The localization team

[Anima]

While I understand some people enjoy the references, every time I see a western pop culture reference in this game I die a little inside. Shouldn't translations be as literal as possible? I fansub anime and always, ALWAYS as a rule keep translations as accurate as possible to the sentence structure and name order.

Ferne commented on this. He says that each language (loc) team has their own style, and in particular, the JP is kinda bland on the names.

He mentioned that a levequest from Bentbranch that sends you off to kill marmots will probably be named 'Bentbranch Leve: Killing Marmots' or something along the line (not exact quote from Ferne, but you get the Idea)

Also, he mentioned that in JP, there are no pirate-talks or polite and medieval talks that we have in EN, and each cities' 'way of talking' is not very different. Not to mention that If the JP dialogue has a joke inside and you literally translate it to EN with the same words, people aren't going to get it; 'What's up with this ? I don't get it ?' or when they use JP Idioms, If you translate it literally to EN, people won't get it and it'll just be lame.

Other Localization team has their own style as well (FR, DE) but what I get from Ferne is that he and his team wants to have fun with the quest-names and stuff so that the 'Western Audience' can enjoy the game as much as the JP do.

I'm sure you'll get a better understanding If you read it yourself ^^ I'll try to get the link

Interview with MCKF (Ferne) Dualshockers

Interview with Micael Christopher Koji Fox (Ferne) GamerEscape

Fun thing

Translating and localizing are two different things. Localization is about taking that translation and presenting it in a way that keeps the core spirit of the original script while retaining an understandable frame of reference and culture for the local audience to connect with. It's a tricky balance to be sure, and there are always spots where something might have been handled differently had someone else had a chance at it. Legends of Localization (http://legendsoflocalization.com/) is a good blog to read about the trickiness of it all as well as comparisons between literal translations, various official localizations, as well as fan localizations.

Thanks for explaining it better

I really respect the works of the localization team ^^ (I can feel the passion they all put inside the game !)