Mandoric said:
Translation is a matter of reconstructing rather than presenting, though, since perforce you can't display the original. It's more equivalent to a play calling for a priest of no other description; whether the actor onstage wears a Roman collar, a Canterbury cap, an exorasson, an eboshi cap, or a saffron-yellow robe is entirely dependent on local habits.
But that's not true! If you assume that the original is a work of art (it is), then the job of the translator is to convey as much of that art as possible given the language and cultural barrier. If that culture is a fundamental part of what makes the original Art, then it is the translator's duty to deliver that culture as well - or at least enough of it to convey the expression of its artistic contributions.
It is not the TRANSLATOR'S job to present a "separate but different" interpretation of the original art. A playwright is creating a blueprint for the creation of a new, separate play that differs with every actor, prop, and director. A translator isn't supposed to give their (almost always) inferior interpretation of a finished work of art, but to deliver that art to a new audience for them to arrive at their own, reasoned interpretation.
Ultimately, Art is universal, but that doesn't mean it has to be easy or dumb. It is well within people's capabilities to understand, for example, the cultural significance of eating ramen noodles from a cart. It doesn't take more than a sentence to explain it, and you never have to explain it again. Years down the line, you won't even have to assume that you have to explain it at all. It'll just be taken for granted. The only reason we are having this conversation now is because we've had years of ramen -> hamburger changes that insult our intelligence and we've never been given the opportunity to move past it.
Seriously, how many games has this been changed in? A dozen? Two dozen? A hundred? Probably more, just in the SNES era alone. It would've been easier, more appropriate, and more accurate to have just explained it in the first place.
charlequin said:
No one is suggesting that localizers should censor content because they don't trust in the ability of their audiences to grasp the material; that never works out well for anyone and no serious professional localizer or student of translation theory would ever suggest doing anything like this.
It's a matter of degrees. It really comes down to where you draw the line. Obviously, there is a point where most people agree that Americans are too stupid to understand or appreciate certain references to foreign cultures, I just think that line is higher than everybody else.
That's what the ramen -> burgers change in PW is about, and the reason it's appropriate there is that the nominal content of the original sentence really isn't important compared to what it's supposed to implicitly convey.
Except that in Ace Attorney 4, there's an entire chapter dedicated to a ramen noodle cart, making the original decision to "censor" ramen somewhat premature, since they had to explain it anyway.
That's not really my position. Pretty much the entire thrust of my argument is that you can't make statements like "translators who are doing their job well will do X in situation Y" because there are always so many different factors in play.
One can sum up their position on localization simply by pointing out where their loyalties lie. If your loyalties lie towards sales, then anything which might potentially make even the dumbest example of mankind feel stupid is going to impact sales. If your loyalties lie towards the player, then you want a game which feels as natural as possible, even if it impacts (sometimes greatly) the original meaning and purpose of the work. Your opinion on localization lies somewhere between "good enough" and "better". If your loyalty is to the original game - the original Art - then your opinion is that people must rise to meet the art rather than the art lower itself to the people. That's my opinion (obviously).
Videogames are not just art, but also history. The fact that remakes of classic games get new translations is proof enough that history was compromised by the original approach.
Sometimes a given translation is going to prioritize low-level textural fidelity to the original work even though that produces a very different context on a certain level -- look at Persona 4, where "story set in the exceedingly familiar locale of rural Japan" becomes "story set in the unfamiliar foreign locale of rural Japan." Other times the holistically preserving the tone is going to be more important, like in Phoneix Wright. In both cases I think the translators made the right call, even though the philosophy of these two translations is very different.
Yes, but one approach lead to a more "pure" work of fiction, where there were no WTF moments where you had to stand back and excuse the localization as a necessary evil.
It doesn't! I'm just saying when something starts out as a pop culture ephemeron I don't see much reason to spiff it up and make it timeless when translating it. If people still care about Phoenix Wright in thirty years I don't think pop culture references are going to matter much either way in how much people appreciate it.
It's not about making something timeless. It's about making choices that are best for integrity and quality of the game - the things which contribute to and ensure that timeless quality. If you ask me, making flippant, fourth wall break anachronisms in localization that weren't there before is no different than releasing Final Fantasy 4 easy version. It's not made out of a loyalty to the players or to the game itself. It is made because they thought very little of the game and even less about the people who would ultimately play it.
The reason it was such a big deal that the REAL Final Fantasy 4 was released (with the correct numerical order even) wasn't because people would be able to revisit their favorite game, but that they'd be able to play it for the first time.