As an Argentinian (and I presume this applies to most foreigners) once you notice how the USA acts as an imperial cultural power you can't really un-see it. They say so much about anti-colonialism and blablabla and then instantly turn around and trample all over any culture that dares not "update" their values in line with the obviously "superior" cultural values of the true USA-sian ubermench. It's a level of hypocrisy so blatantly crude that the only way I can explain it is that these activists subconsciously know what they're doing and feel guilty about it, so they crusade against it to absolve themselves, but they're so absorbed by their superiority complex that they don't realise they're just repeating what they hate.
@@amargasaurus5337 bruh, I'm from Perú, same. And I mean, I think the same. People from the USA don't reflect on anything. No self reflection, no cultural self reflection, just colonizing with a pink bow on top.
@@amargasaurus5337 It's literally the same people the also claim the America has no culture. Like what. Your busy pushing your culture on everyone else. america has Many cultures sure and they fail to see just how wide american culture has spread to everywhere around the world
@@BlueBDand somehow the people pushing this all say they respect other peoples and countries cultures lmao. Meanwhile they do the furthest thing from that. It’s mind boggling how clearly hypocritical all of this is, and they stick their head in the sand and scream when you point it out. It’s really sad, how do people become so deluded. I don’t understand it
they'll complain about imperialism then they'll do exactly that, imposing their "culture", but most importantly ideologies, on other cultures without blinking.
This is so tiring. You just don't rework someone else's creation. It's so disgusting. When I read or hear a translation, I just want to know what the actual creator truly intended. Is that so much to ask?
for the most part Fans Translate is the only way. they do exist since the 90's hence dragon ball and samurai x manga and likes. They do Visual Novels, CD Dramas, Games, Manga, Light Novels, Animes, even JP shows. But I don't know if there are still active since covid destroyed most things and groups. Or they switch to Manhwas Korean side. But if you read some mangas and there is "TL" explaning stuffs, more likely its the fans.. they sometimes say sorry because they got confuse on what the authors said on it.
They don't treat translation as a technical job. They treat it as a creative job. Combine this with the rampant narcissism and egoism and the final product is clear
They have no respect. They don't like you. They only think their opinion is the right one. They don't want trasitional culture to exist, they'd rather desecrate it
God I hate these people. Souring our media. Our games, our movies, translations. These delusional,dogshit people, just tainting our escapes from reality please go be with other dog shit people like you. We don’t want them here in our media.
The funniest part is where they purify anything that personally offends them. It's like a McDonald's cashier removing pickles from your order because she doesn't like them. A character talking about marriage and starting a family? Can't have that! A girl wanting to be feminine and lose weight? That's too offensive! So, they will PURIFY anything that gets under their skin personally.
As a japanese translator myself, I HATE what is happening with the localization and censoring of japanese media, and media in general. I make a point to stay as close as possible to the source text, but keep in mind that usually a localizer checks the work done by the translator, and can then apply changes. Sometimes, they even have to make changes according to company guidelines. It happened to me, the localizer had to "tone down" a line according to company guidelines, even though it didn't need any toning down, which in turn, made the line less faithful and less accurate. This shit sucks.
This isn't just deeply offensive, and disrespectful, it's straight up evil. As will all woke nonsense, flip it, see they like it then, take Stephen universe, translate it to Japanese, and completely change the meaning and characters. Oh, all of a sudden it's offensive and disrespectful.
I think something like that actually happened with Steven universe, where a country changed one of the lesbian gems to be written a boy. The creators got mad and in the wedding episode the boyish one wore the brides gown.
over a week ago when I found out localizers started doing this shit again, I actually got the motivation to learn Japanese and make it my 4th language. 11th day in now, after spending 3 hours a day learning, and I am slowly progressing, wish me luck, in my quest to never have to endure bad localization again! :D
This is only a stop gap solution. They are now trying to censor Japanese entertainment at the source. Hence why Square Enix and Capcom have their own internal DEI departments
Dude how? Online or through Schools? can you share where? JP are very hard since they have a level grading system that grade on how much knowledge you can read japanese. I forgot if its 13 levels. Thats why not all japanese can read newspaper, thats how complex it was.
I used to feel safe buying Japanese games because the Japanese aren't gonna add woke stuff in their games but than I got Eiyuden Chronicles and every changed nothing is safe anymore not even Japanese games 😢
Localiser working on berserk: Nope, much too problematic, this story is now about a pretty fairy, who is best friends with a weak spined loser that can't do anything, and she has to save him all the time, because she's a girl boss, and she can't do anything wrong!
blacklisted like DEI, we need someone like Kabrutus. but on some news. Some JP companies are now using AI translate to there games (Falcom, Kai no Kiseki), mostly because of this and what happen to Dragon Quest Devs interview.. well we hate AI, but compare to this woke idiots. Its for the best. lesser evil it is.
I get why it's sometimes necessary, but these activists localizers cannot be trusted to be honest and accurate with the localization. At this point, I would rather read the occasional confusing reference than have some person editing away the original meaning. As someone who is fluent in Japanese and has been studying the language for 10 years, it's very obvious when people like Katrina change the meaning of the original. Fortunately, I can play these games on the original Japanese, but for people that can't, it's really annoying to have to second guess what is actually accurate.
@@KalenKries-gi7fm It depends on the game.Obviously games likes JRPGs have a lot of text and words to know compared to something like a rhythm game. I would say, I was able to understand difficult games after about a year of consistent studying and learning about 6k words. I could understand simpler games after learning about 2k words after 3 months of daily studying. I learned about 15 words a day by sentence mining them from anime and Japanese RUclips videos with the Migaku browser plugin and reviewing them in Anki every day. I also watched about 2-4 hours a day of Japanese media and music to constantly practice understanding the words I had learned. It was a lot of work, but learning a language like Japanese is never easy even if you use the best methods. For more information you should watch videos from Jouzu Jules, Livakivi, Refold, Trenton, MattvsJapan, and Days and Words to better understand the process of input based language learning.
Localization is never necessary, if you want to enjoy a culture's media then learn the culture. It's incredibly insulting to go to another culture and expect it to completely change itself to accommodate you, especially when you make no effort for the opposite. No different from tourists visiting other nations on vacation and expecting everyone to speak English or something.
Also let’s not forget the time I was called a bigot over referring to the type a and b choices as male and female which I will stand by. Like I just don’t like western localisation of games.
Just because it started in the west doesnt make it western; This virus of an ideology has no identity and wishes to infect every nation & region it can. Westeners hate this just as much as everyone else because it doesnt represent the values of western culture; If it started in japan i wouldnt call it eastern localization because it doesnt represent the east & their values. Its a virus pushing a one world ideology, its not western or eastern, evil has no nationality or ethnicity, it hates everyone equally. Stop it man
I really disliked in the 90s when many games and Anime got dubbed with very American English using slang instead of just basic English as that slang was not always widely know and it seems things have only gotten worse in recent years.
I know of some Translators who use the defense „if we would translate correctly it would be broken shit no one’s understands“ I told them what they are saying is BS a translators job is to make sense so that it can be understand in the other language. Their answer was either to ignore me and spread their falsehood or call my a liar and I have no idea, because I don’t work in that industry. Nice knowing that I as someone who really doesn’t work in that industry knows more about translation than the ones working in that industry.
People would actually defend them and support them if they weren't imposing their views and their bs and didn't break the original product but they chose to be their own enemy and destruction to the point that people are siding with AI!
You know it's bad when fan made translations for games never released outside of Japan did a better job at translation than the official one. We're at the point it's worse than 90s Engrish translation.
Why the heck I should get the same crappy USA localization here in the Philippines? Sick and tired of getting bastardized version JP games. I play JP games for the JP culture. If I want Western culture then I would play Western games.
7 years into my own JP learning journey, so glad I started. Crazy to think that 2017 was 7 years ago and bad modern activist localization was STILL a problem all the way back then. If anyone's on the fence or struggling to find motivation to learn, it's really the hardest at the very beginning once you're trying to climb the initial wall of totally new character sets, different grammatical structures etc. Once you get the basics it becomes easier and easier to learn new things and soon enough you'll be flying through it. Never looked back.
@@KalenKries-gi7fm there are many resources available, if you haven’t found any then that suggests you haven’t been looking very hard or at all. A simple search on RUclips will get you a mountain of results. You might start with the Genki textbooks. Genki is not necessarily the best, but it is probably the most popular and there are many, many resources available to go with it. But there are many other options as well.
What helped me get started was just playing some games preferably RPGs entirely in Japanese text and all with translation guides to double check and get through menus, still working on the lettering system but frequently understand voiced dialogue without any help now, far from fluent but huge progress and gamifies the learning process with a clear goal and incentive which solves the motivation problem.
The only argument that I've ever seen that makes any sense for localisation is with jokes that involve wordplay that relies on the specific word sounds in the original language (puns, generally) or idioms that make little sense outside of the original culture. Those are usually pretty rare though. I miss the days of fan translations being common where they'd add notes EXPLAINING those in the subtitles so that you not only got to enjoy the joke, but also learn a bit about the language/culture of the original creators. I don't see how insulating people from foreign cultures or ideas is possibly anything but a negative thing for humanity as a whole, and is quite a xenophobic stance to take.
Translators notes were great, I miss the kind of love and attention the old fan subs would put into their work. We got such great quality translations from passionate people, and they did it for free. By comparison, what we get out of the professionals that are paid to do the work is abysmal.
I absolutely adore translators notes. I was reading Noragami recently and the sheer amount of translators noted brought me great joy! When I reach the end of a book, and its 3-5 pages of pure, lovely explanation of what choices were made, and why, it's amazing! 100% there needs to be more of that!
I've noticed this bs going on for a veryyy long time and finally decided to make the effort to learn Japanese after becoming more fluent with my parent's native language. Thank you Tom Lipschultz in particular (formerly from localization company Xseed) for first shining the light on the exhaustive degree of it way back in the day, having the stance to ensure the proper translation and his firm anti-censorship stance before he left the company. I hope he is doing well in his endeavors and I thank him for being one of the few many years ago pointing it out when it was just affecting smaller niche Japanese games. Also love the channel, great content and glad I subbed.
Dude, Thank you for talking about this. I'll be posting a long rant but before, It doesn't affect me until my fave games got affected, "Sora no Kiseki"(and all of the other titles after that). I'll be posting this here because, I talk it about this on other forums site and they all shunt me to death.. bunch of wokalizer worshipers. I guess youtube comments are the only way. Anyway. I just read twitter a post about XSEED translated "Sora no Kiseki" that they ("intent to mistranslate most of the japanese words, They over exaggerated Estelle violent personality, remove Estelle catchphrase, remove all japanese jokes on the game..etc") When I saw this I made me think about all the past revelations about the localizers starting from Animes and Mangas. I post in a forum on Falcom Subreddit, about this and gather a good conversation, and I even ask it nicely, I ask for the ones who play Japanese version or Both Versions. But I didn't expect they (almost all) turn on me. They say that "there are no 1 to 1 translation from JP to English. Estelle personality is perfect on localization (violently). They prefer english jokes over japanese jokes. Japanese jokes lack substance. Estelle catchphrase on japanese is lackluster. Japanese culture is stupid, its good they change into this. Learn to read japanese if you whiny about this". And worst of all "they corrected me on the name, they said its trails in the sky, not (SORA NO KISEKI) because its localized" In my mind, What the hell happen to this sub? Sora no Kiseki is the japanese name of the game! only one person talks to me like a person and also said the game name right (Sen no Kiseki). This stuff happen since when Sen no Kiseki 1 got out (2014?). They hate who ever badmouth the localizers. I ask if there are other forums to discuss this topic "like MEN". He said no, all forums are like this, even other japanese games. This is how bad it is, They even dismissed the game name in Japanese, the nerve! Why do this people play japanese games if they DON'T WANT to know japanese culture, jokes and stuffs. for the most part I am Asian, even so, I can't speak japanese. So you can't say that they change it (localized) for the whole world to understand. How Selfish of Them! How about us! how about the people like Japanese stuffs, gone through fans translating it so they can appreciate JP literature and Anime Subtitles close on what the japanese portray of there culture and stuffs. We read, play japanese games and literature because we want to know more about japanese side of things, that includes JOKES and metaphors they used. So they basterdise all of this for there (Wokalizers) fame and brag about it. I also happens to notice this on Netflix, they change the english subs, I know this because I recognize sounds/words in JP but its the opposite on what they put on subtitles. Thats why I don't watch anime Netflix translated. I rather watch FAN TRANSLATE Anime subs rather than this Wokalizer Jokes, I rather read The Manga than the Wokalize ones, because why? Fans Translate all of it, they also explain the jokes, metaphors they used, cultures, background words and more. As close 1 on 1 as they can. Very faithful on what the JP Authors portray.
Bro and they prattle on about being the tolerate and loving side of everything. What a joke. Theyre just racists and xenophobes hiding behind virtue. Two faced snakes
I feel you on this and it boils my blood how disingenuous and bad faith people are about it, they think you are criticizing the whole game when all you want is just a faithful translation and try to shut you down or saying you are overreacting and yadayada, it's just exhausting that these people also take the credit as if the success of the story is all thanks to them and their "quirky" works, so Jap studios see this and be like "oh alright good job translation team 👍" when it's actually awful how sometimes they butcher some and the product does really bad in the west due to it and the Jap team has no idea that it was cause of bad localization. It's even worse when these localizers don't know a single thing about Japanese and their language and rewrite the work of actual translators which have to suck it up. But I guess asking people to respect the source material and be genuine makes you a bad person. It's so tiring...
I can fully understand you, it gets on my nervs enough to just leave some games be. but i guess in the Kiseki case i am just glad they even localized it, as it has tonnns of text. Especially the sky games and they weren't that big of hits. I mean even the freaking empty treasure chest speak. Also i don't know if its the same localization team as NISA has taken the series from XSEED in the west, guess they will have hired some of the translators of XSeed? Do wonder what was changed in the more modern games (Daybreak), theres lots of "pedophile" jokes and mentioning how young the mains coworker is. I just don't know, could be similiar in japanese or have been changed to please some woke westerners. All in all i do think the series gotten a bit more boring and worse in comparison to Sky. I do have Zero and Azure to play still. I found Estelle and Yoshua in Cold Steel a bit strange. Well they were not much more than cameos either way.
DoublePerfectKO on RUclips did a lot of videos exposing the egregious localization of FF14 (I think he's said he's Japan Day Tripper's brother). To be able to know if a translation is good or not, you need to be at least somewhat bilingual and have access to both language versions of the game. And then to expose it, you would need a social media platform. A lot of FF14 players just read the ye olde english and then think the translation is high quality because it sounds like Shakespeare. These people have absolutely no idea.
just hire the Fansubs crew to make the subtitles and the localization. The work of the worst Fansub crew is 100% better than the best woke localizer out there.
yeah I do that too. but they portray Fan subs / Fan Translates as PIRACY... this happen to Sora ni Kiseki SC and 3rd, even today. The Woke media before articles it like this.. They said Localization the true and legal ones.. well look what happen now..
@@KalenKries-gi7fm Fansubs ARE piracy, but by the time they get a contract to sub or localize a project, they become contractors, hence dropping the "criminal" baggage.
The issue with fan subs is most are done on free time or as something fun to learn the language. To do it seriously like whats needed they would have to make it a full time job.
Remember working designs? They were pissing every one off by throwing pop culture references into Lunar. “Help another culture understand.” Can quickly become “I can make it better, funnier, more impactful, and in the worst case more “appropriate.”
Ai translation is one of the few AI things I fully support. Get these activists out of my entertainment and give me the full, unadulterated, Japanese work. Give me what the artist, the writer, the creator made. Edit: SICKNESS MUST BE PURGED!
@@RockR277 Automated translation might be coherent but it still might not be “good” dialogue. There are words and nuances that will always make direct translations difficult/impossible in many situations, requiring human translators. I’m not advocating for human translators to overwrite the intent of work they’re supposed to be translating. But I am saying it isn’t unreasonable with translators bend certain things because language isn’t that simple
Sadly, this is one of the smallest problems we have... Since the end of the PS4 generation, more and more Japanese games are being censored or not even receiving a Western version due to nonsense (like the Marvelous games, which had a lot of trouble releasing their games) and the Switch, which was supposed to be a console for a younger audience, receives much less censorship... But since Sony's console is the most consumed in the West, this ends up changing the core of the games more and more and the companies censor their games beforehand for the country of origin and the West. Just like what happened with Dragon Quest. This problem of Sony demanding censorship of games is not just a Western problem, in Japan they have censorship policies too, but here they receive an extra hand of censorship. When the PS4 was released, they had a policy of practically no censorship, but now... Now it's an apocalypse.
Jep, Sony has gone fully woke, its an US company now when it comes to this, the Netflix of gaming. And they infect other publishers and devs as well as consolemaker. Don't care about Microsoft that much as they don't influence smaller japanese devs that way.
I wanna make a publishing and localization company, to bring to the west old untranslated games from pc 98, ps1 etc. I lived in Japan, and i understand why westerners want the authentic stuff, i want it myself
Nihon Falcom recently decided to ditch NIS America Wokalizers from the localization of the Remake of the Trails in The Sky arch, and decided to manage the localization in house. I saw this as a great news for the franchise, because, in theory, it'll be safe from the sick and mediocre wokalizers. Just wanted to share this news here, and thanks for the video. G** ble**.
The reverse also happens sometimes When sonic frontiers released in japan the localizers changed the original dialogue written by ian flynn because they wanted it to be "less direct" Results? Lots of japanese players complained that the dialogue was garbage because all of the references where scrubbed and they tried to leave a lot for the imagination with didnt work
To be fair, lots of people dislike Frontiers' original script for being an inch away from a Family Guy cutaway compilation (seriously, 99% of the references have no purpose outside of ''hey! remember this?'') and being a storytelling mess (the ''emotional'' crying Sage scene anyone?), so while I don't condone altering the script, I wonder how much of it is due to the changes and how much is because the script is really not as good as some people hype it up to be.
The bad faith argument that localizers and woke zealots immediately went with once these twitter comparisons started to pop up a few years ago was that the official translations sounded better than the direct translations. They mischaracterize the direct translations as being the alternative, when in reality they're just meant to show that the localizers misrepresented the dialogue. I've been seeing lately how youtubers and random commenters have started using these arguments too, even ones who claim to be against wokeness. They brush over the discrepencies. Any dialogue can be improved and with the time constraints we can't expect perfection, but I think striving to be accurate should be the first priority. I've noticed that additional translations are becoming more and more common in JRPG's, and I've heard that they're more accurate. This is a good alternative. I'm swedish, so english isn't even my native language. I studied french for 3 years in school and a bit of german. I know them well enough that I can cross reference with an english dub and spot differences. I think I could get either language up to a reading level pretty quickly. Japanese feels like it will require 10 times the work to reach the same level. Unfortunately the Metaphor french and german translations are both based on the english one. I made some comparisons with lines used for japanese to english comparisons, and it looked pretty obvious since they were very different. But the french translation of Unicorn Overlord, also made by Atlus looks really accurate and it's not long winded. Considering how flowery Unicorn was, maybe they had no choice but to go for the japanese, or possibly they used the first draft direct translation english script made by actual translators who are fluent in japanese. Maybe because Metaphor is developed in house, there were different protocols. Anyway, imagine being an actual unicorn, being fluent in both english and japanese, and these talentless hacks disrespecting your work by writing fanfics over them. And it's these translators that will get sacked first if they were to move towards AI.
I'm someone who prefers the English voices to the Japanese cast (though I do hold high amounts of respect for seiyuu) and I'm tired of these lolcowlizers. I hate how they quirk up the dialogue to be something that it's not. I also hate how they basically ruin the subbed version of shows too with the cringe dub script. The thing I hate most of all is adding completely unnecessary political pandering to a bunch of crazed leftists who don't even watch the show in question.
Man, I remember the fight between JP subs(jp voice) vs Dubs (eng voice) in the internet long ago.. in most anime fans I didn't expect it will evolved into this mess. I rather have the sub vs dubs than this blashphemy
It's because the debate was basically settled original language subs>>>>>>dubs in 9 out of 10 instances not just in anime but in general the original language is usually the best version, but subs are an acquired taste that take getting used to and also not always perfect, subs are usually more accurate too at least they used to be, dubtitles are an absolute scourge and they've been getting pushed more heavily nowadays for obvious reasons
Seeing your line comparison of Gallica made me glad i decided to play Metaphor with japanese voices and brazillian portuguese text. Since learning of the involvement of that katrina individual i decided i'd give the BR version a try, and it's mostly very accurate. Never really felt Gallica talking down to the protag. she's actually very empathetic to him. Guess this is the way to play in the future, if anything, this localizer shit deserves credit for encouraging more people to learn the original language and experience something for themselves instead of relying on the maliciousness of these weirdos.
I could do that too, but the problem for me is the fact that Atlus is hiring those katrina tards people instead of others who could do a much better job. You could even say that they are willfully and well knowing doing that. I get excited to play and willing to spend the money, but then I get discouraged upon that fact. I'm glad you can have a better experience changing the subtitles but for me I think I will wait, we shall see.
I have noticed a similar thing with different games as well. Most languages are fine but English is were the localization damages happen. It has encouraged me more to pick up on my Italian/Korean. So I can have a better experience cause I am really getting tired of it but of course that takes time so for now I am just looking at certain lines with a second thought in English for now.
The problem is many other translations are based on the EN version. So if the EN translation is wokified, so is everything else because they're based on it
@@mightyfineincredible2252 That's something that made me reluctant to trust translations in my native language, since some Brazillian voice actors admitted they used to translate adaptions from other languages (in anime, for example), but from what i can tell with Metaphor, that's not the case. The text mostly checks out with what's said in Japanese, and from the comparisons from this video, it looks like other regions are translating things correctly instead of localizing.
@@mightyfineincredible2252 Our italian translations always come directly from the Japanese, that’s why we have some of the most accurate descriptions in our games, for example in Elden Ring the English translators twisted some of the lore by mistranslating some little details, and people in the forums came to the “Italian” version to really understand the real description
5:30 to quote the best character in GOT "a man who mush proclaim himself king is no king at all." That has always been the part that gets me. I don't think I've ever encountered a genuinely funny person who openly said they were. If anything, the line usually is "I'm a comedian, why do you take anything I say seriously?"
It's a good thing she was fired from SEGA. Persona 6 still has hope. This is the reason why I still listen to sub or just have the game or content in the original language. I'm glad I lived in Japan for 8 years and don't really need subs anymore.
It's good that they've finally started translating directly from Japanese into Russian, instead of translating the English localization like they used to.
Just watched the first 2 episodes of the terminator anime series in Netflix and the English dub and even the subtitles don't match at all the words and even the mood of the original dialogue And even adds narration where the original has silence
Ok has anyone else noticed how copypastad most of the replies defending lolcowization are in this thread? It's like they're all mini easays that all try to bog everything down in culture ware stuff by bringing bring up W*ness even if nobody else did to claim everyone is just oversensitive to it and then cherry pick the same handful of talking points on specific dialogue exchanges from the game? It's uncanny and suspicious.
Their podcast on this was incredibly insightful. Truthfully, I don't think either side is wrong. Though it is clear that the players who really enjoy the Japanese language and consume this content because it is Japanese is often seen as a minority. So they're not quite the target audience with localization.
Dude! I was playing the demo last night and I couldn’t help but notice the fairy companion’s “Omg why are you such a loser?” attitude towards the MC and it just yanked me out of the experience. I don’t really have a lot of time on my hands these days to play every good game that comes out so this one will have to go back of the line because I can’t be bothered to deal bad localization no matter how good the game is. We all blame the localizers but it’s not like the Japanese stakeholders don’t know about this stuff, so the ultimate responsibility lies with them. They’re not getting my money until they fix the products they’re offering
We need a community that would save the manga, anime & Japanese culture creations. The employees should all leave their employers & form their own studios & we will support them on a new platform that is away from big brother, SBI, SWJ etc. 2025 lets make a change.
The transliteration thing is the most BS because it's disingenuous as fuck. They know exactly what people mean when they say they want an accurate translation, but they love twisting it into some BS nobody actually said or meant because it's the only way they have even a sliver of an argument. As someone who grew up on Funimation DBZ and who uses English Pokemon/Digimon/Megaman names, I can't say I inherently hate localization, but I do hate all this woke BS where there's a very obvious disdain for both the original work and the audience mixed in with their pretentious "I can do it better" attitude. I also know just how bad a lot of older dubs are, especially also growing up on 4Kids. It's funny how despite literally building his career own crapping on bad localization, LittleKuriboh is a guy I've seen defending this nonsense on multiple occasions. It's sad and frustrating because I do generally prefer listening to stuff in English, but knowing it's a bastardized (and nowadays actively spiteful) version of the original just turns me off.
Subs are something you get used to with time and once you do it's hard to go back. Why not try rewatching something you like subbed so it's less overwhelming? There's a lot of good stuff that never got dubbed on top of the bad faith dubbing epidemic so it's a taste worth acquiring.
I put 70 on steam for metaphor till I learned Katrina killed Persona 3 reload, then went to a steam discussion like 4-5 months ago telling me Katrina worked on metaphor….i died inside. So I bought black myth and Skald. She killed all Atlus titles for me until they fire her.
Bro i downloaded Google translate on my phone and now you can just hover the camera over the Japanese text and it translates it. May not be perfect but it's better.
I'm afraid that AI can also be taught to take liberties with translation like this . Especially, if it is "fed" with already existing translations. It's tough. I do not want to take it on Atlus with a bad review, but this issue should still be noticeable for them, somehow.
A very important subject you bring on this video. Japanese companies should double check these translation before releasing the game. I'd rather we have to wait for games to be localized like in the old days rather than having these subpar translation with changed characters, censorship, etc.
The actual den-fami event was several hours long and had a lot of people come on including Yoko Taro. I couldn't watch it live because it had machine translation disabled during the livestream but I wanted to watch it later (specifically the Yoko Taro part) and I can't now because of all of this.
I started learning Japanese three months ago, going really well. I am so intent in learning it not because I'd absolutely in love with the language, but out of pure spite for localizers.
As a long time anime and gamer this has been around for a long time. From Sailor Moon and One Piece as well as tons of games. I think the best old school translator was the person who did the Final Fantasy 3 (6) on SNES and other square projects. If you like something you need to go online. Fire Emlem Engage was also pretty bad. As a reader these mistranslations however light can ruin stories because the person translating doesnt understand the impact of the changes to a story as it develops.
The biggest mistranslation I notice in anime and Japanese games is Onii-chan . It means older brother but they always replace “big brother/older brother” with the character’s name. Now I barely understand Japanese but I know what that term means. And when I hear onii-chan in anime/games but see the character’s name as the subtitle I just fume. Just a small pet peeve but it made me begin to hate localization
they been doing this to movies forever in every language. Usually it's not so bad, for example a lighter translation might substitute curse words with for a less aggressive word
You earned my vote with Refantsio. I hate how the fairy is portrayed. Not only does she talk down to you, but she white knights for you. When she throws a pity party demanding sympathy I am more than happy to bully her. There is a part in the recruitment office when you read a bounty board and the fairy says "Oh that looks like a feminine name I wonder who they are" That is a complete bastardization of English. "I wonder who she is" would have been far more appropriate also you wouldn't have said "oh that looks like a feminine name" I highly doubt most of that sentence was in the original Japanese. I hope there isn't much of that woke BS in the game, because that bit even the little that I mentioned significantly magnifies all of the bad localization. The conversation with the recruiter with the noble guy. That was localized like an amateur. The spirit of what was being said was lost. It was needlessly crude. It shows a localizer that does not understand the writing that is being read and lacks the creativity and understanding to write it in such a way that it is as good in English as it was in Japanese.
You know when they write these lines they are patting themselves on the back like they are gods gift to games. It's so infuriating to see how they casually ruin the experience and somehow think they are doing everybody a favor. I hate it so much.
@@sam7559 Ahh. You're one of those who tries to use that excuse for bastardization. Let me make this clear for you then. One is speaking to a pregnant woman and you inquire as to the sex of the child does one say "Are they a boy or girl" No, of course not. Because it would be utter nonsense to do so. One says "Is it a boy or a girl" That is proper English. In the context you are referring to, and with full display of ignorance either intentional or otherwise, this would be a more apropos situation "Can I speak to the manager?" response: "They're out at the moment can I take a message" In this context you are asking to speak to the manager. The manager is a position and therefor a group is being referenced not a particular person. This is the difference in context. As I've said before to not understand these simple fundamentals of English makes one disqualified to use it in any profession.
@@sam7559 definitely not regional. You would be incredibly hard pressed to find a book written before the year 2000 (likely even before 2010) that would have that written.
I just watched Wistoria, wand and sword And it just bothers me when what I read and what I hear don't coincide. And they happen to be especially noticeable when they completely oppose the tone of the scene
Damn, I am so happy that our german localization was an early bird. So it didn't had to grow up with those insane people tainting it in its infancy. Still it isn't completely save of that. We have to protect the original meaning. Lets say german localization is a bit more resistant to those changes
But I am in no position to not worry about that. I watch english dubs/subs the same or even more than german dubs/subs. I'll keep an eye on it from now on. I mean we already have the problem that Sony/Crunchyroll tries to pander to western audiences which is a bit of a trend setter for any japanese export. And it is absurd, because the western audience doesn't want that Anime changes to pander to western audience. But because Sony tries to play it save, (whatever save means) it opens save spaces for those people who try to insert their own agenda.
Having Crunchyroll move to AI is great for the subs, though the scripts for English dubs can be abominable. I avoid dubs like the plague so I tend not to notice those at least.
As a guy from south-east asia, i just wish i could get what the original dev's wanted to make. I have zero interest in a modified game. Sadly, there is no other way for a majority of people like me to experience a game without these modified localized versions. It's one thing to make your own stuff but i wish i could these localizers could restrain from changing the tone altogether. Not everyone is from your country and culture and certainly don't wanna be fed your values. Hopefully some new translation technology would replace this unnecessarily monopolized localization market.
I'd rather a game be uncensored AND release as the original than censored and changed by localization. I also have more trust in fan localization than official translation.
It can't be overstated just how jarring a translation disconnect can be even if you are only passingly fluent in the language in question. It really takes you out of the experience and shatters any immersion. I would even wager that there is no QA for translations. The publishers will just accept that the translators have done their job adequately without it being proofread or previewed by QA or a focus group. Even beyond this, region locking often prevents end users from experiencing the non-censored source content. True enough, there may be workarounds if you really want the original content, but it shouldn't fall on the end consumer to go to such lengths. It really seems like translator is a job that is settled upon. As you said, if they have anything to add to storytelling, they should be authoring it in the first place. So many of them seem dispassionate or even antagonistic to the source material of their craft. I'm not saying every translator involved needs to have the same candor and fervor as say, Heny Cavill has for 40k. But when there are fan dubs and retranslation hacks that can do better than a commercial release translation, you know you are doing something wrong.
I stopped playing or buying games where such BS was obvious. Unicorn Overlord, Eiyuden Chronicles, Octopath Traveler... I'm real picky about what I play now because these idiots need to understand we don't like this nor will everyone be cowed to accept crap.
also add Sora no Kiseki, and all Kiseki titles.. fak they destroyed my childhood.. over exagerated Estelle Violence and stuffs.. faken Big Stick american jokes..
I played Metaphor, and the translations never felt awkward or out of place. The translators did an excellent job conveying the essence of the original Japanese, making the dialogue sound natural and interesting to read in English. In fact, I found the modified localized text to be even better than the original at times. My issue arises when translators start adding political messages or try to push an activist angle in their work. But in Metaphor, there was nothing of the sort, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as it was. These days, people fixate on small details such as this due to all the added wokeness in games, but that wasn’t a concern here.
Some how I subscribed?? Lol thanks for pointing out the localization in Metaphor. We're in the same boat in hating localization and these awful gain of function activist. F'ing sucks worse than localization in the 9ps.
I noticed a lot of this when I used AI to translate a lot of dialogue in Three Houses. Countless examples of minor gender related dialogue getting changed or removed and removing some interesting characterization.
Interesting differences in Metaphor - last few years I've been playing with dubs b/c the eng VA's have improved dramatically (compared to mid 2000's). That being said, the change of tone and wording for the examples you showcase are substancial - and I would honestly prefer the closer t/l compared to the re-imagined phrasing~
What you're calling "transliteration" is actually literal translation. Transliteration is rendering characters from one alphabet into another alphabet, like Cyrillic alphabet into Latin alphabet.
Yeah, I realized I messed that up the day after I put the video live. It's even in the example I used with Romanji in it, as Romanji is the transliteration of Japanese, my bad. -.-
its good to know we can mod the game with the fan translation that more accurate and respecting the art but still, kinda sad because of them, we might opt-ed to Ai translation and im sure no one shed a tear for them beside they people as if we going to defend them as they pretty much spit in our face with they unprofessionalism
this has been a thing for so long and im glad people finally noticed, localization was a mistake, i hope we just get ai translations from now on which may be jank but at least they wont inject messages or their own terrible takes
My understanding from the interview is that they build for the lowest common denominator so the work only has to be done once. So because censorship is being pushed for the US it's also getting pushed onto the Japanese market. Since DQ is a franchise that is exported it's going to end up having all of the work centered around the lowest common denominator to ensure the design standard is met across the entire brand. So even if a title isn't released outside of JP it still runs the risk of having people push for US styled censorship on it because it's not a one off IP.
I pre ordered Metaphor and I still want to play it. I loved the demo. The fact that these localizers changed some dialog does bother me and I am very angry but what can I do? The best I can do is learn Japanese what isn't easy, don't buy the game and the game isn't the issue the gameplay is amazing, the music, the story, is the localization that worries me. I am on PC so maybe someone will release a mod with the actual correct translation, who knows and it's sad because the voice actors are topnotch and do their best. Atlus takes 2 steps forward and 1 step backwards every single time.
I dont think the metaphor localization is incorrect, I don't know for a fact, but the interactions with the guard captain seem normal. He is a corrupt individual who only values himself and the main antagonist, not to mention his dialog in the English translation just sounds better. I know that it is important to keep the original intent the same, but just because you perfectly translate something doesn't mean it necessarily keeps the same meaning, Or something that been altered from perfect translation doesn't mean it doesn't keep the same meaning. For the guard captain, you can clearly see that both versions of translation keep the same idea, but one has been altered to more clearly show his character and uses more descriptive language. I understand the worry of Localizers changing the meanings of a media, but I don't think this is it. I won't crucify these people until Atlus themselves come out with an official statement. As for Gallica, I doubt this is truly talking down to the protagonist. This just seems more playful than girlbossy because it reminds me more of how Morgana would talk to the player, which, as you showed on screen, Katrina did not work on. Then about her calling you dopy, which 1: most likely just playfully. 2" slightly true as your character has the option to, at multiple points, ask what the very important high stats mission was agian. Gets instantly spotted as an Elda by many people. Has the option to almost (what Gallica thinks is) getting scamed by the fake Royal scepter replica. and tries to play dumb with Strohl when strohl catches him and Gallica talking. 3: it's her reminding you that nobody likes Elda. Finally, I doubt misuse of Localizers in metaphor becuase if they really did try to change how Gallica acts, they either completly forgot to do it, or were not allowed, as the rest of the demo did not show this behavior. Finally, it was stated in marketing for metaphor that Gallica is described as "Although she is too small to participate in battles, her knowledge of magic and ability to sense magla is superior to the protagonist due to her fairy nature. She doesn’t mince words, but she is a reassuring ally on his journey." That key part "she doesn't mince words, but she is a reassuring ally on his journey." They are trying to say that she will not hesitate to say something direct, as in, if the protagonist is lost, he should admit it. As in, he should keep his head down because people will see the dopy Elda kid immediately. But is still a kind individual who doesn't quite believe in her own value to the rest of the characters, as seen in the demo when she vents to the protagonist. Agian to reiterate, I don't believe malpractice in the translation/localization of metaphor, and I will not be willing to crucify an individual without an official statement from Atlus. But if it is true and that there is malpractice, then i absolutely do not support it. But from my experience, I do not see any, I just see that people are worried on the internet that there is, with thier only evidence being the translations don't one for one match. Side note: may I point out that the Twitter translation of Gallica talking to you is just flat out wrong. She says, "The Elda tribe is already rare..." True, they are rare, "... so be careful, try not to get tangled up with them." This sentence is wrong, the player charecter IS an Elda. This sentence either poorly conveys that she is trying to tell you to stay away from "them" as in the rest of the people in thecity, or is flat out wrong by saying "them" referring to the Elda because our charecter IS the Elda. Also this translation only says the Elda are rare, forgetting to state that they are also hated, and doesn't warn the protagonist to keep himself down low. I point this out becuase these translations *might* be done with Google translate or AI, which one is know to be bad at translations for more complex sentences, and the other isnt quite ready for complex translation yet. Just putting that out there becuase I saw no one else correct this. Or I could be wrong and the poster is trying to translate themselves and slipped up.
Great commentary, got my sub 👍 l have been excitedly waiting with baited breath to see the rise of AI translation and the sweet tears of the localisers as they scream in terror of being unemployed and irrelevant once again.
You're a cool down to earth Dood. I'll be waiting for a sale for metaphor and giving it a negative review. I found this channel from the streisand effect from endymion tv.
Yeah I'm just gonna take the dive and read/play japanese media in japanese. To anybody who's done this, what are the tools and workflow that worked best for you? Right now im using jisho and ocr.
The irony of calling yourself inclusive by taking over another culture with your own and imposing your own values is not lost to me.
As an Argentinian (and I presume this applies to most foreigners) once you notice how the USA acts as an imperial cultural power you can't really un-see it.
They say so much about anti-colonialism and blablabla and then instantly turn around and trample all over any culture that dares not "update" their values in line with the obviously "superior" cultural values of the true USA-sian ubermench.
It's a level of hypocrisy so blatantly crude that the only way I can explain it is that these activists subconsciously know what they're doing and feel guilty about it, so they crusade against it to absolve themselves, but they're so absorbed by their superiority complex that they don't realise they're just repeating what they hate.
@@amargasaurus5337 bruh, I'm from Perú, same.
And I mean, I think the same.
People from the USA don't reflect on anything. No self reflection, no cultural self reflection, just colonizing with a pink bow on top.
@@amargasaurus5337 It's literally the same people the also claim the America has no culture.
Like what. Your busy pushing your culture on everyone else. america has Many cultures sure and they fail to see just how wide american culture has spread to everywhere around the world
@@BlueBDand somehow the people pushing this all say they respect other peoples and countries cultures lmao. Meanwhile they do the furthest thing from that. It’s mind boggling how clearly hypocritical all of this is, and they stick their head in the sand and scream when you point it out. It’s really sad, how do people become so deluded. I don’t understand it
they'll complain about imperialism then they'll do exactly that, imposing their "culture", but most importantly ideologies, on other cultures without blinking.
This is so tiring. You just don't rework someone else's creation. It's so disgusting. When I read or hear a translation, I just want to know what the actual creator truly intended. Is that so much to ask?
for the most part Fans Translate is the only way. they do exist since the 90's hence dragon ball and samurai x manga and likes. They do Visual Novels, CD Dramas, Games, Manga, Light Novels, Animes, even JP shows. But I don't know if there are still active since covid destroyed most things and groups. Or they switch to Manhwas Korean side. But if you read some mangas and there is "TL" explaning stuffs, more likely its the fans.. they sometimes say sorry because they got confuse on what the authors said on it.
They don't treat translation as a technical job. They treat it as a creative job.
Combine this with the rampant narcissism and egoism and the final product is clear
They have no respect. They don't like you. They only think their opinion is the right one.
They don't want trasitional culture to exist, they'd rather desecrate it
God I hate these people. Souring our media. Our games, our movies, translations. These delusional,dogshit people, just tainting our escapes from reality please go be with other dog shit people like you. We don’t want them here in our media.
@@mightyfineincredible2252liberties fundamentally have to be taken for an effective translation.
The funniest part is where they purify anything that personally offends them. It's like a McDonald's cashier removing pickles from your order because she doesn't like them.
A character talking about marriage and starting a family? Can't have that!
A girl wanting to be feminine and lose weight? That's too offensive!
So, they will PURIFY anything that gets under their skin personally.
Remember the woke comic characters like the fat Dora looking hero and the hero named safe-space, oh and don’t forget snowflake….
As a transhumanist, not allowing women to be women infuriates me.
I'd pull back in to give that cashier a tip. Fuck Pickles.
The issue: They treat their job as a creative job instead of a technical one
As a japanese translator myself, I HATE what is happening with the localization and censoring of japanese media, and media in general.
I make a point to stay as close as possible to the source text, but keep in mind that usually a localizer checks the work done by the translator, and can then apply changes. Sometimes, they even have to make changes according to company guidelines. It happened to me, the localizer had to "tone down" a line according to company guidelines, even though it didn't need any toning down, which in turn, made the line less faithful and less accurate.
This shit sucks.
This isn't just deeply offensive, and disrespectful, it's straight up evil.
As will all woke nonsense, flip it, see they like it then, take Stephen universe, translate it to Japanese, and completely change the meaning and characters.
Oh, all of a sudden it's offensive and disrespectful.
At this point fuck it they should.
I think something like that actually happened with Steven universe, where a country changed one of the lesbian gems to be written a boy. The creators got mad and in the wedding episode the boyish one wore the brides gown.
they want yours. It's always about them getting to waht you love and tainting it.
The worst consequence that localized could face would be to put a lock on her fridge.
over a week ago when I found out localizers started doing this shit again, I actually got the motivation to learn Japanese and make it my 4th language. 11th day in now, after spending 3 hours a day learning, and I am slowly progressing, wish me luck, in my quest to never have to endure bad localization again! :D
I believe in you, follow your dreams young weeb!
ありがとうございます、わたしはゆめをたえます！
This is only a stop gap solution. They are now trying to censor Japanese entertainment at the source. Hence why Square Enix and Capcom have their own internal DEI departments
That's good
What are you using to learn Japanese?
Dude how? Online or through Schools? can you share where?
JP are very hard since they have a level grading system that grade on how much knowledge you can read japanese. I forgot if its 13 levels. Thats why not all japanese can read newspaper, thats how complex it was.
I used to feel safe buying Japanese games because the Japanese aren't gonna add woke stuff in their games but than I got Eiyuden Chronicles and every changed nothing is safe anymore not even Japanese games 😢
I know this is easier said than done but you just have to learn Japanese.
Is the woke in the room with us now??
@@SoFarSoGoodSoWhat14they infiltrated the industry, that’s the problem. They want to insert their ideologies into everything.
@@SoFarSoGoodSoWhat14Look guys, the fascist sympathiser appeared 🤢
@@SoFarSoGoodSoWhat14Just because you're ok with fascists, doesn't mean all of us are
We know exactly what you're doing ;)
Localiser working on berserk:
Nope, much too problematic, this story is now about a pretty fairy, who is best friends with a weak spined loser that can't do anything, and she has to save him all the time, because she's a girl boss, and she can't do anything wrong!
Isn’t Puck a dude?
@@mramisuzuki6962 gender neutral she/they in the localization
@@Sinner987they is not a gender, you are either male or female.
@@mramisuzuki6962 Yeah lol
I can't agree more. Those localization teams should be blacklisted! Many great games destroyed, such a shame
blacklisted like DEI, we need someone like Kabrutus. but on some news. Some JP companies are now using AI translate to there games (Falcom, Kai no Kiseki), mostly because of this and what happen to Dragon Quest Devs interview.. well we hate AI, but compare to this woke idiots. Its for the best. lesser evil it is.
I get why it's sometimes necessary, but these activists localizers cannot be trusted to be honest and accurate with the localization. At this point, I would rather read the occasional confusing reference than have some person editing away the original meaning.
As someone who is fluent in Japanese and has been studying the language for 10 years, it's very obvious when people like Katrina change the meaning of the original. Fortunately, I can play these games on the original Japanese, but for people that can't, it's really annoying to have to second guess what is actually accurate.
may I ask what Japanese Grade Level you have to attain so you can read/play Japanese games??? I hope its not JP Newspaper level... Thanks.
@@KalenKries-gi7fm It depends on the game.Obviously games likes JRPGs have a lot of text and words to know compared to something like a rhythm game. I would say, I was able to understand difficult games after about a year of consistent studying and learning about 6k words. I could understand simpler games after learning about 2k words after 3 months of daily studying. I learned about 15 words a day by sentence mining them from anime and Japanese RUclips videos with the Migaku browser plugin and reviewing them in Anki every day. I also watched about 2-4 hours a day of Japanese media and music to constantly practice understanding the words I had learned. It was a lot of work, but learning a language like Japanese is never easy even if you use the best methods. For more information you should watch videos from Jouzu Jules, Livakivi, Refold, Trenton, MattvsJapan, and Days and Words to better understand the process of input based language learning.
Localization is never necessary, if you want to enjoy a culture's media then learn the culture. It's incredibly insulting to go to another culture and expect it to completely change itself to accommodate you, especially when you make no effort for the opposite. No different from tourists visiting other nations on vacation and expecting everyone to speak English or something.
@@KalenKries-gi7fm There's dozens of free lessons on youTube, from beginner to intermediate, made by Japanese tubers if you want to dip your toe in.
Also let’s not forget the time I was called a bigot over referring to the type a and b choices as male and female which I will stand by.
Like I just don’t like western localisation of games.
Just because it started in the west doesnt make it western; This virus of an ideology has no identity and wishes to infect every nation & region it can.
Westeners hate this just as much as everyone else because it doesnt represent the values of western culture; If it started in japan i wouldnt call it eastern localization because it doesnt represent the east & their values. Its a virus pushing a one world ideology, its not western or eastern, evil has no nationality or ethnicity, it hates everyone equally. Stop it man
I really disliked in the 90s when many games and Anime got dubbed with very American English using slang instead of just basic English as that slang was not always widely know and it seems things have only gotten worse in recent years.
I almost died when I caught yeeted being used in the subtitles of something I was watching.
Every day that passes brings us closer to a localizer having a character unironically say the word skibity.
@@OujirouYT We have to be living in a simulation.
I know of some Translators who use the defense „if we would translate correctly it would be broken shit no one’s understands“ I told them what they are saying is BS a translators job is to make sense so that it can be understand in the other language. Their answer was either to ignore me and spread their falsehood or call my a liar and I have no idea, because I don’t work in that industry. Nice knowing that I as someone who really doesn’t work in that industry knows more about translation than the ones working in that industry.
Thank God they're doing AI translations now, these hacks will be out of a career.
People would actually defend them and support them if they weren't imposing their views and their bs and didn't break the original product but they chose to be their own enemy and destruction to the point that people are siding with AI!
You know it's bad when fan made translations for games never released outside of Japan did a better job at translation than the official one. We're at the point it's worse than 90s Engrish translation.
This reminds me of "mistranslations" of Hebrew (and Koine Greek) in the Bible.
Words can be used to distort Our perceptions of reality.
Why the heck I should get the same crappy USA localization here in the Philippines?
Sick and tired of getting bastardized version JP games.
I play JP games for the JP culture.
If I want Western culture then I would play Western games.
7 years into my own JP learning journey, so glad I started. Crazy to think that 2017 was 7 years ago and bad modern activist localization was STILL a problem all the way back then. If anyone's on the fence or struggling to find motivation to learn, it's really the hardest at the very beginning once you're trying to climb the initial wall of totally new character sets, different grammatical structures etc. Once you get the basics it becomes easier and easier to learn new things and soon enough you'll be flying through it. Never looked back.
any tips where and how? youtube or school course?
thanks..
@@KalenKries-gi7fm there are many resources available, if you haven’t found any then that suggests you haven’t been looking very hard or at all. A simple search on RUclips will get you a mountain of results.
You might start with the Genki textbooks. Genki is not necessarily the best, but it is probably the most popular and there are many, many resources available to go with it. But there are many other options as well.
What helped me get started was just playing some games preferably RPGs entirely in Japanese text and all with translation guides to double check and get through menus, still working on the lettering system but frequently understand voiced dialogue without any help now, far from fluent but huge progress and gamifies the learning process with a clear goal and incentive which solves the motivation problem.
The only argument that I've ever seen that makes any sense for localisation is with jokes that involve wordplay that relies on the specific word sounds in the original language (puns, generally) or idioms that make little sense outside of the original culture. Those are usually pretty rare though.
I miss the days of fan translations being common where they'd add notes EXPLAINING those in the subtitles so that you not only got to enjoy the joke, but also learn a bit about the language/culture of the original creators.
I don't see how insulating people from foreign cultures or ideas is possibly anything but a negative thing for humanity as a whole, and is quite a xenophobic stance to take.
Translators notes were great, I miss the kind of love and attention the old fan subs would put into their work. We got such great quality translations from passionate people, and they did it for free. By comparison, what we get out of the professionals that are paid to do the work is abysmal.
The whole of pheonix wright is not rare lmao my god.
@@battokizu All books are just non-stop jokes all the time, just look at this joke book as evidence: nothing but jokes!
I absolutely adore translators notes. I was reading Noragami recently and the sheer amount of translators noted brought me great joy! When I reach the end of a book, and its 3-5 pages of pure, lovely explanation of what choices were made, and why, it's amazing! 100% there needs to be more of that!
I've noticed this bs going on for a veryyy long time and finally decided to make the effort to learn Japanese after becoming more fluent with my parent's native language. Thank you Tom Lipschultz in particular (formerly from localization company Xseed) for first shining the light on the exhaustive degree of it way back in the day, having the stance to ensure the proper translation and his firm anti-censorship stance before he left the company. I hope he is doing well in his endeavors and I thank him for being one of the few many years ago pointing it out when it was just affecting smaller niche Japanese games. Also love the channel, great content and glad I subbed.
"Win/win...except for them, but fuck 'em."
😂
Dude, Thank you for talking about this.
I'll be posting a long rant but before, It doesn't affect me until my fave games got affected, "Sora no Kiseki"(and all of the other titles after that). I'll be posting this here because, I talk it about this on other forums site and they all shunt me to death.. bunch of wokalizer worshipers. I guess youtube comments are the only way.
Anyway. I just read twitter a post about XSEED translated "Sora no Kiseki" that they ("intent to mistranslate most of the japanese words, They over exaggerated Estelle violent personality, remove Estelle catchphrase, remove all japanese jokes on the game..etc") When I saw this I made me think about all the past revelations about the localizers starting from Animes and Mangas. I post in a forum on Falcom Subreddit, about this and gather a good conversation, and I even ask it nicely, I ask for the ones who play Japanese version or Both Versions. But I didn't expect they (almost all) turn on me. They say that "there are no 1 to 1 translation from JP to English. Estelle personality is perfect on localization (violently). They prefer english jokes over japanese jokes. Japanese jokes lack substance. Estelle catchphrase on japanese is lackluster. Japanese culture is stupid, its good they change into this. Learn to read japanese if you whiny about this". And worst of all "they corrected me on the name, they said its trails in the sky, not (SORA NO KISEKI) because its localized"
In my mind, What the hell happen to this sub? Sora no Kiseki is the japanese name of the game!
only one person talks to me like a person and also said the game name right (Sen no Kiseki). This stuff happen since when Sen no Kiseki 1 got out (2014?). They hate who ever badmouth the localizers. I ask if there are other forums to discuss this topic "like MEN". He said no, all forums are like this, even other japanese games. This is how bad it is, They even dismissed the game name in Japanese, the nerve! Why do this people play japanese games if they DON'T WANT to know japanese culture, jokes and stuffs.
for the most part I am Asian, even so, I can't speak japanese. So you can't say that they change it (localized) for the whole world to understand. How Selfish of Them!
How about us! how about the people like Japanese stuffs, gone through fans translating it so they can appreciate JP literature and Anime Subtitles close on what the japanese portray of there culture and stuffs.
We read, play japanese games and literature because we want to know more about japanese side of things, that includes JOKES and metaphors they used. So they basterdise all of this for there (Wokalizers) fame and brag about it.
I also happens to notice this on Netflix, they change the english subs, I know this because I recognize sounds/words in JP but its the opposite on what they put on subtitles. Thats why I don't watch anime Netflix translated.
I rather watch FAN TRANSLATE Anime subs rather than this Wokalizer Jokes, I rather read The Manga than the Wokalize ones, because why? Fans Translate all of it, they also explain the jokes, metaphors they used, cultures, background words and more. As close 1 on 1 as they can. Very faithful on what the JP Authors portray.
Bro and they prattle on about being the tolerate and loving side of everything. What a joke. Theyre just racists and xenophobes hiding behind virtue.
Two faced snakes
I feel you on this and it boils my blood how disingenuous and bad faith people are about it, they think you are criticizing the whole game when all you want is just a faithful translation and try to shut you down or saying you are overreacting and yadayada, it's just exhausting that these people also take the credit as if the success of the story is all thanks to them and their "quirky" works, so Jap studios see this and be like "oh alright good job translation team 👍" when it's actually awful how sometimes they butcher some and the product does really bad in the west due to it and the Jap team has no idea that it was cause of bad localization. It's even worse when these localizers don't know a single thing about Japanese and their language and rewrite the work of actual translators which have to suck it up.
But I guess asking people to respect the source material and be genuine makes you a bad person. It's so tiring...
I can fully understand you, it gets on my nervs enough to just leave some games be. but i guess in the Kiseki case i am just glad they even localized it, as it has tonnns of text. Especially the sky games and they weren't that big of hits. I mean even the freaking empty treasure chest speak. Also i don't know if its the same localization team as NISA has taken the series from XSEED in the west, guess they will have hired some of the translators of XSeed? Do wonder what was changed in the more modern games (Daybreak), theres lots of "pedophile" jokes and mentioning how young the mains coworker is. I just don't know, could be similiar in japanese or have been changed to please some woke westerners. All in all i do think the series gotten a bit more boring and worse in comparison to Sky. I do have Zero and Azure to play still. I found Estelle and Yoshua in Cold Steel a bit strange. Well they were not much more than cameos either way.
I would like a Metaphor destranslation mod. The text of what is actually being said would be nice with japanese dub.
And that will get banned on all mod site
That comes out, I’d buy it hands down.
@@zerosam5541 probably not on based mods
I wonder if anyone is working on it or would. I have held off on getting the game but if it was delocalized id buy it. Ive only played the demo
@@zerosam5541 yeah they did that for BG3 but I still got the anti-alphabet mod installed they can try but they can't ban it from everywhere. lmfao
WE just can't have nice things. Keep on fighting the good fight good sir
DoublePerfectKO on RUclips did a lot of videos exposing the egregious localization of FF14 (I think he's said he's Japan Day Tripper's brother). To be able to know if a translation is good or not, you need to be at least somewhat bilingual and have access to both language versions of the game. And then to expose it, you would need a social media platform. A lot of FF14 players just read the ye olde english and then think the translation is high quality because it sounds like Shakespeare. These people have absolutely no idea.
Thanks for the suggestion, and a fellow nikke Rapunzel..
just hire the Fansubs crew to make the subtitles and the localization. The work of the worst Fansub crew is 100% better than the best woke localizer out there.
yeah I do that too. but they portray Fan subs / Fan Translates as PIRACY... this happen to Sora ni Kiseki SC and 3rd, even today. The Woke media before articles it like this.. They said Localization the true and legal ones.. well look what happen now..
@@KalenKries-gi7fm Fansubs ARE piracy, but by the time they get a contract to sub or localize a project, they become contractors, hence dropping the "criminal" baggage.
The issue with fan subs is most are done on free time or as something fun to learn the language. To do it seriously like whats needed they would have to make it a full time job.
Remember working designs? They were pissing every one off by throwing pop culture references into Lunar. “Help another culture understand.” Can quickly become “I can make it better, funnier, more impactful, and in the worst case more “appropriate.”
Ai translation is one of the few AI things I fully support. Get these activists out of my entertainment and give me the full, unadulterated, Japanese work. Give me what the artist, the writer, the creator made.
Edit: SICKNESS MUST BE PURGED!
Amen brother
AI translation is not a solution. Maybe it can be serviceable for quickly subtitling. But not for writing scripts human voice actors need to read
@@TheJadedJames I'm not sure I understand. If it can make subtitles that I can read, why wouldn't voice actors be able to read it?
@@RockR277 Automated translation might be coherent but it still might not be “good” dialogue. There are words and nuances that will always make direct translations difficult/impossible in many situations, requiring human translators. I’m not advocating for human translators to overwrite the intent of work they’re supposed to be translating. But I am saying it isn’t unreasonable with translators bend certain things because language isn’t that simple
Sadly, this is one of the smallest problems we have... Since the end of the PS4 generation, more and more Japanese games are being censored or not even receiving a Western version due to nonsense (like the Marvelous games, which had a lot of trouble releasing their games) and the Switch, which was supposed to be a console for a younger audience, receives much less censorship...
But since Sony's console is the most consumed in the West, this ends up changing the core of the games more and more and the companies censor their games beforehand for the country of origin and the West. Just like what happened with Dragon Quest.
This problem of Sony demanding censorship of games is not just a Western problem, in Japan they have censorship policies too, but here they receive an extra hand of censorship.
When the PS4 was released, they had a policy of practically no censorship, but now... Now it's an apocalypse.
Jep, Sony has gone fully woke, its an US company now when it comes to this, the Netflix of gaming. And they infect other publishers and devs as well as consolemaker. Don't care about Microsoft that much as they don't influence smaller japanese devs that way.
I wanna make a publishing and localization company, to bring to the west old untranslated games from pc 98, ps1 etc. I lived in Japan, and i understand why westerners want the authentic stuff, i want it myself
Why not bring it to your home country?
Nihon Falcom recently decided to ditch NIS America Wokalizers from the localization of the Remake of the Trails in The Sky arch, and decided to manage the localization in house.
I saw this as a great news for the franchise, because, in theory, it'll be safe from the sick and mediocre wokalizers.
Just wanted to share this news here, and thanks for the video. G** ble**.
OH DID THEY NOW. THANK FUCK
The reverse also happens sometimes
When sonic frontiers released in japan the localizers changed the original dialogue written by ian flynn because they wanted it to be "less direct"
Results? Lots of japanese players complained that the dialogue was garbage because all of the references where scrubbed and they tried to leave a lot for the imagination with didnt work
To be fair the writing is dogshit either way.
To be fair, lots of people dislike Frontiers' original script for being an inch away from a Family Guy cutaway compilation (seriously, 99% of the references have no purpose outside of ''hey! remember this?'') and being a storytelling mess (the ''emotional'' crying Sage scene anyone?), so while I don't condone altering the script, I wonder how much of it is due to the changes and how much is because the script is really not as good as some people hype it up to be.
I think most Jrpg fans want AI to do the job at this point instead
The bad faith argument that localizers and woke zealots immediately went with once these twitter comparisons started to pop up a few years ago was that the official translations sounded better than the direct translations. They mischaracterize the direct translations as being the alternative, when in reality they're just meant to show that the localizers misrepresented the dialogue. I've been seeing lately how youtubers and random commenters have started using these arguments too, even ones who claim to be against wokeness. They brush over the discrepencies. Any dialogue can be improved and with the time constraints we can't expect perfection, but I think striving to be accurate should be the first priority.
I've noticed that additional translations are becoming more and more common in JRPG's, and I've heard that they're more accurate. This is a good alternative. I'm swedish, so english isn't even my native language. I studied french for 3 years in school and a bit of german. I know them well enough that I can cross reference with an english dub and spot differences. I think I could get either language up to a reading level pretty quickly. Japanese feels like it will require 10 times the work to reach the same level.
Unfortunately the Metaphor french and german translations are both based on the english one. I made some comparisons with lines used for japanese to english comparisons, and it looked pretty obvious since they were very different.
But the french translation of Unicorn Overlord, also made by Atlus looks really accurate and it's not long winded. Considering how flowery Unicorn was, maybe they had no choice but to go for the japanese, or possibly they used the first draft direct translation english script made by actual translators who are fluent in japanese. Maybe because Metaphor is developed in house, there were different protocols. Anyway, imagine being an actual unicorn, being fluent in both english and japanese, and these talentless hacks disrespecting your work by writing fanfics over them. And it's these translators that will get sacked first if they were to move towards AI.
I'm someone who prefers the English voices to the Japanese cast (though I do hold high amounts of respect for seiyuu) and I'm tired of these lolcowlizers. I hate how they quirk up the dialogue to be something that it's not. I also hate how they basically ruin the subbed version of shows too with the cringe dub script. The thing I hate most of all is adding completely unnecessary political pandering to a bunch of crazed leftists who don't even watch the show in question.
Man, I remember the fight between JP subs(jp voice) vs Dubs (eng voice) in the internet long ago.. in most anime fans
I didn't expect it will evolved into this mess. I rather have the sub vs dubs than this blashphemy
It's because the debate was basically settled original language subs>>>>>>dubs in 9 out of 10 instances not just in anime but in general the original language is usually the best version, but subs are an acquired taste that take getting used to and also not always perfect, subs are usually more accurate too at least they used to be, dubtitles are an absolute scourge and they've been getting pushed more heavily nowadays for obvious reasons
@@GodOfOrphans you gotta be insane to prefer listening to bug people noises
@@LordsofMedia hence why subs are superirior as they aren't voiced by hollyweird bugmen
Seeing your line comparison of Gallica made me glad i decided to play Metaphor with japanese voices and brazillian portuguese text. Since learning of the involvement of that katrina individual i decided i'd give the BR version a try, and it's mostly very accurate. Never really felt Gallica talking down to the protag. she's actually very empathetic to him. Guess this is the way to play in the future, if anything, this localizer shit deserves credit for encouraging more people to learn the original language and experience something for themselves instead of relying on the maliciousness of these weirdos.
I could do that too, but the problem for me is the fact that Atlus is hiring those katrina tards people instead of others who could do a much better job. You could even say that they are willfully and well knowing doing that. I get excited to play and willing to spend the money, but then I get discouraged upon that fact. I'm glad you can have a better experience changing the subtitles but for me I think I will wait, we shall see.
I have noticed a similar thing with different games as well. Most languages are fine but English is were the localization damages happen. It has encouraged me more to pick up on my Italian/Korean. So I can have a better experience cause I am really getting tired of it but of course that takes time so for now I am just looking at certain lines with a second thought in English for now.
The problem is many other translations are based on the EN version. So if the EN translation is wokified, so is everything else because they're based on it
@@mightyfineincredible2252 That's something that made me reluctant to trust translations in my native language, since some Brazillian voice actors admitted they used to translate adaptions from other languages (in anime, for example), but from what i can tell with Metaphor, that's not the case. The text mostly checks out with what's said in Japanese, and from the comparisons from this video, it looks like other regions are translating things correctly instead of localizing.
@@mightyfineincredible2252 Our italian translations always come directly from the Japanese, that’s why we have some of the most accurate descriptions in our games, for example in Elden Ring the English translators twisted some of the lore by mistranslating some little details, and people in the forums came to the “Italian” version to really understand the real description
5:30 to quote the best character in GOT "a man who mush proclaim himself king is no king at all."
That has always been the part that gets me. I don't think I've ever encountered a genuinely funny person who openly said they were. If anything, the line usually is "I'm a comedian, why do you take anything I say seriously?"
It's a good thing she was fired from SEGA. Persona 6 still has hope. This is the reason why I still listen to sub or just have the game or content in the original language. I'm glad I lived in Japan for 8 years and don't really need subs anymore.
“No your not a colleague your a colonizer”
It's good that they've finally started translating directly from Japanese into Russian, instead of translating the English localization like they used to.
Did they? I couldn't stand P3R's Russian translation partly because English script usage was so obvious, is metaphor better?
Just watched the first 2 episodes of the terminator anime series in Netflix and the English dub and even the subtitles don't match at all the words and even the mood of the original dialogue
And even adds narration where the original has silence
yeah this also happen to Netflix animes too the japanese ones.. the subs on japanese sounds and words are so off..
Honestly i prefere Machine translate over localizers nowdays.
I think your point about translation v.s. transliteration is a really solid distinction that more of us should adopt going forward. Great video.
Ok has anyone else noticed how copypastad most of the replies defending lolcowization are in this thread? It's like they're all mini easays that all try to bog everything down in culture ware stuff by bringing bring up W*ness even if nobody else did to claim everyone is just oversensitive to it and then cherry pick the same handful of talking points on specific dialogue exchanges from the game? It's uncanny and suspicious.
3:15 exactly what I expected. These nuts stereotype themselves.
Wonder what people think about the recent Resonate Arc discussion with a localizer
Their podcast on this was incredibly insightful. Truthfully, I don't think either side is wrong.
Though it is clear that the players who really enjoy the Japanese language and consume this content because it is Japanese is often seen as a minority. So they're not quite the target audience with localization.
Wokealizers.
My future kids would be disgusted by their actions nobody wanted, while these people think they're the hero for this it's bullshit.
Dude! I was playing the demo last night and I couldn’t help but notice the fairy companion’s “Omg why are you such a loser?” attitude towards the MC and it just yanked me out of the experience. I don’t really have a lot of time on my hands these days to play every good game that comes out so this one will have to go back of the line because I can’t be bothered to deal bad localization no matter how good the game is. We all blame the localizers but it’s not like the Japanese stakeholders don’t know about this stuff, so the ultimate responsibility lies with them. They’re not getting my money until they fix the products they’re offering
We need a community that would save the manga, anime & Japanese culture creations.
The employees should all leave their employers & form their own studios & we will support them on a new platform that is away from big brother, SBI, SWJ etc.
2025 lets make a change.
The transliteration thing is the most BS because it's disingenuous as fuck. They know exactly what people mean when they say they want an accurate translation, but they love twisting it into some BS nobody actually said or meant because it's the only way they have even a sliver of an argument.
As someone who grew up on Funimation DBZ and who uses English Pokemon/Digimon/Megaman names, I can't say I inherently hate localization, but I do hate all this woke BS where there's a very obvious disdain for both the original work and the audience mixed in with their pretentious "I can do it better" attitude. I also know just how bad a lot of older dubs are, especially also growing up on 4Kids. It's funny how despite literally building his career own crapping on bad localization, LittleKuriboh is a guy I've seen defending this nonsense on multiple occasions.
It's sad and frustrating because I do generally prefer listening to stuff in English, but knowing it's a bastardized (and nowadays actively spiteful) version of the original just turns me off.
Subs are something you get used to with time and once you do it's hard to go back. Why not try rewatching something you like subbed so it's less overwhelming? There's a lot of good stuff that never got dubbed on top of the bad faith dubbing epidemic so it's a taste worth acquiring.
@@GodOfOrphans I already watch subs
@@s3studios597 Yet you have not ascended into sub purism
You won me with the Bastok flag.
Completely agree. Besides, some of the literal translations in games are my favorite.
Glad I clicked on this video, that was a really good point that it is more powerful to use playtime and reviews to try and reach corporate direction.
Playing Xenoblade Chronicles for the first time and holyshit, almost everything is mistranslated in the subtitles.
WAIT REALLY?? its really that bad???
@@KalenKries-gi7fm yeah, most of the cutscenes are mistranslated
I put 70 on steam for metaphor till I learned Katrina killed Persona 3 reload, then went to a steam discussion like 4-5 months ago telling me Katrina worked on metaphor….i died inside. So I bought black myth and Skald. She killed all Atlus titles for me until they fire her.
Bro i downloaded Google translate on my phone and now you can just hover the camera over the Japanese text and it translates it. May not be perfect but it's better.
I pray Ys X is safe. I won't be buying Metaphor
I'm afraid that AI can also be taught to take liberties with translation like this . Especially, if it is "fed" with already existing translations.
It's tough. I do not want to take it on Atlus with a bad review, but this issue should still be noticeable for them, somehow.
A very important subject you bring on this video.
Japanese companies should double check these translation before releasing the game. I'd rather we have to wait for games to be localized like in the old days rather than having these subpar translation with changed characters, censorship, etc.
The actual den-fami event was several hours long and had a lot of people come on including Yoko Taro. I couldn't watch it live because it had machine translation disabled during the livestream but I wanted to watch it later (specifically the Yoko Taro part) and I can't now because of all of this.
I started learning Japanese three months ago, going really well. I am so intent in learning it not because I'd absolutely in love with the language, but out of pure spite for localizers.
God, I am glad that german manga translators had, as far as I know never big controversies.
As a long time anime and gamer this has been around for a long time. From Sailor Moon and One Piece as well as tons of games. I think the best old school translator was the person who did the Final Fantasy 3 (6) on SNES and other square projects. If you like something you need to go online. Fire Emlem Engage was also pretty bad. As a reader these mistranslations however light can ruin stories because the person translating doesnt understand the impact of the changes to a story as it develops.
The biggest mistranslation I notice in anime and Japanese games is Onii-chan . It means older brother but they always replace “big brother/older brother” with the character’s name. Now I barely understand Japanese but I know what that term means. And when I hear onii-chan in anime/games but see the character’s name as the subtitle I just fume. Just a small pet peeve but it made me begin to hate localization
I legit thought "localization" was just a synonym mor "translation" in the industry...
Thank God I’m Italian and we have good localizers and translators that don’t twist the phrases to fit into their agenda
they been doing this to movies forever in every language. Usually it's not so bad, for example a lighter translation might substitute curse words with for a less aggressive word
You earned my vote with Refantsio. I hate how the fairy is portrayed. Not only does she talk down to you, but she white knights for you. When she throws a pity party demanding sympathy I am more than happy to bully her.
There is a part in the recruitment office when you read a bounty board and the fairy says "Oh that looks like a feminine name I wonder who they are" That is a complete bastardization of English. "I wonder who she is" would have been far more appropriate also you wouldn't have said "oh that looks like a feminine name" I highly doubt most of that sentence was in the original Japanese.
I hope there isn't much of that woke BS in the game, because that bit even the little that I mentioned significantly magnifies all of the bad localization. The conversation with the recruiter with the noble guy. That was localized like an amateur. The spirit of what was being said was lost. It was needlessly crude. It shows a localizer that does not understand the writing that is being read and lacks the creativity and understanding to write it in such a way that it is as good in English as it was in Japanese.
You know when they write these lines they are patting themselves on the back like they are gods gift to games. It's so infuriating to see how they casually ruin the experience and somehow think they are doing everybody a favor. I hate it so much.
"-I wonder who they are" is not wrong to use in English, the singular they has been in existence since goddamm Shakespeare
@@sam7559 Ahh. You're one of those who tries to use that excuse for bastardization. Let me make this clear for you then. One is speaking to a pregnant woman and you inquire as to the sex of the child does one say "Are they a boy or girl" No, of course not. Because it would be utter nonsense to do so. One says "Is it a boy or a girl" That is proper English.
In the context you are referring to, and with full display of ignorance either intentional or otherwise, this would be a more apropos situation "Can I speak to the manager?" response: "They're out at the moment can I take a message" In this context you are asking to speak to the manager. The manager is a position and therefor a group is being referenced not a particular person.
This is the difference in context. As I've said before to not understand these simple fundamentals of English makes one disqualified to use it in any profession.
@patriot639 maybe it's a regional but "are they a boy or girl" is what I'm used to with it being considered dehumanizing to the fetus
@@sam7559 definitely not regional. You would be incredibly hard pressed to find a book written before the year 2000 (likely even before 2010) that would have that written.
I just watched Wistoria, wand and sword
And it just bothers me when what I read and what I hear don't coincide.
And they happen to be especially noticeable when they completely oppose the tone of the scene
Damn, I am so happy that our german localization was an early bird. So it didn't had to grow up with those insane people tainting it in its infancy. Still it isn't completely save of that. We have to protect the original meaning. Lets say german localization is a bit more resistant to those changes
But I am in no position to not worry about that. I watch english dubs/subs the same or even more than german dubs/subs. I'll keep an eye on it from now on. I mean we already have the problem that Sony/Crunchyroll tries to pander to western audiences which is a bit of a trend setter for any japanese export. And it is absurd, because the western audience doesn't want that Anime changes to pander to western audience. But because Sony tries to play it save, (whatever save means) it opens save spaces for those people who try to insert their own agenda.
Having Crunchyroll move to AI is great for the subs, though the scripts for English dubs can be abominable. I avoid dubs like the plague so I tend not to notice those at least.
You apparently never heard of the works of the "distinguished" Claude M. Moyse. He certainly brought "humor" into his German translations.
Wokies get the ropies!
Wokies get the ropies!
it's kinda sad that it has come to this but yeah they need to vàmos😔
As a guy from south-east asia, i just wish i could get what the original dev's wanted to make. I have zero interest in a modified game. Sadly, there is no other way for a majority of people like me to experience a game without these modified localized versions. It's one thing to make your own stuff but i wish i could these localizers could restrain from changing the tone altogether. Not everyone is from your country and culture and certainly don't wanna be fed your values. Hopefully some new translation technology would replace this unnecessarily monopolized localization market.
I don't want to even touch Metaphor: ReFantazio until some alternate subtitles can be modded in, and that's probably not possible.
I'd rather a game be uncensored AND release as the original than censored and changed by localization. I also have more trust in fan localization than official translation.
It can't be overstated just how jarring a translation disconnect can be even if you are only passingly fluent in the language in question. It really takes you out of the experience and shatters any immersion. I would even wager that there is no QA for translations. The publishers will just accept that the translators have done their job adequately without it being proofread or previewed by QA or a focus group. Even beyond this, region locking often prevents end users from experiencing the non-censored source content. True enough, there may be workarounds if you really want the original content, but it shouldn't fall on the end consumer to go to such lengths.
It really seems like translator is a job that is settled upon. As you said, if they have anything to add to storytelling, they should be authoring it in the first place. So many of them seem dispassionate or even antagonistic to the source material of their craft. I'm not saying every translator involved needs to have the same candor and fervor as say, Heny Cavill has for 40k. But when there are fan dubs and retranslation hacks that can do better than a commercial release translation, you know you are doing something wrong.
I stopped playing or buying games where such BS was obvious. Unicorn Overlord, Eiyuden Chronicles, Octopath Traveler... I'm real picky about what I play now because these idiots need to understand we don't like this nor will everyone be cowed to accept crap.
also add Sora no Kiseki, and all Kiseki titles.. fak they destroyed my childhood.. over exagerated Estelle Violence and stuffs.. faken Big Stick american jokes..
you think you hate localizers enough. WRONG. YOU CAN ALWAYS HATE THEM MORE
I played Metaphor, and the translations never felt awkward or out of place. The translators did an excellent job conveying the essence of the original Japanese, making the dialogue sound natural and interesting to read in English. In fact, I found the modified localized text to be even better than the original at times.
My issue arises when translators start adding political messages or try to push an activist angle in their work. But in Metaphor, there was nothing of the sort, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as it was. These days, people fixate on small details such as this due to all the added wokeness in games, but that wasn’t a concern here.
really great video. gonna subscribe and check out the rest of your channel
This is wild. Atlus normally has fantastic localisation
Yes, but actually no.
If you research Atlus translation, you'll find out they had these problems since the original Persona 5.
Some how I subscribed?? Lol thanks for pointing out the localization in Metaphor.
We're in the same boat in hating localization and these awful gain of function activist. F'ing sucks worse than localization in the 9ps.
I noticed a lot of this when I used AI to translate a lot of dialogue in Three Houses. Countless examples of minor gender related dialogue getting changed or removed and removing some interesting characterization.
Interesting differences in Metaphor - last few years I've been playing with dubs b/c the eng VA's have improved dramatically (compared to mid 2000's). That being said, the change of tone and wording for the examples you showcase are substancial - and I would honestly prefer the closer t/l compared to the re-imagined phrasing~
Localizers over the last 5ish years have done a great job....at making me motivated to learn a new language myself.
Great video. I hope more gaming channels keep covering this and without the walking on eggshells mentality
I legit stopped learning Spanish cause i realized i needed to learn Japanese cause of all the bad localization.
What you're calling "transliteration" is actually literal translation. Transliteration is rendering characters from one alphabet into another alphabet, like Cyrillic alphabet into Latin alphabet.
Yeah, I realized I messed that up the day after I put the video live. It's even in the example I used with Romanji in it, as Romanji is the transliteration of Japanese, my bad. -.-
Now I'm skeptical of all Translations across All Media
its good to know we can mod the game with the fan translation that more accurate and respecting the art
but still, kinda sad because of them, we might opt-ed to Ai translation and im sure no one shed a tear for them beside they people
as if we going to defend them as they pretty much spit in our face with they unprofessionalism
this has been a thing for so long and im glad people finally noticed, localization was a mistake, i hope we just get ai translations from now on which may be jank but at least they wont inject messages or their own terrible takes
I always wondered why English dialog in JRGPs was so awful. Now I understand.
Hopefully, the people in charge of translation AI isn't ideologically captured and ruin the localization.
That dragon quest warrior design change has been in games that only released in Japan, though.
My understanding from the interview is that they build for the lowest common denominator so the work only has to be done once. So because censorship is being pushed for the US it's also getting pushed onto the Japanese market.
Since DQ is a franchise that is exported it's going to end up having all of the work centered around the lowest common denominator to ensure the design standard is met across the entire brand. So even if a title isn't released outside of JP it still runs the risk of having people push for US styled censorship on it because it's not a one off IP.
Companies have the resources to offer both "localized" and AI translations options. Just let us choose what we want!
I pre ordered Metaphor and I still want to play it. I loved the demo. The fact that these localizers changed some dialog does bother me and I am very angry but what can I do? The best I can do is learn Japanese what isn't easy, don't buy the game and the game isn't the issue the gameplay is amazing, the music, the story, is the localization that worries me. I am on PC so maybe someone will release a mod with the actual correct translation, who knows and it's sad because the voice actors are topnotch and do their best.
Atlus takes 2 steps forward and 1 step backwards every single time.
Pirate the game
You can't it's denuvo @@erikm8707
I dont think the metaphor localization is incorrect, I don't know for a fact, but the interactions with the guard captain seem normal. He is a corrupt individual who only values himself and the main antagonist, not to mention his dialog in the English translation just sounds better. I know that it is important to keep the original intent the same, but just because you perfectly translate something doesn't mean it necessarily keeps the same meaning, Or something that been altered from perfect translation doesn't mean it doesn't keep the same meaning. For the guard captain, you can clearly see that both versions of translation keep the same idea, but one has been altered to more clearly show his character and uses more descriptive language. I understand the worry of Localizers changing the meanings of a media, but I don't think this is it. I won't crucify these people until Atlus themselves come out with an official statement.
As for Gallica, I doubt this is truly talking down to the protagonist. This just seems more playful than girlbossy because it reminds me more of how Morgana would talk to the player, which, as you showed on screen, Katrina did not work on.
Then about her calling you dopy, which 1: most likely just playfully. 2" slightly true as your character has the option to, at multiple points, ask what the very important high stats mission was agian. Gets instantly spotted as an Elda by many people. Has the option to almost (what Gallica thinks is) getting scamed by the fake Royal scepter replica. and tries to play dumb with Strohl when strohl catches him and Gallica talking. 3: it's her reminding you that nobody likes Elda. Finally, I doubt misuse of Localizers in metaphor becuase if they really did try to change how Gallica acts, they either completly forgot to do it, or were not allowed, as the rest of the demo did not show this behavior. Finally, it was stated in marketing for metaphor that Gallica is described as "Although she is too small to participate in battles, her knowledge of magic and ability to sense magla is superior to the protagonist due to her fairy nature. She doesn’t mince words, but she is a reassuring ally on his journey." That key part "she doesn't mince words, but she is a reassuring ally on his journey." They are trying to say that she will not hesitate to say something direct, as in, if the protagonist is lost, he should admit it. As in, he should keep his head down because people will see the dopy Elda kid immediately. But is still a kind individual who doesn't quite believe in her own value to the rest of the characters, as seen in the demo when she vents to the protagonist.
Agian to reiterate, I don't believe malpractice in the translation/localization of metaphor, and I will not be willing to crucify an individual without an official statement from Atlus. But if it is true and that there is malpractice, then i absolutely do not support it. But from my experience, I do not see any, I just see that people are worried on the internet that there is, with thier only evidence being the translations don't one for one match.
Side note: may I point out that the Twitter translation of Gallica talking to you is just flat out wrong. She says, "The Elda tribe is already rare..." True, they are rare, "... so be careful, try not to get tangled up with them." This sentence is wrong, the player charecter IS an Elda. This sentence either poorly conveys that she is trying to tell you to stay away from "them" as in the rest of the people in thecity, or is flat out wrong by saying "them" referring to the Elda because our charecter IS the Elda. Also this translation only says the Elda are rare, forgetting to state that they are also hated, and doesn't warn the protagonist to keep himself down low. I point this out becuase these translations *might* be done with Google translate or AI, which one is know to be bad at translations for more complex sentences, and the other isnt quite ready for complex translation yet. Just putting that out there becuase I saw no one else correct this. Or I could be wrong and the poster is trying to translate themselves and slipped up.
stop trying to gaslight people translation and localization was garbage. don't try to gaslight people in to thinking everything is okay.
The localizer in question admitted on camera to being a bad faith actor multiple times stop acting like that didn't happen
Great commentary, got my sub 👍 l have been excitedly waiting with baited breath to see the rise of AI translation and the sweet tears of the localisers as they scream in terror of being unemployed and irrelevant once again.
You're a cool down to earth Dood. I'll be waiting for a sale for metaphor and giving it a negative review.
I found this channel from the streisand effect from endymion tv.
Yeah I'm just gonna take the dive and read/play japanese media in japanese. To anybody who's done this, what are the tools and workflow that worked best for you? Right now im using jisho and ocr.