Thanks much for the answers! ^^/ Loving this thread.

Quote Originally Posted by Unelonborro View Post
Back when I was a young'un and Japanese video games first started making their way to the US, localization was handled by Japanese nationals who may or may not have had a strong grasp of English--not just at Squaresoft or Enix, but at pretty much every company at the time. This is how we came up with such classics as "A winner is you" and "All your base are belong to us."
Those are indeed classics that I remember well lol. Out of curiosity, with western game developers really booming over the past decade+, has there been any such cases that happened with shoddy localization into the Japanese market? Do you find that western games are localized well, or did they go through a period of infancy as well?

Your bit about actually targeting a western audience with the localization, rather than just a translation, is really interesting. I've never really thought much on it before, but it makes a lot of sense the way you laid it out. Looking back, I've certainly read/played my fair share of media that hadn't had such care given to it. Looking at some recent quests as examples, Saved by the Bell, To Catch a Predator, I'm on a Boat, Don't Ever Leaf Me, Hide and Go Peak, and many others, make sense through English and our culture, they're phrases that we know from life, shows, music, etc. Out of curiosity, do quests like these take on relevant names that may invoke similar "I know what that's from!" feelings for the Japanese community? Any examples to share that we might know?

Is there any chance that someday you may be able to give a bit of a description to some auto translate terms that are ambiguous, or that are misused often? I'd be interesting to know what they actually say/mean in Japanese. "Please use a weak weapon to attack" seems straight forward enough, but I've had a few Japanese players use that in party (not during something like Void Watch) and I was left confused at what they were getting at. Some terms of our's that may not be well known is "Excuse me..." "Are you alone?" "Can you hear me?" and many others. They seem straight forward enough, but whether due to the language barrier being too much of a bother to communicate through, or our knowledge of what the terms come out to be on the Japanese side, it's difficult to get a clear answer from Japanese players.