An Introduction to Dragonspeak

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

While I definitely appreciate the thought that went into characterizing the race of dragons, I can't help but feel that at the end of the day, there's a palpable discrepancy in how the Japanese writing team decided to represent the character of Midgardsormr and how he's written in English, to the point where impression of him as a character I got from looking up the Japanese dialogue is at a stark contrast with the impression English players on this very forum got from him.

[Grayve]

While I definitely appreciate the thought that went into characterizing the race of dragons, I can't help but feel that at the end of the day, there's a palpable discrepancy in how the Japanese writing team decided to represent the character of Midgardsormr and how he's written in English, to the point where impression of him as a character I got from looking up the Japanese dialogue is at a stark contrast with the impression English players on this very forum got from him.

Oh? How so? Should we examine all four languages to get a better picture?

[Sadana]

Oh? How so? Should we examine all four languages to get a better picture?

I, for one, am all about this.
I actually wish we had transliterations of the JP dialog available to us. Yes, I realize that's a MASSIVE undertaking... hence, the 'wish'. :3

[Shiki_Lockhart]

Oh? How so? Should we examine all four languages to get a better picture?

You only need to translate from original and that is Japanese. I have the audio in japanese and subs in english and I know a little japanese. What I was reading either didn't make sense or was WAY to short when he was talking over 1 or 2 minutes long... that's information lost and I hate when in any format game/anime/manga/serie/movie/etc happens. It is true you can't be too objective and word for word but you can't do 100% literal either because in that case meaning is lost. And that is what happened -_- not only in this speech but in all contents, we lose always some information and lore because of bad/bad choices/trying to make like that dragon way of speech translation.

[Mholito]

You only the to translate from original and that is Japanese. I have the audio in japanese and subs in english and I know a little japanese. What I was reading either didn't make sense or was WAY to short when he was talking over 1 or 2 minutes long... that's information lost and I hate when in any format game/anime/manga/serie/movie/etc happens. It is true you can't be too objective and word for word but you can't do 100% literal either because in that case meaning is lost. And that is what happened -_- not only in this speech but in all contents, we lose always some information and lore because of bad/bad choices/trying to make like that dragon way of speech translation.

And what did he say that wasn't mentioned in the english localization?
I assume it is something like a scene from the movie "Lost in translation", where a japanese person is speaking for about a minute, while the translator translated it into a short sentence. The reason for the difference there was that the translator cut out a lot of completely needless rambling. In that example, nothing of any importance was actually lost in translation.

[Viridiana]

What I was reading either didn't make sense or was WAY to short when he was talking over 1 or 2 minutes long... that's information lost

Speaking from experience with Korean (which is grammatically identical to Japanese, I'm told), it's entirely possible to take a long, rambling sentence of paragraph length and shorten it to a short sentence or two without losing any information.

[Gilthas]

While I definitely appreciate the thought that went into characterizing the race of dragons, I can't help but feel that at the end of the day, there's a palpable discrepancy in how the Japanese writing team decided to represent the character of Midgardsormr and how he's written in English, to the point where impression of him as a character I got from looking up the Japanese dialogue is at a stark contrast with the impression English players on this very forum got from him.

Ah yes. The Japanese should be translated and not localized camp. I disagree completely with this. It's why a good translator usually also needs to be a good writer.

It's also a pretty reductive way to look at the English localization team. Like they're just simple translation bots and not an actual part of the development team.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

Ah yes. The Japanese should be translated and not localized camp. I disagree completely with this. It's why a good translator usually also needs to be a good writer.

It's also a pretty reductive way to look at the English localization team. Like they're just simple translation bots and not an actual part of the development team.

Please stop putting words into my mouth. You're valiantly fighting what is obviously incorrect but also none of what I've said.
Localization is an extralinguistic process that involves adaptation for a different culture. Like, let's use an extreme example, a swastika in Japan would be taken as a buddhist symbol while in Western culture, you'd have to remove that from a game because people will absolutely take you the wrong way. This is localization. Replacing a jokeful reference to a Japanese comic with a jokeful reference to an English comic where appropriate is localization, done to retain the effect in a different cultural setting.
Localization however is not a carte blanche do just do whatever as every decision must serve some purpose or be questioned.
And "translation bots", that's rich. Translation, even something as trivial as 1:1 (which does not imply translating words by the way) is a very mind-tasking process. So again, please stop putting words into my mouth.
I'll admit, I'm not a big fan of fauxpeare writing and certain other alternations (like removal of callouts of Megaflare in Gilgamesh trial and Diamond Dust in Shiva trial, perhaps also considered inappropriate for high fantasy feel?).

See, fair enough, the translation is done in-house and close to people who come up with original lore. That's great. But the fact remains that the original writers did not consider this setting while writing Midgardsormr's dialogue.

[Spellbinder]

But the fact remains that the original writers did not consider this setting while writing Midgardsormr's dialogue.

Then maybe, just maybe, instead of lambasting the localization department for their characterization of Midgardsormr, someone should ask why the original writers failed to consider character setting and history they asked him to make?

You don't just ask someone to create an entire language and stuff it in a drawer to collect dust, and I think it's great that they took the time to incorporate this into the dialogue.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

Then maybe, just maybe, instead of lambasting the localization department for their characterization of Midgardsormr, someone should ask why the original writers failed to consider character setting and history they asked him to make?

You don't just ask someone to create an entire language and stuff it in a drawer to collect dust, and I think it's great that they took the time to incorporate this into the dialogue.

Maybe? I'm not here to point fingers at people.