Persona 5 deserved better: a translator's take on a subpar script

SONY APOLOGISTS B T F O
>It's hard to say where the localization of Persona 5 went wrong.
>The game itself is sleek and meticulously polished, from the gameplay to the menu UI. Dungeons are a blast to explore, battles are satisfying right down to the results screen and the plot packs many emotional punches. These individual features all blend together to make a game that feels effortlessly cool.
>In stark contrast, the English script feels like a rough draft. Sometimes it sounds like a human wrote it, but those moments are rare.
polygon.com/2017/4/20/15356026/persona-5-translation-localization

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EOPs BTFO

Not a Nintendo game, so I don't care.

>polygon

The content of the article matters more than the site its hosted on

>Direct linking to polygon
Go shill somewhere else you retarded faggot.

The translation wasn't bad and the people who complain about it are just grasping at straws.

The host is often indicative of the quality of the content

...

I guess it could've been better, sure, but it wasnt like it kept me from enjoying the game at any point.

Translations always feel like that tho.

I'm not defending it but I've never played a JRPG that didn't have wonky dialogue. Japs speak differently than civilized western society.

Dialogue being awkward and stilted is kind of an expectation in my sincere and honest opinion my family.

>polygon

Gave them two hits just for you.

Polygon != quality
get someone like nichegamer to make an article on it and we will talk

Just delete this thread already.

Translation was great.

obviously they never played 4

>polygon

never mind

>Linking to Polygon
Fuck off newfag.

If you read the article you'll see its a guest writer and not a member of their staff

Consult

They're not wrong, it was pretty fucking shit

I've seen a lot worse though sadly

I like how he says "It can't be helped" isn't english

WTF planet is he from?

Summer is early this year

What's bad about Polygon again?

>the article is just muh functional equivalence

Oh wow I didn't know Herkz worked at Polygon. I guess it can't be helped.

>It's hard to say where the localization of Persona 5 went wrong.
>In stark contrast, the English script feels like a rough draft. Sometimes it sounds like a human wrote it, but those moments are rare.
What?

>Sure, it's no Zero Wing. Let's agree that it's "fine." But is "fine" the standard we should accept from the Atlus USA?
>Personally, I don't want to pay $60 or more for a product that's merely "acceptable" at best.
Jesus christ this faggot sounds entitled.

There was something wrong with the translation? Only things that stuck out to me were some slang words the kids said but otherwise it seemed pretty good.

why does this trigger people so much. it sounds perfectly fine in english and its not some uncommon turn of phrase you'd never hear a native speaker say or anything.

Sup Forums gets triggered by its politics and how it sometimes docks 0.1 points off a games score for how it treats women or some shit

Retard.

nothing was wrong

Atlus went even as far as to have dual audio

its the most polished Persona game to date, if not the most polished Atlus game ever

Article is an attempt on the authors part to appear intelligent

I don't know Japanese, but the translation was miles above 3 and 4 in terms of making teens sound like teens. There were still awkward moments, but things like the texting and bickering sounded a lot more natural than before.

So no, the article is completely wrong.

He makes some good points.

>"He healed himself...? Is it because he ate those inside there?"

>"What kind of stupid phantom thief would use their real name!? I'm not down for that!"

>"Why do I—the one who was just watching—know more about it than you two!?"

>"I hope that she doesn't torment herself over this. When it comes down to it, women don't hesitate."

>"Uhh ... Anyway, it can't be helped if that's the case. Time for you to go to hell."

>"What nonsense that you used a mousetrap on me!"

All pretty awkward.

Of course Sup Forums is going to dismiss this criticism because they love Persona 5. It's legitimate criticism though.

>polygon

Thats better english than 88% of Americans can use.

All sound completely fine.

There were a couple times where things were just completely opaque to the reader because the English equivalent makes no sense: cognition is a ten dollar word that could have been replaced for example. Calling the yakuza the mafia was a mistake, and there are a shitload of signs in the game that should have been translated but weren't. It makes it hard to tell what weak parts of the script are translation errors or bad writing.

That's some high level nitpicking in a script that lasts 100 hours.

You fuckers don't even know what a bad translation is because you just turned 18 this year. At least they didn't translate "right" with "left" like capcom did for BoF3 in europe.

>demanding quality from commercial products is now "being entitled"
I bet you go out of your to find and buy the shittiest products on the market just so you can avoid being entitled.

Jesus, cheers for the heads up on BoF3. Was just about to start playing the EU version.

Is BoF4 similarly fucked for the EU release?

Transparent?

This. Thank fuck they gave us dual audio, the Jap cast is far superior (especially not Igor, his English voice sounds like they're using fucking auto-tune).

I agree it's nitpicky. It's the kind of thing a professional translator probably notices but nobody else does. If you read the article he's saying the language didn't play up the characters' personalities enough. Which makes me shudder to think what kind of chop job he would have put in its place.

Imagine Ann bumbling and saying "like" at the start of every sentence and Ryuji constantly swearing and puttin' apostrophes after everythin'.

Am I the only one who really, really disagrees with this article?

As a player, I fucking hate liberal translations like the one in Yakuza 0 where you can just tell half the lines range from “loosely translated” to “completely made up”. It pulls me out of the game every single time something like “shouganai wa ne” is translated to “If you're gonna twist my arm..”. It just feels so wrong.

Look, I'm not stupid - I understand the context a line was said in. I don't want my translations to try and localize the dialog into english; I want my translations to help me understand the japanese. I guess I consider them as subtitles to the japanese audio, not localizations into english. I would understand their problem if this was about the english dub, but I don't give a shit about the english dub - I want to play the game on japanese, with english subtitles to help me understand the complicated parts.

As such, I want translations that are as literal as possible. Not only does it make it easier for me to appreciate the japanese version but it also makes it easier for me to follow along and understand the sentence structure.

It is very literal so anyone who has experience with fansubs, scanlations or fan-translations should have no issue.

I faintly remember something, yeah.

Just pick up a guide for those sections and ignore their directions.

The game had an absolutely absurd amount of text with almost nothing repeating, from the near daily voices in the crowd for loading screens, to mementos banter, and very frequent days in class. Also easily the longest persona game so far if you really Take your Time.
There were only a few things that felt kind of awkward here and there, but they even got Futaba's memetic dialogue really well: she did stupid things frequently but wasn't obnoxious with it, and the worst thing she did was kek once to make Mishima look even shittier.
I'm glad they actually took the extra time to polish it, since it looks like that also forced them to solidify things too.

Completely agree. You were probably annoyed by NieR Automata too, right? And Final Fantasy 14?

Is "it can't be helped" a weeb phrase?

>You were probably annoyed by NieR Automata too, right?
Yes, spot on
>And Final Fantasy 14?
Never played it

Polygon loves Memehouses's translations. Disregard any of their opinions on translations.

I don't even know. I'm too afraid to ask any normal people what they think.

Yes

>Sup Forums gets triggered by its politics and how it sometimes docks 0.1 points off a games score for how it treats women or some shit
Don't forget they were funded by Microshit too.

when a site is entirely composed of excrement it stands to reason that so is anything that comes out of it

I find it interesting that both Y0 and P5 were translated by Atlus USA, but Y0 is pretty localized which could be due to Sega still sending over some guys to help out while P5 is the most literal translation that Atlus USA has done.

What's wrong with Nier Automata translation?

>Never played it

Heh okay. Well how about FF Tactics War of the Lions? They went way overboard trying to make everything sound ye olde englishy. Square's localizations are just fucking awful like that. Like translating "daijoubu?" as "is aught amiss?" instead of "are you alright?"

>polygon
>literally worse than reddit
Off your self and never come back op.

>Calling the yakuza the mafia

I keep seeing this, but in the japanese dub they call them "mafia" as well. Even then, Iwai is referred as a yakuza in the english script so it was obviously not a localization decision.

Not him but I legit was bothered by Automata's localisation at points when I played using the Japanese dub. The localisation is fine and the dub is decent despite Sup Forums's memeing on it but in terms of its literalness it takes too many liberties with the phrasing of certain parts for my tastes.

It's little things like an extra 'damn' inserted where there was none that add up to slightly alter the tone for the most part, but there are a few slightly larger changes made.

Its nowhere fucking near as bad as what they did to DoD3 or Fire Emblem Awakening though.

It's an extremely common Japanese phrase in anime that has become sort of a meme in the western fandom for it because despite making sense its not something a native English speaker would typically say.

Personally I think the hub bub about it is fucking retarded.

This is why I'm finally biting the bullet and learning JP. I don't want to fuck around with these localizations anymore.

2B's character is completely different in Japanese and English.

completely changed 2B's personality. Try playing with jap audio. 2B is serious about her job but she's not some action hero star. So think a larger-than-ever-before-seen giant robot suddenly emerges from the ocean and 2B is genuinely alarmed by what she sees, and says something like "what on earth is that?" But the English dub just sarcastically quips "well THAT's new."

ガッナ=GUNNA = GUNNER
バウト=BOUT = ATTACK

>"GUN ABOUT"
??????

I should point out that despite me preferring “strict” translations over “loose” translations, I still think Atlus did a piss poor job localizing Persona 5. Why? There were literal typos in the script.

So it's pretty damn apparent they just did a 0-effort job, and if they put more effort into it maybe it would have ended up more like Yakuza 0 as well?

>they made an entire website to bitch into a vacuum of space
What a twat. What does all of this complaining do? Atlus finished the game already and will probably have to go through things again anyways for P5:Crimson if they actually do that. Sure there's a few errors here in there in this gigantic game, but the quality is still pretty high overall, and there's never really a desynchonization from the text unless you look pretty hard into it.

Persona 5's translation was fine, it might actually be Atlus USA's best translation job.

>Calling the yakuza the mafia was a mistake

They didn't. Any time you read "mafia", that is what is being said in the JP dub. Any time they actually mean the yakuza, they are called the yakuza. You can find that out for yourself in Iwai's S. link.

>game is good, let's try find a flaw

They also didn't translate background audio, anything said on TV, or the audio for the movies you can watch.

It was pretty damn hilarious when during the “climactic” suicide announcement, the entire thing was just un-subbed. (Fortunately, I was able to reconstruct what was said from words and the reactions of the people)

The other guy that was posting, I remember getting annoyed at parts of the NieR:A localization like the interactions between 9S and 21O. They completely butchered the whole “haihai!” “ONE HAI IS ENOUGH” “haaaaaai” interaction.

What?

they refer to the Yakuza during the scene with the Cleaner on Shido's ship where they're shocked to see that he's Yakuza by his tattoos.

War of the Lions has a better script than the original translation tbqhf. It's less literal but it also has proper grammar and spelling for all of the ye olde englishe it uses which is more than you can say for the fucking terrible first swing at a translation they put out; and as a bonus it even removes the censorship.

After playing it in Japanese I think I even prefer the new translation to the original script, but that's way more subjective.

You would be a pretty shit translator. Apparently you haven't even played the game.

But they did?

Did you play the game, or are you just regurgitating shitposts you saw on Sup Forums?

Yeah same, although for me it's mostly because I fear that games will continue getting censored in the west or perhaps unreleased in the west entirely.

I've been learning .jp for about a month now and I have a few hundred kanji under my belt + some jukugo. It's actually surprisingly easy if you've watched some anime and have a good flashcard deck, you'll probably recognize most of the words already.

If you didn't get interrogation marks over your head when you saw this, you can't say the translation is "fine".

Wait, what the fuck was censored in the first FFT translation?

I acknowledge the huge (sometimes laughably bad) translation errors in the original script and I still disagree that War of the Lions was an improvement. It took all the spontaneity and emotion out of every conversation and made them sound stilted and samey. Fell victim to the classic "there are two personalities, nobles and cockney shoe-shiners" trap which you also see in 14. And also it was an innovation since the original was in plain conversational Japanese without any attempt to sound archaic.

Satania is cute
CUTE

twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/854376796082647042

That's another reason why I've started learning it. And after so many years of playing undubbed video games and watching anime the common stock phrases are already instantly recognizable anyway.

Look it up if you don't believe me. I would remember something as big as that not being subtitled.

Find me a LP or someting with japanese audio and I'll link you to the exact part I mean. (I found youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEnRK_B0kPIpm6QW5QZKTZsjtmITMfF12 but it isn't far enough yet)

>Molly Lee, or VerdelishJP, is a freelance video game translator who procrastinates on Twitter too much. She recently finished translating Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome, an erotic comedy visual novel scheduled to release later this year courtesy of MangaGamer.

So a low tier porn localizer is probably butthurt they werent hired at atlus

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying the Japanese audio goes back to English or something? Because all those parts you pointed out are translated and dubbed in the English dub.

>tfw I just remembered I have a save close to that part but I can't take a recording of it because fAtlus disabled the recording function

I think for some reason the worst parts of the translation are concentrated at the start of the game. It feels better after the first few hours.

I'm not EOP, I know three languages. Japanese isn't one of them

No, I'm saying the japanese dub has no subtitles for those parts.

There's no subtitles in some of the scenes. One example is the anime cutscene when you send the 5th palace calling card. None of the background voices you hear are subtitled, only the main cast.

Then they'll probably fix it.

Off the top of my head:
>Rapha getting raped by her uncle was made as opaque as possible
>A weirdly high number of references to death or dying were changed in incidental dialogue despite the fact the main story had no issue bringing it up
>Violence in general was toned down, e.g. 'stabbed' became 'struck'
But I'd need to replay both versions again to actually make a comprehensive list.

>It took all the spontaneity and emotion out of every conversation and made them sound stilted and samey.
Gonna have to disagree with you there, I actually thought it made a lot of the more emotional scenes more intense due to the more charged language used. Particularly Delita's monologues and such.
>Fell victim to the classic "there are two personalities, nobles and cockney shoe-shiners" trap which you also see in 14.
Kinda with side NPC's, yeah, but I felt that the main cast at least felt distinct within their roles and had exceptions like Agrias who talks like a bit of a mix between the two. Haven't played FF14 though so I cannot compare it.
>And also it was an innovation since the original was in plain conversational Japanese without any attempt to sound archaic.
Yup, which is one of the reasons I prefer the English WotL script - it just felt 'right' to have them all talking like that and in-line with the setting, as opposed to the Japanese script where you could have swapped out the language used with that in nearly every other FF game or most JRPGs from that era in general. But like I said - that's just my personal taste, and I'm not autistic enough to try claim that its somehow objectively better or anything.

"It can't be helped" isn't nearly as bad as "At this rate..." which I am immensely tired of seeing.

And both aren't NEARLY as bad as "You better take responsibility."

"It can't be helped" doesn't bother me at all because in my language we have same exact phrase that we use.

>people taking some meme no name seriously

The translation is fine you fucking weebs. So what if the script is a little different, it still means the same thing in the end and none of the characterization or elements get lost in the long run. Who gives a dman what some Polyshit article says?

Plus, the dub voice-acting is great. Easily, the best dub va's for the Persona series ever.

Do your best, Sup Forums-kun~!

>polygon
Pls stop linking this shit you fukken kike.

To give you an example of what I mean. The first line in the game.

>"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice."

A little awkward. It should probably be "please save us" rather than "help us." Most importantly it sounds like a person who is in distress earnestly praying for divine intervention.

>O Father, abandon not your wayward children of Ivalice, but deliver us from our sins, that we might know salvation.

It goes too far in the other direction, sounds overly formal and stale, like something a deacon would say during a church service (Ophelia is a young princess, not a clergy member).

Everything generally followed this rule, make all the lines sound like people are reading out of a book instead of speaking off the cuff.

Do you have a particular Delita monologue in mind as an example of him sounding more emotionally charged? I'm interested in seeing how it compares to the original. The neat thing is that with longplays on Youtube you can really easily compare the scripts.