Why is the localization so atrocious? (possible spoilers for the demo)

[shadowthief011]

I am serious here ,this is not another "oh no localizers made things woke" post...
I've only played a few minutes of the demo and I've already seen the localizers change the dialogue drastically for no reason that has to do with localization...

They turned Gallica from a helpful companion into a meanspirited brat, and the Captain in the recruitment office, from someone who wants to "teach the harshness of reality" to that noble man, into someone who outright means to see him dead.

For those that have played more of the demo and understand Japanese...are things like this for the entirety of the Demo?

[VR]

Messaggio originale di goodbye_bonito:

I haven't noticed any dramatic difference in localisation, obviously wording is different, doesn't change anything tho, not misleading any way nor changing characters personalities. If anything, it's a bit better than original because Japanese games tend to have very dull "anime" style lingvo

Wording being different means that the meaning is entirely different. I know that the illiterate struggle with understanding how synonyms work, but changing words does change meaning for those of us who can actually read. Try reading the individual words instead of guessing sentences.

[Syraniss]

You people cry about the silliest things. These direct translations given are terrible, some of them don't even make sense in english. If I wanted the game to be translated by a machine with zero ability to interpret tone or context I could already do that with google glass, thank goodness they are teams localizing these games.

As long as they are not inserting fan fiction or terrible political takes we should stop crying. All these examples look clean and flavorful to me.

[Dagný]

Messaggio originale di Chaser324:

I feel like the people that make these sorts of threads and post inconsequential screenshots as if they're a smoking gun must barely be able to even speak English much less Japanese.

It's because that's exactly the case

[VR]

Messaggio originale di Syraniss:

You people cry about the silliest things. These direct translations given are terrible, some of them don't even make sense in english. If I wanted the game to be translated by a machine with zero ability to interpret tone or context I could already do that with google glass, thank goodness they are teams localizing these games.

As long as they are not inserting fan fiction or terrible political takes we should stop crying. All these examples look clean and flavorful to me.

The English translations don't make sense in English. They're word salad with no relation to the scene in which they appear, not purple prose. I'd rather take the machine translation over some moron who can't parse a sentence in their own native language. The only people who think this isn't a problem are the ones who also can't read.

[Potjack]

Messaggio originale di FPS:

Messaggio originale di ヒナタちゃん:

The tone of the game has been completely changed and a lot of people are forced to consume a product that has nothing to do with the original.

Oh ♥♥♥♥, people are forcing you to play a game that you don't like the tone of? Like at gun point? Phew, here I thought you were just complaining to have something to whine about. Now that we know you're being **forced**, we can take your whine seriously.

[senou]

I'm not the one to talk about this, I wont point any fingers for Metaphor or claim anything as I don't know, I'm not Japanese or have any experience in translation.

But isn't Atlus/Segas localiser for scripts like bad? I always read about it online and maybe it's cope. Their name is Katrina Leonoudakis, I googled it now. Seems to be a lot of criticism/things written about them

[VB Driver]

Messaggio originale di shadowthief011:

https://ibb.co/dcdr11H
https://ibb.co/JQ09bX3
https://ibb.co/wcvS5VT
https://ibb.co/7vHHk59
https://ibb.co/Ch4TWrJ
https://ibb.co/KxhV62m

And?.....
Exactly same things with a different wording.

[KingKrouch]

Messaggio originale di FPS:

The localization of this game made me want to ask for a refund, absolutely NONE of the lines were the same as the original, they had all the characters speak this way.

Americans think the world revolves around them, English subtitles are the only option for many people.

The tone of the game has been completely changed and a lot of people are forced to consume a product that has nothing to do with the original.

What's even funnier is that Sega translates every other version based on the English script, so I hope you love Joss Whedon quips and culture war ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ injected in your games.

Messaggio originale di ヒナタちゃん:

Well, i remember the localization lead for this game already deleted his twitter when the whole Unicorn Overlord sh1tstorm broke out, saying something along the lines of "Preemtively deleting it because i dont want to deal with people coming after me". Im not going to bother comparing the scripts but from what was posted here it doesnt even seem bad. You could have gotten way worse in 2024 in a game about racism and politics. Again, if you have a problem with localizers, make enough wind. Be annoying. Or nothing will change. OR if you have a brain, learn japanese.

Nah, I don't think "Just learn Japanese" should be an excuse.

I just personally find it funny that the same group of people on social media that act defensive whenever they're caught mischaracterizing dialogue or censoring ♥♥♥♥ say "Just get a JLPT N1" as a method of gatekeeping and a poor defense for their questionable changes, suddenly have to rely on machine translation which they constantly berate online as being the spawn of satan. Well, that and the fact that they "absolutely hate" gatekeeping, unless it's someone they're in an ideological agreement with. Literally, CyGames, one of the infamous ones for adding Joss Whedon, Smokey Bear, and Donald Trump references to their translations, had an employee (In a uma musume video) that was caught using DeepL on one of their monitors. What's even the point of getting a JLPT if you're just gonna use a machine translator anyways, I've seen some IdeaFactory games with blatantly machine translated crap. I can understand a JP > EN dictionary and just googling things if you need to figure out references or slang, but that ain't it.

Even the ones that people praise for being "transparent" about accepting feedback on their translation quality (Nexon), have divorced cat-ladies that seethe and change things because they're personally sad that other people can dare to enjoy things. If that's the bar that should be reached, then no wonder modern gaming sucks.

Corpo bootlickers act like you either gotta accept a MTL mess that is absolute garbage, or accept the Joss Whedon quips, zoomoid/millenial/ebonics slang, and complete mischaracterizations/flanderizations of characters. Don't hire glorified lolcows with egos the size of the empire state building like Hurricane Katrina (because she's big and ruins everything she touches) and GeeWiz to work on your English versions then. ♥♥♥♥ the toxic positivity nonsense.

[Spardacus]

Dude, your translations are not accurate at all.

[VB Driver]

Messaggio originale di Akashic Librarian:

I feel like people think that the folks doing the translations for these games just get a free pass to do whatever they want instead of what the truth is. Which is that every single little thing has to get approved probably multiple times.

Like that's just how it is in the business world if something is going to be put in front of the customer it has to be approved and if it isn't being approved that's not the fault of the person doing the job who is likely underpaid and over worked, it's the fault of the project manager who's entire job it is to manage those approvals and to make sure the project is on track.

Yep, people also lash out at translators while the ones responsible for final text are actually EDITORS.

This far-right conspiracy drama must stop; the drama in which some ultrainfluential evil translator lord is above directors, producers and CEOs.

[KingKrouch]

Okay, from my time looking at this person's translations, nothing quite stuck out to me that badly, but I do think that sentences could be edited to make it sound more natural. That's *fine* for a rough draft TL, but for dialogue it needs some work. Another question to ask is if the dialogue is translated in context or out of context.

Assuming that dialogue is revised and made to sound more natural, I'd rather take that over the endless purple prose. If you provide an LLM with context around dialogue, stuff like character names, and the sorts, you can get surprisingly decent outputs from that (at least better than either DeepL or Google Translate). I've seen what Google Translate and DeepL spit out, and most of it is unusable outside of basic stuff.

[Катюша]

Unfortunately, this has been an issue that has plagued gaming forever. Especially Japanese developed titles. Standards are so low that people accept anything.

[VB Driver]

Messaggio originale di Spardacus:

Dude, your translations are not accurate at all.

It's Google Translate. I just used Google Lens and got the same results.

So OP basically blames localizing team for not using GT but trying to localize.

[Hinamina]

Messaggio originale di FPS:

Messaggio originale di ヒナタちゃん:

Well, i remember the localization lead for this game already deleted his twitter when the whole Unicorn Overlord sh1tstorm broke out, saying something along the lines of "Preemtively deleting it because i dont want to deal with people coming after me". Im not going to bother comparing the scripts but from what was posted here it doesnt even seem bad. You could have gotten way worse in 2024 in a game about racism and politics. Again, if you have a problem with localizers, make enough wind. Be annoying. Or nothing will change. OR if you have a brain, learn japanese.

Unicorn Overlord?

https://i.imgur.com/dswthr0.png

The localization of this game made me want to ask for a refund, absolutely NONE of the lines were the same as the original, they had all the characters speak this way.

Americans think the world revolves around them, English subtitles are the only option for many people.

The tone of the game has been completely changed and a lot of people are forced to consume a product that has nothing to do with the original.

You dont even understand what localization or translation means. Unicorn Overlord was way overblown and even your screenshot says the same thing as in japanese, just with more words. Again, im all for the movement to make bad localizers and translators lose their jobs but to look to UO is just stupid for the most part. There are like two severe translations or rather the lack thereof in character endings but people like you never played the game to begin with to pull up those examples.

UO has a different translation style for the english language and yes, it changes the tone. But if you really cared about the tone of japanese games you would already be able to understand japanese and play them in their native language. Like i did decades ago. If you really loved japanese media and were not some ironic weeb but a real otaku you would have already done it. Pathetic. While i stil hate localizers more, dekinai like you that just complain instead of learning are almost as bad in my eyes. And ive seen all your excuses as to why you are not able to learn another language. Spare me.

[KingKrouch]

Messaggio originale di ヒナタちゃん:

UO has a different translation style for the english language and yes, it changes the tone. But if you really cared about the tone of japanese games you would already be able to understand japanese and play them in their native language. Like i did decades ago. If you really loved japanese media and were not some ironic weeb but a real otaku you would have already done it.

To play devil's advocate, The Like a Dragon games have separate subtitles for the cutscenes depending on what voice track you're playing the game with.

That should be the gold standard, even if those games have an issue with accuracy as well.

Persona 5's translation (at least before Royal) was fine (setting aside some character pronounciation issues in the dub), but that didn't stop a certain writer on the Borderlands games (Which are poorly written) from complaining about it. If he dunks on it, that's when you know you're going in the right direction.