Xelloss said:
For what it is worth, I also thought it was a very good response and am glad to see it back. For what else it might be worth, it is always apparent when playing Aksys games that quite a bit of thought went into the wording and I think you guys do a very good job. No indirect criticism was meant to be implied.I just recall for example, Persona 4. Atlus kept honorifics in that game even though it was dubbed, and I also thought that game was very well done; I did not find it unprofessional.
Persona 4, however, did a good job of it. it's incorrect to say that it "kept" the Japanese honorifics. It didn't. It used Japanese honorifics, but they weren't the same ones that were in the Japanese version. I think only -san, senpai, -chan and -kun were used (P3 had -tan as well). However, the manual had explanations for these, and the honorifics were used in a way such that you could figure out the meaning from context clues.
In P3, Junpei actually calls Yukari "Yuka-chi". That became "Yuka-tan" in the localization, though I don't know if it was because -tan is just that well known in the anime-watching audience, or if it was because of the pun that resulted from its use.
Xelloss said:
Some people say using honorifics in English is unprofessional. I wholeheartedly disagree, honorific usage can convey an enormous amount of info regarding the social situation. Honestly it is a common occurrence where the "localization" fails to capture the original nature of the relationships, and all the social undercurrents. Sometimes this matters, sometimes it doesn't.This is exacerbated with dubbed voices, and is one reason why I typically cannot abide them. (there are of course, always exceptions)
Of course, the problem is there is no easy answer. So I tend to give ppl who localize a bye, just because of that. But... if a localizer feels that they need to include honorifics to maintain the feel of the social setting or subtleties of the relationships then I do not consider that unprofessional. Sometimes I think you are caught between honorifics, or else losing out on relevant social and situational info... or else having to "alter" the script somehow.
I do think the setting has a large role to play in appropriateness though. If the setting is a fantasy setting, or a Japanese setting... then including honorifics to me makes a lot of sense. There just needs to be some sort of indoctrination/explanation for people who may not be familiar. Obviously if the setting does not match... that is a different story. Even though I tend to prefer honorifics, even I would think that a story about a bunch of Americans from Montana would look completely absurd if they were using honorifics.
Except what you consider "altering" the script is something necessary that every translation needs to do. What Magna Mixalis said is right, localizations should be tailored for those who don't know much about Japanese. It's better to rewrite the dialogue to convey the relationship between speakers in a subtler and more natural way than to keep the honorifics out of fear of making changes, or using a direct translation and resulting in awkward dialogue that would, ironically, be far more misleading to a non-Japanese-speaking person than the "altered text" version.
I often see translations where "onee-san" translated to some version of "big sister". In many cases, this actually works. However, I find that in most cases, just "sister" actually sounds more natural.
You also have to remember that a language heavily reflects the culture and thinking of the people who speak it. I've read of scientific studies where the same multilingual people describe themselves and other objects differently depending on which language they are using at the moment languages (and in many of the studies the two languages being compared were Japanese and English). English is a language that heavily reflects the individualistic nature of it speakers, while the Japanese language reflects the importance of social harmony and collectivism of its speakers. Japanese has fewer words to describe strong, self-focused emotions like "anger", and English has fewer words for things like "duty". A lot of this cultural information is lost during translation, and may need to be spelled out more explicitly for the audience to pick it up. A direct translation will simply result in that context being completely lost on the ears it falls upon.
I'll say what I said in an earlier post again. An ideal localization should sound like it was written in English by a writer who only knows English and no other language. That doesn't mean that every localization that doesn't read like that is bad, it just means that that's what they should be working toward. I think many of the people who argue in favor of more direct, accurate localizations, don't realize that by not rewriting the script, information is actually lost.
