Translation Team: Please stop doing this...

[Aeyis]

Done and done.

I also spend a lot of time working with the other guys in our team: the English team as well as the French and German teams. We talk a lot about what we’re going to do with the characterizations, certain stylistic issues, everything down to how we’re going to spell certain words… If we’re going to go with English spelling or British spelling… How certain races are going to talk, what kind of words they’re gonna use, the overall styles for cities… things like that.

The interview you linked only mentions working together with other localization teams.

The following part indicates how its largely up to the localization teams judgement:

We talk about adjustments… how we’re going to go in and tweak the text, and if those tweaks are big enough to warrant going over to the devs and getting their permission

This is precisely the point I was making before. Localization often changes dialogue from the intent with which it was originally written.
Personally I consider this the worst kind of 'translation'. Because it's pretty arrogant to change a different writers text into something you feel is more fitting.
Translation should be all about accurately conveying the originals intent.


Localization teams can get away with a lot. That should already be obvious considering the phrasing of certain quest (names) and the usage of certain words.
I just wish they would use that creativity to accurately translate the dialogue.


Again I should stress that I do not question the translation teams ability. Merely their overlocalization.

So does removing color from dialog, but that's unavoidable because different languages have different ways of adding "color" and it's not the sort of thing that can generally cross from one language to another, especially if they're unrelated languages like Japanese and English. Removing color and then adding a rather different color back in is slightly closer to preserving the intent than removing color and leaving just the bare literal meaning to stand alone.

That is quite true. However for example American English phrases many things differently then UK English. And there are variants of those as well.
This is why I feel that the best localization should focus on translating, rather then phrasing. Make use of words with exact meaning, instead of expressions.


Currently I feel that a lot of color is added where originally there was none.Or as they put it:

And then, again, a lot of the quests, when we do our translations, we will some times add things — Japanese can be a very vague language — a lot of important information is either cut completely or it’s implied heavily. It can be kind of confusing for western players and readers, so we’ll go in and tweak things to make it a little easier to understand and a little bit clearer.

I don't know, personally I would much rather enjoy the original writing rather then someone else's take on what the writing should have been like.

I DO think that the English devs greatly over value their contribution though. When a scene is COMPLETELY different in Japanese and English, I don't care if the teams worked together, it is STILL an extremely shoddy end-result. I'm from a generation where Japanese scripts were often changed at a whim by lazy and unprofessional English translators, so my knee jerk reaction is to hate it, even IF the Japanese team approves of the change. I'm waiting for Yugiri to pull out a rice ball and loudly declare in English how she LOVES jelly donuts.

And that summs up my own reaction pretty nicely.

How can anyone with a straight face say that the teams are closely working together when the dialogue is so different between languages? I do not understand.


I hold no love for localization, I admit. But this only because of the results I see.

Having Lady Iceheart swear to me in english, calling me a fool and more...while in japanese her only words are a subdued (in a slight pleading voice) ''warrior of light''
How do these 2 very different characters carry the same intent?