How The English Version Of Rhapsody Added A Joke About “Direct Translation”

[HolyGrail]

*Then proceeds to not do a literal translation *

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Phq7bDNRw&ab_channel=CensoredGaming

Not only is the price staggering most likely to support bad localization teams; but NISA really has petty people working in their "localization department".. IMO the American branch of this company seems very parasitic, unnecessary and tacked on.

Would prefer AI translations over this..

[Melodia]

Pretty sure the translation is the same as it was when it was released on PSX, which was done by Atlus USA before NISA even existed.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by Melodia:

Pretty sure the translation is the same as it was when it was released on PSX, which was done by Atlus USA before NISA even existed.

its still relevant to current discussion though, ESPECIALLY with the current advanacements in AI, and how people feel no sympathy for localizers for taking heavy liberties with their translations. Even when they claim they're doing a "direct translation", they're still not translating it well. I did look at the release date of this release, before you point that out to me.

[sylardean]

NISA are well known for seriously overpricing their games but at the end of the day, you DON'T have to buy them if you don't want, it's YOUR cash, and it's their game to charge whatever they like for it. I HATE the prices NISA charges and so do a lot of other people but it's up to them at the end of the day.

I have to ask, have you EVER played a complete word for word direct translated game? I have (a final fantasy VI direct translation) and whilst some of it makes sense other parts don't, 'cos of cultural differences. Inside jokes don't make sense, references don't make sense, etc.. this is why translators take liberties, because they need to rewrite cultural references into something that other country's people will understand.

As for making use of AI translations, those are even worse and just down right lazy, not to mention AI is putting people out of work.. because even though this AI translates, it still can't differentiate between references and cultural jokes and change them for people to make sense of it and make story's and dialogue flow better over all.

The google/bing translations of Final Fantasy 4 and 5 were incredibly bad, but sometimes really funny to play.

So YES! localizers DO sometimes take liberties (and in some cases by a lot) but these liberties are sometimes needed to make game dialogue flow better within the game's over all story. Of course, the best way is to learn the language yourself and then play the original untranslated game, but I bet you're not up for doing that.

Translating games is NOT just a simple case of translate word for word and the script is done, next inserting the script back into the game, there's compression issues, text table insertion, spacing issues, overflow issues, memory issues where some games will need the memory expanded in the game's rom/iso or whatever to fit the translation in it, it's a LOT more work than maybe you realise, and often NOT easy to achieve, this is usually all due to memory limitations so text needs to be shortened to fit within the memory available.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by sylardean:

I have to ask, have you EVER played a complete word for word direct translated game? I have (a final fantasy VI direct translation) and whilst some of it makes sense other parts don't, 'cos of cultural differences. Inside jokes don't make sense, references don't make sense, etc.. this is why translators take liberties, because they need to rewrite cultural references into something that other country's people will understand.

You're missing the point. What we want is a translation of the script into coherent English, not to have the script rewritten to include lines about the patriarchy, "casual homophobia", Gamergate, something being a "bruh moment"(using that as an example because it doesn't necessarily have to be political for me to be opposed to it, just that its more egregious because of how different Japanese politics are from ours so its noticable), going on about "SJWs", lines like "this is for the fighter who fell victim to the male gaze", etc.

[sylardean]

Originally posted by dynastystar:

Originally posted by sylardean:

I have to ask, have you EVER played a complete word for word direct translated game? I have (a final fantasy VI direct translation) and whilst some of it makes sense other parts don't, 'cos of cultural differences. Inside jokes don't make sense, references don't make sense, etc.. this is why translators take liberties, because they need to rewrite cultural references into something that other country's people will understand.

You're missing the point. What we want is a translation of the script into coherent English, not to have the script rewritten to include lines about the patriarchy, "casual homophobia", Gamergate, something being a "bruh moment"(using that as an example because it doesn't necessarily have to be political for me to be opposed to it, just that its more egregious because of how different Japanese politics are from ours so its noticable), going on about "SJWs", lines like "this is for the fighter who fell victim to the male gaze", etc.

Then your saying you don't want a direct translation, you want a translation that's not changing much in the way of original dialogue but keeps the game understandable and more respectable for today's politics and SJW's.

Unfortunately this is the way games have always been, developers ain't worried about snowflakes caring about political/sexual/identity issues within their game, the game will sell no matter what, as long as it looks and plays good. The ONLY way you're going to get that changed is by taking it to court and having game laws changed, which would be NO easy task. I've played well over 400 Jrpgs from the 1980's right up to modern day, the best ones usually have some sort of politics involved story wise somewhere along the line, even some topics that SJW's would totally freak about.

I recently played a game where the main character uses the word 'Tr@nny' to describe a guy in it that was cross-dressing, which actually caused a major witchhunt for the translator, and forced him to quit translating games all together, he was a huge name in the translation community too. That issue was blown right out of the water and it turns out it was literally the translation direct from the Japanese version.

I mean at the end of the day, where do we draw the line as a society with all this Snowflake/SJW schyte? 'cos it's gone overboard as it is. Lets rip this statue down 'cos its not politically correct, it offends me, lets cement ourselves to the road 'cos of oil, lets destroy priceless works of art in... ACTUALLY i'm not gonna get into this, STEAM is not a place for political preferences and world problems.

Any hows, good luck in getting your voice heard and getting a script version for this game that you want, I just wouldn't hold your breath getting one from NISA, so the only option is to do one yourself maybe and have someone build you a script insert compiler for the game. Maybe someone over at 'www Romhacking dot net' would be interested in taking on this task..?? Worth a look there.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by sylardean:

Then your saying you don't want a direct translation, you want a translation that's not changing much in the way of original dialogue but keeps the game understandable and more respectable for today's politics and SJW's.

Unfortunately this is the way games have always been, developers ain't worried about snowflakes caring about political/sexual/identity issues within their game, the game will sell no matter what, as long as it looks and plays good. The ONLY way you're going to get that changed is by taking it to court and having game laws changed, which would be NO easy task. I've played well over 400 Jrpgs from the 1980's right up to modern day, the best ones usually have some sort of politics involved story wise somewhere along the line, even some topics that SJW's would totally freak about.

I recently played a game where the main character uses the word 'Tr@nny' to describe a guy in it that was cross-dressing, which actually caused a major witchhunt for the translator, and forced him to quit translating games all together, he was a huge name in the translation community too. That issue was blown right out of the water and it turns out it was literally the translation direct from the Japanese version.

I mean at the end of the day, where do we draw the line as a society with all this Snowflake/SJW schyte? 'cos it's gone overboard as it is. Lets rip this statue down 'cos its not politically correct, it offends me, lets cement ourselves to the road 'cos of oil, lets destroy priceless works of art in... ACTUALLY i'm not gonna get into this, STEAM is not a place for political preferences and world problems.

Any hows, good luck in getting your voice heard and getting a script version for this game that you want, I just wouldn't hold your breath getting one from NISA, so the only option is to do one yourself maybe and have someone build you a script insert compiler for the game. Maybe someone over at 'www Romhacking dot net' would be interested in taking on this task..?? Worth a look there.

oh I avoid most NISA releases, due to the price and due to the localization. The Trails series and the Ys series are dead to me even though I am a fan of Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel I and II. my "male gaze" example was from a NISA localization(fortunately, it happened after the point of no return, so I didn't have much left to do) and now I'm not playing the sequel because of that and the sequel includes lines about trump and some other references as well(the game makes a sports reference which imo, was too direct). The bruh moment, based on the character portraits is from a NISA localization. I'll have to hear about a serious turnaround of the company from people I respect for me to take NISA off as an ignored publisher, and to pay attention to anything NISA does. I do not expect to get a new script of this game, since they've already released it and as shown in the abysmal release of Ys VIII, are lazy and are not the type of company to go back over and fix work they've already "finished". That is, unless the game has enough blowback like Ys VIII did, but they're no doubt gonna stand by this script.

What do you mean by "more respectable for today's politics and SJW's."

[Dissidia]

Oh come on... It's a silly 23 year old joke from Atlus USA's localization. Why is this such a problem all of the sudden?

Sure, some games did not receive great western localizations, but Rhapsody's localization was excellent and I personally thought this joke was pretty humorous.

[Juandiqsuc]

lmao official translator are so incompetence

[Katana]

When you post evidence proving you’re right, and your own evidence shows the opposite…

Avoiding repetition of words is a very important goal for good writing flow. In the Japanese version, they’re literally using the term “WhiteSnow” which maintains mysteriousness due to the English translation layer. But in direct-translation English, they’re just using the word “Snow” twice when then referring to it as a snowscape - even though in Japanese a different vocab term is used.

The translators were 100% correct to hang shade on jokers like this YouTuber. Meanwhile incels in the comments are rambling about “SJW/Woke” nonsense.

[Melodia]

Originally posted by Katana:

The translators were 100% correct to hang shade on jokers like this YouTuber.

Funny thing is, as mentioned above (and in a few of the YT comments, including by someone who literally worked for XSeed) this is something that was in the game when it was translated 24 years ago.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by Dissidia:

Oh come on... It's a silly 23 year old joke from Atlus USA's localization. Why is this such a problem all of the sudden?

Sure, some games did not receive great western localizations, but Rhapsody's localization was excellent and I personally thought this joke was pretty humorous.

That's your opinion not a fact. One fact is that the majority of people disagree with you.

[Asakura Shinichi]

Its so cringy reading all those kiddos protecting those garbage localizations, when you dont even need to search far to see how those same games dont have any issues with those bad localizations in other languages, which was proven with the French localization of Cold Steel 3, none of the political garbage and reddit tier boring jokes and cutting of all jokes that NISA found offensive happened in the french localization all the jokes were still there properly translated. The only thing you are proving with defending this garbage localization is how narcisistic and self centered americans are, thinking they are the center and number 1 in the world, when in actuallity they are slowly getting closer to a 3rd world country.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by Asakura Shinichi:

Its so cringy reading all those kiddos protecting those garbage localizations, when you dont even need to search far to see how those same games dont have any issues with those bad localizations in other languages, which was proven with the French localization of Cold Steel 3, none of the political garbage and reddit tier boring jokes and cutting of all jokes that NISA found offensive happened in the french localization all the jokes were still there properly translated. The only thing you are proving with defending this garbage localization is how narcisistic and self centered americans are, thinking they are the center and number 1 in the world, when in actuallity they are slowly getting closer to a 3rd world country.

They can't control their borders and they don't have voter ID so it sounds like they are already one, but it's pretty off-topic.

Can't wait for AI translations to be perfected so that we can avoid what you have described.

[Sywen]

thanks for pointing this out. Now i know not to buy this (or anything else this localizer team 'translated')

i'd rather have an accurate translation than the localizer's fanfic.

[Melodia]

Originally posted by Sywen:

thanks for pointing this out. Now i know not to buy this (or anything else this localizer team 'translated')

You mean Atlus USA in the late 90s and early 2000s?