English translation a little strange ?

[Skippio]

Anyone else found the English translations a little wacky and strange in places ? for instance Rinwell's "Blah blah blah magic" or The conversation with Shione and Alphen where she is discussing wanting to die and Alphen blurts out "But if you die that would mean your dead" there's more than one instance of it during the main story and they always feel strange but then again i don't speak Japanese and it may be 100% intentional

[Ogami]

Its not very good, yes. Also a ton of typos/ grammar mistakes in the subs.
And if you know Japanese even a litte and use the Japanese dub you notice quickly that the English translation ( its dub subtitles) has only very loosely something to do with what is being said in Japanese in many scenes.

Not a good localization job in my opinion.

[Kaestlyn]

Blah blah blah is a throwback I believe to a character in Takes of Vesperia who gets a skill with this name to increase their cast speed. Having played a lot of Vesperia I thought it was a funny Easter egg

[Monterossa]

Typical Bandai Namco's "localization".

They also changed character names, and some key terms in the lore. It's so annoying.

[DeathHydra]

Originally posted by Monterossa:

Typical Bandai Namco's "localization".

They also changed character names, and some key terms in the lore. It's so annoying.

I can never understand why localizers change character names. The worst offender is Dragon Quest XI. They change a huge amount of names, it feels so weird playing them in Japanese dub.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by DeathHydra:

I can never understand why localizers change character names. The worst offender is Dragon Quest XI. They change a huge amount of names, it feels so weird playing them in Japanese dub.

I read an interview once about that topic with Dragon Quest and its usually because the name is perceived as not "cool" enough for the western market.
Often the names have some certain meaning in Japanese or are based on some wordplay which gets lost in the English version so they change the names.
If that is a good explanation, i dont know.

[Lee]

A mark of a good translation is often translating for meaning/tone and not translating literally word for word.

If you can't have that, a literal word-for-word is the next best thing, but as a previous poster mentioned things like allegory, puns, jokes, pop-culture, etc just don't translate literally so tend to not make sense.

Finally, a bad translation will neither capture the meaning or correctly do a direct translation... I've had the english voices on the whole time so I haven't noticed but I'm hoping any differences are a result of adapting the meaning rather than mistakes.

[DeathHydra]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Originally posted by DeathHydra:

I can never understand why localizers change character names. The worst offender is Dragon Quest XI. They change a huge amount of names, it feels so weird playing them in Japanese dub.

I read an interview once about that topic with Dragon Quest and its usually because the name is perceived as not "cool" enough for the western market.
Often the names have some certain meaning in Japanese or are based on some wordplay which gets lost in the English version so they change the names.
If that is a good explanation, i dont know.

The former is definitely not a good reason. As for the latter, I guess it's kinda understandable, though I doubt every name have certain meanings in Dragon Quest XI from what little Japanese that I know. (they change almost all character names)

Can't really comment on Tales of Arise yet since I haven't gotten very far. Things I've noticed so far are some typos, which I can tolerate, and small changes on some names, which is a bit annoying but okay, I guess.

[Good Night Owl]

When it comes to localization in general, I think people are not understanding that a lot of times, they literally can't translate it word for word. Often times resulting in changes that isn't really the fault of the people localizing it. people just assume there's no reason for it. I think the reasons are often kind of complex and unique with every localization. Not attacking this thread, just saying in general.

More on the topic at hand though, I like the "Blah blah blah Magic!". I found it to be entertaining.

[natsukashii]

Not super far in (like 20h or so) but I haven't noticed any translation changes that I couldn't at least justify in my head. I'm only about N5 though but that's better than complaining about the localization without even knowing japanese lol. Ps. Shionne is way cuter in japanese Ds.

[GodSlayer]

Originally posted by Kaestlyn:

Blah blah blah is a throwback I believe to a character in Takes of Vesperia who gets a skill with this name to increase their cast speed. Having played a lot of Vesperia I thought it was a funny Easter egg

you mean rita?

[Kaestlyn]

Originally posted by ExiaLyseR:

Originally posted by Kaestlyn:

Blah blah blah is a throwback I believe to a character in Takes of Vesperia who gets a skill with this name to increase their cast speed. Having played a lot of Vesperia I thought it was a funny Easter egg

you mean rita?

Yeah - just didn't want to "spoil" party members etc if someone hasn't played.

[Villain]

there's only one english subtitle right? then it's probably a dubtitle(caption for english dub). not a translation of a japanese dialog. 

[Preyz]

Originally posted by Villain:

there's only one english subtitle right? then it's probably a dubtitle(caption for english dub). not a translation of a japanese dialog.

the only time games get a good translation now is if they don't get a english dub to start with if it gets a english dub all we get is a copy paste of the english script

[きょすけ]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Its not very good, yes. Also a ton of typos/ grammar mistakes in the subs.
And if you know Japanese even a litte and use the Japanese dub you notice quickly that the English translation ( its dub subtitles) has only very loosely something to do with what is being said in Japanese in many scenes.

Not a good localization job in my opinion.

Putting aside the typos, the main issue with the localization is that either it's done by going straight to the point, or by mimicking the japanese script with the english equivalent, but that's an issue that depends for many factors, such as to make it easy to pick up (generally for a broader audience), if there is a lip-synch check (mostly about cutsceness here); let's also not forget that some names may sounds different due to "engrish" nature (aka romanization system) in which names sounds different between japanese and english due to the katakana structure: take for example the name siegfried (ジーグフリード), which in romaji is spelled as jiigufuriido, and as you can see, the initial "Z" as been replaced with the "J"; I made this example in order to address some changes in names, which for the most part are different due to how they are spoken in japanese.

This is a pretty bad explanation, but I'm kind of tired right now, still it should suffice for getting the gist of it.

Originally posted by DeathHydra:

I can never understand why localizers change character names. The worst offender is Dragon Quest XI. They change a huge amount of names, it feels so weird playing them in Japanese dub.

Many games suffered from this, even back in the day since the psone era, it gives often headaches because when I replay them in japanese I start getting confused.

Dragon Quest franchise has done this since forever, they changed pratically everything even attacks names, and I still don't get why grand cross has been renamed as "Pearly Gates", not only it doesn't make sense, it also kills the factor that the name implies the terrain effect it leaves...

Originally posted by Ogami:

I read an interview once about that topic with Dragon Quest and its usually because the name is perceived as not "cool" enough for the western market.
Often the names have some certain meaning in Japanese or are based on some wordplay which gets lost in the English version so they change the names.
If that is a good explanation, i dont know.

It's a middle ground. During translations usually a translator is hired and then at least another person in charge of the localization (editor): the problem is that in the gaming industry there have been people who instead of doing their work, wanted to edit the scripts in order to fit their tastes (such cases are the infamous neptunia case, which ended up BADLY, due to their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ editor (Nick Doerr, serch for more titles ruined by him, he even stated that he doesn't know anything about japanese which adds more salt to the wound).

As for he op though, if I have to be honest ToA localization is not as bad as the ones I usually encounter in my playtime, but I will judge it once fully replaying it completely in japanese to check the major differences.

Generally speaking though let's not forget that no matter what, both translators and editors have their one touch, eh.

[Powercow]

The subtitles do have a fair amount of typos (two words with no spaces, "you're" instead of "your", etc.)

There was also a strange moment during the story in Menancia when they talk about the Renan Supporters being kicked out of the castle, and they meant Renans who support the Dhanans, which struck me as odd because earlier they talked about Dohalim Supporters, who are people who support Dohalim.

The one that irks me a lot though is Resurrection and Revitalize.
When you cast Resurrection, the voice actor yells out "Resuscitation!" That's... not the word but meh close enough.
But later when you get Revitalize, she yells out "Resurrection!" Now that's just confusing.

If I had to imagine, at some point in development Resurrection was called Resuscitation, and it was changed later after the VA work was done and they couldn't afford to get them back to fix something so small.
Now as to why Resurrection isn't Resurrection, and Revitalize getting renamed Resuscitation... I got nothin'.