Do you prefer literal translations or localizations?
>>12216665I'd encourage anyone who is even remotely serious about this hobby to just learn Japanese.
I always prefer for the translator to throw out the script and treat the game as his personal creative writing/comedy project.
>>12216665i prefer to play it on the original language
>>12216665No one in these threads can even define a "literal translation" to begin with. And those who think they can largely fall into two, equally incorrect camps.>"A translation has to sound awkward and stilted, because that means it MUST be literal!"Yet translations that rely on awkward word order, unusual sentence structures, depend heavily on common J-E calques (e.g. "it can't be helped") just as often fail to capture the spirit of the message, despite people assuming that awkward="literal."Then, we have>"A translation should just, like, say what the text MEANS, OK!? Jeez! Stop adding to the script or changing it!"Yet English translations that successfully capture the true intent of a message in the J-E pair often MUST add to the text to clarify things that are succinctly woven into the Japanese message, alter the structure to capture the spirit of what the Japanese message means, or remove elements that are conversely redundant in English that aren't so in Japanese.Of course, there is no arguing with translations/localizations that start to add things that simply weren't there and had no basis in the core meaning of the source text, like the OP image which is completely made up, since that's just it - it's made up. These outliers serve only to distract from the actual, important discussions.
japanese is incredibly idiomatic and doesn't translate well verbatim
Localizations only. Next question.
>>12216894That isn't even a direct translation. The original is:>ここは雪の世界、ホワイトスノー村よ。>美しい世界を楽しんでね。If you were to do a completely direct translation, it would be:>This is the world of snow, WhiteSnow village.>Enjoy this beautiful world.A normal translation would be something like this:>This is WhiteSnow village, where the snowflakes fall.>It's beautiful, isn't it?And a localization would be something like this:>Welcome to YellowSnow! Try the lemon flavor, it's great.>What? Did something I say piss you off?
>>12216665I don't mind the awkwardness, beats shitty jokes and narcissism from the localizers
>>12216665If you care enough about the story of the games you play to prefer one translation over another, you'd probably be happiest just learning Japanese and reading the original.
>>12216930>Enjoy the world of snow.I like literal translations, though. I makes me appreciate foreign phrasing and alternate ways of looking at things. I like to read the literal translation, but, rather than take it literally, I try to look for the deeper meaning. If I get a non-literal translation, even if it is "faithful", I feel like it obscures the deeper meaning.
>>12216871Asking for a "literal translation" is basically just saying "I don't care what the author's intent was, explain it to me like I'm failing Japanese 101 and you're my tutor."Nobody should want to experience art that way.
>>12216961I think that mindset is fantastic, but that you're looking for the deeper meaning in the wrong place. Something will always be lost in any translation, no matter how literal. If you want to interface with the text like this, you really should be reading the original.I'm fairly confident that even as a day one Japanese learner with a dictionary and a dream you'd enjoy the original more, get more out of it, and have a more accurate experience than even the best of literal translations.I feel that translations should be written for the benefit of people whose interest in a subject matter is more shallow than yours. People who don't yet have the literacy or interest to examine media on the level you are. Those people would struggle to enjoy going through the original text, so a translation is the only decent option they have, at least for now.In my opinion, to be a good translation is to be a gateway to further interest in the source material and the culture that produced it. If all you want is a robotic one-for-one this-word-means-this you don't even need a translator, you can get that from an electronic dictionary.
>>12216961>I try to look for the deeper meaning>the town is called WhiteSnow because it's surrounded by white snowWow so deep desu ne~
>>12216698>just learn an entire new language to play with your childrens toys instead of compromising with slightly different dialogue that still gets the point acrossthese are fucking videogames not high literature.
>>12216894what game?
>>12217000Rhapsody.Extremely easy yet charming RPG.
>>12217003thanks, looks relevant to my interests.
>>12217005Enjoy it, anon.There was a sequel that only got translated (and ported to PC) in the past couple of years, too.
>>12217009wait so where can I play the translated sequel? I can only find a translation for the first one on ps1.
>>12216665>literal translationsis always a bad translation>localizationshasn't really been a thing since the 90s
could someone post the learn Japanese resources that used to be posted ?
>>12217014You can buy on steam ("Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess") or pirate it.I can upload my cracked version if you know a site which will let me upload ~1,5GB without creating an account.
>>12217062ah okay so its an official release. I know a certain fatguy who can help me out with that. thanks anon
>>12216665I've just had some bad news. Tomorrow is the mother in law's funeral. And she's cancelled it. [laughtrack]
>>12216665Well I mean if you wanna get really literal a literal translation would leave everyone speaking like yoda
>>12216871What every normal person want is just that it doesn't sound like it's written by a cringey american tard redditor
>>12217105And yet you have no clear way to define this. The entire conversation breaks down rapidly into>"I PERSONALLY like how THIS sounds! But, uhhhhh NOT THAT!"Which is neither helpful nor rewarding for anyone, least of all the translators and localizers.
>>12216665Accurate translations.
>>12217106I have no idea what you're talking about. When people complain "translation bad" it's because the meaning changed. Translation quality now and historically has been too low to some nuanced discussion about any particular translation's benefits and trade-offs.
>>12216871>common J-E calques (e.g. "it can't be helped")You're using that word wrong.>s a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translationExample 摩天楼. 摩=scrape,天=sky,楼= tall building. 仕方がない. 仕方=way,method. ない= nonexistence. Way does not exist would be closer as a calque. This is just misinformation.>>12216930The totally direct translation is not entirely direct.>美しい銀世界を楽しんでね。Missing the 銀>Enjoy this beautiful silver world
>>12217213Is snow considered silver in japan?It's white, stupid nips.
>>12217225No I'm just stupid. and didn't realize 銀世界 as a whole was an expression.雪が一面に降り積もった景色を言い表す語。白雪に覆われた山野。雪景色。
>>12217228So the direct would be snowscape.>Enjoy the beautiful snowcape.
>>12217076Are you talking about GabeN?
>>12217253no, Im not a steamslop drone.
>>12216871They basically have a problem with how many liberties are taken with translation. This happens with a lot of media, even old media, if the language evolved.
>>12216894Solution: Keep the name in the language, but translate the description.
>>12217526The solution is just to blacklist the one responsible.Again, while there are legitimate translation mistakes and poor approaches, these outright "no fucks given" moments are the equivalent of somebody taking a shit on the sidewalk. Are sidewalk shitters a problem? Absolutely. Should they be dealt with? Posthaste. Should they be considered at the same table of discussion where civic engineers talk about sidewalk design and upkeep? Fuck no.
>>12216997Calm yourself. He's encouraging you, you pleb. Learning another language isn't a really big deal. It's something to work towards, but you don't have to master it. Wouldn't you like to know Japanese anyway? It would make traveling much more fun.
>>12216665Localization is a meaningless term that no one can define properly. Just go back calling translations "literal" or "loose" please.
tasteful localization > autistic literal translation > bad localization
>>12217554Localization is a standard term from the pre-internet era and encompasses all the work required to prepare a product for a different market. Apart from textual translation, this most notably would include content tweaks and modifications, often for the sake of avoiding controversy and complying with local standards (for decency, obscenity, and so on).
>>12217505oh you're a tranny simp, so much better!
>>12216665I prefer good writing, which is damn near impossible to find
>>12217646In other words, if you're not SELLING it, DON'T call it a localization!Fan-"localizations" are an excuse for amateurs to remain amateur bitches, nothing more.
>>12217626I'll take the fun translation.
Let us shift the discussion to something more real and meaningful for the thread. I provide some random lines from a vidya I've been TL'ing>声は聴こえなくなった…Context: a mystical voice speaks to the player from the void, then this line is displayed after the voice is finished speaking.On the sliding scale, where do you draw the line?>(Control group AI rendering): "The voice became inaudible..." / "The voice could no longer be heard...">"The voice became no longer able to be heard...">"The voice became unhearable...">"The voice became inaudible...">"The voice faded away...">"The voice faded out...">「…… …ここは、なんだかとても懐かしい 感じがするContext: a character arrives in a location they've never been before, but that makes them feel a difficult to pin down sense of nostalgia.On the sliding scale, where do you draw the line?>(Control group AI rendering): "...... ...This place, somehow feels very nostalgic">"... ... ...Here is, somehow, really nostalgic feeling.">"... ... ...This place feels really nostalgic, somehow.">"This place feels... really nostalgic, somehow.">"Something about this place kind of... really takes me back.">「世界を救う、星を救う言葉にするのは簡単だが実行に移し実現させるのは容易ではないContext: a character says this prior to congratulating (You), the player, on saving the world.On the sliding scale, where do you draw the line?>(Control group AI rendering): "To save the world, to save the planet - putting it into words is simple, but putting it into action and realizing it is not easy">"Save the world, save the planet. Putting it to words is simple, but putting it to action and realizing it is not easy.">"Save the world, save the planet. Saying it's simple, but taking action and making it happen isn't easy.">"Save the world, save the planet... It's easy enough to -say- it, but actually getting it done's not so easy."At what point does one translation theory lose its virtue? When you set these atop your scales, at what point does it simply fall off?
>>12217782Rewrites aren't translations
>>12217231Oh, so there's no freaking problem after all?My gosh. Yeah, if you want to study Homer and can't learn Greek, you might have to read sever translations including verse as well as prose, but is it really so hard to avoid, as was said above, reddit language? I agree that there is a lack of precision of terminology, but I think that the smell test largely suffices here.
>>12218054NTA but no, there isn't.That line had some minor controversy because it was obviously some weird-ass catty in-fighting that seeped into the hack. Guarantee you someone - probably a rival or lackey - rubbed the writer the wrong way, who basically went "STFU you know-nothing." Except their passive-aggressiveness exposed their own ignorance.Most translation hacks are made by failed writers and autistic programmers. Curiously, despite the amount of weebvermin, actual translators are a rare species. Even a lot of self-proclaimed translators are hucksters. Everyone eyes each other nervously, hoping the other party doesn't see through them. Or maybe you did everything by the book, but one slipup smears you. Thieves don't have recourse if things go south.RHDN deserved death.
>>12218038The voice faded out. (Or fades out depending on how the story is being told) This place feels really nostalgic somehow.>>(Control group AI rendering): "To save the world, to save the planet - putting it into words is simple, but putting it into action and realizing it is not easy">>"Save the world, save the planet. Putting it to words is simple, but putting it to action and realizing it is not easy.">>"Save the world, save the planet. Saying it's simple, but taking action and making it happen isn't easy.">>"Save the world, save the planet... It's easy enough to -say- it, but actually getting it done's not so easy."None of these feel natural to me.
I want to enjoy the game. I enjoy pop culture references and sassy characters and le heckin reddit tier jokes. I don't care what has to be done to give me it.
>>12216665literal translations, just fix up the grammar so it sounds smooth.
>>12216665false dichotomy
>>12218254That's from the official translation, mot a hack.Atlus USA and NISA both have a lot more Working Designs influence than they'd admit to nowadays
>>12218054You think "snowscape" and "world of snow" are the same for reason. They already translated 雪の世界 as "town filled with snow". If there was a time to use "world of snow" it was then. 銀世界 is not snow world. it's refers to a landscape covered in snow. You know a snowscape.>白雪に覆われた山野Yeah 世界 oftentimes is world but in 銀世界 you don't translate it as world. If you see 銀世界 and think X+world you're an idiot like me
>>12218431>That's the official translation.
>>12216665Neither, knowing Japanese lets me avoid all this neckbeard drama nonsense
>>12216665This topic always gets caught up in pointless semantics. The literal purpose of language translation is to convey meaning and intent. In translations that actually matter like law or business contracts they're filled with tons of notes and citations to ensure that happens to the best of their ability. It's a bit tricky when you're trying to tell and story particularly one filled with dialog so it sounds "natural", but it can still be done with a decent enough understanding of the languages, conventions, idioms, etc. Now localizers are a real point of contention since they're meant to go beyond mere translations and attempt to make things palatable" for a certain audience. There's a lot more room for bs to happen there for whatever reason they can come up with
>>12218505Thank you for making the game more interesting, translators.
>>12216665I don't care I skip most dialougue in jrpgs
>>12217551We'll have good enough auto-translating devices soon enough that learning a language will be a super niche thing for people who absolutely need to get the full experience of understanding.
>>12216871>"it can't be helped"I've never understood why people act like this is a weird phrase in English. I remember hearing it all the time growing up.
>>12218527I guess it's not a universal thing though, could be more regional.
>>12218038>The voice faded away...I like this the best, "inaudible" is too clinical and "unhearable" is not a word. "Fade away" conveys the mysterious nature of the event, whereas "Fade out" makes me think of a song fading out.>Something about this place... really takes me backAll of the options here are bad but this one gets the closest, a better take in my opinion would be>This place... have I been here before?Not as literal (I'm assuming the Japanese explicitly says nostalgia/nostalgic) but sounds like something someone who speaks English would say>Third exampleAll are bad and unnatural, my take would be"It's one thing to say 'Save the world, save the planet'.. but to actually do it is another."Taking liberties again but none of the AI options are acceptable.
>>12218038My picks from your specific list:>"The voice faded away..."Perfect.>"Something about this place kind of... really takes me back."Good, though slightly wordy. "This place feels... somehow, so familiar" might be tighter.)>"Save the world, save the planet... It's easy enough to -say- it, but actually getting it done's not so easy." This is the most readable, provided the character isn't a king or a god.The best translations on your list are the ones that prioritize the so-called "equivalence of effect". The others are either too stiff/rhythmicless (translationese) or too colloquial-sounding.Does the Japanese line make the player feel mysterious isolation? Then the English line must use "faded away", not "inaudible".Does the Japanese line make the player feel a warm, confusing memory? Then the English line must use "takes me back" or "familiar", not the cold adjective "nostalgic".Some suggestions for lines 2 and 3:>"There is something about this place... It feels so familiar." (Or a polished version of your last option: "Something about this place... really takes me back.")The character isn't analyzing a data point called "nostalgia"; they are experiencing a feeling. Something like this captures the emotion. >"To save the world... to save the planet. It is simple to speak the words, but to take action—to make it a reality—is no easy task." It retains the gravity/dignity of the original Japanese (容易ではない is a formal way of saying "not easy") while using natural English rhetorical structures.
>>12216665as long as it makes sense in English, who cares.
>>12218038>where do you draw the line?This is a weird question because these examples aren't really about drawing the line.>なくなった>次第に消費されて,無い状態になる。尽きる>"The voice faded away...">"The voice faded out..."Would just be correct no?>Here is,Is just wrong>really takes me backWould need to be justified because takes him back to where? >It's easy enough to -say- itYou can't put the 簡単 first messes with the emphasis. Notice how it's >のは簡単だ>のは容易ではないEnds of both. I don't see a line here. Or translation theory. Some are just wrong and some are just better. As far as these examples are concerned.
As someone who has neither the time nor inclination to learn a completely different language will take the localization but also deeply appreciate seeing what the original meaning was since there's no perfect answer for translating everything to a different audience. There are just too many barriers between language and culture to consider without something being lost in translation.
>>12218809>there's no perfect answer for translating everything to a different audience.*different languageWhen *insert writer* wrote *insert book* the book was written in English for fluent English speakers. Not specifically 2nd generation Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine.
I have never had a bad localization ruin a game but I have had several autistic "direct translations" ruin games so yeah.And I know Japanese.
>>12216997If you're gonna bitch and moan about the translations of children's toys not being pure enough, yeah.>b-but they're mature vidya for adults!Everyone involved in the legal processes surrounding them getting brought over viewed them as children's shit. Same as Astro Boy or Starblazers or Robotech or Dragon Ball Z. Plus, most of the examples that will be posted here are fucking ancient by this point.
>>12218842>I have never had a bad localization ruin a game>And I know JapaneseI cannot fathom this. Is it not polarizing when every fucking line is completely made-up? Or double the length, or the characters have forced accents to make them sound dumb when they just sound normal in Japanese?
>>12218849>posted here are fucking ancient by this point.It's almost like this a board for retro games...
>>12218861Yeah, it is, which is why bitching and moaning about translations done by people who are, at worst, about to retire, and at best, already in the grave is a fucking meaningless endeavor. Just learn Japanese if you care so much about the sanctity of games that had stories written as an afterthought, it's not like they're gonna go back and fix the translations in these things.Even if someone did retranslate the games, you people would still complain, as has happened EVERY SINGLE TIME. Maybe you'll learn Japanese and realize most of their good writing is found in blogs and novels, and not fucking toys.
>>12218851If that's happened, it wasn't obvious enough to realize while playing. I feel this whole 'bad localization' thing is only a problem to people who actively worry about it.
>>12218870It is.A lot of the big classics people love from Japan are things they inevitably experienced in a hyper-localized fashion. Stuff like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, Dragon Ball, really any anime that aired from the 1960s to the early/mid 2000s, Xenogears, entire franchises like Sonic and Mega Man, any Castlevania game, all this stuff was super localized and people still loved it. Not even just for the games themselves, people did love works like MGS and DBZ more when they were heavily localized compared to more faithful translations (let alone ones that use the actual Japanese voice performances).
>>12218876I actually hate the modern "more accurate" style of translation. It feels as if I'm reading the Japanese version but half the meaning has been randomly cut out and the entire game feels extremely awkward and stiff. If you're a weeb and you think real japanese feels like that I have some news for you. That shit's just as inaccurate as the localizations you guys hate.
>>12218887>It feels as if I'm reading the Japanese version but half the meaning has been randomly cut out and the entire game feels extremely awkward and stiff.That's actually just Japanese. 20+ year resident of Japan and raised two kids here, the whole thing with the language is that (as used in video games/anime) it IS stilted and repetitious. If you've played one JRPG and encountered each of the major character archetypes and dialogue styles, you've played them all. It's all descended from formulaic dramas to begin with. If you're translating a game's dialogue directly, there's almost never going to be anything interesting or unique about it. Not the previous anon, but I also still find older localizations more enjoyable. The campiness adds to the appeal. Like old kung fu movies, these games SHOULDN'T be taking themselves too seriously.99.9% of the people who say "the accurate Japanese is better" aren't qualified to make that claim. The Japanese manner of communicating a story is fine.. if you are Japanese. It's not just knowing what the words mean in a dictionary, you have to have a brain that is fully integrated with that cultural context to REALLY absorb the impact and nuance of how any character interaction should be received on an intuitive level. And most weebs are never going to be that, even if they claim they've watched 4000 animays. You have to live the life and come at it from the inside, it doesn't work the other way around.
>>12218530What region?
>>12219281Uuuuuuupstate New York?
>>12219283But can I see that Aurora Borealis?
>>12218876Maybe where you grew up, but I everyone I knew growing up always preferred the subbed version of DBZ and hated the English VA's. The subbed version was uncut and had more blood and tits so everyone considered it the cooler version. Did the people in your area really prefer the English dub or did they never see the subbed version?
>>12219414>Your areaYou can just say "The English Speaking World".
>>12218638>em dashesNice AI post.
>>12219241>That's actually just Japanese.No dude. At bare minimum, stuff like particles, syntax, and word choice add a ton of flavor to Japanese sentences, and this is what's not being carried over to these "literal" translations". These are the "missing meanings" that these translations lack. Japanese doesn't actually have a ton of missing meaning in its sentences, this info is just supplied by the context of the conversation instead of being forcibly inserted by grammar rules into most sentences. This line of thought has always been a total non-sequitur to me. It's because Japanese people communicate in such a different and more subtle way than other people that it's hard to translate. Like there is a whole sea of behaviors people in Japan have adopted to subtly be an asshole to other people without losing face. In America if you're at a restaurant and your girlfriend says, "You think that waiter secretly hates us?" because he seemed to ignore you when you called out to him, odds are she's just overthinking things, but in Japan stuff like that is usually true. Even their language is too subtle, it's just a pain
>>12219532Semantic value is relatively equal between languages as they're all fully capable of expressing all the sames meanings. The only real difference is the way the meaning is expressed.
>>12219552You don't know any language besides English.
>>12219509Yes, AI invented them.
>>12219509>>12219843FIRST OF ALL, nobody normal uses em dashes on the internet, it's an obscure tool to use for the specific type of dash characteristic to chatGPT. -, the symbol typically placed alongside an underscore, is closer to a hyphen, whereas an em dash is distinct due to its length.SECONDLY, this post >>12218638 didn't fucking have any em dashes. It's blatantly AI generated but that was the worst avenue of attack anyone could possibly take since it doesn't use a single one.
>>12217551>travelingLOL
>>12220203fwiw (haven't made a single post ITT yet) I've been using em dashes for 25+ years, though I just use a double hythen --like this--. Lots of obnoxious modern rich text interfaces auto-convert it to the unicode emdash. It's no gaurantee that AI wrote it.
>>12220203>SECONDLY, this post >>12218638It has em dashes in the greentext, which isn't greentexted from the response so must have come from somewhere else.
>>12217646My uncle's in beaner entertainment and my girlfriend's in frog, and I can tell you with certainty that the pre-socialmedia definition of localization among professionals was "editing text for another region." That's more or less it. At some point, the word got co-opted by terminally-online otaku to refer to translations that aren't good enough for them.
>>12219532New whiteness map just dropped.
>>12218861Enjoy the world of retro games.
>>12220567Note: this is what happens when you have a passive aggressive translator with a thin skin work on your game.
>>12220567*Retrogamescape
>>12220567>>12220615
>>12217213Reminds me of this.>"Well I can't beat the original guy's penchant for colloquialisms and idioms, but I can at least let off some steam about how autists will never be happy anyway."
>>12216665Literal comes off as robotic. I need me some soul.
>>12216871Anyone who's not a disingenuous faggot like you knows damn well that what people actually MEAN is that they want a translation of the Japanese text rather than some random bullshit the translator made up out of nowhere.>Of course, there is no arguing with translations/localizations that start to add things that simply weren't there and had no basis in the core meaning of the source text, like the OP image which is completely made up, since that's just it - it's made up. These outliers serve only to distract from the actual, important discussions.That's literally what the actual important discussion has always been about.
>>12220857>what people actually MEAN is that they want a translation of the Japanese text rather than some random bullshit the translator made up out of nowhereYou do. I don't.
Tales of Phantasia has an interesting translation. Or is it localization?
>>12219414Retards that encountered the deebeezee burger dub at a very young age got Stockholm syndromed into liking it over the original because the original is "too different" from the heavily rewritten and shittily voiced crap they associated with the series.It's almost kinda fascinating, like willingly eating dogshit instead of steak because the steak doesn't taste dogshitty enough.
>>12220857>what people actually MEAN is that they want a translation of the Japanese text rather than some random bullshit the translator made up out of nowhere.Except that no one, not a single person, not in this thread and not anywhere online, can clearly define exactly what they mean by this.
>>12221027"Did the translator translate the text, yes or no?"Wow that was hard.
>>12221061Yes, and that means absolutely nothing since it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.Until you retards acquire a proper inventory of concepts to discuss with some clarity what you expect from translated works, you will never get closer to having what you think you want.
>>12220932Based
>>12221065>actual translation: "i like it">some localization thing: "yo that shit was lit af"i'd rather these types stick with actually translating
>>12221082also forgot to put in a little unrelated political commentary there
>>12221082Name 10 examples.
>>12221027I thought this looked like a clear enough example >>12220668
>>12221132You have yet to explain what you don't like about that translation, what you think constitutes a "good" translation, and provided evidence to support your claims (without devolving into why you PERSONALLY like one translation over another).
>>12221151>You have yet toI'm not even any of thsoe guys, but i'd prefer the fan and google translation if you're gonna dilate so hard about this
>>12220668Heard the pixel remaster changed this again. Probably to something flat and boring.Not sure what made the retranslator completely give up on that line. Datedness aside, the original translation isn't THAT far off.'Course, it's obviously a knock at romhack bullshitters who kept nearly jeopardizing his work.
I prefer machine translation.
>>12221169>isn't THAT far off.Translation:It's not even close but saying that outright would be too controversial.
>>12221657Fan translation was the worst btw, surprised it didn't devolve into swearing like every other "uncensored translation" back then.
>>12220550It's what happens when "American localization" becomes a practical synonym for garbage.
>>12221765No, worst is right. It's the only one calling Kefka dumb>"One Short of a Six Pack" is an offensive way of describing someone who is not very intelligent.Instead him being a bad person.Potentially GBA could also be the worst but I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume there's a missing JP line. Otherwise GBA worst for the sheer amount of nonsense added.
>>12216698why? so i can read flat, soulless writing in its original language?
>>12217551>It would make traveling much more fun.You haven't left your apartment in ten years.
>>12221791The GBA one is 100% the translator just making up shit that has nothing to do with the original line. There's no missing JP line.
>>12222065Proofs?
>>12216665literal translations are the best. if you play a game localized you didn't really play it.
>>12222137If you play a game in translation, you didn't really play it.
>>12221765lol it did, just not that line.>>12221791It reads like the retards overcorrected due to their irrational hatred of colorful language. Japanese is typical "chotto-'holding-back-what-I-mean'-ese" and frankly a stupid line all things considered. It really feels like something obvious meant for the World of Balance as a "the player better watch out for that Kefka character who might be important to the story according to this NPC" that was accidentally flagged for the World of Ruin. The OG translation is the only one that keeps the weird "holding back from entirely calling him out" tone but calls him nuts instead of indecent, which still fits and ultimately does not change much.
>>12222218This is a psychopath who doesn't speak Japanese.
>>12222218>holding-back-what-I-meanThe speaker is just being normal. When you want someone to believe you, you don't rant about how X guy is the most evil person in the universe. Makes you sound like you have a personal vendetta.
>>12222128If the picture isn't proof enpugh for you, then the game itself.
>>12221765Yeah, it's bad, the fan translator disowned it long ago and has admitted it's 90% guesslation of Japanese text he didn't really understand.
>>12216871In the case of OP image, the mother-in-law part is pure fanfiction that never existed before. Probably didn't exist in the PS1 version either not that that version is a standard of translations.
>>12221791>"One Short of a Six Pack" is an offensive way of describing someone who is not very intelligent.No, it's a euphemistic way of describing him as unhinged or crazy, similar to saying he's got a few screws loose. A less colorful way of phrasing it would bne to say "he's not all there," which CAN mean stupid, but more often than not means lacking in judgement due to being mentally unstable.
>>12222923No it refers to intelligence. The confusion stems from the FF6 usage clearly being about sanity not intelligence, and it kind of works but the expression is about intelligence.
>>12216665The GBA button is tripping me up, what game is this?
>>12222939FF5
>>12222945Don't localize the name, it's V not 5.
>>12222975I could write ファイナルファンタジーV but most of you couldn't read it.
>>12216665localizationsIt's not the fault of the concept that every white collar job in the west is at least half women and pozzed to the moon.
>>12222993>fainaru fantajii Just because it's been transliterated doesn't mean it's not still english
>>12217526It's literally "White Snow" in Katakana. They did keep it.
>>12216665Literal translations touched up by an actual writer will always be peak. Just do a double check so they don't make shit up.
>>12216698Most people who do that end up actually getting interested in the culture and stop giving a shit about video games. By the time you can functionally read/speak the language, you've been exposed to so much of Japan's culture outside of a niche hobby that realizing you did it so you can 宝魔ハンターライム, properly feels like a waste of time.
>>12223042Weird, learning a language didn't make ME stop having a hobby.
>>12223068It's more that the process of bettering themselves by learning a new language that actually requires you to understand the culture made them interested in other things. There are still plenty of people who only do it for a hobby (why do you thing localizers/translators exist in the first place?), but it's really easy to suddenly realize you don't care about putting all of that time and energy into some rando PC-FX game because you now have an author whose works you like, or are now super interested in some historical period or modern political issues.
>>12223085I stil find it funny that the newest go-to insult here is ESL, somehow knowing multiple languages is a bad thing.
>>12216665KINO WOOLSEY
>>12223101If your first language isn't english AND japanese you have no business translating shit. JSLs and ESLs are frauds.
>>12216698Ok, Ken-sama
>>12216871The "it can't be helped" which is so commonplace isn't even any good. I'm ESL, but I'm pretty sure no english speaker says "It can't be helped" ever. It's not a thing. "What are ya gonna do" is a better translation
>>12223042It's the other way around. You'd have to be retarded otaku to spend that many years learning the language. No one is gonna do it for video games
>>12223101The fact that you can't even comprehend the subtextual distinction between "ESL" as an insult and "any person whose second language is English," yet you condescendingly scoff at the idea kind of highlights why ESL is an effective and accurate insult. It's not about bilingual/multilingual people being inherently bad, it's about a very particular type of person who has a weak grasp of the language yet arrogantly asserts that everything they say is right, even when native speakers correct them.
>>12223139Too bad subtext is dead on this site and ESL is applied to anyone who so much as makes an innocuous spelling error.
>>12223107While Woolsey did preliminary work on a canceled Final Fantasy V localization for SNES, it didn't even get to the text-insertion phase. The English PlayStation version is a textport of the also-canceled PC version, which was instead done by the in-house native-Jap who apparently also did US Final Fantasy II. This is legitimately an insane thing to do since the text did not get any passthrough polish; for context, imagine if Square based the PlayStation translation of FFII on the unreleased NES version.I think the FFV fan-translation slapped the shit out of Square so much that they've made damn sure that mangy kids can never outdo them ever again.
>>12223149Ironically, it's largely because of those same ESLs trying and failing to use ESL as an insult while having no nuanced understanding or self-awareness of why they were called that in the first place.
>>12222218>It really feels like something obvious meant for the World of Balance as a "the player better watch out for that Kefka character who might be important to the story according to this NPC" that was accidentally flagged for the World of Ruin.Interesting, never considered that. What's the same NPC say in WoB?
>make translation mistake>it's actually an improvement
>>12223479This series has the best english font of the 8 and 16-bit era
>>12223479I always wanna hear the thought process behind mistakes like this
>>12223479What does the Japanese actually say?
>>12223685Normally there'd be nothing to worry about, but Astral-sama is old so...
>>12216698EveI refuse to learn Japanese because they can't speak English for shit.
>>12216871Anywhere between literal stilted translation and punched-up added-context semi-localization is generally acceptable even if people's preference might lean slightly one way.What everyone unanimously doesn't like is localizers literally inventing text out of whole cloth because they are a failed writer who can't produce anything of worth off their own back and need to hijack someone else's work to express their "creativity".There's a world of difference between boring literal translations, and adding Seinfeld and Ronald Reagan references into a JRPG. The localizer for Megaman X5 changed the names of all the bosses to members of Guns n Roses solely because they liked the band. It's pretty clear where they are overstepping the mark and there's no use trying to wave it away as players being overly autistic and pedantic about it.
>>12223740>The localizer for Megaman X5 changed the names of all the bosses to members of Guns n Roses solely because they liked the bandI don't like Guns & Roses because the singer has an irritating voice, but I think it's a pretty funny choice.
>>12223740>NOOOOO YOU CAN'T NAME CHARACTERS NAMED AFTER STUPID SOUNDING THINGS INTO MORE RECOGNIZABLE, FAMILIAR, RELATABLE THINGS>E-Except when I PERSONALLY like it!!!
>>12223697That change is genuinely hilarious.
>>12223829It's acceptable to change names to a more relatable joke/reference when the names are originally a joke/reference that won't land with the overseas audience. Japanese people think it's hilarious to name enemies after condiments, but that would just seem weird to Americans, so it's appropriate to find other reference Americans would enjoy when localizing the game for Americans. Would you say this is the case in Mega Man X5? Were the bosses all originally named based on some reference or joke that people outside of Japan simply wouldn't get, or did the names get turned INTO references for no reason? These distinctions are crucial in determining what's appropriate for a localization.
>>12223840>it's acceptable when I PERSONALLY like it, b-because... uh... because, well... because I SAY SO, OK!? JEEZ!
>>12218523Lazy and jealous, a real communist
>>12223740>The localizer for Megaman X5 changed the names of all the bosses to members of Guns n Roses solely because they liked the band.It was actually because she (voice of Claire Redfield) wanted to make her husband happy. Then they divorced anyway... True story.It was probably a last-minute change because the manual still had the Japanese names, and Legacy Collection 2 undid the GNR stuff so maybe there's a late localization build that looks like that.Still better than the Japanese 'Igloozoid Assholgleolio' type names we started getting post-X5.
>>12223847I literally outlined very specific circumstances in which it's okay to swap one reference or joke for another to retain cultural relevance but not okay to insert a joke or reference where there wasn't already one. It's completely objective.
>>12223851>Still better than the Japanese 'Igloozoid Assholgleolio' type names we started getting post-X5.Nah the original X games' stupid maverick names are great. Gravity Beetbood's my favorite and I'll never get over GODKARMACHINE O INARI. I'm glad they didn't bother changing all the stupid enemy names in the credits at least.
>>12223851That's how the names always were, actually. It's why Boomer Kuwanger carried over by accident. He just left his pals like ICY PENGUIGO in Japan.
>>12223829>main character uses only katanas for weapons>NO JAPANESE NAMES ALLOWED>other character uses european knight swords for weapons>NAME HIS ULTIMATE WEAPON AFTER A KATANAwhat the fuck was woolsey's actual problem
>>12223990I presume the rationale for that was the main character's basic weapons should not sound more exotic than a central legendary sword (Though 'Grand Dream' fits the 'planet's dream' theme better)
>>12223042>>12223085I dont understand the point youre trying to make are you saying that after learning japanese you stop playing video games or you stop wanting to translate video games? I "can functionally read/speak the language" like you said but I play more japanese games year after year but I was never interested in translation.
>>12223894you are way too sensible for this place, or to be a translator
I prefer understanding what the game writer intended with that line. If it's a cultural reference I wouldn't get as a stupid Amerifat, change it.If there wasn't a dumb mother-in-law joke in the original, DON'T PUT A FUCKING MOTHER-IN-LAW-JOKESo I guess localization, but not the localization boogeyman you faggots memed yourselves into believing.
>>12224006Is the correct spelling Granleon or Grandleon?
>>12224394>change things that can't/won't translate without some translator's note of some kind>don't insert new thingsthis is apparently hard a concept for people
>>12224397グランドリオン = there's supposed to be a "d". You might have seen it without because Masa and Mune are Gran (グラン) and Leon (リオン), whereas 'D'oreen (ドリーン) is part of グランドリーム (Grandream). (Also pretty sure Leon is supposed to be "Reon" and "Doreen" should be something like "Drean".) Name's imperfect anyway because all three don't fit in cleanly, Leon/Reon gets left out in upgraded form.
>>12216665You don't need to translate word by word but I don't want the meaning to be changed.
>>12216894>jpeg phonepoACTUALLY LOOKS THE SAUCE>its the samegeez, if i didnt hated journos.
>>12216698I did. And old video game make mch more sense now. Not only you read the text straight from the original writer's pen, but when you understand the Japanese way of thinking you understand the subtext, the reason, the innuendo behind the text.I'd say it was worth it, but then again i'm a polyglot, i learn languages for fun. People who are not into learning languages are probably gonna find it boring and tedious.
>>12224263It stops being the only thing they care about. That, once you pass the N1, you probably interested in more than just seeing what was ACTUALLY said in an old Working Designs game.You're a rare breed if you committed to learning the language and still ended up only caring about playing untranslated video games. There's nothing wrong with that; its just not the path most people end up on.
>>12223019Since it's a foreign name in the original japanese, they should have translated it to ShiroYuki.
>>12225081i always like that idea
>>12224263From personal experience, it's really more a matter of>I enjoyed (thing) enough to put the time into it to see that others can enjoy (thing) as well.I think a lot of people sorely underestimate the amount of work (mostly tedium) that goes into translating a video game, though. I don't recommend it. Stick to books/light novels/other shit that generally goes in a straight line. The smaller quantity of text in a vidya belies the fact that you become responsible for keeping track of each relationship between the text and the story progression, minding every possible reference and callback to things that happened somewhere before, minor character interactions, anything. God help you the moment the script starts becoming substantially larger than that. As it goes, usually the complexity scales exponentially with text amount and not linearly. This has a way of making every part of the process take a lot longer than it would to do something that goes in, generally, a straighter line.Now consider that the majority of people who participate in video game translation couldn't translate their way out of a paper bag and have no way of enjoying the source work properly to begin with, and realize that there's a reason vidya gets the shortest end of the shortest stick when it comes to translation.
>>12225098>sorely underestimate the amount of work (mostly tedium) that goes into translating a video gameYou can literally just make shit up and people will praise you for it. If you're actually doing your job it's difficult(still lower end compared to other professions honestly) but you don't have to actually do your job. So none of the actual difficulties of translation matter.
>>12225106Irony would be a more correct term than sarcasm for Dracula's final taunt.
>>12225127It's not a taunt.
>>12225106>When you still haven't beaten the Gemini translation to take pictures.
>>12225098for some reason it's kind of eerie how similar this spreadsheet is to the one i used when i did this. you even used one of the same colors i did for the cells.
>>12216698I've already learned English for that. It's good enough, not starting all over again.
>>12226519You don't actually start over when learning a language. If you think about it most people start with some JP-EN dictionary, meaning they get to use their english knowledge to understand japanese. And then there's the benefit of understanding concepts before you learn the words for them. There's tons of cheats you get.
>>12226576Fair enough, I also heard it's easier to learn new languages the more you already know. I natively spoke like 2.5 Slavic ones, probably helped.Also motivation and actual usage matter I guess. In school I had English and German - English clicked because of vidya, movies, and this gay forum, but German never stuck, 'cause I didn't give a shit.Nippon does have stuff worth digging into, but I don't know if I'll bring myself to actually learn it.
>"1000 years ago i saw something". Man these literal translations sure are dry.
>translation: what is this? *picks up weird scifi gizmo*>localizer: what the fucking hell is this stupid peace of shit? *picks up weird scifi gizmo*>reason given: is to show he's tough :)yeah flavor text can be weird I've heard of context being "lost" but depending on the game you can understand context based on the you know story and character animations or portraits and stuff. I've heard americans struggle with understanding context and needing things to be spelled out for them so maybe that's why it happens.
>>12227098No original Japanese? No opinion can be considered credible without the source text. Imagine arguing about a book using cliffnotes as a primary source.
>>12227098I'd take the reasoning if they don't go overboard on it
>>12227098>translation:>It's decided>It can't be helped>After all (in unnatural places)>Too/also (unnatural usage)>Before breakfast>I'll never forgive you>Even if you say that...>To think that...>To think that you've come this far...>You'll go no further>Not in a place like this>What are you doing in a place like this>Where is this place>At this rate>Take responsibility!>You're a hundred years early!>Disappear!>How nostalgic>My heart isn't ready>That's my line!>As expected of>This feeling is...!>What is this light!?/T-That light!!!>What is this power!?/T-That power!!!
>>12227098>I win my imaginary argument :)
>>12223894I've seen that exact same "IT'S ONLY OKAY IF I PERSONALLY" multiple times. I think he's legitimately insane
>>12227191Legitimately this is an issue. Without authentic Japanese text you can propose any fucking translation you want. You have entire chunks of a passage untranslated or cut out completely, or have parts added to intentionally make it sound more off. You can give the benefit of the doubt but you can't know for sure whether the claim has any basis in reality.
>>12227203i'm thinking localizationfags are as insane as hardcore dark souls 2 fans (excuse the nonretro), they can't see what's in front of them
>>12227208The issue is, the argument is self-evident. For example, how do you go from this...
>>12227217...To this?And this is a great example because you don't even need to know Japanese to see that one of these text boxes contains 1 word, while the other is nearly filled to the limit. You literally don't need to be an "expert" at all to identify that there is a clear and glaring problem with the message in English.
>>12223589My guess is they fucked up when reading the first line and didn't realize the negative, reading it as "Normally you'd worry, but he's old anyway".
>>12216665
>>12227217>>12227220It's only self-evident if you have japanese text in the first place though. If that example was a proposed "literal" translation and then the localization,no orignal japanese text, you wouldn't actually be able to trust anything.
>>12227227Whoops that was meI was going to say these Woolsey type translations were great back in the 90s, when Japanese was damn near unlearnable for the average person and Japan was still strange and mysterious to most americans. But as an adult I was playing "Albert Odyssey" I think and although the game has a very dark and serious intro, the characters constantly cracking jokes and the faeries speaking in valley girl accents gives me major tonal whiplash. So, I don't like them anymore. Back in the day the liberties taken with the scripts were fun and helped sell the product, but nowadays in 2025 I think most of us want literal translations.
>>12227231>when Japanese was damn near unlearnable for the average personThere has never been a time in history where language was simultaneously unlearn-able. while at the same time having cultural exports. No, average as a qualifier doesn't justify that statement. The 90s were well past the era of japanese isolationism.
>>12227240I was 9 years old and it would be several years before anyone I knew owned a computer, several more years before programs like Pimsleurs Japanese and Rosetta Stone and nowadays Duolingo launched, and most of my friends were the same way, none of us knew Japanese, none of us knew very much about Japan (including my parents and my friends parents) and the amount of Anime shows on Cable Television could be counted on one hand. Japan was pretty mysterious and unknowable back then, as my lived experience. Most of us only knew what "Nintendo Power" would tell us about it, and what little we could piece together from watching Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z. At the time, I thought Japan was full of Anime and Ninjas. I'm telling you what happened when I was there, in the 90s lol. It would be like another 9 years before I was made aware that Japan does not, in fact, have Ninjas in it and that Ninjutsu wasn't "more powerful" than Kung Fu
>>12227247You being ignorant because you were a small child is different than society as a collective being ignorant. Nothing was stopping the average man from going to the library and reading books about Japanese culture and language. Obviously the average person did not do this. The average person still does not do this. But the option was there.
>>12227247>>12227256One of the most important things about language learning that was already fairly well-known, but still "mystifying" to the average person, was that>read more and listenIs the single most effective method for learning a language.I used to know EOPs all the time back then who would parrot shit like>"Uh, well, ummm immersion is the best way to learn a language because uh I heard it from some reliable source, trust me bro!"But it was a lot harder to find people who had actually gone through this process of linguistic sublimation to see whether it was legitimate.I still think most normalfags are mystified a bit by it, but there is more proof easily found now than ever before that immersion is an effective language learning method, and thus more people are more open to doing it. There are still copers who wish they'd learned x or y or z when they were younger, but you definitely see a lot more people who don't traditionally fall into the language-learner demographic (adults) learning and seeing great results. And, moreover, without falling for garbage like college courses or other shit that doesn't actually work.
>>12227256My grade five teacher spoke Japanese and told me lots about it, but he was the exception and not really the rule. I didn't even know "Gohan" meant rice until he saw me drawing Dragon Ball Z pictures and informed me of it. He was also an official diplomat to Japan for my country. He died of brain cancer and the Japanese friendship society built a little plaque with his name on it beside the school he taught in and that guy, at the time, was the guy who knew the most about Japan in my life. The rest of us were clueless. Most of us were not diplomats to Japan or Professors like he was. I'm just glad you recognize this was my ignorance as a child because I'm not sure what your other points may be. That people could still learn Japanese if they wanted to? I mean, I could have learned Southern Afrikaans too if I was motivated enough but pretty sure most of us couldn't find a tutor, the internet was in it's dialup phase, most of us didn't own a computer, smart phones didn't exist back then and most of the people I knew had no idea where or how to even begin learning Japanese. I knew one guy in my entire life who knew anything about Japan and that was literally his job.The entire anime section at my local video update, which was the rental store with the wider selection, had something like 20 movies and OVA's in it at the time. I remember Slayers, Akira, Genocyber and Dirty Pair. Outside of those maybe 20 movies and short series, I knew nothing of Japan. I'm sorry if that bothers you somehow. I'm just telling you what I remember from my life in the 90s. All my friends were the same way. I'd ask the adults and they'd tell me they didn't know. I didn't get mad at them, I just appreciated them being honest enough to admit they didn't know any better than I did about Japan. William Gibson wrote Cyberpunk novels partly based on American ignorance of Japan and such things. The whole genre is partly based in that 80s 90s ignorance. It was a fact of life for me
>>12227263I feel like immersion is impossible on the same level now because even if you're the only English speaker in Bumfuktu you can just go on the internet.
>>12227271>I feel like immersion is impossible on the same level nowThe fuck do you mean?It has never been easier to download a fuckload of anime, audiobooks, light novel epubs, visual novels, and read/listen for hours uninterrupted.
>>12227272I think he might have fucked up and meant "Possible" because he's pretty much saying the same thing you are lol
>>12227279I thought he meant you can't forced into it anymore. Atleast if you're an english speaker because english has spread to the point where it's almost all you need to get by. The trial by fire approach doesn't really work.
>>12227272Yeah and I am under no obligation to understand a word of what any of that shit says, half of it I can literally just read the English translation instead.
>>12227287>Yeah and I am under no obligation to understand a wordClearly, since this is logic you've chosen to apply to your native English as well it seems!
>>12227269My point is that globalization predates the internet, and ones capacity to learn things about a foreign culture in 1990 was a lot more advanced than wording like "mysterious and unknowable" would let off.
>>12227303Oh. Ok I agree.My only point is that learning shit was way fucking harder back in the 90s. You couldn't just tap on your smartphone with a fun little gameified version like we have with duolingo today.Back then we had flash cards and big thick musty text books. If you were lucky you could mail order a huge cassette tape collection or something like Pimsleur. It was like 60 cassette tapes and cost a fortune. Sometimes the book wouldn't be available, because someone else had rented it out.And at the time I just wanted to ride my bike around town with my friends lol. It was a different era. Pokemon and Digimon got pretty big around then and that helped clear up a few misconceptions.Without these weird woolsey type translations I would have lost so much context from the characters and such. It really added a lot more flavor and personality for me. It took a long time before it really began to sink in for me that Japan is a lot like what we have over here. Japanese people eat, drink, poop, enjoy sleeping in soft and warm beds, have male and female who have sex, enjoy jokes and playing games like I do, etcLearning everything was a lot harder back then. It really bums me out cuz I look at kids today and they don't know how to do fuck all, despite having ten times the learning resources I did as a child. But I'm getting off topic here. Love you all. Hope everyone is having a good night. I'ma go now <3 In closing most of my happy memories of FF6 include the woolseyisms. I can't even imagine the game without all the Americana he sprinkled into it. I mean, I did play the new translation, but as others have said, it feels dry compared to the liberties they took when it first came out. It definitely made it feel a lot more personalized and tailored towards me as a dumb North American kid. I was able to enjoy it more.But nowadays when I see that happening it just makes me feel slightly insulted, like the translator thought I was too dumb to get it
>>12227309>Back then we had flash cardsThat's still the easiest and quickest method for learning a language by the way. Game-like apps are a waste of time
>>12227339Learning vocabulary. Actually getting into the habit of daily reading and listening is going to be a wall no matter what.
>>12227309This is going way off topic, but I have some teachers in my extended families, and based on what they tell me, I am seriously concerned for the state of modern education. I know I sound like an old man yelling at a cloud, but I seriously think technology is poison for children's ability to learn things. The kid who is lectured to by a teacher with chalk on a blackboard and who is assigned homework problems from a textbook is going to learn way more than the kid who uses whatever techno-garbage they're pushing in schools these days. Everything is done on Chromebooks (basically Android tablets with a keyboard) and all the kids let ChatGPT do everything for them. I know things are different between antsy children and self motivated adults, but I seriously wonder the extent to which these language learning apps are actually useful vs being a distraction from older, better resources.Having unfettered access to foreign language books, radio, and television is a godsend, though.
>>12227225oh yeah, probably. I'm really bad about catching those truncated negatives sometimes too.
>>12216665>literal translationsusually suck as they feel stiff and unnatural, you need a bit of adapting to make it work, and no, I wouldn't go as far as "son of a submariner" even if it's pretty damn funny.
>>12227191What if I told you. *looks left* *looks right* it's more likely to happen in fan translations?
>>12228324
Localizations, but I intend to learn japanese so I don't have to rely on translations
>@Grok dump all the text of every game translated by Ted Woolsey, then take this shitty jap game and translate it in Ted's style
>>12216665Fucking KEK
>>12227217>>12227220Man, this retard really had an issue with the word "stop" for some reason.
>>12227217>>12227220high context vs low context languages and different cultural expectations
>>12228661More like English majors failing at launching their writing careers.
>>12228324>*looks left* *looks right*kys reddit
Most localizations suck because Americans who translate games professionally suck dick at English more than Japanese, and so do the people who prefer them. Case in point:>>12220668>>12221169>>12221765>>12222923>hurr the official one is good because it says thing it doesn't mean!
>>12228640These people usually do fine work on their work. If I had to suspect the one fuck-up on the Final Fantasy V Advance localization team, it was probably the "editor", Colin Williamson, whose name is also attached to Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions.
>>12228751>people"Erin" is a man, btw.
>>12227231>I think most of us want literal translationsYou do. I don't.I think video games should be fun. It's not art, it's not literature, it's just entertainment for male teenagers.Bring in the jokes.
>>12228815Why though?
>>12228843He's jewish.
>>12216665I want a translation that doesn't change parts of the story or change the characterization of characters. I am fine with localizations when, for all intents and purposes, it's not changing anything. One major problem with Locations is changing the names of characters. That should never happen. That's how you get Kor Meteor. FFXIV has had similar problems in the story that make part of the English TL basically non-canon.
>>12216665I want to see both at the same time
>>12228874>I want a translation that doesn't change the characterization of charactersheres a black pill for you, this is unavoidable when changing a japanese speaking character into an english speaking character. There is baggage that comes along with every language and when you change the language you change the character. Start coping or start learning.
>>12229080Here's a blackpill for you: it can be done well and it will be once your kind is dead. The vast majority of normalfags already hate you.
>>12229091>Here's a blackpill for you: it can be done well
>>12229094Americans already are the most accurate translators, despite all the kike and brown noise. Look at any English-Japanse game and weep at the absolute disregard they have for our puns and language. White Americans are the only human beings who care about translation accuracy.
>>12229098How many languages do you know?
>>12229141All of them. Hebrew is the single most ugly one.
>>12229091>your kindenglish speakers that learned japanese to play japanese games? Why would normalfags hate me?
>>12216665The only saving grace of modern gaming is that Working Designs is dead. Fuck you, Vic
>>12229163jews>Why would normalfags hate me?Because you're a hecking colonialist who killed the hecking brownspawn.
>>12229182Im not a jew, im not brown, and im not a tranny. Like I said if you arent learning japanese then continue to cope and come up with better and better coping methods if you want to be happy.
>>12229187I'd rather just remove kikes from my country.
>>12228640I've seen worse actually but it's not retro
>>12229098>Americans already are the most accurate translatorsThey're the worst translators. Other languages don't have these problems. Other langauges are often based on the butchered english and are still somehow more accurate.
>>12229212They're the best translators. They are held to a greater standard. Look at any Japanese translation of an English game, it's fucking garbage. Also you're jewish.
>>12229212Truth. It's just anti-japanese racism>Translator has to translate a character saying yes from a game in another language>French game: translates it as "Yes">Spanish game: translates it as "Yes">Italian game: translates it as "Yes">German game: translates it as "Yes">Russian game: translates it as "Yes">Japanese game: translates it as "Heck-a-roony-do! I agree 1000%, lmao!"
test
>>12220943One of my favorite fan translations. Have to finally play the PSX version one of these days
>>12223840I want as many references to Bill Clinton and jokes about blue dresses with white stains on them.
>>12228843It's a game, you're supposed to enjoy it. I don't take games "writing" seriously because it's honestly quite pitiful.
>>12223840>Japanese people think it's hilarious to name enemies after condiments, but that would just seem weird to AmericansYou need to back this up. Because Akira Toriyama did it but that doesn't mean it's tied to japanese cultural. And how do you even know the intent is to be funny? What if the characters are named after condiments with the intent of seeming weird? You can't make changes like that based on assumptions.
>>12229953Why though?
>>12229953Might as well play them in Japanese with a random sitcom running in the background then.
>>12230142It's not sitcoms anymore old-man. Subway surfer footage and family guy clips. Modernized brainrot.
>>12228751Weird, I usually find that more cooks in the kitchen is good for official work because they're professionals cross-checking each other, whereas you don't want that with fan translations because it devolves into an autism support group.
>>12230038>why do you want to have fun?
>>12230583How is being lied to fun?
learn japanese, avoid whatever mental illness this thread is
>>12230583Pic makes no sense in the context of this reply chain.
>>12232452That's because anon doesn't understand the actual message of the comic and is using it wrong.
>>12227970the thing nobody wants to admit is the sense of humor that a Japanese language bars/programming nerd would have is not even remotely close to the sense of humor found in general audiences
>>12216871Bingo, can we stop having bait threads about this now
>>12217028literally just start with lingodeer or even Duolingo. Just start. Start. That is the important part. Worry about the most efficient way after when you know you are interested in taking things further
>>12216997Kinda crazy how the people that make these games are fully grown adults that treat them as their passion projects and put their entire artistic merit into the games only for retards to have the brain dead opinion of "this is just stupid shit for kids nobody takes this seriously."
>>12228751Tom and Colin were fairly big-name SomethingAwful goons iirc which carried over to the Advance translations
>>12218523>>12220264>>12221853Why did a simple post encouraging people to better themselves through learning a language draw such vitriol? That's kind of strange.
>>12235756people don't like confronting their incompetence
Let's face it, nobody cared at the time. When these games were new and children were playing them, for the most part, the story barely even mattered. It's actually pretty rare in JRPGs for actions to have later consequences in the game. That's why Chrono Trigger was so ground breaking, and Fire Emblem before had some charm because deaths were permanent.But the story was just a couple screenfuls of text all told in many of these games, you could print it out double spaced on ten sheets of paper or so. And the stories were essentially similar every time, you need to go on a fuckin' bunch of fetch quests to beat a series of increasingly powerful enemies to finally discover the secret of which things to bring where in, usually, a completely linear fashion.Now even in the old Bards Tale and Ultima days, before JRPGs were really a thing, you had more freedom and a bigger better story, often with branches and consequences and such. Actual dilemmas which won't immediately result in a game over, or a win, but which might make things harder down the road or easier perhaps, or different. I think people expect too much from JRPGs at least until the mid to late '90s when they started to really mature and branch out conceptually. 16-bit games are typically aimed at kids. The few exceptions you could point out prove this rule. Also westerners don't get obscure jokes about Japanese cultural tics only availble to born-and-raised Japs.
>>12235909>That's why Chrono Trigger was so ground breakingim not reading the rest of your post, play more games
>>12235909>16-bit games are typically aimed at kids. The few exceptions you could point out prove this rule.This only makes sense if you completely ignore the history of Japanese home computer games. There were thousands of games released for 16-bit computers in Japan, almost all of which were bought by university students and salarymen, not kids.>That's why Chrono Trigger was so ground breakingSweet Home is an example of a JRPG with multiple endings from over a half decade before Chrono Trigger. I'm sure there are even earlier examples, that was just the first that came to mind. Regardless, Chrono Trigger was in no ways "ground breaking" in this regard.
>>12235909>>12235921>>12236086Warpiggies don't actually play games. They just sit online for 16 hours a day and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about how supposedly good WRPGs are in unrelated JRPG threads. Once you realize this, their weird out of touch posts make sense. It's just a way for them to avoid having to actually sit down and PLAY a WRPG.
>>12234625Correct
>>12216871>>12217106You talk like a salty localizer.
>>12216698お見事!よくやった!
>>12216665>Play japanese games with nip cryptography Only if they make ffv-2 with Octopath Traveler art-wise. Also, make Bartz a deceased Chad that had children with all the girls to unify somehow the kingdoms; and then make a story about all the siblings uniting to kill Enuo in the middle of a succession war.I guarantee you, this ffv-2 would be fire.
>>12216665I prefer my own translations
>>12219532>No dude. At bare minimum, stuff like particles, syntax, and word choice add a ton of flavor to Japanese sentences,And it is all reduced by virtue of the massive reliance on repetitive archetypes and tropes. The Japanese language has a lot of capacity for complex and nuance, and Japanese MEDIA is NOT LIKE THAT.>Japanese doesn't actually have a ton of missing meaning in its sentencesYou've missed the point entirely. Structural rules of grammar and particles cannot prepare for what it's like to actually be Japanese, raised in Japan, immersed in the culture with an implicit understand of how you psychologically react to every turn of phrase. You cannot learn this from a book and you cannot communicate this in a "translation" no matter how you adapt an honorific or stress over whether someone uses "boku" or "ore".
>>12235921>play more gamesIt's still one of the top games for the most possible endings, especially from that particular era. Branching and storyline complexity was relatively NEW back then for JRPGs.Western home comptuer gamers had these options before JRPGs were even a thing.>>12236086>This only makes sense if you completely ignore the history of Japanese home computer games. There were thousands of games released for 16-bit computers in Japan, almost all of which were bought by university students and salarymen, not kids.I should have specified 16-bit console games. That's what was meant. I'm aware of the bulk of Japanese software and how it's erotic. Of the hundreds of remaining titles yes there were quite a few games. But which had branching storylines, complex plots, etc. among RPGs? Not many. In fact on Japanese home computers you mostly had the same games you had on Japanese consoles, the same types basically. Except it was mostly erotic games for those not present on consoles.>Sweet Home is an example of a JRPG with multiple endings from over a half decade before Chrono Trigger.That's cool but it's really not quite the same thing, is it? I'm sure you could find others too, but in this case these exceptions prove the rule. You still don't commonly get multiple endings or such things in JRPGs. Let alone retro ones, it was quite rare.>>12236157>Warpiggies don't actually play games. They just sit online for 16 hours a day and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about how supposedly good WRPGs are in unrelated JRPG threads.I read this as:>p-puhlease don't criticize JRPGs! No, it's painful!Complaining about irrelevant jokes in a kid's game translated for kids who don't know Japanese and not being Japanese, will never understand without special training and not even then... what's the point? We've seen this thread many times. It's always so pointless lol. And it exposes how shallow JRPG fans typically are.
>>12236437Good, now do pajeetnese
>>12236086Most of those multiple endings are just variants, I beaten the game, legit on cart in japanese.
>>12229240This, but UNIRONICALLY
>>12216871nice hair splitting attempt. we just want accurate translations without added bs.
>>12236613You don't even know what you mean by "accurate".I translated "ガキ" as "chit" the other day in a dialogue where someone was talking smack to a cheeky girl who'd disrespected him, and this is far more interesting, expressive, and by virtue of its expressiveness, arguably more accurate since it precisely describes the type of character being insulted. But some would get all steamed about it being "Britbong" despite being clear and good.Too bad Americans won't get it, but what are dictionaries for, eh?
>>12236647>A chit is a small slip of paper with writing on it, often used as a note or voucher for money owed, especially for food or drink.What does this have to do with a girl being cheeky?
>>12236659>what are dictionaries for, eh?
>>12236665As it turns out, dictionaries aren't the same in all regions.
>>12236157>It's just a way for them to avoid having to actually sit down and PLAY a WRPG.Does Wizardry count? I like it quite a bit, but I'm convinced Greenberg and Woodhead were spiritually Japanese.>>12236558>But which had branching storylines, complex plots, etc. among RPGs?That's irrelevant to the claim I was addressing, that "16-bit games are typically aimed at kids." This is false.>In fact on Japanese home computers you mostly had the same games you had on Japanese consoles, the same types basically. Except it was mostly erotic games for those not present on consoles.This is, in fact, not a fact. Console ports of PC games were limited, for the most part, to the most successful titles only (Princess Maker, Ys, Nobunaga no Yabou). Vanishingly few games were ported from consoles to PCs. Some, but not many, arcade games received both PC ports and console ports. The overlap between PC and console libraries was rather small. Additionally, the majority of PC games in Japan did not contain erotic content. The audience for Japanese PC games skewed older because the computers cost anywhere from $1,200 to $2,500, while the games were typically $100 or more, not because it was all pornography. To be clear, I'm not denying the existence of erotic games on these platforms. But they by no means constitute the majority of Japanese PC exclusives.>That's cool but it's really not quite the same thing, is it?You initially described Chrono Trigger as "ground breaking," not as one among numerous titles (of which at least one pre-dates it) that act as exceptions which somehow prove a rule. The claim you've walked back to may very well be correct depending on how how loose your rules are. But your initial claim was false.>>12236582At best you can call Chrono Trigger a refinement, not "ground breaking."
>>12236647Is every character presented as speaking britbong or did you just do it for that one character and just that one time, meaning said character normally uses American slang, creating incomprehension that's not present in the original work?
>>12236675autocorrect*incohesion not incomprehension.
>>12236647Its funny, after learning japanese as someone whos first language is english you realize how much easier it is to understand a japanese game made for the japanese compared to a japanese game translated into english because of people like you who insert all these nonsensical french/german/spanish words into the script because they sound exotic and cool. Not my problem anymore, good riddance.
>>12236675The entire script is being done in primarily British English as its neutral "baseline", but with regional accents and dialects since the game takes place in an alternate version of the real world.Bongland is the only major English-speaking country NOT properly represented in-game which is what solidified the decision.
>>12236647>too bad the primary and most wealthy global audience won't get itYes, that really is too bad because it will probably hurt business for the company.
>>12236678>willing to learn one of the most difficult languages for english speakers>upset by having to perform a google search 3 times during a 30 hours gamenot for one second am i buying this EOP LARP.
>>12236687Japanese writers are fluent in japanese. American localizers are not fluent in french/german/spanish/britbong/shake-sphere.
>>12236674>That's irrelevant to the claim I was addressing, that "16-bit games are typically aimed at kids."Console games? They absolutely were.>This is, in fact, not a fact. Console ports of PC games were limited, for the most part, to the most successful titles only (Princess Maker, Ys, Nobunaga no Yabou).Come on that's not true at all, you had a huge number of JRPGs that started on computers first and then went to consoles. Or came out at roughly the same time. The Dragon Quest games and Final Fantasy games stand out as obvious ones but many others exist. As I said it's common to find a big popular JRPG on both consoles and computers.>The overlap between PC and console libraries was rather small. That's wrong too, fighting games, platform games, war games, they were commonly released on both consoles and computers in Japan. The overlap was significant. Overwhelming even.>The audience for Japanese PC games skewed olderThis was true partly because Japanese didn't view the home computer market seriously, it was something for otaku. It wasn't until maybe the late '90s that people commonly had computers in Japan. Those were for business, and otaku (porn). And erotic games make up, I'm not even kidding, something like a quarter to nearly half of the catalogs on Wikipedia. I'm not saying that's 100% accurate but it's certainly a better and more useful reference than anything else.They had a shit load of porn games over there.>You initially described Chrono Trigger as "ground breaking,"It was, it's recognized to this day as one of the best role playing games of all time. The battle strategies with actually making placement on the field count, being able to team up with multiple party members, being able to avoid random encounters or grind as much as you want, and the multiple branching storylines with long term consequences, it's ground breaking. It has ALL the necessary parts, not just one or another.But these are kid's games.
>>12217018>hasn't really been a thing since the 90smaybe in Americuh but it's still pretty prevalent in Europe
>>12236891>Console games? They absolutely were.If we focus solely on console games, then I'd tentatively agree.>Come on that's not true at all.None of the 16-bit Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games were ported to any home computer platforms of the era. The first two games in either series received MSX ports. But those are 8-bit games being ported to an 8-bit computers. Falcom is the only company I'm aware of that ported a large portion of their 16-bit PC RPGs to home consoles.>That's wrong too, fighting games, platform games...This is somewhat true in the case of 8-bit Japanese computers. But by the 90s, the PC and consoles spaces were largely separated in Japan.>And erotic games make up...What computers were you looking at? The highest credible number I've found claims the PC-98's library is roughly 40% eroge. But the PC-98 was also the platform with the most eroge published for it by far. Something like the X68000 had far less eroge than that. Less than 20% of it's 800+ game library, if Wikipedia is to be trusted. Between just those two platforms, you're looking at over a thousand non-eroge games, the large majority of which are PC exclusives.>it's recognized to this day as one of the best role playing games of all time."Best" and "ground breaking" aren't equivalent. I can't think of any other medium where a work which primarily mixes and matches a bunch of pre-existing ideas, ones from within the same genre no less, would be considered as such. Chrono Trigger is a solid game, the result of a decades worth of iterative refinement. But it's by no means radically unique in any single regard, or when viewed holistically, aside from arguably its level of polish. That said, I'm willing to concede that I'm probably using the term more conservatively than most. I try to avoid the sort of hyperbole that's emblematic of English language video game discussion.>But these are kid's games.And we're both on a hobbyist forum devoted to their discussion.
>>12236613>we just want accurate translations without added bsI don't, I like a good joke in my games. Go be autistic somewhere else.
>>12236973>"Best" and "ground breaking" aren't equivalent.You may have had one element which Chrono Trigger uses at play in earlier JRPGs but usually not in concert. That's the real difference.
>>12236985So does that mean he actually learned it from Clinton? Is that canon now?
>>12216997>just learn an entire new language to play with your childrens toys instead of compromising>hobbies are stupid life is dumb everyone should kill themselves何ですか?あなたの趣味は何ですか?
>>12236985Can you post one? I'm not seeing any in the screenshot you posted.
