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TPC unifying Chinese translations of Pokemon names & some people are protesting
- Thread starter Tripon
- Start date
GuitarGuruu
Member
I can't really say I'm not surprised. Going back and changing the official names of Pokemon that are over 20 years old is very questionable to me, not sure why the decision was even made.
Slamtastic
Member
Andrefpvs
Member
Finally canon!!
Edit:
YES!
CROKI STARE AH!
Neoleo2143
Member
This is a fair argument, Gamefreak ought to localize in their languages in those regions. Though, the physical march is a bit much....
Jack Scofield
Member
Think about how much your life must suck to protest something like this.
My first thought as well, haha.
Large protests over actual issues don't tend to go well under a communist regime like China.
On the contrary. I'm fucking envious of people whose biggest problem in life is that their favorite Pokémon has a new name which doesn't sound right.
The issue I think is 超 , which is pronounced as 'chao' is Mandarin. All together it would sound like 'Pi-ka-chao' in Mandarin.
So, no. The original translation does not sound the same in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Couldn't say it better
stan423321
Member
Imagine that after some political guacamole some shows in Slovakia are suddenly shown dubbed in Czech, and for some reason suddenly neither nation likes each other. This is the picture painted by those articles. I imagine a bunch of you don't see a problem at all, what about ethnicity being outdated concept et cetera. Well, to them it isn't outdated, and I perfectly understand.
So it's a matter of TPC going with the numbers and appealing to the mainland.
I don't know about physically protesting this but I also don't live in Hong Kong or really know about the climate there in regards to being subsumed by the decisions mainland China makes.
SirPinkyNose
Member
I think I'll play some Magic Babies tonight.
I'm not sure if the names were ever "official" per se, considering that Sun and Moon will be the first official Chinese language release? Sucks that there will be changes but I can't imagine too many games out there have separate Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc versions?
I think for things like anime and manga, it's easy to just farm things out to a Chinese licensing company(ies) which can easily localize things specifically for each market (all they need to do is change text/record voices after all) but for games where the localization is done in-house, it seems like it'd be a lot of extra work with negligible benefits... I mean, even if they left the rest of the text entirely the same and changed only the Pokemon names, that's still an extra version of the game that needs to be tested for bugs and so forth.
Now compare that to the Traditional Chinese version which makes more sense to me since they can technically target both Taiwan and HK with that. Plus I feel like there'd be more protests if they didn't provide a Traditional Chinese version (which I want to say is an available option for most games translated for the Chinese-speaking market these days, given the popularity of console/handheld gaming in HK/Taiwan vs in China) vs not providing a Cantonese option (which, like I speculated above, I don't think most localized games have?)
皮卡丘>比卡超 anyways 
On a slightly related note I hope they're taking more cues from the Taiwan names vs the China names as far as official names go. China tends to go for straight up closest sounding to the original names even if they sound kind of harsh/awkward while Taiwan tends to add a bit of flair that makes it sound more pleasing (see: movie names, country names, etc). Not hopeful regarding this lol.
SmartWaffles
Member
The Hong Kong / Cantonese translation isn't even official since there was no offical Chinese version of Pokemon before Sun & Moon in the first place. And for how small Hong Kong's market is, it is outright unfavorable for TPC to do a separate set of localization.
This is not correct actually. The games are never localized before, but the anime and manga are, and their translation is official. However, same goes to mainline China with the officially translated anime and manga. It's really a mess because the translation in Hong Kong and mainline China are done by different people.
Huh, I'm actually very surprised Nintendo hadn't released the games themselves in Chinese before. Especially weird since, although not for Pokémon, Nintendo is I think the only video game company which does highly-specific localizations, like separate French versions for Europe and Quebec. Hell, Microsoft Windows has 3 different Chinese localizations now (Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan), if anything I'd have thought they were going the other way. I was also mistakenly under the impression that Hong Kong wasn't under this level of influence from the mainland.
YearoftheWooster
Member
I think it's mostly from Mainland China lifting the video game ban which drew Nintendo into diving into that new market.
Hong Kong hackers were the first to get a Chinese translation out in the first place, which in turn brought about the official translations for other Pokemon media, so it's understandable that they'd be mad.
My Mandarin is terrible / almost nonexistent, so it'd be cool to actually be able to read a colloquial Cantonese Pokemon translation. At least some gamers in Hong Kong are okay with the English names.
nephilimdj
Member
But the games should of been in Chinese 20 years ago anyway, what was the point of Nintendo Phuten (Taiwan).
Nintendo dug themselves in a hole.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Yeah, alot of Cantonese is getting squelched semi-not-really-but-yeah by general media and government so the silliness has a darker edge to it.
"Magic Babies" though...hehehe
I'm still surprised Nintendo never went for it with Hong Kong and/or Taiwan before, though, I'd have thought those would be markets they'd have gotten in on more quickly, especially given that Pokémon became an international hit pretty much immediately and was released in several other languages straight from Gen 1.
NormalFish
Banned
China is not communist.
MissDeviling
Member
The cultural and political issues are fucking terrible in HK right now. There's nothing to be envious about. It extends a lot further than Pokemon names.
papertoonz
Member
Finally canon!!
Edit:
YES!
welp time to fuck some bags then
Yeah, I've been digging some more into similar news shenanigans for the past hour and the protests definitely make more sense with the bigger picture in mind.
The Chinese-speaking market is pretty neglected sadly. I think it's getting better now (for example, IIRC FFXIII was the first FF to get an official Chinese translation) but people still mostly have to deal with Japanese imports. I have no real idea why this is the case but I do kind of wonder if it's due to rampant piracy combined with PC gaming being generally more popular that made publishers hesitant about putting forth the effort to enter the market. Now the argument could be made that publishers themselves caused this problem by not localizing their games for the Chinese market, forcing gamers to resort to and being very accustomed to piracy, as well as not developing a console gaming fanbase... but who can really say at this point.
As for Pokemon, I think Nintendo just handed off the license to various licensing companies which then released the anime/manga for their respective regions. I want to say maybe the TCG got an "official" release as well, at least for the first sets, but I can't really remember. I think some companies got to release "official" branded plush as well, at least in the beginning, but that's mostly died off too due to the ease of internet shopping these days.
Anyways, hopefully these endeavors pay off for companies though! It'd be nice to see more people get to enjoy games that aren't just platformers haha.
AlphaTwo00
Member
Yup. This is just another layer of shit on top of the "Hong Kong" won't exist in the future. Media relevancy is usually the first to go.
Coming off of the Yakuza Zero Cantonese edition, this is a huge regressive step backward. I feel like this generation I'm in is the last that will carry the language.
Hong Kong protests are a huge deal right now. It's only going to get worse til 2046, when HK is fully handed over to China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Movement
Okay, I'm an idiot. Whatever term describes what china is then.
Pretty much this.
Wikipedia is your friend...
...and it seems to confirm your previous statement was... right?
Cute Dragon Here
Member
I think the best way to deal with this is probably decoupling the simplified and traditional Chinese text and the Pokémon names. Have the name representation to be further set up by a second option if a Chinese option is selected.
This would work really nicely with Simplified and Traditional Mandarin (or close to it) in mainland China and Taiwan, while you can get Traditional, Cantonese names in Hong Kong, and... well, Southeast Asia gets to be picky? (Though I'm pretty sure most here are fine with English in SEA.)
This would work really nicely with Simplified and Traditional Mandarin (or close to it) in mainland China and Taiwan, while you can get Traditional, Cantonese names in Hong Kong, and... well, Southeast Asia gets to be picky?
(Though I'm pretty sure most here are fine with English in SEA.)In Québec, back when Pokemon was released, Nintendo didn't release their games in French, but we had an edited version of the French dub of the anime, which was mostly the same but used the english names for the trainers and pokemons instead of the (France) french ones. Starting with the Wii era, Nintendo actually started translating games for Quebec and imposed the french names for Pokemon.
Older fans didn't like it and they don't like it now, but obviously the target audience of the games don't give a shit. That's almost certainly what'll happen there too.
(grumble grumble jigglypuff not rondoudou grumble grumble)
Older fans didn't like it and they don't like it now, but obviously the target audience of the games don't give a shit. That's almost certainly what'll happen there too.
(grumble grumble jigglypuff not rondoudou grumble grumble)
Weren't consoles banned there until very recently?