a Japanese speaker and what would sound cool in actual English is very different.
Example: Xenoblade 2 the finally form of Hana (Poppi) is Judgement Day Mode. That's English right? So that should carry over.
But the core of that name is the fact that Hana's form names are JS, JK, and JD which are abbreviations of elementary school, high school, and college. So I have no idea how you would translate that but they came up with Alpha, QT, and QT pi.
Same for the character Zeke. In Japanese his title is Zeke The Ultimate Genbu which would be pretty gibberish in actual English so it was changed to Zeke Von Genbu Bringer of Chaos which not only fits the character, but is a cool title.
46:45 The Inklings were all about this point about culturally embedded meanings of words. Owen Barfield wrote his big book Poetic Diction about this. C. S. Lewis writes a section, I think it’s in Surprised by Joy, about the meaning of the Greek word for ship, and how that meaning was far richer and distinct before the English word for ship ever came along.
If someone could clarify for me, why exactly is this a big issue? I dont know a second language full disclosure.
But when I play a game, I just judge it by whether the writing and story is good or not. Whether it resonates with me or not. And sometimes that pulls in translated games, and the translation itself into the category of writing and resonance-even though it's different technically.
I feel like if there is all this doubt and skepticism as to whether or not the story is faithful or direct and, therefore, whether or not we can take any meaning from the story and its themes... well, I personally would just turn to playing games written in English. Plenty of great games and great stories out there to enjoy that simply don't have this short-coming. Like Red Dead Redemption 2 (which I'd love you guys to play one day and hear your thoughts on it.)
Its certainly interesting, but people are really hopped up about this and im not sure why. I suppose one answer is "well, we like these games. This is what we want to play."
Im just a bit lost on why having a perfectly translated rendition of writing is a game-breaker considering theres so much art out there that doesnt have this isssue.
Is basically that, a good localization is the maintain the dialogue and ideas as faithful as possible to the original language, while changing some things to better fit the local language. The problem of the localization lies when the localizers try to editorialize the story to better fit their interpretation of the story and characters.
@Machiroable ahh ok. Editing would be bad especially if you weren't hired to edit.
Do we know that some localizers are changing them intentionally? Or could one of the problems be maybe a lack of funding/no market, considering anime and Japanese culture aren't big in the west yet? Apart from its "cult" fanbase at least.
It's not a big issue, it's something people have always discussed online, but modern social media can make even the most niche topics explode in terms of views
@@RalphNC09 It's certainly intentional, and often political. I personally value a good story over an accurate localization, but we often get worst of both worlds, localizations that are inaccurate and bad. Poor localizations aren't new, and are sometimes good, like Chrino Trigger's, but now we're getting low quality stuff and sometimes it's a political sermon.
Localization discourse is annoying because *both sides* are full of bad faith arguments from people who care more about the culture war than the art.
2 Translators, 1 JRPG
Around 44:05 Casen says "there should be tons of things that people do that you don't agree with, and instead of trying to change it so that everything aligns with you [...] maybe accept it, and maybe try to learn from it."
This is absolutely a valuable lesson about discourse in general, and might be the crux of the entire episode. However, Casen seemed to be saying it specifically as an argument for one side, when it could apply equally to both.
Also consider the possibility that this mindset is exactly how some (surely not all, but some) of these changes have happened. Maybe the original creators listened to a different point of view, learned from it, and decided that it was a worthy change for their art, or even that it made their art better. After all, we heard straight from Alex last time that, these days, localization is usually done in direct communication with, or even requires approval from, the original creators.
Maybe some games would have been better off without any external influence, but then again, maybe there's a game you now love that, without any such influence, you would have found utterly mediocre or objectionable.
Publishers and yes, even developers, want their games to sell so they can make more games! They're trying to provide what most people seem to be buying. If you find that doesn't align with what you want, it's not a slight against anyone, and it doesn't mean there's some evil force at play, it probably just means you're not dead center in the target-audience Venn diagram. If that feels frustrating, I can understand. Maybe when you found anime or JRPGs, it was fringe culture, and now you're still on the fringe, but the content isn't.
1:17:01 This statement has a few ways to interpret it, and depending on which one it actually means heavily changes my agreement with it:
If the meaning is supposed to be: "A good translation can create cultural references in the real world" (for example memes), OR "A good translation localizes cultural references already in the script, so that they are internally coherent within the setting, and make sense in the target language" I would generally agree.
If the meaning is: "A good translation creates cultural references from inside the setting or drawing from real world, when such references are NOT in the original script", I very much disagree.
From what I've seen, a big sentiment for us who have been critical of game and other media localization recently, is that we feel that localizers have been overstepping their roles, and are crossing into writers territory. The scriptwriters work has already been done. The story and characters have been written, and we want to experience them as they were written. Now the localizers job is to convey that script to audiences in a different language. I do get that it's not always easy, and a literal word to word translation doesn't always work, but veering too far from the original doesn't sit well with me.
A good thoughtful episode nevertheless. Many good arguments and thoughts, even if I didn't agree with every single one that was made.
TL;DR If there's already a cultural reference in the script, feel free to localize it to suit the target audience while keeping the meaning and tone of the line as close to original as possible, but do not insert one if the original script doesn't have it.
Only 30 minutes in, but the problem with assuming the intentions of localizers is that localization is very much a trust-based service. You are catering to customers that, by the nature of the service, cannot quality check it themselves. They have to trust that localization is correct and faithful. And just anything built on trust, like a bowl of m&ms, if you think one is poison, you don't want to touch the whole thing.
So I disagree that any kind of reaction shy of criminal, can be dismissed as overblown because you don't know how much media a given consumer is starting to question once they get the idea that some of the translations are unfaithful.
Localization may have been a purely trust-based service in the past. Like back when Alex O. Smith worked on games like FFX. But in the 2nd half of this episode, Patreon member David (Japanese to Spanish translator for Nintendo) explains that there are shared documents between the original Japanese writers and the Localization teams where they go back and forth on proposed changes to the Japanese version and they get approval to make the change for whatever language.
So there is an open line of communication in the localization process with the JP devs and/or publishers now. It's much less trust-based and more collaborative than in the past. Or at least that seems to be the case at Nintendo of Europe.
@@stanm4410 I find it strange to reconcile that with the reports that modern non-english localizations stray less than their English counterparts on the same media.
And you still have to trust that this collaboration is totally equitable. Given that NA branches hold so much more power than those in other countries, there is still room for concern.
@@Oliander712 Are you sure? Because for certain if you play Japanese games in Korean or Chinese, you're getting a different translation. Even playing games translated from English to Japanese has a lot of difference. This is a kind of hysterical paranoia.
@@stanm4410 We know, that the Pokemon first Gen Spanish Translation was a complete lack of conversation aside from the translators being given names for moves without context.
The english localization aside which is another can of worms.
@@NoraNoita Right... the first Gen of Pokemon was in the 90's. Those were still the dark ages for game translations.
Honestly, rather than waiting for another year or two until somebody finally translates Xenosaga DS and Lunar: Walking School for Saturn, I have decided to simply learn Japanese))
I personally have no problems with the changes made in localization, as easy to read well written language is the highest priority for me. There have been many fan efforts to retranslate older games. There are a plethora or ff6 and chrono trigger fan retranslations, and many of them are directly competing with eachother for accuracy. There are also examples of transformative translations that are praised such as the way Estelle is re-written in Xseeds Trails in the sky. There are also polarizing examples like anything from working designs, but some love the humor and charm injected into those translations
For a moment I read, "Have TRANSISTORS", which reminds me.
Did you two ever played Transistor?
Transistor would easily be the best Supergiant game for this podcast haha! And I’d love a reason to replay.
Operation Rainfall. Man what a time that was. I bought 2 copies of XB from Gamestop just to try to pump up the sales so Nintendo would notice.
Sand is actually a good base for a buildings footings. It is stable and excellent at draining water. Its clay you need to be wary of. It has high water retention which causes destructive levels of movement in your building
Cheers for this, was starting groundwork tomorrow.
@@Windraesa May your structure be ever stable and never crack
I literally don’t know either of your politics, and i feel like i would vote for either of you. On this willingness to talk alone.
@@rjfink We have some low standards for politicians these days, don't we? What a time it is when just the act of calmly talking and listening is seen as a boon to your platform.
@@jacobmonks3722 the bar is low and they can’t clear it. But as the hosts say, a lot of people can’t. So it’s nice to see - it’s special.
@@jacobmonks3722 To say that the bar is low for us would be an understatement, the bar is at the center of the earth and rather than simply walking many politicians grab a shovel the second they get a chance to speak.
Can we listen to their policies before voting them in for the most powerful position in the world?
Becoming US President shouldnt be popularity contest, but here we are...
@ResonantArc
2:02:23 Even without recording a new set of voice lines for a more literal translation, I don't think you realize how much time and money it would cost a company to produce a new set of subtitles. It's not only the translation and the editing, it's also the whole QA process amongst other things. This is especially true for text heavy titles, but such an endeavour would be deemed unjustified extra costs for no substantial additional revenue.
As a Japanese person, I found and interpreted the points on "colonization" very differently. The vibes of the video is that there is an homogenization of western culture and influence that is destroying the eastern roots of many of these countries; which is true. The position you take is that this is universally a bad thing because it robs the opportunity to learn about other cultures and self reflect on what you would consider norm. I think what is missing in this sentiment are the people who live, in let's say, Japan and there's a bit ignorance to the lived experience for the locals.
It reminds me of an interaction I had with a Japanese colleague where we talked about the moral zeitgeist shifting between the different eras of Showa (1926-1989), to Heisei (1989-2019), to Reiwa (2019~). Each era is distinct in its approach and we recognised how people who live in Reiwa (as in currently), would be apprehensive towards some of the things that happened during Showa (school bullying, bad mannerism of cigarette smoking, terrible work-life balance, etc.) - it's somewhat akin to Boomer vs Gen Z talk in the west, but that's between two generational people. This occurs to the person i.e. person who lived through Showa, now feeling apprehensive about the things that happened during then. Many of the qualities that they like about Reiwa are precisely of western influence and Japan's attempt to modernise their core values to be more globalized and acceptable to the world (work life balance is better without 終身雇用 permanent employment being the norm, for example).
If Japan kept its ways that were unique to itself, which leaned towards a one-for-all environment where individuality and autonomy was considered unsavory, it may have developed a stark contrast to western cultures. But not everyone in Japan wanted this, some like the globalisation and the realisation that there is a world outside of Japan and the moralities are being updated to a western standard.
Thus this sentiment that "colonization" is an universal bad thing is I feel somewhat misguided - it's akin to asking cultures to keep to their conservative ways and not embrace new ideas, in an attempt to create more total world diversity for the benefit of tourists
Btw, can you make miniepisode about Casens linguistic hobby? I am curious how many languages he knows and how well.
What sucks is that criticism of localization has become a political issue. A few crazy people with power in the industry are admittedly and proudly changing scripts wholesale because they believe their work is better. When these people are called out for this, they point to whatever political topic the shoehorned in and call their critics bad people for not wanting that, dodging the actual argument. I know that these are only a small fraction of the whole industry, but them being really loud and claiming to speak for everyone else only makes things worse.
After watching the entire video I just appreciated the very balanced discussion especially in this setting where Zakogdo isn't here in person to rebuttal or share his thoughts. I'm still unmoved as far as translations go and maybe I'm just lucky with the games I find myself playing (jrpg wise) to not really experience the worst end of it to where I can't really see the alternative "Hey lets min max make this as faithful as possible by a group of people in America for most languages"(realistically). Also the fact that he still hasn't played Unicorn Overlord is just wow to me, its a great game play it! I'm surprised such a post was even made in detail before finishing the damn thing! I also loved how facetious Casen was being as I'm in agreement with a lot of the counter points he brought up and again Mike's points were fantastic as well. Great stuff guys as always looking forward to next time as well!
How would you even know that changes happened in the translations to your JRPGs? Isn't the fact that you haven't found a single bad translation either an admittance to not truly being immersed in the genre or not having a critical eye for the writing in the first place.
@@PepsiMan666it’s probably more an admission that he’s not terminally online over analyzing translations
I get all the corporate nonsense involved in translation work and how it might go against the will of some translators. These guys are like us, wanting the translations to be as faithful as possible.
Then you got the other end of the spectrum, the people who actively believe that the text they are translating is boring and needs some extra spice for shits and giggles.
I still remember the scene of Trails in the Sky FC Chapter 3 in which Estelle, Joshua and Tita visit Elmo village to fix a broken pump. In the Japanese version, Estelle is merely commenting on the unpleasant smell (of sulfur in the air). In the English translation, they inserted a fart joke in the conversation ("Joshua, did you...?"), making Estelle seem extra childish and juvenile. You can't tell me that some exec at XSeed told the translators to add random jokes and pep up literally every conversation, considering the freedom they had during translation (for example with the chest messages).
As Alexander O. Smith said in his interview, direct feedback from the original Japanese creators is very uncommon. If that is the case for Square Enix, a literal JRPG giant, then it's sure as hell not happening with a smaller company such as Nihon Falcom. How are we supposed to give feedback in cases like these, where "voting with your wallet" just signals disinterest in the franchise to its original developers?
Well sometimes, if a company is too stupid to figure out why their game is not selling well, then they deserve to go bankrupt.
At the end of the day, only thing fans can do is vote with their wallet and complain online, and former is a lot more powerful than latter.
You have to also consider that in the case of Falcom, those early localizations are actually very popular. The target audience has to be considered, and you can bet there will be huge complaints if, for example, the dialogue when you open chests isn't kept in the FC remake localization. It's the translation the die hard fans experienced, and they don't want it changed.
Well, Alex O. Smith was talking about direct feedback from the JP devs being rare back in the 90's and early 2000's. When he was working on FFX and FFXII.
The industry has changed now. In this episode their Patreon member David mentioned at one point that his Spanish localization team has a shared spreadsheet with the JP devs where they collaborate and discuss changes they want to make.
So it sounds like there is way more oversight on the translation and localization process these days than there was in the past.
But it's also possible that the JP devs are just deferring to the localization team on most of the requested changes. Thinking that they probably know best since they know the other language/culture better. Who knows.
@@neidhardt8093 Yeah, the localisations are favored by the "I don't speak a single word of Japanese, but I think the localisation is pretty good" crowd. I don't want to take that joy away from them, but I strongly believe those early players would've been fine without characters whose altered lines are borderline slapstick comedy material, too.
@@dudemcguy1227 I think that it's still a pretty rare occurrence these days, but that is only my gut feeling. Only the absolute minority of Japanese devs (and by that, I mean a really really miniscule amount of people) are going to know about "very US-specific social issue X" and why localiser Y - who may or may not spend way too much time on social media - thinks it is absolutely critical to tone down scene Z because of it.
Most devs are just way to busy pumping out new games. Even those developed with multiple languages in mind - FFXIV for example - are not safe. The English script has often been criticised for inaccuracies and vagueness that left the meaning of certain situations up for player interpretation, an issue that isn't present in the more literal German and French translations.
Something you guys have missed in all these talks and both sides have missed on IMO is the lack of silence. Both the americans and japanese are bad for this for difference reasons. Mostly ive noticed it in anime but its in video games too. Americans like to add or extend a line to fill silence. Like panning over a scene to be dramatic (this is mostly in kids shows but not always). While the Japanese insist on moaning and groaning when a facial expression is enough. I feel ps2 era japanese games were the best as they had less budget to add these moans and groans but my god it is painful nowadays. I cant stand most jrpgs anymore and i used to live for them
That's your personal opinion, and your choice. That doesn't mean they have to change anything about it, you just have to accept the media just isn't for you.
@NoraNoita well, of course its my opinion... whose else would it be?
Full disclosure, I have my ears in the Culture War -- I follow channels that are dedicated to fighting the Culture War. I also happen to be a conservative-leaning gamer & geek/nerd (we're more common than the media makes us out).
I believe what you gentlemen are doing to be quite admirable. If only more people & channels had your integrity, gentlemen.
Kudos.
As a former culture war/ outrage media consumer: I agree what’s being done here is admirable.
Leaving my own anecdotal experience behind, I have to mention that I firmly believe watching culture war / outrage media will slowly consume more and more of your brain and rot it from the inside out.
I challenge all of my fellow nerds who are addicted to the vicious news cycle to take a break for a few weeks stop posting on X for a few weeks and really take a step back.
When you return to the front lines of that content you see it for the circus that it really is.
@@L337Koala I am doing that as we speak. It definitely gets overwhelming, and some in the Culture War are doing so in bad faith.
Right now, I am strictly watching hobby channels and gaming channels like Resonant Arc, “I Finished a Video Game,” Maximilian_DOOD, etc.
Great video, I loved your sentiments at about 15:00 where we can listen to each other and find parts of the truth in each other. I'll always feel conflicted about translations. I love that things can come to where I am, and I do want them to mostly be true to the source but also appropriate for the audience it's coming to. However there is always issues that can arise, either from accident or bad faith, or even other positions in the company focusing on profits. Also changing characters almost entirely can occur.
I'll always think of how poorly thought out the line "Men come and go but ladies stick together" from Valkyria Chronicles 4 was. Do I have an issue with girl power? Not at all! But it was said to some one who was a recent widow.... and I think something truer to the original intention would have been much better, and less ignorant of what had just happened. Not a slam to VC games at all, I love them.
Just for the record, Xenoblade Chronicles WAS being released in Europe, but not the US. To add salt to the wound, the English translation already existed for the British release.
great episode. And, even though I am 100% in agreement with your position, I can respect and understand Zakogdo point of view as stated in the letter. Glad he responded even if not in person (very understandable) and glad you gave space to show his response.
Since I am vehemently against the "rogue" translator idea but Mike opened the door to their occurrence I can concede that they can happen in 2 cases: A small line lost in the middle of 1M+ lines translation project from a disgruntled employee? sure but anything significant will not go unnoticed by the editor. And even in the case Mike mentioned about small team on obscure anime: That will only fly if the creators do not care about it. That too can happen , for sure. And you can even blame the translator but nothing will change if the creators don't know or don't care about it.
So I've watched the whole thing now, also it kinda sounds like at times you make it out as if Zakogdo instigates hate against individuals, which certainly is not the case, as you said it's that 1% of individuals who take it way too far and are just crazy.
The thing to remember as well is that they're coming into this conversation late. This has gone one at least a decade prior and the localizer response to perfectly polite questions about certain localizations has amounted to basically "fuck you, learn japanese". So it's small wonder many have run out of niceness.
@@Deadagent"polite questions". Lol
@@neidhardt8093 Yes, this didn't begin with venom from the people asking for changes. Though judging by your tone I doubt you're speaking in good faith either.
Thank you for this discussion arc, I've been following it with great interest and you're also super civil about the subject and people involved.
I wonder how you and Zakogdo feel about translations *from* English *into* Japanese. I'm talking about video games produced in the West, like Skyrim, Assassin's Creed, the Witcher etc. I guess that everyone chooses their own hill to die on, but I imagine that if someone is a translation "purist", then they must hold the same high standards no matter which pair of languages are involved. Or is this specific translation direction (Japanese -> English) special to you?
>"Blame yourself or god"
>"Ti's your fate that wronged you, not I".
That's a good example of creating your own new cultural reference.
Oh that's a good example! The latter is IMO much more poetically pleasing, but the former conveys a religious perspective of the speaker that the latter just does not.
I don't know where these lines come from, but on their face this is a difficult decision. I would need to see more of the tone of the scene and the personality of the speaker.
This example is important because Yasumi Matsuno threw his hat into the ring
@@razmeanie4519actually the line is "tis your birth and faith that wrong you, not I" so both lines have a religious context. If your faith has wronged you that indirectly is telling you to blame your god.
So it is not a good example of a new cultural reference in the slightest. The difference is simply concise vs flowery/indirect.
1:09:20 it looked like he included sound files to that. Did the voices seem like an outburst? What about the physical recoiling that zakogdo mentioned, was that there in the scene?
I was wondering the same thing. I haven't played the game though, so I don't know if it has voice or animations in this scene.
I mentioned this in the Tactics Ogre podcast, but in the mid 2000s, when there hadn't been a remake of the game yet, in my childish naivety I would email square-enix asking for a remake....... hey, it came about eventually, with a new translation and everything! I'd love to take some credit for it hahha it was my own operation rainfall.
Mike, did you ever finish Unicorn Overlord? Think you mentioned in a previous video how you got busy but wanted to dive back into it. Also, Casen did you ever play through it?
Related to corporate decisions being top down, i recommend watching GDC presentation called representation as innovation.
I hope two translations becomes the norm going forward. That would be fantastic.
I still don’t understand why it’s already not a standard.
Already there are comments here to give prime example of what Mike and Casen was talking about in the beginning of this video.
I know, it's fascinating.
Mike I hope you get to invite Michael Christopher Koji Fox from the FF14 team. He is an amazing localization lead and can provide more perspective on these topics. Cheers
I am curious if they had any thoughts about the Yuji Horii interview that was forcefully taken down about the Dragon Quest 3 Remake.
I really hope they talk about this in the next installment, along with Eiyuden's localization. That was eye-opening.
That has nothing to do with localization though. That's just censorship.
@@neidhardt8093it literally has everything to do with localisation. Thr people localising the game don’t think the original content is suitable so changed it to be more fitting.
Horii said the quiet part aloud, suddenly the interview disappears. Really makes you think.
@mrbubbles6468 its not the people localizing the game that made the decision. It came from square enix japanese executives who want a kid friendly rating for the game. The localizers just do what they are told in that case. The reason those changes happen is because the japanese executives in japan dont want a mature rating im the west so they tell hori what he cant do with his game. Its certainly an issue but again the localizers are not the ones driving the issue.
I went through a similar episode with Gyoro and Ururun when I played the PSP version of Star Ocean 2 after the PSX version. I got suprised by the name change, so I went like "wait, didn't they have different names?" I looked it up and then went "oh I guess that makes sense".
P.S. I still prefer the Japanese names XD
your blindspot section made me think about the recent Dragon Quest 3 remake news and the developers not understanding why they have to use type a or type b instead of male or female. then your read people comments on social media and most i have seen blame the western culture for this and other changes in games. Casen your point about movies is spot on.
As someone who is bilingual, the truth is that no two translators will translate a book exactly the same. There is a lot of subjectiveness in translation. This is why I am a lifelong language learner. To get the full context and understanding, there is no substitute for reading it natively. That said, I've found that modern translations love taking a looot of liberty with their translation. Older translations tended to be more literal, sometimes to a fault. But modern translations sometimes go off the entire other end.
translators insert meaning that is not there in the original for their own ideological purposes. Imagine if they'd done this with Xenogears and every Christian theme.
Translating we understand this. But they are not translating they are REWRITING or out right changing context and meaning and its HARMING everyone.
It's amazing how you're trying to have a nuanced take and people are still shrieking at the shadows from the hole they put themselves in. It's frustrating.
@@lotheravanti4295 No instead they did it with Xenoblade X. Practically every trace of religion was excised from the localization.
@@EricWalkerswildride You can give a hundred translators a foreign book to translate, and if they are all at the same level of translation skill, they should all logically wind up with the same book with the same content, with only occasional differences in sentence structure, not completely different stories with different characters who act different from the untranslated book.
Untranslated and localized characters, especially Japanese ones, almost always speak like entirely different people, having their vocabulary stuffed with FUCKs and SHITs and sociopolitical buzzwords straight off Twitter.
What anti-localizer people want is incredibly simple: what the text says, but in english, not slang-english, not Twitter-english, not "punched up" idiom-riddled english, just english words equivalent or close enough to equivalent, to what the JP script says. This is not hard. Manga scanlators have been able to do this for decades, as have other foreign media translators.
The reason English localization becomes like it does, is because the localizers themselves publicly proclaim on twitter that they WANT to change things, that they NEED to change things, that they change things deliberately to piss off fans. Yet translations from other countries have little-to-none of these issues! Weird isn't it!
Had a good laugh at the punctuation mark thing. There is a way to avoid those types of problems, which is to actually understand Japanese.
On the context words in culture part: You can use something as simple as American English and British English as well, there are some words in both that are spelt exactly the same but have totally different meanings depending on if it was used in an American English way or a British English way so it is never as simple as just translating words like you said even for English.
On reading subtitles in films while listening to it in the source language: Gonna have to issue a sharp criticism of the way you phrased this, this is only possible for normal people but people with disabilities like dyspraxia would find this nigh impossible to do. I have a brother who has this and he always needs to use text-to-speech to read stuff out to him, he needs to use it for simple articles, his own written work etc and when he can't do it like codex entries within a game he simply has to skip them because his processing power and the way dyspraxia works makes it not possible for him to take in the information unless someone reads it out to him. A better way to phrase it would be to say it in a way that most people barrier to it isn't hard but take into knowledge that for some people who have processing troubles relating to disabilities it's not something they can do. While it might seem like a nitpicky thing to criticise, for people with disabilities (I have epilepsy myself) it is something major for us even a little bit of acknowledgement means a lot.
The Hundred Heroes translation was just bad, it had at point way to modern vernacular, enough spelling and grammar mistakes that I was annoyed, the runeshard numbering was wrong in the german version, some item etc. descriptions were bad, same with the flow between speech bubbles because they often enough lost the meaning in some. And whatever was the thing then you recruited Goldsmid.
English version had a lot of changes as well. Perrielle's personality is very different in Japanese vs English (where they tried to make her sound like an overly sassy girlboss). Lots of points where I could mentally tell the subs and JP didn't line up at all
@@Hugsloth I got that too, had to switch to english because the german version had to many mistakes.
the wisest man builds hit house underneath the sand.
52:45 I wonder, if Zakogdo is only concerned with creating an "equivalent experience", why does he take issue specifically with Metaphor's translation of "many races intermingling in the city" making use of the word "diversity" -- a term commonly used to describe exactly the phenomenon occurring in the story, even going back to 1966 Star Trek and Spock's adage "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations", suggesting a vast comingling of races and species?
English speakers are very well-equipped to take the correct meaning from this term as it relates to the in-game scenario. The translation is the equivalent experience of the Japanese text. It's almost as though he has a mysterious issue with the specific word "diversity", for some reason I'm sure is very intellectually honest. This entire "equivalent experience" premise is surely not a smokescreen for some other cause.
Ironically, there is a dangerous naivety in many attempts to pursue the wisdom advocated for by Hegel. The same mistake is often made by people inspired by pop culture depictions of enlightenment -- to use Star Trek again, they see a paragon of reasoning like Jean-Luc Picard trying his virtuous best to grasp all perspectives, and take the wrong lesson that all perspectives are equally valid, and that intellectualism is the process of arbiting between them in perpetuity. They miss the crucial part where Picard, or Hegel, can ultimately recognize that a perspective can be dishonest or even outright evil.
Small grains of truth are often weaponized by bad faith actors, and being overly credulous to them is a fast track down a very bad path. Giving them too much credibility in an attempt to be enlightened and fair is counterproductive to those very principles. One can acknowledge the issues represented by that grain of truth on their own terms, as part of an independent analysis with its own intellectually honest aims.
Whether it be Weimar-era talking points like "disproportionate representation in bank ownership", 2014's "ethics in game journalism", and now "malpractice in game localization", and in whichever form this manifests next, there will always be some kind of disingenuous attempt to co-opt vulnerable audiences into extreme positions. The legitimacy offered to those attempts by those who consider themselves rational third parties is a big part of how they accelerate, ultimately, into disaster.
Another gem from Zakogdo's feed is when he highlighted a particular case of extreme translation malpractice, where one game translated the original Japanese text calling a character "Lolicon!" into "Pervert!". Clearly, the original insult is a much less serious accusation in colloquial Japanese than it is in America, and it would be absurd for English-speaking audiences had it been transliterated the way Zakogdo seems to want. Therefore, the translation was an equivalent experience, but for some reason Zakogdo really wants this exact kind of thing to remain "uncensored".
And yet, in the example of fiction set in period France by a Japanese author: If it communicates something to Japanese audiences using a contemporary Japanese gesture, in order to communicate the equivalent to a French audience, it would demand alteration to the equivalent French gesture. The philosophy that localization should demand the audience "meet the original culture halfway" is incompatible with the defense that he only advocates for "an equivalent experience."
But even then, he seems very selective about the cases in which he wants the experience to be equivalent. Don't mention "diversity", even if it's equivalent. Do mention "lolicon", even if it's not equivalent. Localize in a way that makes audiences understand the original intent, but also preserve cultural idiosyncracies that obfuscate intent. Forgive me if I'm confused about what this person actually wants, because in its incoherence, it seems to exist largely in service of reactionary outrage. Grains of truth aside.
Personally I feel this has to do with another aspect of the culture wars, control of words themselves. Words are having their definitions warped and outright changed to mean completely different things than they did even just a few years ago. An entire generation now believes racism means prejudice plus power and therefore you cant be racist to someone in the historical majority, when racism literally means discrimination and prejudice based on someones perceived race/skin color and can happen to anyone. I too sometimes feel a reactionary distaste to the word diversity but as I played the game it is used as it should and it is incredibly refreshing after only seeing it used in the completely hollow HR and twitter sense. It makes having honest and fruitful discussions infinitely harder.
I mean he himself showed how stupid those complaints are. The changing of the characters in Star Ocean 2's PSP port was actually a better translation, but that didn't stop him from trashing on that translation until he "knew better".
It's almost like the baseline should be a basic curiosity for why things turned out the way they did.
His idea of a translation would be so fundamentally horrific. If his past self was unwilling to understand a Japanese wordplay joke, what makes him think a mass market of equally illiterate people would go for it?
Which translator was correct? The one who did the literal names and lost the joke or the one who "censored" the names to correctly convey the joke?
A red flag for sure.
This was an amazing comment thank you lol
@@TheXBOXLIVEPARTY The idea of prejudice + power isn't to redefine racism in such a way that certain kinds of racism don't count.
It just makes it clear that racism carries more concerning implications when directed from the powerful against the powerless.
Racism towards said majority existing amidst a historically persecuted minority isn't good, but it can be understandable. More importantly, it won't result in any systemic harms that put vast numbers of people at risk, the way racism from the other direction does.
Disingenuous actors will deliberately try to conflate the two things, and the idea of Prejudice + Power helps us to differentiate them.
Fox News Host saying he's a victim of racism because it's frowned upon for him to quote rap lyrics... probably not the same thing as, say, a Rwandan having some unkind rhetoric about the Dutch who perpetrated unimaginable suffering in their country. Which, in turn, is also not the same thing as Adolf talking about the blood of the nation being poisoned. Power and history does matter.
Nevertheless, it's irrational and wrong to discriminate against someone on the basis of their race, nation, whatever. It's just that things should be understood in their context.