Dogshit Localizations

[rusty_shackleford]

Decent read:

https://dionysussite.wordpress.com/2023 ... l-english/

Long read, huh?
ctrl+f 'imperialism'
2 results

Yep, it's leftist bullshit.

[Oyster Sauce]

Has anybody else had the immense pleasure and/or honor of working with Olive Jirushi lately? I can't find a website or social media account for them.

[rusty_shackleford]

Has anybody else had the immense pleasure and/or honor of working with Olive Jirushi lately? I can't find a website or social media account for them.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/161326/b ... station-5/
>Book Translation Services Tim Law (aka Olive Jirushi)
https://www.mobygames.com/person/151137/tim-law/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timotarou/
https://twitter.com/timotarou

[Lutte]

Here's your beloved Castlevania Symphony of the Night intro bro —translated by Jeremy (((Blaustein))):

The most noticeably problematic part about the official translation is that it feels like the translator just wanted an outlet to mock religions. It doesn't feel like the typical "I changed things for the Rule of Cool sounding things".

In the original, Dracula makes arguments about the nature of humans, but in the official translation, everything is really a lead up to that interaction:

>Richter: You steal men's souls and make them your slaves!
>Dracula:Perhaps the same could be said of all religions.

This doesn't feel like that particular game's characters talking. It feels like reading the writer's (which, in this case, is the """translator""") opinion. This shit is more egregious than the part most people focus on when it comes to this series of dialogue (the "what is a man").

I never finished it, but I mostly translated Fallout Sonora from Russian to English. Sometimes, things just don't map well, especially idioms or culture-specific things.

The answer to handling this kind of case, when you really need to be creative in rewriting things, is to ask yourself, while doing the rewriting: would what I am writing right now really be the sort of thing this specific character would say? or fit the tone of the narration?

Here's a fun question:
What is a translator supposed to do when the author made a genuine mistake and the translator can't contact the author to fix it?
For example, I know much more about the location being written than the authors themselves, and studied the Arizona Rangers which are rather integral to the story indirectly through the Desert Rangers.

If something is a complete work of fiction, you should remain true to the fiction of the original author.

If what is being translated is science papers, history books, encyclopedias etc, you should of course correct the mistakes.

[Segata]

Add another one to the OP:

[rusty_shackleford]

Add another one to the OP:

Yeah, except this is a reverse case.
FF9 was made in USA.

[Segata]

FF9 was made in USA.

Made in Hawaii by a fully Japanese staff and the US version wasn't even the first version released.

Another pic

[rusty_shackleford]

FF9 was made in USA.

Made in Hawaii by a fully Japanese staff and the US version wasn't even the first version released.

Another pic

If it's made in America, the official language is American English. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

[Segata]

If it's made in America, the official language is American English. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Well that explains why FFIX was such a downgrade in the series

[WhiteShark]

If it's made in America, the official language is American English. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Regrettably, that is false. The United States has no official language.

[rusty_shackleford]

If it's made in America, the official language is American English. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Well that explains why FFIX was such a downgrade in the series

It's easily the last best final fantasy, not even close.

[Segata]

It's easily the last best final fantasy, not even close.

Final Fantasy IX is a weird way to spell Final Fantasy V. Is that American English too?

[rusty_shackleford]

Made in Hawaii by a fully Japanese staff and the US version wasn't even the first version released.

Square's Hawaii branch was about 55% American, meaning the majority of the developers were native English speakers.
https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/sto ... ocus4.html

. To date, out of the 150 people hired by Square USA, around 40 percent of the employees are from Japan, 45 percent are from the Mainland, 5 percent are from Europe and 10 percent are from Hawaii.

FF9 was developed almost entirely at that studio. Not to be confused with the very similar Square Pictures.

I'm not actually convinced there was a japanese script that was then translated. It's difficult to even find who wrote said supposed script beyond the basic plot elements.
As an argument for it being at least partly originally written in English, this line looks like it was written in English then translated to Japanese, because the double meaning was lost in translation:



Ask @WhiteShark to verify.

[WhiteShark]

The wordplay is not present in the Japanese version, for sure. It says, "Of course, even if rain falls or a storm comes!" That's not proof the script was originally English, though, as we all know localizers like to add things. I suppose it were decent circumstantial evidence if there's no reason in context for them to be talking about rain and storms.

[rusty_shackleford]

The wordplay is not present in the Japanese version, for sure. It says, "Of course, even if rain falls or a storm comes!" That's not proof the script was originally English, though, as we all know localizers like to add things. I suppose it were decent circumstantial evidence if there's no reason in context for them to be talking about rain and storms.

Cornelia
"Prithee, call me 'princess' no more!"
"Marcus, wilt thou truly cherish me, the king's only daughter?"
"Or is such a desire too dear to wish for!?"
"After our nuptials, shall I become no more than a puppet?"
"A mindless puppet, never to laugh, never to cry?"
"I wish to live my life under the sky. At times I shall laugh, at other times cry."
"For no life is more insincere than that lived as a masquerade."

Marcus
"So much consideration thou hast given it! But worry not!"
[They embrace]
"Cast away thy trappings of royalty, and I shall swaddle thou in a gown of pure love!"
"Never again will I part from thee!"
"Pray, my love, make me thy canary to keep forever in the cage of thy bosom!"
"Let us embark on the first ship tomorrow, before dawn can tell of our elopement!"

Cornelia
"All my fortunes at thy foot, I lay, and I shall follow thee throughout the world!"

Marcus
"No cloud, no squall shall hinder us!"

[Marcus turns around and walks off screen]

Cornelia
"O, love is the sweetest joy and the wildest woe."
"All I wish is to be by my sweet Marcus's side."

[Screen shows Blank on the side of the stage, eavesdropping]

Blank
"Fie! It shall be war again unless this marriage is stopped."
"Ne'er will I let their plan come to fruition."
[He walks on stage]
"Good day to ye, Highness."

The line just feels awkward when it's not being used as the double meaning.

[Segata]

I'm sure Sakaguchi wrote the game in English, a language he barely dominates, instead of his native Japanese.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm sure Sakaguchi wrote the game in English, a language he barely dominates, instead of his native Japanese.

To the best of my knowledge after trying to find evidence, Sakaguchi didn't write the script, he did the story outline and plot elements.

[Segata]

To the best of my knowledge after trying to find evidence, Sakaguchi didn't write the script, he did the story outline and plot elements.

Well, who did it then?

[rusty_shackleford]

The credits are clearly missing a lot of people. I am referring to the ones in the manual, not the ones you'll find on something like MobyGames that includes all the various CGI stuff.

There is nowhere near enough people credited here for a game like FF9 at the time. It doesn't continue on the next page, either.

How odd that nobody seems to have questioned this anywhere afaict

[WhiteShark]

Here's the localization team as listed in the credits:

Localization Director: Kazuyoshi Tashiro
Localization Engineers: Yoshinori Uenishi, Richard Mark Honeywood
Translators: Nobuhiro Uchiyama, Vincent Zouzoulkovsky
Localization Assistants: Nathalie Ishida (Akira), Tomoko Sekii, Seikou Hokama, Mai Morofushi

During the development of Final Fantasy IX, Honeywood's team had expanded to allow translation from Japanese directly to French, Italian, German, and Spanish without English as an intermediate.

[rusty_shackleford]

Here's the localization team as listed in the credits:

Localization Director: Kazuyoshi Tashiro
Localization Engineers: Yoshinori Uenishi, Richard Mark Honeywood
Translators: Nobuhiro Uchiyama, Vincent Zouzoulkovsky
Localization Assistants: Nathalie Ishida (Akira), Tomoko Sekii, Seikou Hokama, Mai Morofushi

During the development of Final Fantasy IX, Honeywood's team had expanded to allow translation from Japanese directly to French, Italian, German, and Spanish without English as an intermediate.

Though many of IX's allusions were present in the Japanese version of the game, they weren't there at the beginning -- when Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi delivered his original script, it barely resembled the full game that would later appear.

"I can remember receiving an initial draft of Sakaguchi-san's script early in production to review as preparation for our Loc Dept," Honeywood said. "I was surprised that it didn't really have any structure or even grammar to it. The plot was just a series of nouns. 'Darkness. Matches. Light. Candle. Boy with tail....' It made me laugh as I tried to imagine how a dev team would make a game out of this, and how much the planners would flesh out that basic story draft to have a very involved plot."

[Mondain]

Primary audience for jap slop is weebs now, not the wide audience it used to be. Weebs demand 1:1 translations.
There's a reason it's called localizing and not translating. Most westerners would have hated direct translations of e.g., final fantasy games. Sort of like how many westerners find Chinese martial arts fantasy to be stupid, culture clash. Western fantasy is rooted in chivalry, not flying around in the air kung fu fighting.


This isn't a response to localizations that are censorship btw.

[WhiteShark]

But if you make the Chinese martial artists sound like millenial twitter fags, suddenly it's something sophisticated westerners can enjoy? Give me a break.

[Lutte]

Mondain's view on localization reminds me of this satiric comic:



That's what it really feels like in practice.

[Goth-Girl-Supremacy]

Here's your beloved Castlevania Symphony of the Night intro bro —translated by Jeremy (((Blaustein))):

This makes me extra furious because people will defend the localization by saying 'it's better'. And you know what? Some of it does sound pretty good. "'Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!" is a great line. Probably every person who's ever played the game remembers the 'What is a man?' line. The problem is that doesn't matter. It's still a butchery. The (((localizer))) treated the dialogue as his personal canvas instead of respecting the original. It's the height of both arrogance and dishonesty to write your own prose under the title of another's work.

It's called better because it is better. A retarded example.

[Vergil]

Here's your beloved Castlevania Symphony of the Night intro bro —translated by Jeremy (((Blaustein))):

Lmao I always thought that "the same could be said of all religions" line was particularly faggy sounding go figure some asshurt kike was behind it.

He's on my list. I know he made a lot of pointless changes in MGS 1 but I want to dig up a bit more dirt.

An example that plagued the MGS community was adding in that Big Boss was cloned while he was in a coma whilst the original dialog says no such thing.
English localization:
"Liquid Snake: But father was wounded in combat and already in a coma when they brought him in. So they created us from his cells… with a combination of 20th century analog cloning and the Super Baby Method."
Direct translation of the original jap script:
"Liquid Snake: But an injury father sustained in combat left him sterile. So they created us from his cells… with a combination of 20th century analog cloning and the Super Baby Method."

[Goth-Girl-Supremacy]

Lmao I always thought that "the same could be said of all religions" line was particularly faggy sounding go figure some asshurt kike was behind it.

Yeah Vergin, "However, is it not true GREED has driven the humans' development and that FAITH has led them?" is such a less jewified line.

Not to mention Richter's follow-up Care Bear response. I can see it appealing to the "everything is wholesome" funko pop fags of here though.

[rusty_shackleford]

Add another one to the OP:

The English version is better btw. Japanese version is just wordpuke that says nothing.
If anything, I'd remove the 'doll' line.

[Vergil]

I like the over dramatic flowery and aspie dialog style of japslop so I prefer the original.

[Oyster Sauce]

Physiognomy references added to OP. Felt it was important.