How is the translation in this game?

[Geomancer]

XSeed did (in my opinion) a very good job with the localizations of the previous Trails games. WIth this one being NISA, how is it?

To be frank, I haven't been impressed with NISA in the past. Perhaps it is the types of games they typically localize, I don't know, but I haven't been a fan. I don't want to say they're "bad" or something like that, just the games I've tried of theirs have not connected with me.

A good translation isn't "pure" or "literal", or however people choose to describe it. Sometimes things have to change to match an English audience that wouldn't understand or "get" what a Japanese audience would. If that makes sense.

The Legend of Heroes games are extremely story heavy, so that concerns me when I haven't enjoyed most of what NISA has previously published.

[Koby]

I'd personally say NISA did a good job on CS3 and met or exceeded XSEED's work from CS1&2.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Geomancer:

A good translation isn't "pure" or "literal"

I disagree with that. Actually, yes, it is. The translators' job should be to translate, not to take it upon themselves to become writers of the game and re-write the story/dialogues etc. based on their own (meaning the translators') thoughts. But that is what they would have to do in order to adopt the policy of making a fast & loose & inaccurate translation, as you are asking for.

I'm pretty sure NISA's CS3 translation isn't pure, which makes it very bad.

And it's also bad because NISA's translators altered some of the thoughts of the characters, by re-writing their original words in order to censor/'sanitize' what they said, according to the translators' (and/or their bosses') own real-life political biases. That is something that XSEED never did AFAIK; in fact, XSEED used to have an extremely anti-censorship producer who would have fought tooth & nail to prevent any of that kind of crap from happening in XSEED games.

As for an English audience not "getting" something a Japanese would were the translation to be accurate: that 'problem' is easily solved via the internet.

If that were to happen, then any English-speaking player could easily type the line that they didn't understand into a search engine, and then they'd receive many responses that explain exactly what it means.

Hence, that is a very poor excuse to 'justify' making an inaccurate translation.

[Furry Wrecking Crew]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Originally posted by Geomancer:

A good translation isn't "pure" or "literal"

I disagree with that. Actually, yes, it is. The translators' job should be to translate, not to take it upon themselves to become writers of the game and re-write the story/dialogues etc. based on their own (meaning the translators') thoughts.

The very epitome of WRONG. They did this in the NES/SNES days and the translations were awful. The job of a translator is to translate AND localize. Straight-up translations of Japanese to English end up sounding very stupid and Engrish-y to a native English speaker.

[Geomancer]

Originally posted by Vigi React:

Originally posted by Dragon:

I disagree with that. Actually, yes, it is. The translators' job should be to translate, not to take it upon themselves to become writers of the game and re-write the story/dialogues etc. based on their own (meaning the translators') thoughts.

The very epitome of WRONG. They did this in the NES/SNES days and the translations were awful. The job of a translator is to translate AND localize. Straight-up translations of Japanese to English end up sounding very stupid and Engrish-y to a native English speaker.

Yes, this is what I'm meaning. I wasn't meaning that they change the content/context of the text and the meaning/emotion behind it. Rather, just making it sound like it was written natively in English which could result in different phrasing (but still matches what was being told in Japanese).

[Koby]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Originally posted by Geomancer:

A good translation isn't "pure" or "literal"

I disagree with that. Actually, yes, it is. The translators' job should be to translate, not to take it upon themselves to become writers of the game and re-write the story/dialogues etc. based on their own (meaning the translators') thoughts. But that is what they would have to do in order to adopt the policy of making a fast & loose & inaccurate translation, as you are asking for.

I'm pretty sure NISA's CS3 translation isn't pure, which makes it very bad.

And it's also bad because NISA's translators altered some of the thoughts of the characters, by re-writing their original words in order to censor/'sanitize' what they said, according to the translators' (and/or their bosses') own real-life political biases. That is something that XSEED never did AFAIK; in fact, XSEED used to have an extremely anti-censorship producer who would have fought tooth & nail to prevent any of that kind of crap from happening in XSEED games.

As for an English audience not "getting" something a Japanese would were the translation to be accurate: that 'problem' is easily solved via the internet.

If that were to happen, then any English-speaking player could easily type the line that they didn't understand into a search engine, and then they'd receive many responses that explain exactly what it means.

Hence, that is a very poor excuse to 'justify' making an inaccurate translation.

Dragon showcasing he doesn't even understand the definition of translation.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Geomancer:

Yes, this is what I'm meaning. I wasn't meaning that they change the content/context of the text and the meaning/emotion behind it. Rather, just making it sound like it was written natively in English which could result in different phrasing (but still matches what was being told in Japanese).

Okay, well that's a different concept then, than the premise which I was responding to in my previous reply.

Rather, the premise I was responding to was: like, if for example, the text of the game refers to something that is popular in Japan but that most people outside of Japan won't know about, and then the translators decide to delete all mentions of that thing out of the game, and replace it with something else that has no presence in the original text.

[Koby]

Originally posted by Dragon:

Originally posted by Geomancer:

Yes, this is what I'm meaning. I wasn't meaning that they change the content/context of the text and the meaning/emotion behind it. Rather, just making it sound like it was written natively in English which could result in different phrasing (but still matches what was being told in Japanese).

Okay, well that's a different concept then, than the premise which I was responding to in my previous reply.

Rather, the premise I was responding to was: like, if for example, the text of the game refers to something that is popular in Japan but that most people outside of Japan won't know about, and then the translators decide to delete all mentions of that thing out of the game, and replace it with something else that has no presence in the original text.

That's called localization.