Topic: VICE Gaming (bad) article on translation and localization

[Quemaqua]

https://t.co/aXrp38pcfX

Find this article patronizing and frustrating, and I needed an outlet to vent. This to me is the epitome of bad localization, which seeks to remove all cultural context, and is exactly what frustrates people who get angry about this kind of thing. No, these translators are not "on your side", because a large part of what likely makes the game interesting to you is what they're trying to surgically remove.

Certainly small changes to make humor work better and such are great, and a consideration that not everyone that's part of the audience will have an understanding of the nuances of the origin culture. That should be accounted for. And of course there are plenty of properties where cultural context is totally unimportant to the end product (fantasy games often don't really have a real-world foothold that matters all that much), but this article completely misses that a lot of what makes foreign games interesting is the culture they come from. If you localize something to death, you also destroy all that cultural context, leaving you with a homogenized version that often feels resoundingly false. People don't "localize" movies, for instance. You translate it and subtitle it, because that context is important to the work of art. According to this writer, apparently games aren't to be afforded that consideration, which is lazy and dismissive of the intelligence of the audience.

A lot of times it also makes things difficult to comprehend. Why did this person get so angry? Why are they being so mean? If you strip out the context in which that character lives, you may essentially turn them into something they were never intended to be. Even Persona 4, which at least tried to maintain the integrity of certain hierarchical Japanese norms, has moments like this, where someone seems to respond in an unnatural way because it just sounds completely wrong coming from someone who sounds so American.

Localization is a beautiful thing, and when done well, it's truly amazing. But there are limits to what can and should be done. Changing everything from sushi to burgers is lazy and stupid. Don't assume that your target audience is too dumb to understand those kinds of differences, or even worse, that those differences aren't part of what makes them interested in the piece to begin with.

[idolminds]

I thought that article was pretty good. Though it is super weird in Ace Attorney one of the main characters is always wearing a shrine maiden outfit in America.

[Xessive]

Poor localization is certainly a problem but I do sometimes empathize with the team responsible for it. They do what they can, often within some pretty arbitrary restrictions. Obviously cross-cultural references don't always carry over and add to that censors restricting certain references as well and it's a pretty challenging affair. I feel for them but I understand the frustration that comes with cut content or horribly disfigured localization.

Recently, I've been seeing official Arabic localizations of games such as Rise of Tomb Raider (RotTR) and The Witcher 3, the former with full Arabic voice acting. It's an impressive feat considering the complexities of the language and the cultural references that carried over, however the dialogue of RotTR was all done in Traditional or Classic Arabic.

Now I generally prefer Classic Arabic because it's poetic but colloquialisms do not carry over well. Voice acting aside (it was not particularly good), the linguistic aspect turned out pretty hilarious because Classic Arabic sounds more like Shakespearean English compared to the common dialects. So it ends up with stuff like "Shit!" getting dubbed as "Curses!" or "Fuck you, motherfucker!" gets translated as "A curse upon you, you scoundrel!" This tends to happen because Classic Arabic is not especially vulgar as far as classic languages go. It's pretty funny and it loses its gravity for sure.

It's not so much a translation problem as it is a localization issue.

[Cobra951]

I get depressed watching Spanish movies with English subtitles.  There is so much lost in translation, most of it avoidable.  It lets me know I will never truly experience a foreign movie (in a language I don't understand) in the way it was intended.

I wish they'd leave all cultural content alone in localized games.  Translate, don't rewrite.  Exceptions should only extend to overly touchy subjects like underage sex.  And if a mature label is slapped on the box, even that should be kept to a minimum.  Drawings, pixels and polygons can't suffer sexual abuse.

Thinking about this made me recall Mystical Ninja, the Western name for one of the Goemon games on the SNES.  It was so Japanese, and they brought it here with that flavor in abundance.  Oh, and then there's Okami.  Their cultural center is a big chunk of why they're so compelling.  Why should every game that makes it here be about our culture now?  That's so needlessly limiting.

[Pugnate]

I mean it *is* Vice

[Quemaqua]

It's Vice now run by Austin Walker formerly of Giant Bomb. Frankly, I expect better out of him. Of course it's just an opinion piece, and not his opinion, but I still think it's a terrible and misguided article, and I'd likely have even been compelled to leave a comment if it wasn't tied to Facebook. It's essentially telling people upset that they're losing something important to them in many game localizations that they shouldn't be upset because these people are heroically "doing it for them". No, jackass, you don't get to tell people what's best for them.

I'm obviously a touch biased since I'm actively studying another language and culture, but this is always how I've felt about anything I've seen translated, be it film, book, game, whatever. I don't mind a good localization, especially for things that really need it (you can't literally translate everything, you just can't, and it's important to note that I have wanted to work in localization for years due to some of the amazing projects I've seen localized to a high degree), but it needs a deft hand, and it needs to respect the audience. If culture is important to the project, culture needs to be preserved.