#localisation

[prokopetz]

The funny thing about Dr. Robotnik being called Dr. Robotnik in the English localisation is that "Robotnik" is a real surname, but the localisers apparently had no idea – they just took the English word "robot" and stuck a vaguely Russian-sounding suffix on it because it was the Cold War and "vaguely Russian" was shorthand for "evil" in American popular culture. Dudes tried to lazily come up with a name that evokes "evil robot guy" and accidentally made him Polish.

[randomguy0ntumbir]

(reposted from @zoethebitch and @imperfectlibrarian because reblogs off)

zoethebitch

everyone needs to stop doing fan edits trying to recreate the theatrical cut and updating the special effects and find the 03 Chilean cut immediately

imperfectlibrarian

Ok. Hang on. I had to search "Star Wars cerveza Cristal" to see if it was real and

I'm speechless.

[haru-dipthong]

Out of curiosity, what else would you define as "anime English" stemming from literal translations? I grew up with anime, so I probably don't even recognize it at this point. Obviously I had original works and socialization for my English, but I never really thought about it until I came across your RGU retranslation project.

It’s hard to pinpoint a precise set of qualities of what I see as anime english. I think it’s mainly characterised by having things phrased in a way that is unusual for native english speaking television, as well as the presence of certain uncommon english words.

The unusual phrasing comes about from translating individual words more than the intended meaning. Japanese speakers phrase things in completely different ways to what is “common sense” in English. For example, passive voice is used often in Japanese — the most normal way to say “He punched me!” would actually be あいつに殴られた！ which means “(I) was punched by him”. This is a simplistic example to illustrate a point, but hopefully this shows how the most common way to say something in English is often quite different to the most common way to say something in Japanese. When you translate Japanese, you shouldn’t try to preserve the original phrasing unless it’s important, because it will not carry the same sound or give the same impression when converted to English.

Translation is not just about the surface level meanings of the words or sentences, but also about the impression the sentence gives you (does it sound formal? Casual? Pretentious? Intentionally awkward?). In sentences where the impression is “natural, everyday conversation” you need to rephrase the sentence in a way that will be a natural, everyday phrasing in English, which may be drastically different from the Japanese.

As for the uncommon english words, those are a bit easier to specify.

告���する：“Confess (your love)” instead of “tell them how you feel” or “ask them out”.

“You’re an eyesore” instead of “you make me sick” or “you’re pathetic” or any number of other insults.

あいつ元気だな：“They’re energetic” or “they’re lively” instead of “they’re a handful”, “they’re a bit much”, or “they’re full of energy”.

面倒くさい：“It’s a bother” or “What a bother” instead of “I can’t be bothered” or “I don’t wanna”.

先輩・後輩：”Upperclassman/lowerclassman” instead of “older kid/younger kid” or “in the grade above/below”. I have NEVER in my entire life heard the word upperclassman used outside of anime subtitles.

There are many many more, but that’s all I could think of off the top of my head. I think the reason these words get used is partly because they’re the most direct literal translation of the individual word (yet no consideration goes into the vibe of the word!). Another part of the reason is that these words have become common to see in anime translations, which establishes a precedent for translators who are time-crunched (or just not very good) to take the easy option and use these words. This reinforces the usage of these words in anime translations, which distances anime english from other dialects of english and gives it a unique sound.

You can see previous posts about this here:

Jun 14, 2023: Examples of how translating word-by-word leads to awkward phrasing

Oct 15, 2023: A discussion about anime english as its own dialect

[elyvorg]

The Most Significant Change in AAI2’s Official Localisation (according to me)

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 finally has an official localisation! This is kind of mind-boggling to those of us who played the fan translation and have loved it in that form for years, never expected an official localisation to happen, and now suddenly have to get used to everything about it being Just Slightly Different.

Having played the official localisation in full, I can say that for the most part, it’s even better than the already-excellent fan translation! Most of the lines have just a little bit more colour in them now, and there’s a bunch of small nuances that went over my head before that are emphasised better in the new version. There are some lines I prefer in the fan translation, but they’re vastly outnumbered by all the lines I prefer in the official version. All in all, strongly recommend fans of the fan translation to check out the official version in some form.

However, among these minor lines here and there that I prefer in the fan translation, there is also this one small but much more significant thing from the fan translation which is not present in the official version. I happen to care about this small-but-significant detail a lot, so here is a post explaining exactly why this is a Thing that Matters (to me, at least).

(This will mention major spoilers for the game! Do not click the readmore unless you have experienced the entire story of AAI2 in some form.)

The Thing is this: In the fan translation, Simon refers to his friend as “Knightley”, all the time. Meanwhile, in the official localisation, Simeon always calls him “Bronco”.

Now, I get why the localisers did this. It’s a Japanese cultural thing – in Japanese, it’s common for even close friends to address each other by their surnames, and indeed, Sim(e)on referred to Knight(ley) by his surname in the original Japanese game. This is usually changed into friends using each other’s first names in English localisations, because it feels strange in English to see two close friends addressing each other in what feels like a distant and formal kind of way.

(For example, in The Great Ace Attorney, Ryunosuke and Kazuma addressed each other by their surnames in Japanese, and this was – very correctly – localised to them using each other’s first names in English. It would feel wrong to an English speaker for these best friends not to do that, even though they are still characters from Japan.)

So it just makes sense as the obvious localisation choice to have Simeon refer to his friend with his given name, rather than his surname.

However! In this particular instance, I firmly 100% believe that this was the wrong decision.

See, Simon calling Knightley by his surname in the fan translation isn’t just an awkward holdover of a somewhat more direct Japanese translation – it actually means something. It’s a subtle hint that Simon doesn’t actually see Knightley as the friend he supposedly is; he’s distancing himself from his friend by talking about him in this more detached way.

This is subtle enough that it isn’t a spoiler, either! On my first playthrough of the fan translation, I never batted an eye at Simon using his friend’s surname. Some people in English-speaking countries do just prefer to go by their surname, even to their friends – particularly when their first name is kind of awkward. It felt perfectly natural that Knightley might prefer to be called just that even by his best friend, instead of “Horace”, which sounds somewhat old-fashioned and dorky.

(And this would go double, surely, for someone whose first name is freaking Bronco of all things. It’d make plenty of sense that he’d rather be called Knight!)

Knightley himself probably didn’t even question it. I imagine Simon would have called him Horace while they were kids at the orphanage, but then when Simon reappeared in his life years later after his disappearance and was calling him Knightley instead, Knightley probably shrugged and figured, yeah, Horace is kind of a dorky name, he’s not a kid any more, “Knightley” is way cooler. (Especially with his obsession with chess, not to mention his whole white-knight complex towards Simon.)

The biggest reason why this means something is that Simon calls him Knightley almost the entire time, with one single exception. In the flashback to their impromptu nighttime meeting in the prison, in which Simon knows he’s about to get his “friend” killed and this is the last time he’ll ever see him, the final thing he says to him is, “Goodbye, Horace.”

He uses Knightley’s first name, for the only time in the game’s present. And so, precisely because he’s used his surname every other time, this simple line becomes an achingly telling sign that Simon still cares about his best friend despite everything, despite the fact that he is literally getting him killed. It’s like he’s remembering the happier times they had being friends at the orphanage before everything turned sour, like a part of him wishes they could still have that, and it breaks my heart.

(This is the same in the Japanese, too – he uses his friend’s given name, which is a sign of extremely close friendship in Japanese and would have even more of an impact to Japanese-speaking players.)

This implication isn’t there in the official localisation, because it can’t be. Not when Simeon calls him Bronco all the time anyway, even when he’s revealed his true colours and is no longer pretending for the sake of Edgeworth and company. Which means that he simply did call him Bronco the whole time, even after they reunited, even while secretly wanting him dead. In that context, using the name Bronco when saying goodbye to him in the prison means nothing in particular. It’s just the name he always uses.

…Okay, granted, it’s not like that flashback scene has no emotional weight in the official version. It still is Simeon coming to talk to his friend one last time when he doesn’t really need to, which still means a lot on its own. But the final line itself isn’t a particularly notable part of it. In the localisation, it’s “Goodbye, Bronco. …And farewell.” The added “farewell” mostly just serves to make it obvious that he knows this is the very last time they’ll meet, but I suppose there is at least something to the fact that you wouldn’t usually say that to someone you didn’t care about. I don’t think it hits nearly as hard as calling him Horace for the first and only time in twelve years, though.

It seems like either the official localisers didn’t notice the significance of the given name in that line there, or they did notice it but they decided that localising Simeon to use his friend’s given name the rest of the time, like localisers normally would, was worth losing the impact of that line. And I firmly disagree that this was worth it. There’s nothing inherently wrong about Knight going by Knight even to his best friend, even if it might feel a little awkward in principle, and the emotional impact of the final thing his best friend says to him would have absolutely made up for that.

[supermassiveshot]

Courtesy of an unexpectedly fun research bender, the names of Riccardo's cats by game language (in order of introduction):

アリア ("Aria") and リュート ("Ryūto", lute) in Japanese.

Clef and Libretto in English, French and Spanish.

Dur and Moll in German.

Diesis and Libretto in Italian.

And the name of Skie's budgie:

Unnamed* in Japanese.

Bertie in English, French, Italian and Spanish.

Hansi in German.

*This is because the relevant InaLink exchange only happens in the European version of the game. In the Japanese version, the pet chatter gets derailed by a misunderstanding about オカエリ/ただいま, "okaeri"/"tadaima" (Japanese on the left, English on the right):

Also, apparently Japanese InaLink has a cool gradient effect on the background which the European version doesn't? The more you know.

[manicpixelwench]

dear Faye.I've read The One vol.2 in Russian million times.I am still in love with it.But yesterday I've read it in English,and by some miracle it became even better.I would recommend to all who critique the story to do this way.But it would be really wonderful to have such advice in the story.Bradley is still pure joy,flirt,and sex🥰best LI ever for me.Thanks a lot for him

Hey babe!

I love messages like this, I'm so happy the book brings you joy.

I hope it's universally acknowledged that any book on Romance Club is "better" in its original language; as talented as our translators are (shout out to the localisation team!), the author's intended voice is likely most powerful in their first language.

Personally I'll never be able to read Russian well enough to appreciate Alice or Sasha's work in Russian - or understand context of funny or quirky phrases, the secret flavouring of the written language. And that's sad! I envy you.

Hell, sometimes I can't even get my sentiment across in English because it doesn't have the words or sayings I would use in Danish...

But we try. We really try our best.

Thank you for reading xxxxxx

[phicicle]

Neat trivia ┐(‘—` )┌ idk

The Taiwanese release for "Bunny and the bull" retitles the movie to "Stephen's fantastic journey"

Taiwanese release title underlined in blue, Mainland China release title in red.

“史蒂芬的奇幻旅程” even has the poster edited, unlike “兔子和公牛”

The other foreign language title which differed from the original was the french title “Petit trip entre amis”

which according to google translate, means "Little trip with friends"

That's literally it, everything else can be summed up as just a direct translation of "Bunny & bull"

[fleshsqueeze]

Western Translation fans: "There's a lot of nuance in translation and it's a difficult job, you can't translate things exactly because meaning comes from cultural context as well as literal world meaning and some things simply need to be adapted to convey the same message" PigameriKKKan$$ "localising" every fromsoftware game before demon's souls: "I'm going to jerk off, mind looking at me while i do it?"

[voidxfaithx]

I’ve been playing dragon quest 4 on DS a lot recently and the localisation has brought me immense joy, particularly the use of genuinely accurate Hiberno-English for some of the region specific dialogue. Outside of media actually made by Irish people it’s so fucking rare to encounter Irish dialogue that isn’t some weird fake leprechaun speak. I was so surprised and delighted when the first NPC you meet when you leave your house in the chapter which feature the dialect greets you with the phrase “How’s she cuttin?”

The dialogue is full of these ultra specific phrases and syntax that I can only imagine someone fully immersed in Irish culture could know about, although based on what I can tell from the credits the translation itself was carried out by like 2 people. I have heard some people online (yanks) complain about the difficulty in understanding some of the regional dialects in DQ4 particularly but also in the other localisations and I do think that’s fair enough but including such detail and authenticity adds so much spice and personality to the world of the game. It’s also just really nice to get a kind of representation for a version of my dialect even if it’s done in such a seemingly random and idiosyncratic way.

[soapdispensersalesman]

Finding out that Mark/Masao Inaba from Persona 1 initially wasn't black legit caught me off guard! ngl I'm already happy they considered this diversity as in hindsight, it completely went over my head that canonically a black guy would be living in Japan which is normal, especially today, just not something you'd usually see in JRPGs.

Will probably make an Masao Inaba reference in my lyrics or poems at some point as there's a metaphor for being mixed race in there somewhere.

[sparticus2000art]

Bunnings miku!

Based on a silly conversation I had with @minted-midas the other day

Had to give her a Bunnings snag to really drive the Sunday Bunnings feeling home (not sure if this is a thing in countries other than Australia lol)

[prokopetz]

There's a lot to criticise about the low-effort localisations of many 1990s JRPGs, but they do have their moments.

[sic-fayl]

Guild Member Next Door (kinda) translation - Part 12

Click here for the previous part - or click here for Part 1!

Disclaimer, as always: This is based on an MTL translation, I do not know Korean myself, I am trying more to stick with the impressions/vibes of a sentence instead of a strict word-for-word meaning - and most importantly, this is only for fun.

Now, back to the story!

After drinking the night away, Yeo-woon had fallen asleep like he’d been knocked out. In the middle of his rest, he heard his own ringtone. When using a pillow to keep the noise from his ears didn’t work, Yeo-woon begrudingly got up and started his search. He followed the ever- louder ringtone, until he finally held his phone in his hand.

“Hello!”

Yeo-woon took the call with a displeased tone. 

‘Whoever’s calling better be prepared to die, if this isn’t the most important phone call ever.’

“…Ah yes.”

Yeo-woon had went from unable to even open his eyes to a professional air and tone in an instant. There was no more anger to be found in his posture.

“Yeo-woon, please, I’m trying to sleep...”

Soon enough, the call was over. Yeo-woon, had only just woken up a moment ago, so he put the phone on his bed and went to the floor, where he could grab Se-hyung and shake him into full wakefulness.

“Se-hyung, wake up.”

“Huh?”

“Just get up, you gotta look at me.”

“Why?”

Se-hyung eyes remained firmly shut, but Yeo-woon still made him get on his feet, holding him steady as he said the next part.

“Slap my face.”

“Okay.”

Clap!

Se-hyung slapped Yeo-woon across the face without any hesitation, and it hurt Yeo-woon so much, he instinctually retaliated with a headbutt, knocking Se-hyung back to the ground. While he whined about an aching head and the rude awakening, Yeo-woon stood frozen, because now he knew for sure.

‘This isn’t a dream…’

“I got the job.”

Sehyung blinked up at him as the words slowly registered and then he grimaced, launching into a new line of complaints.

“But how? What about yesterday then, huh? You were all ‘they already decided on someone!’ this and ‘can I sue for the wasted time?’ that.”

“Hehe...”

At Yeo-woon’s sheepish smile, Se-hyung’s face twisted into pure disgust. Through gritted teeth, he finally forced out his next words.

“You’re so stupid... Congratulations, bastard. So, you gonna move? They say it’s always best to live close-by.”

“I’ll start looking at some places. But it’s not like I have to move right away.”

“Just look at a lot of different places and don’t let them talk you into renting some shithole.”

Yes, that was what mattered most. Yeo-woon couldn’t hold back his happy laughter anymore, so he let it all out, filling up the room. Then he froze, as his blood went cold from an important realisation.

“…I didn’t do my daily check-in yesterday.”

“What check-in?”

“Aah, it’s all your fault!”

He stumbled over to his computer to turn it on, pushing away his friend with his foot along the way, since Se-hyung had gone back to being sprawled out all over the floor. But in response to the weak kick, he curled up and began muttering to himself.

“This is painful to witness... Just some game anyway. Who cares if you don’t log in for a day?”

“It’s more than just a missed day, it’s rewards too!”

Whatever. He didn’t expect the guy who only ever played Minesweeper and Tetris to understand this anyway. Yeo-woon focused on logging in, typing his password and ID into the login screen. He still wouldn’t receive yesterday’s attendance rewards, but he was anxious to get back into the game all the same.

First the loading window appeared, with its cute little characters. Then the screen changed to show the village he’d logged out in, the last time he’d played. A red notification instantly greeted him.

‘Your mailbox is full, so you cannot access the Auction House! Please empty your inbox, to gain back your access!’

He didn’t know what could have caused this, so he double-clicked the Postman that was still right in front of him and checked his mail. What he found was 20 pages of new mails. Eight mails could fit onto one page, so that made 160 new mails he’d received, even though he hadn’t even logged in yesterday. It looked like each mail had something attached to it as well, since he couldn’t press the button to just delete all the mail.

Ji9Star [.]

Ji9Star [.]

Halloween Eggplant [New Year’s Cash]

Ji9Star [.]

Impeatuous Peatection [Your allowance^^]

Ji9Star [.]

Ji9Star [.]

Ji9Star [.]

1 2 3 4 … 19 20 ▷

Most mail came from Earth Star, but sometimes other people’s names would pop up. After opening the very first mail on the list, Yeo-woon couldn’t help but laugh out loud from how dumbfounded he felt.

[Received mail]

Sender: Ji9Star

Title: .

(empty)

Attachment: 100,000,000 Coins

‘That bastard really couldn’t just accept me giving the 1.2 billion back and making a run for it, huh...'

“Lee Yeo-woon. I’m going back to bed. Just wake up for lunch when it's three.”

“…Uh, sleep well.”

Se-hyung finally left the floor behind, to instead monopolize Yeo-woon’s bed. But the bed's owner didn’t even check what Se-hyung was doing, too busy scrolling down his computer screen. He opened each mail one by one and then went to his chatbox, trying to open the Couple tab he had there with Earth Star. But maybe it was still too early in the day, because Earth Star was shown as offline.

So Yeo-woon headed off to the village’s nearby bank instead, to first put away all his own money. This way, with the money he was now carrying on his person being 0, he’d have an easier time counting exactly how much money Earth Star had sent him. For now, he excluded any mail from other Poseidon members and only collected the attached money in Earth Star’s mails, but he still ended up with an impossible sum of money that just kept on growning and growing from where he’d originally started with 0. After working his way through just three of the twenty pages, he alteady got a notification that he’d unlocked the [Get Rich Quick] achievement.

‘Achievement Unlocked: Get Rich Quick’

There were many achievments in the game and each could be unlocked by accomplishing specific things. But even then, there was no actual effect they caused, just some nice accomplishments you could feel proud about, so there was no real reason to actively collect them. Soon enough, Yeo-woon held 10 billion coins in his inventory. The amount sent with each mail kept randomly changing too and occasionally there were event items attached alongside the money.

‘He’s crazy. What’s he doing, sending more than 10 billion coins to a random person like me? What if I’d just run away with it all?’

Yeo-woon couldn’t say he understood Earth Star anymore at all. Once he’d went through each mail Earth Star had sent, he’d amassed a sum close to 50 billion.

After he noted down the exact amounts everyone had sent, Yeo-woon started returning the money to its rightful Poseidon members. In response, the ones who were online right now sent him messages in the Friends chat.

[Friend] CroakRush: Huh?

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: Just keep it...

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Really now! Newb is just as naughty as Earth said... ;;

[Friend] neutaaaa: T not B, it’d be Newta if anything

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: ? Damn...

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Thought I graduated school just fine, but now I can’t even read the alphabet anymore ig.

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: Lmaooooo

“Oh, you actually just wanted to call me a newbie.”

Yeo-woon, who’d just realized that had been the actual meaning, just sat there staring. And then he frowned. After inadvertently accusing Halloween Eggplant of not knowing the alphabet, he decided to go all in and also disprove what he’d actually meant by it.

[Friend] neutaaaa: And I’m not a newb, I played another game before, but it kept getting worse.

[Friend] neutaaaa: I even was a max level chef in it, okay?

[Friend] neutaaaa: I got to be the sous chef in the biggest tavern of the Paladin server.

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: LOL Little Forest 2?

“…!”

His heart raced as he saw Halloween Eggplant correctly name the game he used to play. He had a different username now than he’d had on Little Forest, but a part of him still wondered if Halloween Eggplant had recognized him. His surprise made him impulsive and so he just asked.

[Friend] neutaaaa: Hey, did you know me on there?

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: How would I lol

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: But there’s a bunch of LilFor refugees who’ve switched to Illusion you sweet summer child lmao

[Friend] neutaaaa: Ah…

The games did share a genre, so Yeo-woon had also heard about many people that went for Illusion once they abandoned Little Forest 2. It was sad, because Little Forest 2 used to be a masterpiece among games. But these days, most of its long-term players had given up and left. Over time, especially with a switch in the company developing the game, it had become more and more bug-ridden and unoptimised and to attract new players, a lot of the old mechanics had been radically changed or even removed entirely. Many people who used to enjoy the original game had been unable to adapt to the changes and so the game was heading towards its end.

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Why do they keep coming here anyway? They’re always saying this game is shit lmaoo.

[Friend] CroakRush: Newguy we usually just call you our newbie;;

[Friend] neutaaaa: But I’m nearly level 160 now, aren’t I?

[Friend] CroakRush: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahaha ahh!

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: ? PFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: Your level is still really low haha

[Friend] CroakRush: 160 lmaoooo

“You...”

Just looking around the village, Yeo-woon saw more than enough people that were a lower level than him. He really didn’t get why these guys insisted on laughing at his current level, when they’d been the ones to help him reach it in the first place.

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: So why does our newbie just reject our help like that?

[Friend] neutaaaa: I’ll just accept the help from now on ig. Thanks.

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Well, if that’s the case…

‘You have new mail! Please go to your inbox to check it.’

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: My help is more on the financial side of things.

‘You have new mail! Please go to your inbox to check it.’

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: Lol same for me...

‘You have new mail! Please go to your inbox to check it.’

[Friend] CroakRush: Since our newbie’s 3rd job improvement is coming up he’ll struggle with equipment anyway. It’s Illusion so you need a lot of money to enhance weapons. I heard in LilFor your weapon doesn’t get destroyed even if the enhancement fails?

[Friend] neutaaaa: Ah yeah...

[Friend] neutaaaa: That took some getting used to.

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: FR???? Wdym it doesn’t get destroyed??

In the last game he’d played, Little Forest 2, if you failed to enhance a weapon, the chance to succeed the next time went up by 0.5% and the main weapon you’d tried to enhance didn’t get destroyed either. As a result, Yeo-woon had never expected a weapon to break in that way, until he’d switched to Illusion and experienced this painful situation firsthand.

CroakRush walked up to his character and sat down right in front of him.

[Friend] CroakRush: I spent a whole month trying to get my cane to survive until +3 and then getting a good spirit stone for it.

[Friend] CroakRush: Wanna see? I made the stats public just now

[Friend] neutaaaa: Huh

The weapon CroakRush had equipped changed its color, from its edges towards its middle. Sometimes Yeo-woon had spotted other players with weapons like that and he always tried to check their equipment details, but people could hide those, if they wanted, and many players did just that.

[Friend] CroakRush: Love that cane haha.

[Friend] CroakRush: Its total stat boosts are 250+!

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: I broke so many weapons to get my enchanted golden hammer too.

That staff had an impressive Lv. 10 boost for attack power, Lv. 9 boost for all stats, and Lv. 8 boost for attack speed. It even had two more boosts, though they were less impressive, but still provided a small boost to defense and damage reduction. With all of that combined, anyone would scramble to buy that staff, if it ever appeared in the Auction House.

[Friend] CroakRush: But I still haven’t enhanced my armor haha… After the 3rd job upgrade you’ll really notice the stat changes depending on what you equip but enhancing it is hard.

[Friend] CroakRush: Even with all the LilFor refugees we keep getting they don’t stay too long haha. Weren’t there also some you switched over with and who’ve quit since then because of how expensive things get?

[Friend] neutaaaa: No clue, I always played solo...

[Friend] CroakRush: Anyways, this is so you’ll keep playing. It’s normal to give newbies nice things like this to keep them! Lmao all of this is reminding me of when we raised our cat too.

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: ?? Cat raised himself.

[Friend] CroakRush: Sometimes I buffed him tho so it’s p much the same ^^

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Why help someone who’s trying to become a Valkyrie?

Since they were discussing a player called Cat, they probably meant KittycatMeowMeowMeow. Yeo-woon remembered he was a Wolfist, which was part of the Explorer class and their 4th and final job was the Valkyrie. Valkyries were ranked the number one job to avoid playing at all costs, in a ‘Top 5 Jobs to Avoid’ guide Yeo-woon had found when he first started playing Illusion. They apparently had difficult controls, weren’t good solo-units and their overall performance was pretty low. Even though the job had been added to the game not that long ago, it was already infamous for getting zero love from the developers.

[Friend] neutaaaa: I heard Valkyries don’t really do much...

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Wellㅡㅡ; Maybe he’s just young and still full of hopes and dreams!

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: Btw I heard that no one could send you mail yesterday bc your inbox was full... Would Earth Star happen to be the culprit behind that?

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Oh, true true haha. How much did Earth send anyway?

“….”

Everyone else had sent some amount between 50 million and 100 million coins. It’d be normal to assume everyone had stayed in that ballpark, Earth Star included. So Yeo-woon hesitated a little, but then he typed in the numbers and send them off with the Enter key.

[Friend] neutaaaa: 50...

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: 50 million? LOL What a cheapskate

[Friend] neutaaaa: Wrong...

[Friend] CroakRush: What so did he only send 50 coins?

[Friend] neutaaaa: 50 billion

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: 50 billion??

[Friend] CroakRush: Did you type a 0 too many????

[Friend] Captain Poseidon: ??

Like he’d expected, everyone was dumbstruck by an amount so high that they felt it had to be a typo. His chatbox became really active, with everyone calling Earth Star crazy for what he’d done. They were right. 50 billion was enough to buy a full set of equipments that already had good stats and enhancements, no extra work necessary.

[Friend] Halloween Eggplant: Ah, Earth Star’s still asleep ig.

[Friend] CroakRush: Woah but the guy did always change the topic when I asked how much he’s got.

[Friend] CroakRush: Never would’ve thought he’s that filthy rich;;

Because the person in question was still offline, they couldn’t ask him why he’d done something this outrageous. Which just made it worse.

Yeo-woon took the chance to send a mail back to Earth Star with the 50 billion coins attached to it and then he immediately logged into his alt account that he normally just used for additional storage space. But this time he used it to send a flood of mails to his actual character, neutaaaa, until his inbox was filled to bursting again. Now, even once he’d log in, Earth Star wouldn’t be able to send him anything per mail and so he’d be forced to keep his 50 billion himself.

(Next Part)

[haru-dipthong]

I'm a big fan of localisation. I believe the goal of a translation should be to keep as much meaning and nuance as possible from the original. Localisation is key to this. Language and culture are inextricably linked, which means you must engage in cultural education and/or localisation to successfully translate. Cultural education is preferable, but in many cases it is not appropriate (not great having to pause every few seconds to read a translator note when you want to turn your brain off and watch a show). However, I think sometimes, translators take the wrong approach to localisation, and I want to talk about that here.

There was an example of "bad" localisation given by a twitter user in this Sarah Moon video: the example was anime characters subbed to use zoomer slang like "sus" and "cringe". I actually think that is an example of good localisation. I am not talking about that kind of thing.

This scene from 深夜食堂 (Midnight Diner) made me want to write this post. パチンコ has been translated as "pinball". I'm sure there are people reading that translation and cringing, just like I did! I tried to put my finger on what irked me so much about it and I realised: this localisation is localising the wrong part of the meaning of パチンコ.

Part of localising is choosing the closest cultural equivalent of a concept. This inevitably means losing some of the specific details of the original word, but usually those details aren't important (if the whole cultural concept is important, you should probably just use a translator's note IMO). For example, the word パチンコ has lots of bits of meaning in it: "gambling" "played on a machine", "time killer", "uses small metal balls", "generally played by older men", "big flashy lights", "money sink", and so on. In this context, the character is talking about "winning money" from パチンコ, so you'd expect at the very least that the localised word would preserve the "gambling" and "money sink" bits of meaning. However, instead they chose to preserve the "small metal balls" and "big flashy lights" bits of meaning (まさかの！). This is a very silly choice because those bits of meaning don't have a shred of relevance to this scene, or any other scene in this story at all. I can see a context in which "pinball" is the best possible localisation for パチンコ. But this was not it, and not even close. I've never heard of anyone winning money from pinball.

I think if I were a translator, my process for localisation would be to break down the word into those bits of meaning, then rank the bits of meaning in terms of relevance to the line/scene/story, then pick a localised word that hits as many of the higher ranked meanings as possible. In this case, there are many better localisations (read: localisations with meanings more relevant to the scene). If I were localising it, I would probably do this: "He took all the money I won from the pokies." but I am aware that pokies is an Australianism. Assuming I was localising for a global english speaking audience: "He took all the money I won from a slot machine".

(TBH though, I don't think パチンコ needs to be localised because the english equivalent loanword, pachinko, is already well known enough to be used in english subtitles imo)

[supermassiveshot]

InaLog update! Turns out it was a false alarm - the demo's still playable so long as I don't let Steam update it - but having all that footage meant I could bash out the script relatively quickly.

For comparison, V1.2.0 on Steam, the version I'm working from here, contains roughly half again as much dialogue as the V1.1.0 version on Switch. Some previous NPCs also had their lines changed significantly, like this girl (Switch on the left, Steam on the right):

The term "Three-diamond Elite" isn't one that we've heard before, to the best of my research, and it never came up in the Switch demo. In Steam and Playstation, it gets one more mention from this man, who mentions the "Mitsuboshi Group" (also new) which seems to govern that.

In Japanese - where he refers to 三ツ星ホールディングス, Mitsuboshi Holdings - the characters used for the name itself mean "three-star", a very similar turn of phrase. Maybe we'll be hearing more from them later?

[themysticsword]

I wrote the Russian translation for Terry's Other Games!

It's a collection of short games Terry Cavanagh has made over the years. Check it out!

(my personal favourite is Grab Them by the Eyes - i'm just a huge fan of customisable items in video games)

Steam Itch