wankgate | 252: imagine all the tags sitting neglected in inboxes for this

nah, it was just a joke about how there will always be some degree of inaccuracy in any translation because that's the nature of translating a work

obviously the degree of inaccuracy varies, though - trust me, i'm annoyed about particularly shitty ones too. the video game industry in particular is inundated with translators who don't seem to even have basic japanese comprehension, and it's deeply depressing. i've given up on getting any castmates who aren't very off due to only being exposed to the english version

for me it's annoying when the official translation is actually fairly accurate and people put it aside to use the inaccurate fan versions. drives me up the wall.

there is a huge amount of this with Japanese media and people who are just dangerous enough with the language to think that good official translation is wrong and opt for something more literal.

that's not to say there aren't things with bad localization, but bad official localization is generally a lot less common then some weebs who passed N2 on the internet will convince you to believe because they don't know how to translate for meaning.

lol that is very true

as someone who has in fact passed the n2 for real, yeah, it's this. i have consumed many, many canons in both languages, and for probably 95% of them the differences between languages are either nonexistent or so minimal as to be functionally irrelevant. this isn't 20 years ago, localizations these days tend to hew quite closely to the original source and when they don't, there's usually a reason for it.

a lot of times i notice people who complain about official translations fall under two camps: people who are mad that the translations aren't written by native english speakers (often the case with gachas) or those who have good english but take liberties with the localization by adding flavor text (so making a character sound more verbose than they are or use more poppy dialogue instead of direct ones)

While I get the issue with both (sometimes it's jarring to listen to localization when you can understand the original voice language, or non-native translations get spelling or word usage wrong) but I agree that functionally they are close enough to the original not to bother me. It is rare to see translation so bad it is unreadable or loses that much of the original meaning to be significant for me.

"so making a character sound more verbose than they are or use more poppy dialogue instead of direct ones"

to get an authentic translation due to context often something will feel more verbose in another language because it doesn't always have the same context that Japanese culturally will have. you have to provide that context or you end up with shitty direct translations.

Yeah, exactly! I'm playing a game now that got a lot of flak for the localization due to that, and while I agree some of the choices aren't perfect, overall the additional dialogue actual gets the mood across very well and the 'corrected translation' patches are so lifeless in comparison and loses some of the character personality as a result.

i feel like you've had better luck than me because i run into translators who just aren't proficient in japanese far more often

like, on the level of incorrectly mistranslating shit like おめでたいヤツ into "auspicious fellow," シャコ (in the context of sushi) into "giant clam," etc. just things that make it seem as if they just plugged words into a dictionary and picked the very first definition that popped up rather than understanding or considering the greater context

Are you sure it wasn't AI translated?

i'm talking about official translations by companies like atlus and nisa, so i would hope they weren't ai translated

AYRT

My bad I somehow missed it was about games. CrunchyRoll definitely uses AI so that's why I asked.

oh do they? i rarely touch anything cr does, but the last time i did, i remember being extremely baffled because they entirely mistranslated a song in the show i was watching (and i mean practically every word was entirely mistranslated)

so that honestly explains so much and was interesting to learn regardless

Yeah those are bad. I physically recoiled with シャコ because I actually eat that so I was all giant clam???

I wouldn't say I'm luckier, maybe just more tolerant? I'm ESL so I guess I am more forgiving of translations at times since my grammar isn't the best either.

I admit I have only ever played (and never finished) P5 from Atlus and I hear a lot of complaints about the localization for that one too. I will say I have seen really bad ones for gachas (for example, Ensemble Stars have some real issues with inconsistent terminology, some stories are just unreadable, and they have frequently spelled names wrong) but they are probably far less frequent than others encounter since I didn't see issues with other games that people I know had plenty to complain about translation-wise (usually some stilted grammar use but still understandable).

i think that's fair! people do often tend to overstate just how bad a translation is, often because they're really passionate about a particular canon and any deviation from what they expected ends up seeming like a really big deal as a result

(and then sometimes like an anon in another thread mentioned because they don't actually know japanese as well as they think and are the ones misinterpreting the original work)

da but i've also seen a lot of people missing the cultural context on things, too, in the sense that they may know textbook japanese but be totally out of touch with how words are used colloquially and so they think a translation is wrong because they're going off the dictionary definition rather than how the word is used in actual conversation.

rip to the characterizations of any character who uses たまえ, since the dictionary definition only gets across that it's supposedly a polite way of telling someone to do something and not all the stuff about how it comes off as antiquated and condescending nowadays because no normal person uses it anymore and it always comes off as a boss talking to someone he think is beneath him

yep that's one that's extremely context-dependent because in an old-timey canon it WOULD be polite/respectful, but like you said, anyone using it in the modern day would absolutely be doing so in a condescending way.

as someone who plays atlus games but not persona: they still seem fine for the most part, if a bit too much on the confusing prose.

Remember when the new Evangelion dub came out and it was extremely literal and thus awkward to listen to and so almost everyone disliked it.

People are clueless about localization.

oh, completely agree. also, i don't take my frustration out on rpers who only have the localization and stick closely to it, as i understand that's really their only version of canon. but sometimes, i do feel caught between a character's speech and mannerisms in japanese vs. the english adaptation...the latter probably reads as more in-character to a western crowd, but there's so much that gets lost in translation that i can't overlook in my personal interpretation of the character. sometimes the english version changes or adds too much, so i have to choose which version i want to follow more closely, and usually i end up with a concoction of both. i wonder if other people have this issue and what their thoughts are

damn, i almost could've written this word-for-word. i think about this often as well - i'm sure that from the pov of a player who's only experienced the localization, my characterization choices must also seem off and grate on them

in the end, i opted to just leave a note on my journals that i base my interpretation mainly off of the japanese version and that i'm not as familiar with the localization, but i do worry about how it comes off

it's a relief to hear that i'm not the only one who frets about this sort of thing

the disclaimer isn't a bad idea! i do worry about this, so it's good to know others feel the same. i'm sorry to anyone who's confused or thrown off by my portrayal. that said, i'll continue leaning more on the japanese characterization because that is generally the one i prefer.

i remember feeling this during the first few years i rped because i was into digimon and the US dub just sounded incredibly different from the JP version (and the dub I grew up with) that it was nigh impossible for me to overcome the differences.

disclaimers definitely help for this. if i know a canon i play has a localization that is quite liberal, i would note which version i play in my journal so people are aware. sometimes it can also be fun mixing both a little (like using dub names as nicknames) if you get a cast.

252: imagine all the tags sitting neglected in inboxes for this

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