So Sup Forums...

So Sup Forums, do you prefer localisation to be more 1:1 or are the localisers allowed to change text and meaning to something that arguably would make more sense to the Western audience?

What did he say originally? Was he an "otaku" talking about doujins?

>Someone save me- to be honest!

I prefer more 1:1 translations. So basically direct translations that are modified structurally to make sense grammatically. When I play weeb games, I want weeb stuff and weeb culture. If 8 wanted western culture, I would play western games.

Professionnal translator here. 1:1 is the only answer as most translators are fucking retards, inserting stupid jokes or stuff that doesn't make any sense left and right.

However, if the translator is good, meaning he has a basic grasp of the culture he's trying to translate, and has decent writing skills, then 2. But it's quite rare.

>Professionnal translator here.
Yeah? Well I'm the gingerbread man. If you would have said freelance or amateur translator then I'd have believed it.

Hi gingerbread man. If I told you I have a master degree in foreign languages and translate stuff for a living, would that appear any less confusing to you?

I'm not doing it as an amateur, if you'd prefer.

your picture can hardly be called a translation. Very literal translations are inappropriate in most cases.
For example, if someone gets hit in the eye really hard and the skin is kinda discolored, You can say he has a "black eye". In germany we call that condition "blaues[blue] Auge[eye]". If you translate "black" literally nobody will understand what you meant.
There are a lot of gotchas like that when translating, you can't translate a lot of stuff literally.

1:1 with transulator's notes.

Simmer the pork with a drop lid

I prefer localisations with changes. Paper Mario TTYD for instance was unfunny as fuck in Japan, but hilarious as hell in English.

He's referencing popular animes, do you guys really not get that?

I think it depends on the work being translated. If something's supposed to be funny, especially if it depends on wordplay, a direct translation would fall flat.
That's what they did for Asterix and it worked pretty well.

2nd, chances are that if you knew all the references that would allow you to understand a 1:1 translation you wouldn't need a translation in the first place.

Besides, literal 1:1 translations often suffer from being stilted or just grammatically awkward. The purpose is to present the information in a way the audience will get the original intention and sometimes that requires the translator interpreting that into a more familiar format, rather than merely repeating it verbatim.

I think there's a difference between using proper idiomatic English and changing the meaning of the text while keeping the same spirit and feeling.

I get HARD. I get absolutely soaking WET when idiotic weebs get ASSMAD over people enjoying the English voice options or the localization in video games and Anime. They are made for a reason, for people who enjoy understanding the characters and contain many passionate performances. OH NO MY WAIFU SEIYUU FROM JAPAN WHO WILL NEVER EVER CARE ABOUT ME OR ISNT IN THE GAME ANYMORE PRE ORDER CANCELLED!

And every SINGLE ONE OF YOU is like it too you look DOWN on people for making a simple perferential CHOICE that does not AFFECT YOU at all! Friends invite me to watch Anime or play a Japanese video game and I ask "Is it in English as well?" and you can always just hear the DISAPPOINTMENT in their voice as they say yes as if I RUINED their lives or something. The Spite FULFILLS ME.

You spend so much time DEFENDING an industry that does not give TWO FUCKS about you on an anonymous IMAGE BOARD. Japs don't give a FUCK what you think or what you think yet you throw your money at a over glorified voice acting industry thats over SATURATED with the same 4 voices that they use just to launch MUSIC CAREERS to take more money from all you neet SHUT INS. Go die of dehydration after you fap to your voice actress shrine one too many times please. PLEASE.

I don't recognize this copypasta. Are you sure you're okay user?

I'm sure he's FINE. His RANDOMLY capitalised WORDS show me his OPINIONS on HOW the english language should be PRESENTED is SUPERIOR.

Please go work for nintendo

I'm honestly okay with the localization team taking some liberties. Like Ace Attorney. I get that some things won't translate literally (especially humour or references to Japanese culture) and I kind of enjoy the meme of American translators changing Japanese food to American food in the dub just for shits and giggles.

The biggest problem for me is when the actual game content gets changed/removed. Or they heavily modify the context of something. For example the digimon episode where two of the digimon are killed by the big bad guy. In the dub it was changed to something like "I am going to send you to my eternal dungeon MUWWHAHAHA".

I'm okay with rice balls becoming doughnuts or whatever, but anything relevant to gameplay or story I hate to be changed.

Have you seen what shit they've been churning out lately, though?
In fire emblem fates they replaced an entire support conversation with ellipses, and took a character's personality and replaced it with pickles.

It's a balance, but if the game takes place in Japan or has a Japanese cast of characters, then I want it as 1 to 1 as possible. Otherwise I think small things can be changed like phases our references to fables. Food should stay the same unless we are asking the player how to cook things.

The translator for the short stories in Lost Odyssey was amazing because he wasn't a video game translator.

1:1 with common sense. I don't know why it's so hard. If someone knows the language they should know of the culture. If they know of the culture they should know how to make changes as necessary without changing the message. The rest is common sense.

Example of common sense change (These aren't actual jap to english translations, just examples of the idea)
>Literal
You must after school come or else negative things!
>Common sense
You better show up here after school!
>Bad translators who want to force changes
Somebody's gonna get a knuckle sandwich if they ain't here after the bell rings, ya hear?

Example of cultural change
>Literal
Onee-san remains here and I will make it all better
>Common sense
Don't worry. Just wait right here and I'll take care of everything.
>Bad translators
Chill out cuz, I got this, just gimme a minute and I'll be back asap.

As someone who actually knows what he's talking about, I'm 100% for localisation. Phrasing that works fine in Japanese doesn't work even slightly in English.

Let me guess, you know a couple of fucking euro languages and think that qualifies you to talk shit about translations from completely unrelated asian ones?

Sure, if your target demo is normies and not weebs.

But why do you hate money?

kuwabara, kuwabara

The japanese have accents and distinct dialects too. A lot of people in these threads forget that.

It is not the job of the translators to change shit.

It is NOT the job of the translators to change shit.

If you give an inch on this, if you say "oh, they changed 'rice ball' into 'donut,' who cares?" and before you know it they're changing lines because they're "problematic"

I don't give a shit about what you think weebs want. They'll take whatever they're given, like the shit eating cunts they are, and having a natural translation is better for everyone who doesn't have an aneurysm when a stock phrase is translated away from what they deem "correct".

This. Changing shit for no reason is stupid. I can understand if you make some slight changes to make things more understandable or to make a character's personality show a little more through dialog, but straight up adding memes and random "western equivalents" to Japanese concepts (when they're not needed) is just bad.

If I remember right, the dub for Azumanga Daioh gave characters with Osaka accents a more southern US type drawl since that was the closest analauge sound wise. Lot of people forget that there are truckloads of cultral and social things that can't be conveyed right in a 1:1 translation.

I prefer playing the actual game that was released instead of the interpretation of an underpaid, fresh out of college weeb who signed up as a translator.

Just because you learned a few words from watching anime and "helped" translate some shit h-game doesn't mean you know what you are talking about lol

I'd gladly pay for a college weeb's translation over politically correct San Fran faggots who believe that they should decide what people get to see.

Literal localizations are always bland and hard to understand at times.
Changing some things so they make more sense if you're not jap is for the better, jokes don't translate well at all

The problem is that translation should really be two stages. Translate literally for the exact meaning and intent, then localize the literal translation to be grammatically correct and congruent.

For an example, when you have a character with a "Nyan" tic, trading a few cat puns instead of having the character randomly meow in conversation is a welcome change, especially when being dubbed into English, but the final dialogue should be equivalent to the original.

To make an awkward analogy, " A C B D" should be translated to " A C B D", then polished to " A B C D". The problem is a bunch of translators instead immediately jump to "A B C B C D"; Filling in the dialogue based on their own consideration rather than actual meaning.

Or they just go ABXYZ, throwing random shit in there because they think it's funny or better.

There is literally nothing wrong with appropriating content for its new audience. Angry Kirby is an intelligent design choice.

Rurouni Kenshin gave the owner of the restaurant a southern accent too. It was neat and something I'd never seen any translation do before.

Excerpt from an interview of FFVI's gba localizer
>My guess is that the original translator was not familiar with the idiom and translated it literally, assuming it meant business had "gone up," or improved, rather than "evaporated." That was a rather major departure from what was intended there, however, and presumably a wholly unintentional one on the part of the translator. So, there was really very little in the way of a thought process there. I recognized the mistake for what it was and corrected it.

I.e. sometimes a literal translation is that farthest from what the Japanese really meant.

Exactly. Localization is supposed to be to improve the understanding of the medium.

It's meant so you get that "Omae" does not mean friend (even though it technically does.) or that calling someone by their last name is not necessarily formal.

It's not for 6 year old memes and clocking out early when you find some dumb reference to replace the dialogue with.

Ah, the old black and white horseshit. I bet if I asked any one of you to name a game with a good "literal" translation, you'd give me an example of good localisation.

Localisation work ranges from good to bad, depending on the translator, the editor, the company, the access to the script and notes, etc.

A completely literal translation, even if you fix up the grammar to actual English and change a few pronouns, is absolute cancer every time. So it's a choice between something that's occasionally good, and something that's always bad.

Honorifics or no honorifics?

I think they should always be there because 95% of people consuming this sort of content understand them, and they communicate their meaning on their own far better than any translation possibly could.

the guy who translated mother 3 should just translate every game

I'd even prefer woolsey over the treehouse

All I can say is that if I pulled any shit like while I was working as an interpreter I would have starved to death because that shit is unacceptable, and interpretation is considered much more liberal than translation work.

I.e. hire subject matter experts like the guy in the interview, not the first chump.

From ni no kuni's translator loosely about what you are talking about
>I have to say I fundamentally disagree with this statement. If the fact that a product originated in another language remains obvious, this can only ever be a hindrance to the immersion of the person consuming that product.

A localization should be invisible. By this, I mean that the product in question should be localised well enough that the content can be experienced without the consumer ever stumbling on features that can only be explained if they know that it comes from another language. And it absolutely should not need any knowledge from the consumer that cannot be found within the product itself.

Why is it acceptable, even expected now? What changed?

So often in fansubbed chinese cartoons they go STRICTLY NO HONORIFICS 4KIDS ONLY, and then get completely fucked over later on because a character makes a direct reference to them, which usually results in having to use some little miss master sir madam bullshit, or some made up nickname.

It's less hassle to have them in the long run.

If the game is set in Japan, I'd rather they keep the honorifics. If its some made up world or set outside of Japan, I'd rather they dropped them.

How would someone translate the significance of a scene where a female character nervously stops the male when he's saying her name with -chan, and asks him to call her by her first name, which he then does slowly, and nervously.

I don't see how you could possibly translate something like that without completely changing the content/meaning.

That isn't a "subject matter expert", the translation mistake was literally a fucking schoolboy error. The original line was 商売が上がったり, you'd have to be an idiot to get it wrong.

The customer. At the same time, it didn't change at all. If I went back to interpretation, I would be held to the same high standards. Apparently localization is just bizarro.

>It is not the job of the translators to change shit.

But it IS. Wordplay for example is unstranslatable 99% of the time, and so are puns.

It's not a videogame, but I really liked the approach of Horrible Histories from English to Spanish, in that they just changed stuff for its logical equivalent.

> original joke is that actors can't pronounce the names of aztec gods, so they just say gibberish
> translated joke is that the actors speak so fast while saying actual god names that it ends up sounding like gibberish

Well. I think they can take some liberties when it comes to structure and stuff. How the sentence looks I don't care about. But I don't like them changing the items in question, I.E, "eat your hamburgers" type stuff.

Literal translations tends to make the text really dry and really lacking in personality. So I don't really mind if they add some spite to it, as long as it's not too in your face, like what Nintendo does is awful.

Depends on the setting. I liked it in Persona, because it's so weeb already. But it would feel out of place in something like a Final Fantasy game.

But I do hate it when translators add stuff like Mr. to replace it.

Localization isn't bizarro, it's just clueless retards hiring people who will literally work for nothing because they want to be in the industry.

All actual translation work, i.e. shit for movies, books, journals, anything sane, is held to high standards. The awful way the localisation industry operates means they can skirt around all that while cutting costs.

The point remains, don't hire the first dude. Staff competently.

Have it be a nickname only used by close/inimate contacts instead of her full name wow it's like rocket science

the classic nickname translation usually sucks

For the most part no one over here needs to know a character feels another is their "senpai". Their actions and way they speak to them will portray it well enough(for the most part). No translation is 100% perfect either. Even with honorifics.

>Have to call a character by a nickname instead of their intended name (plus issues with lip sync now added) for the rest of the series because of bad translation

Yeah, amazing solution m80.