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I love Japanese entertainment. I'm not a native speaker of either, but I often use English subtitles with Japanese audio, because my English is better than my J

I love Japanese entertainment. I'm not a native speaker of either, but I often use English subtitles with Japanese audio, because my English is better than my Japanese. As a result of having both languages in front of me at the same time, I often notice when translators take liberties and sometimes even rewrite entire personalities of characters, and it has always annoyed me a lot. This article was great for helping me understand the motivations for localizing stories and characters (instead of simply translating them). I certainly don't blame the author (and other translators) for trying to provide the American audience with what they think is the best possible experience. But for anybody who isn't American, the localization might be entirely wasted - there's a good chance that they're just as familiar with Japanese culture and history as they are with American culture and history. What's worse, in cases where the localization is wildly different from the original, the audience probably doesn't have any way of knowing it. It would be fair to tell the audience when the localization is inspired by or based on the original, instead of a direct translation of it. Otherwise, consumers can be misled to thinking they like or dislike a certain writer, while in reality their opinion is based entirely on a translator. Slightly related: in Final Fantasy XIV, a character in the main story was COMPLETELY changed for the English version of the game. Playing in Japanese, I grew quite fond of the character, so when the character eventually died in the story, it had an actual impact for me. A friend of mine plays the same game exclusively in English, and when I discussed the death with him, he told me that this character was completely forgettable for him and he didn't even really remember the circumstances of the death. I'm fairly certain that the lack of impact for him was entirely because of the localization.

joe-collins 7y ago
I am a monolingual English player, and I suspect you're referencing events that culminate in the player receiving a ruined shield. If so, I will say that while the character was nearly forgettable as of your very first encounters, they rapidly evolve when brought properly into the spotlight, and I was devastated by their death. tl;dr I don't know what your friend is on, but I disgaree
Agentlien 7y ago
It goes one step further. I've noticed that sometimes parts of the Swedish subtitles are poor translations of the English translation, rather than a direct translation of the original. This is especially noticeable when you have an English idiom translated word by word to Swedish in a Chinese or Japanese movie.
- kace91 7y ago
  The baffling Spanish translation of FFVII was quite (in)famous for that. So much so, that one of the most famous pieces of comedy gold from the internet of that time was a "let's play" series made using captioned screencaps, in which the author would sarcastically take any mistranslation literally. This "alternate story" included: - introducing a new character called "Pointsave" (the translation for some reason refered to saving spots as people by using proper names) - a deep drama surrounding Tifa and Barret's experiences as transgender people (since the translation arbitrarily referred to them with male and female adjectives, switching mid-sentence) - characters continuously getting drunk in fiestas (since the common references to "your party" were translated to mean "your party events" rather than "your group of people").
  - JaumeGreen 7y ago
    > characters continuously getting drunk in fiestas (since the common references to "your party" were translated to mean "your party events" rather than "your group of people"). I "fondly" remember getting to the first village outside, and being told "Tu fiesta te espera arriba" (Your fiesta/party is waiting for you upstairs). And there were the characters, all moody and sad, and I was thinking that it was a really shitty party. Until I mentally translated it back to English and understood.
swampthinker 7y ago
Very relevant: https://youtu.be/YvNxgHTWIlo https://youtu.be/YvNxgHTWIlo
kace91 7y ago
I wonder if there's any source of information where I can get specific examples of this issue. It would be quite curious to see side by side comparisons on how stories differ, and see if there's any general trend.
- rawTruthHurts 7y ago
  It's not a "source of information" but a "specific example": the robotech RPG manuals (or at least some of them 90's editions, not the main one but the companions) had an appendix where they delved into the differencies between the US and Japanese translations. Looks like not just technical terms, but some plot lines diverted fairly from the original
  - benj111 7y ago
    Wouldn't that have to be the case as Robotech is a US combination of 2 unrelated Japanese cartoons?
- thristian 7y ago
  https://legendsoflocalization.com/ https://legendsoflocalization.com/ is a blog all about this kind of thing.
raehik 7y ago
The other day I tweeted with one of the localisers behind Half Minute Hero / 勇者30 , a silly RPG-esque game. They did this with one of the stages: it was a sepia level, harkening back to the NES (and slightly before) era. In Japanese, the bad guy spoke in spaced katakana, like the old Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Pokemon games. The reference was immediately understandable and cute. You can easily do the same in English by using ALL CAPS, AND SILLY PHRASING WITH LOTS OF PUNCTUATION!!! In my opinion (native English, but not alive in the NES era), that would work great. But they didn't: they instead replaced all his dialog with various lines from the classic "all your base" meme/translation. It's a departure from the original - still works well, still funny, though in a different way. Different translators think differently. I love seeing how that impacts things. (Also shoutouts to Square Enix's localisation team, they are usually INCREDIBLE. I have even more love for Crisis Core after playing it in Japanese.)

joe-collins 7y ago

I am a monolingual English player, and I suspect you're referencing events that culminate in the player receiving a ruined shield. If so, I will say that while the character was nearly forgettable as of your very first encounters, they rapidly evolve when brought properly into the spotlight, and I was devastated by their death. tl;dr I don't know what your friend is on, but I disgaree

Agentlien 7y ago

It goes one step further. I've noticed that sometimes parts of the Swedish subtitles are poor translations of the English translation, rather than a direct translation of the original. This is especially noticeable when you have an English idiom translated word by word to Swedish in a Chinese or Japanese movie.

kace91 7y ago
The baffling Spanish translation of FFVII was quite (in)famous for that. So much so, that one of the most famous pieces of comedy gold from the internet of that time was a "let's play" series made using captioned screencaps, in which the author would sarcastically take any mistranslation literally. This "alternate story" included: - introducing a new character called "Pointsave" (the translation for some reason refered to saving spots as people by using proper names) - a deep drama surrounding Tifa and Barret's experiences as transgender people (since the translation arbitrarily referred to them with male and female adjectives, switching mid-sentence) - characters continuously getting drunk in fiestas (since the common references to "your party" were translated to mean "your party events" rather than "your group of people").
- JaumeGreen 7y ago
  > characters continuously getting drunk in fiestas (since the common references to "your party" were translated to mean "your party events" rather than "your group of people"). I "fondly" remember getting to the first village outside, and being told "Tu fiesta te espera arriba" (Your fiesta/party is waiting for you upstairs). And there were the characters, all moody and sad, and I was thinking that it was a really shitty party. Until I mentally translated it back to English and understood.

swampthinker 7y ago

Very relevant: https://youtu.be/YvNxgHTWIlo https://youtu.be/YvNxgHTWIlo

kace91 7y ago

I wonder if there's any source of information where I can get specific examples of this issue. It would be quite curious to see side by side comparisons on how stories differ, and see if there's any general trend.

rawTruthHurts 7y ago
It's not a "source of information" but a "specific example": the robotech RPG manuals (or at least some of them 90's editions, not the main one but the companions) had an appendix where they delved into the differencies between the US and Japanese translations. Looks like not just technical terms, but some plot lines diverted fairly from the original
- benj111 7y ago
  Wouldn't that have to be the case as Robotech is a US combination of 2 unrelated Japanese cartoons?
thristian 7y ago
https://legendsoflocalization.com/ https://legendsoflocalization.com/ is a blog all about this kind of thing.

raehik 7y ago

The other day I tweeted with one of the localisers behind Half Minute Hero / 勇者30 , a silly RPG-esque game. They did this with one of the stages: it was a sepia level, harkening back to the NES (and slightly before) era. In Japanese, the bad guy spoke in spaced katakana, like the old Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Pokemon games. The reference was immediately understandable and cute. You can easily do the same in English by using ALL CAPS, AND SILLY PHRASING WITH LOTS OF PUNCTUATION!!! In my opinion (native English, but not alive in the NES era), that would work great. But they didn't: they instead replaced all his dialog with various lines from the classic "all your base" meme/translation. It's a departure from the original - still works well, still funny, though in a different way. Different translators think differently. I love seeing how that impacts things. (Also shoutouts to Square Enix's localisation team, they are usually INCREDIBLE. I have even more love for Crisis Core after playing it in Japanese.)