An Introduction to Dragonspeak

[MercuryD]

I really do find it interesting that much of this argument comes down to "I read a translation!" with that second hand translation being the grounds for judgment. Personally, I have watched it in both and I think the issue comes down to that in Japanese much of this information is spelled out whereas in English the information IS there though it is up to the player to find it.

Also, please don't make such harsh judgments if you are not, in fact, able to understand all of the dialogue for yourself without the use of a 3rd party.

tldr; both translations are great and both convey the same info.

[Tiggy]

tldr; both translations are great and both convey the same info.

The simple fact that this debate exists in this thread, others in the general forum, reddit, etc shows that to not be the case. It may be for you, but clearly there is a problem beyond just you.

[Gilthas]

The simple fact that this debate exists in this thread, others in the general forum, reddit, etc shows that to not be the case. It may be for you, but clearly there is a problem beyond just you.

This debate doesn't exist because of any problems in the translation.

This debate exists because some people treat Japanese like a sacred language and have no idea what a proper translation/localization is. Calling the English version a "plainly bad translation" is simply ridiculous.

[axemtitanium]

Quoting myself from another thread.

It was an authorial decision to make Midgardsormr's relationship with the player more ambiguous in the English version, perhaps to set up a more dramatic reveal later. The EN team is no less a part of the lore/story team than any other language, including Japanese. The story in this game is a collaborative effort and the EN team decided to characterize EN Midgardsormr in this way, making him more mysterious, terse, and ambiguously adversarial than his JP characterization. You are free to dislike that authorial choice, but it's no less "correct" than the Japanese version because all people involved are full-fledged "authors" of the work.

The Japanese script is not the "original" script which was translated into English. Japanese and English language speakers are all authors who collaborated to create the original script in two languages. There is no "translation team", there is an English language team which worked on the English version of the script. No translation ever happened and therefore there is nothing lost in translation.

[Jacost]

Honestly, I think that losing a point or two was worth it to give the big guy an actual personality beyond "textdumpguy".

[Balipu]

Did we also take into account the cultural context? You know like how Japanese indirectness is different than english indirectness. Like how not bad in english means not bad, and not bad in japanese means fucking trash. As all professional linguists I also had a course called cross-cultural pragmatics. It was very enlightening.

[Wadoka]

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

[Nialle]

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Shaka, when the walls fell.