I also think that the suggestions that the localization team was incompetent or incapable -- "maybe interns did that part" sentiments or "8-4 should have done it" -- are not particularly helpful. We know that large parts of the game are localized very well, which suggests the glaring issues are a result of lack of time and resources rather than skill or care. It sounds as though a capable team simply did not have enough time to do their work as well as they could. Simply saying the localization is "bad" is not as likely to resonate with the people who made the poor decisions regarding scheduling as it is to specify that a localization should not be rushed and requires the consistent attention that can only come with more time, not more bodies.
When it comes to a discussion about clarity in communication, I do think the distinction is important.
It's a bit of mess UX-wise. Even at home I have to scroll back up past a page's worth of text to view the next section. I'd rather have collapsible blocks instead of replacing the area underneath.At work so smaller screen than home, but not when you have the scroll back up multiple times just to scroll back down and read stuff. Horrible site design, the worst. Websites are not yo-yo's, for fuck sake.
Criticizing localizations that fail to bring out personalities of a colourful cast of characters and has other issues is not an "overblown issue". Good for you if your standards in this regards are so low that you can enjoy such shoddy work, but don't expect everyone to do so without voicing out their opinions. Also, what on Earth do blind fanboys like you have against criticism? No one is saying Persona 5 is a bad game or unplayable, we aren't insulting your family or kicking your or the creators' dogs, but this IS unarguably a blemish for an otherwise awesome game and it does absolutely NO ONE any favors to let Atlus/Persona 5 get a pass on such mediocre work for a game that deserves only the best.Between BoTW's framerate, Persona 5's translation, and Andromeda's faces what else will come out to contend these three as gaming's most overblown issues of 2017?
This has actually been a bit of a problem with the discussion of this localization as it's gone on. There are obviously several lines that are inexcusably bad, but there also seems to be a disconnect between the idea that many want the characters to sound like real people (particularly teenagers), who all have distinct voices, but also want everyone to speak with proper grammar at all times. It feels like it muddies the water to see people complain about things that teenagers might say that they personally don't like hearing teenagers say because it's technically improper english.
Older Detective: Are you Prosecuter Sae Niijima?
Older Detective: There's a call from your director.
Older Detective: Hurry and get it over with. To be frank, you're being an inconvenience.
Sae's phone rings and she answers it. It's the director.
To be honest, I just rewatched the scene and remembered that my initial impression without the Japanese was that you're supposed to be scared of the spooky, highly influential men in suits who have the power to make your boss call you. The English line of "There's a call from your director..." enforced the spooky omnipotence of the guy for me. He has so much sway that he knew the second that he could make your boss call you.
If "He here?" is just modern-teenager speak then I accept it doesn't belong with "are serious to kill us" and "Kamoshida was a scum". But I have never heard or read any actual or fictional person use it before in my life.
While this isn't English (as stated on the site), I have to disagree with this example as its actually something that fitsThis can't be real lol
I seriously don't recall seeing similar issues in their other localizations like P4. And it's not the worst localization I've ever see by far, but I kinda expect better from Atlus.
To the butthurt people I love persona 5 dearly but seriously if your contribution in this thread boils down to fan parading and downplaying issues consider not participating in this discussion
This whole thread is basically contending this in a substantial way and your arguments against it have lacked any kind of substance. Also nobody is dragging the translators through the mud. At least I hope not. As the compiling site states there should be the implicit understanding that we're criticizing the work not the people behind it. And generally at least in this thread I hope people know that there are multiple different reasons that don't relate at all to people's skills that this is the end result.
Also I don't know but disregarding things on the basis of their merit is very much fair play. The same way I would likely disregard a flat earther talking about certain topics. You don't automatically earn the right for valid consideration by having an opinion.
As for the last part just a blatant lack of understanding of what I was saying but sure.
The statement you make there stands for itself. I don't feel like I need to pile on that.
Why does the large size of P5 keep getting brought up as an excuse when the equally large P4G did not suffer from anywhere near the level of problems with its localization?
Not sure. Dude is on Twitter retweeting crazy shit like Persona 5 will damage perception of Japanese culture. I mean fucking hell.
The original release of P4 had translation mistakes
To start off, they claim that literal translations are inherently and objectively inferior. I view this as a matter of preference, as people have been fighting back and forth on it for years, particularly in JRPGs, so that stood out as a bit silly.
P4G is not equally large.Why does the large size of P5 keep getting brought up as an excuse when the equally large P4G did not suffer from anywhere near the level of problems with its localization?
The main story content is actually by far where I notice the most errors. Stuff like Confidants tend to be the best of this localization in my experience.
They could patch the text only errors probably. Voiced lines would take a lot more time and money.For some reason I'm unreasonably angry about this whole thing. I'm not even that big of a Persona fan. I think its mostly the fact that Atlus USA doubled down on the whole "this is our best localization so far". Like, thats just clearly wrong. Accept it and move on. Alternatively, patch the errors and shit out. Can they do that, technically?
It is inherently impossible to translate a language literally while having it still resemble what someone in the new language would actually say. Languages do not all follow the same grammatical rules and syntax structures. If your translation is making it difficult for a reader to get the information they need, it is a bad translation.
If I translated something literally from French to English, no one would ever say, "You're right", they'd say "You have reason". They wouldn't say, "What is it?", they would say "What is that that it is?" They wouldn't say, "I agree" or "Sure", they'd say, "I am of agreement". No one talks like that.
A translation is supposed to convey intent and meaning in a way that the reader can understand, not get caught up in semantics and miss the forest for the trees. That's the cardinal rule that actual, professional translators follow.
Exactly how I feel.People need to understand that we can have nuanced opinions about a game. Persona 5 is probably going to be my game of the year - in a year in which I've played and loved BOTW, Horizon, and Yakuza 0.
Again though, I can point out some of the examples aren't impeding understanding so much as just sounding slightly awkward.
To compare to your example, a lot of it more resembles translating the literal "you have reason" as "your reasoning is sound" or even "that's reasonable", rather than defaulting to "you are right".
In short, a (more) literal translation favors using reason in some regard to preserve some of the nuance inherent in such phrasing, rather than just default to the colloquial version.
The issues pointed out here aren't just clunky. A few parts of the translation have actively caused confusion.
Like, take the first example cited on the site:
Here's how one poster from the last thread interpreted the meaning of this conversation, without any knowledge of the Japanese.
That's a fair reading from what he was given. How could the detective know she was going to receive a phone call? There must be something special about this guy.
It was the overuse of stock phrases that really killed me. That's just... embarrassingly bad. Like early 2000s anime subbing bad. Not game ruining, but definitely something worth being worried about. AtlusUSA absolutely needs to realize that this isn't even remotely acceptable. Just what on earth happened during the localization process?
Between BoTW's framerate, Persona 5's translation, and Andromeda's faces what else will come out to contend these three as gaming's most overblown issues of 2017?
Yeah, watching streams I deffo got those shitty anime fansub vibes from the script.
Also jesus @ the persona avatars in this htread, there's no reason to be so defensive.
Also jesus @ the persona avatars in this htread, there's no reason to be so defensive.
that's....a stretch
it is not rare for someone to call a person, not getting an answer, then start calling the personal cellphone, or wherever the callee is, etc etc until getting through to the person they want
it's still a stiff translation in some places, but that level of confusion is just due to people who would have gotten confused in japanese too
I don't think it's even limited to teenagers, just an informal truncated way of speaking.
Are you really incapable of understanding why this game is getting so much shit?
"Mental shutdown incidents" is one of my least favorite things in the script. From my rudimentary knowledge of Japanese and reading NHK, it seems in Japan they like to give things category names, like a sort of common-proper noun hybrid, and it doesn't translate well to English. People in at least the U.S. would just call them "weird news stories about people passing out" and stuff like that. I can't see people subscribing to using a common term like "Mental shutdown incidents."
Does anyone have a clue what I'm getting at?
You mean outside of NeoGAF being NeoGAF.gif?
There are way worse localizations out there that nobody's even sneezed at.
Went to Persona 5 reddit, found this post with more comments than most others on the first page.
Also, the thread started because someone literally made a website to higlight the issues.
But just GAF being GAF, amirite?
No, my entire post was criticism. This isn't a problem that can be fixed with awareness. This isn't an ethical problem. The team at Atlus woke up everyday and did their best work, and now we have a catalog of people spitting in their faces. That's the real ethical problem, and this is what I have pointed out, despite the down votes content on shaming dissenting opinion. This is why I have the thankless job of being the cold hand of karma.
Im willing to bet hardcore persona fans are the harshest critics of the localization, lol.
Well actually judging by the people who have written articles and/or made entire websites about it, it appears some fans of the recent fire emblem fates (or at least it's localization) are actually the biggest critics.
Fun fact: The same person who made a website about persona 5's localization defended fates as being perfect and not having issues at all. Oh and for extra fun? He defended radical character shifts and personality overhauls as part of the localization process and people complaining about them were just obsessed with "literal" translations.
Reading through the website again with that knowledge put a lot of things into context.
Well actually judging by the people who have written articles and/or made entire websites about it, it appears some fans of the recent fire emblem fates (or at least it's localization) are actually the biggest critics.
Fun fact: The same person who made a website about persona 5's localization defended fates as being perfect and not having issues at all. Oh and for extra fun? He defended radical character shifts and personality overhauls as part of the localization process and people complaining about them were just obsessed with "literal" translations.
Reading through the website again with that knowledge put a lot of things into context.
Hey, highlel: author of the article here. I've noticed some negative comments about me on exactly that topic, and I'd like to assure you that Fates doesn't get a complete pass from me either. (From what I can tell, the source of that information is an out of context tweet that some fellow used to construct an ad hominem argument against me with.)
Fates does well on a general readability front (the editing is excellent, and the text is fun to read), but I'm rather displeased with how they altered some of the content and support conversationsthat's something I'd never do in a project of my own unless forced to by the client, and then only under protest. If you read my section on translation vs localization, I do address this somewhat: the be-all and end-all is always the creator's intent, and Fates was flawed on that front.
Hope that clears things up a bit!
Hey, that fun fact from silveralen was neither fun nor a fact.
"Mental shutdown incidents" is one of my least favorite things in the script. From my rudimentary knowledge of Japanese and reading NHK, it seems in Japan they like to give things category names, like a sort of common-proper noun hybrid, and it doesn't translate well to English. People in at least the U.S. would just call them "weird news stories about people passing out" and stuff like that. I can't see people subscribing to using a common term like "Mental shutdown incidents."
Does anyone have a clue what I'm getting at?
It can't be helped.Hey, that fun fact from silveralen was neither fun nor a fact.
Fun fact : the dude in question made a post on reddit addressing this "issue".
Hey, that fun fact from silveralen was neither fun nor a fact.