bucklemyshoe said:
-your mother is a classy lady- that!
i absolutely hate dubbing in games. it just ruins them.
take persona 3 for example. wonderful game but the english dub gives the characters a new personality and just destroys the enjoyment. however the undub version is just amazing.
seriously, -your mother is a classy lady- dubbing and -your mother is a classy lady- game companies who refuse to include a japanese language track option.
And you are an example of the virus that plagues the entire Japanese to English translation scene. For a localization to be good, it must take some liberties in bringing the game to a new audience. This doesn't mean censorship, because censorship is annoying. However, there are some things that simply don't translate, and to rectify that, translators need to feel free to let their own interpretations influence their work.
Certain companies, like NISA, don't seem to understand that and continue translating almost word-for-word in order to continue to please these intractable language purists. Including a Japanese voice track aggravates the problem, as it simply makes it easier for people to make comparisons between the translation and the original.
My standard for a translation is this:
1. The translation must not be incorrect. That is to say, it must not alter important or unimportant storyline elements.
2. The translation must be localized. It must sound natural in the language being translated to. If a person who has no experience with the Japanese language finds the text odd, then it's bad. Likewise, if a Japanese speaker is able to deduce the exact original wording from the English text, then it is badly localized.
3. Minor details must not be changed. "I'll bring the food to you in 5 minutes" should not be translated as "I will start making food in 5 minutes" (a certain fansubbing group *cough* Chihiro *cough* made a mistake similar to this before).
4. Jokes must be appropriately inserted. Jokes normally don't translate, so they can be altered however they need to be to keep the atmosphere. It's also alright to insert individual jokes in different scenes were they weren't there before, or to remove them when there isn't a suitable alternative, as long as it doesn't change the atmosphere.
5. There should be an attempt to suitably do something with titles. A lot of dubs simply use "sir" or "Mr." to replace "-san". This is not acceptable. The titles should be removed to make the language sound more natural. Watch the Chobits dub to see what I'm talking about. If possible, use last names and first names appropriately in the way that a native English speaker would.
Persona 3 was actually really good about this. For those of you that didn't know, the honorifics used in the localization are different from the original honorifics in the Japanese version. Also, first names were used in places where the Japanese version used last names, in order to make it sound more natural for an English speaker. This was actually appropriate. The honorifics' inclusion was a stylistic choice, so it's okay for them to be there. Atlus USA opted to only use the 4 or 5 honorifics most anime-watchers know (-san, -chan, -kun, -tan, -senpai). That's why Akihiko doesn't use "-kouhai" in the dub.
6. The editors for the text should not know Japanese.
All these rules are relative, not absolute. That is to say, stylistic choices can be an exception, like Persona 3 is for #5.
Those are just my 2 cents. Also, I should mention that Aksys scores an A on my translation quality grading scale. That's not flattery, it's fact. There are a lot of things Aksys could do better. Translation quality is one of them, but it's still good as it is. Just always room for improvement.
