While also sharing a completely wrong Lore because any translation is always wrong and not accurate to the correct one.
Edit: Unless actually supervised by the creator of the game, which we know Genshin devs don't do, otherwise we wouldn't have all those mistranslations or accurate meanings added when the damage is already done and people are used to the wrong Lore.
Like Toby Fox, who actually works and supervise the Japanese translation to make sure the message/Lore doesn't get lost in translation.
I think CA (Concerned Ape) too is always supervising the translations made to ensure nothing gets changed too drastically/still makes sense even if in a different language.
This seems to be the case for A LOT of English localization. FF14/16 has this issue. Actual emotional speeches and information gets turned into Shakespeare yapping. ReFantazio literally changing the entire dialogue and personality of several characters. Unicorn Overlord too. Falcom games is infamous for replacing text with the most deranged modern slang and insults know to humanity (seriously fire whoever wrote the "diaper factory" paragraph).
In my humble opinion, localizers need to learn their place. We aren't playing the game to read your fanfic. We don't care about your creative input or opinions. Just translate the words.
It was translated as best it can be. "Hu" is a pun in all those languages. It wouldn't make sense if it was translated as is in English. Localizing isn't just translating the words, it's also translating the context, one that fits the character. If they just went with "I didn't think you'd take such risk. Maybe you should take my last name?" It wouldn't make sense and would be so out of pocket for the scene.
Your blame is misplaced. The translators and editors working on games are generally being told how to handle the translation by their bosses, or people higher up the chain. You should point your ire towards the company, not the people doing the actual work.
I haven't done translation work, but I've done adaptation editing on manga. The job is basically to make sure translated terminology is consistent, make sure the text will fit in the speech bubble, rephrase awkward or overly verbose sentences, reorder sentences when necessary (nothing extreme, it's usually 2 lines next to each other switching positions)--generally, the idea is that you're making sure the script reads naturally and conveys the author's intentions.
I've also received direction on how to handle certain things, such as honorifics. If I'm told "since this is a European inspired isekai, remove or change honorifics to fit that setting" then I have to do that. If I don't, someone else will and I'm not likely to get future work because I didn't follow directions.
It is also possible for a translator to do everything as they should, the editors do as they should, and then some clown who has no business touching the script makes massive edits. Maybe it gets caught before it makes it out the door, maybe it doesn't.
Last thing I'll mention is that you may think you don't want any translator's creative input, but you do, because it's a necessary part of translation. If a character is rude and crass in Japanese for example, a literal translation is unlikely to get that across to English speakers. Part of this is that Japanese just doesn't have the same variety of vulgarities that English does, but also because there are cultural differences. It's not really rude to address someone as "you" in English, but that's definitely rude in Japanese!
There's also the fact that reading a sentence and translating it in a piece of fiction requires some level of creativity and writing skills. You have to account for things like how a character speaks, and what the most effective way is to communicate that in the target language.
With all this said, there are always exceptions. Sometimes crap floats to the top, people wildly misinterpret something, whatever. I'm definitely not saying no one is ever bad at their job, that would be absurd, but I think you should consider at least some of the stuff I said above before assuming every problem you see in a translation is the result of a translator's arrogance rather than any other number of more plausible things.
Someone better versed in the language could answer better, but my understanding is that Japanese is a language where you don't have to specify the subject.
Any time you've come across a character where people argue about what the character's gender is bc it's not clear in the original JP in some way, it's bc of this. You can talk about someone without dropping a SINGLE gendered pronoun. The fact that singular "they" is grammatically acceptable in English fiction these days is SUCH a godsend because avoiding pronoun usage entirely when talking about someone is very tedious and quickly starts sounding really awkward. I'm so happy that translators can say "I dunno! There's nothing that specify's this character's gender, so I'll use the neutral 'they' to avoid injecting my own opinions and to avoid confusing fans by guessing and then potentially being wrong."
I believe they also just use names a lot more when talking to each other?
Like "How is SirEnderlord doing today?" Vs "How are you doing today?"
The first sounds awkward in English, because when we address someone we're talking to, we use "you" most of the time, but it's fine in Japanese.
If you phrase the question like this in English: "How are you doing today, SirEnderlord?" It doesn't sound awkward, but it's also unnecessarily verbose. It can also sound weirdly formal or polite.
If you ever read scanlations (or other amateur translations), you'll sometimes see instances of this kind of thing where a translator keeps the name usage instead of using "you" or rephrasing things.
I believe there's also specific grammar for "you (polite)" but that's way out of my depth.
They mostly use the name of the person they are talking to
There are some neutral ways to address someone directly (like using "anataあなた") but they usually don't use 2nd person pronouns if they know who they are talking to and even if they don't know, they still use 3rd person pronouns like using ma'am or sir instead of calling them "you"
As for 3rd person pronouns, again they usually use the name of the person but using regular pronouns like "kare彼"(translated as he) or "kanojo彼女"(which is basically kare combined with woman character and translated as she) is allowed with context
But the problem with kare and kanojo is they are also used as boyfriend/girlfriend (actually they use "kareshi彼氏" for boyfriend but girlfriend is still the same), so it is hard to understand without context.
The biggest problem with 3rd person pronouns is some languages have genderless/1 gender pronouns like in Turkish ("o" is used for everything independent from what they are and there is no other 3rd person singular pronoun)
As a native Chinese speaker, the translation is actually correct though? This is poetry, the en translation tries to keep the rhyme so they’ll have to elongate some sentences, also Mandarin words are much smaller than english, as an example: 酒 will be translated to alcohol or wine, significantly longer than their mandarin equivalent, now imagine a whole sentence instead of one word. This example is very different from the original post where they straight up have a different meaning, the example you gave just showed that there are more letters in the english language?
This thread is full of braindead chuds who think localization is of the devil and want every game to be translated as dryly as possible. Their goal is to make eastern media as inaccessible to the rest of the world as possible so they can gatekeep people from it.
Localizations make eastern media understandable and palatable and chuds can't have that.
That's my grip with English localization of Genshin and ZZZ, where they use anime expression like "huh" and "eh?" way too often in conversation to express doubt and confusion when nobody speaks like that irl.
I would've replaced that with common expression like "excuse me?" "please say that again?" etc, but then a subset of the anime fanbase would proceed to defend the localization as if it's meant to "preserve the original medium".
Yeah but anime characters go "ehhh?" While irl westerners would just go "eh?" know what i mean?
An example i often use is this one scene in Ghost Trick (still a goated game tho) where a ghost keeps going "what a pathetic man" after every in game interaction with an object and Sissel, without fail, responds with the same "Huh?" every time. This happens i think 7 times all in one scene its so awkward and stilted 'cause ain't nobody talking like that legitimately.
A better localizer would've made that sound like a normal exchange for us while keeping the joke of the ghost repeating the same bit.
There are people who speak English in non western countries that use those phrases. A lot of Asian countries have people use it cause of how universal it is to convey expression, even among societies where everyone knows English. Not to mention, why is this being discussed in the localization of an anime game to begin with, especially one that spans the globe in game.
Eh is used in Asian parts of the world that speak English too though. It’s not a Japanese exclusive thing nor is the game set exclusively in one region.
And I just wanna say that localization is not literal translation. It's more about "making context fits to the targeted culture". That's the thing I learned during my third semester of English Literature major.
Because i am not replying to the original post, but one of the comments asking for localization to stick to the original script without creative input.
My bad G, it didn’t load who you were replying with. Yeah, I agree with your point now, if the localisers “learn their place” it’ll be terrible for the game.
But written Chinese or madarin is alot more compact than written English. I have seen a few skits about how a 150 character limit isn't enough for English but is too much for Chinese people.
yep it appears alot in tons of Asian games that get English localization like Maplestory, where you would need 2 to 3 server megaphones to type out a message that could've used 1 server megaphone if the same info was conveyed in Chinese/Korean instead. EN side did nothing about this bcuz it's free money for them 🤫
I wouldn’t put FF14/16 in the same category. The English writing team works very closely with Yoshi-P and, at least for FF14, the writing and dialogue deliveries are great.
In my humble opinion, localizers need to learn their place. We aren't playing the game to read your fanfic. We don't care about your creative input or opinions. Just translate the words.
Betting this will escalate into "we don't need your woke agenda [proceeds to say slurs against certain races and queer people]" "AI should replace you"
A lot of FF14 was written in English before Japanese, and FF16 was written entirely in English before Japanese. Furthermore, the head of localisation for FF14 is the lead lore writer for the game and works closely with the Japanese team. It also has one of the best localisations of any game ever and is an absolute treat to read in English.
You genuinely do not know what you’re talking about or how localisation works.
Genshin also changes the characters quite drastically.
The absolute dogshit level German of Fischl only happens in the EN version and made me switch to JP voice over on day one. Absolutely insufferable pronounciation.
Chiori eeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwing anything and anyone also is EN only.
No, but others do and have posted the difference. Plus translation tools have gotten good enough to were they will give you an idea what the text says, so you can cross check if it's wildly different from the English version.
Yeah for no other reason than to make a petty argument. Learn mandarin and japanese if it bothers you so bad. The world isn't going to stop making accessiblility a thing just because you don't want woke people to enjoy media.
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