Posted by Tomato (ip68-3-164-47.ph.ph.cox.net/68.3.164.47) on March 12, 2002 at 10:40:07
In Response to Well, here's some posted by Shih Tzu on March 12, 2002 at 00:52:33:
Whoa, I didn't expect anybody to actually discuss my article. Wheeee :)
You don't think FF2 was a lot better than previous game translations? I agree it's not a huge step like FF3 made, but I still can't shake the feeling it was a pretty big step up from stuff before it. Even though it was a pretty "iffy" translation in many places, hardware and NOA difficulties aside.
>I suppose I should come out, as it were, and state that I'm attempting the translation of Just Breed. It's my first shot at a game translation, and I'm only just completing my third (school-)year of Japanese studies, but I think I can do it with enough effort and patience (helps that I'm in Japan for the next few months yet). It'll take a while, but I'm planning on doing it as a capstone project for my East Asian Studies major, so I'm gonna strive to do a careful job.
I took a quick look at some of what you did on Just Breed the other day, looking good. Looking real good :)
> And hoo boy, there's a lot that circa-1992-NOA would've cut out of this one. I dunno about swearing (That's an especially subjective thing to translate, isn't it? Especially since the concept doesn't exactly exist in Japanese as it does in English, or at least that's my impression. It's not terribly nice to go up to a little old lady and say "Kuso! Chikushoume!", but it doesn't seem as regimented as it does in English, with some segments of the population calling a certain list of words evil. I wonder if that'd make a neat article, Tomato? Anyway, I digress.), but there's lots of other stuff to corrupt our youth...mass drunkenness, child neglect, transvestites, graffiti, hostess bars... Probably typical RPG stuff, but this is only my fourth game played in Japanese and it's all new to me. Maybe Game Gear games are more chaste somehow.
Yeah, I've noticed the same thing about swearing myself. The distinction between swearing and not swearing as it exists in English doesn't correspond directly in Japanese IMO. The problem is people just starting learning the language might not know this and everytime there's a kuso or chikushou or whatever, if there's not a huge swear word in the English translation, it's automatically wrong. Bleh, hard to talk about it without examples and actual contexts. And people who don't know Japanese but hear that all the swearing was taken out from a translation don't know exactly what that means, so when a translation like the Dejap ToP comes out, people might think "Whoa, they put tons of swearing in" or "Whoa is this how Japanese games really are" or "Whoa these guys like cuss words". Is that good or bad? I dunno.
> How does one convey old-person-speak in English? Can and should it be distinguished from polite but plain housewife speech? Should a translator have particularly "old-fogey" words in mind (the classic arguably being "newfangled")?
This is a big problem I'm having at the moment, when I'm editing the BL and SO scripts. A character's personality can be defined by the kinds of thing he/she says and the way he/she says it. In Japanese it's more easy to subtly alter speech patterns, in English it's pure torture. And if you're gonna try to beat the English text into submission to make the way a guy talks sound different, you almost always wind up going to the extremes of personalities. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a big problem I'm trying to find my way around. I don't want all the game characters to sound like super mega extreme personality guys. I think in the end, we have to accept the fact that English isn't as flexible and just do the best we can.
> "When the ground looks funny, try doin' a spin-dig! Might find a room below! Ya dig? Har!"
>
> The last three words don't have a literal equivalent in the original Japanese line; indeed, they can't have a literal equivalent, since the "dig" part depends on dual meanings of the word in English. Still, I justified it to myself as a way to convey the color of the original, and simply because I personally liked it. However, I've always wondered about this line, and I'm interested to know what others think about this, especially since it has close connections with my still-nascent translation philosophy. I can provide the original line, eventually, if anyone asks.
Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. That would definitely be a Working Design's-type translation. It also depends on your audience and your goal for the translation. If you're going for a "super literal translation" (as if one existed), then that wouldn't be warranted, but if you were going for a translation that people wouldn't be analyzing and would just be playing for enjoyment, and if you think that line is warranted, then go with it. If somebody comes up to you and says you suck for screwing with the text, you'll just have to give them a good whooping and send them home crying to mommy ;)
Incidentally, this is part of the reason why there's the whole BL fiasco, the hacker I first started with (who didn't know any Japanese) saw like one line where I did a slight westernization like yours and claimed I was a horrible translator and that my cheap-ass translating skills suck. Well, I didn't stay with him very long after that :)
>
>It isn't the words, it's the fact that this old dude is suddenly spouting katakana English like the young folks do (or like he thinks they do), like he's Hamasaki Ayumi or something. (Who taught this guy these words?) Especially in this case, where converting the katakana directly into English makes the sentence sound stupid, I'm thinking of loosening up quite a bit here in order to convey the "old-guy-trying-to-adopt-youngun-speech" feel. Anyone have any opinions on this, or any other interesting examples?
BL has a line or two like this, the resident old fogey tries to be cool and young on a couple occasions and uses words (that are 100% warranted) like "hip" and "cool". When a couple people saw him saying that stuff, they asked me why I did that, assuming it was my fault or something. I think what usually happens is that if a translated line or paragraph sounds good, it's because the original author was good, but if something sounds weird or out of place, it's automatically the translator's fault. I bet you 50 yen that when people play your translation with that old guy being a hip young guy, they'll say something about it to you :)
> I always found it amusing how the EvilBook or whatever enemies in Secret of Mana got past the Nintendo censors. Leave 'em alone long enough, apparently, and they pop open to a li'l naked elf girl or something.
Yeah I can't believe they missed that :) Not like there was much to see though. It was like 10 pixels or something ;)