Issue with the Japanese to English translation

[Trashy]

A few reasons.

The first is that English and Japanese are extremely different languages. Some things simply don't translate, and that problem gets worse with languages that are distant. Take the phrase "a tangerine on an aluminum can." In English, it's just a phrase, but anyone who knows the Japanese would recognize it as a (extremely lame) pun. Not puns get lost in the translation. Take the Swahili phrase "tuko pamoja." It literally means "we're together," but to a native speaker, it conveys a much deeper meaning of shared purpose. A good translator would have to render it differently. It's why machine translations suck: Google translate is great at the actual meaning of words, terrible at putting them in proper context and getting the meaning of the entire text.

The second reason is that culture doesn't translate. My character's name, "Taylor Swiftcast" is humorless to people who don't know who Taylor Swift is. Even among people who do, it's considerably less funny to some people who don't like her music.

The big reason is that localization is not quite translation, and it shouldn't be. Go play FFVII (make sure to remove nostalgia goggles.) Even ignoring the errors, it's translation is flat. Characters don't talk like actual people. They don't have speech patterns or any sort of flow to their speech. Then play Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII, both incidentally, translated by the excellent Alexander O. Smith. Both have characters talking in a believable way. Sydney speaks in a roundabout way, with lots of metaphors, whereas Ashley is direct and blunt. Larsa and Ashe speak with lots of carefully chosen words and a high-class diction. Penelo and Vaan speak much more colloquially.

XIV is localized extremely well. Everything is understandable, and artful. Yes, some things are lost in translation, but the writing can stand on its own as good video game writing, not some dry academic translation of the original Japanese.

[LunaHoshino]

-snip-

I agree, the writing is masterful and the translation is, for the most part (at least from what I've seen in both languages) rather faithful. The changes like those between the JP and EN Haurchefant are completely understandable, as I can't see his JP self going over nearly as well with English-speaking audiences ("This weirdo pervert is a lord of one of the four High Houses?"). The EN version keeps his quirky personality and flirtatious nature, just toned down to a level that's more acceptable to the average English speaker. I think it works quite well.

My own issues are more with things like the example I gave, where things were left out when there was no good reason to leave them out. There's a difference between localizing a character to make them more acceptable/appealing to the target audience and just plain omitting lines that add to the overall understanding of a situation.