Times when the localization team really went rogue

[CG4R12I4N]

Skies of Arcadia English Version is no more than a huge fanfiction that doesn't adhere to the original Japanese. Deal with it.
Also Ted Woolsey might be acceptable with how he still delivered decent works despite short deadlines and SNES engine limitations, but the rest after him are mostly shit writers with exception of maybe Xenogears' lead translator. Up to and including Koji Fox himself.

 

[Strategist]

Skies of Arcadia English Version is no more than a huge fanfiction that doesn't adhere to the original Japanese. Deal with it.
Also Ted Woolsey might be acceptable with how he still delivered decent works despite short deadlines and SNES engine limitations, but the rest after him are mostly shit writers with exception of maybe Xenogears' lead translator. Up to and including Koji Fox himself.

Eh, the Xenogears localization is really bad. Filled with errors and Japanglish. My favorite Squaresoft translator is Alexander O. Smith. Worked on Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

...You forgot that Xenogears was translated by ONE person, not the entire team, not even any editors. With only given 3 months to finish two whole disc of already gigantic text amounts.
It's kinda dry narratively and had quite a lot of errors sure, but it sure beat most other Square games localizations at the era, much like Ted Woolsey's works.

 

[MasterEn]

Skies of Arcadia English Version is no more than a huge fanfiction that doesn't adhere to the original Japanese. Deal with it.
Also Ted Woolsey might be acceptable with how he still delivered decent works despite short deadlines and SNES engine limitations, but the rest after him are mostly shit writers with exception of maybe Xenogears' lead translator. Up to and including Koji Fox himself.

buddy, calm down a bit. i don't know what the original Japanese version is about. it seemed to be a pretty high quality game. i didn't notice any obnoxious references to real life or very bad jokes. if you have some examples, i would like to see them. i haven't heard or read from anyone on the game being bad in any way. it would be interesting to see the differences between the english and japanese versions.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

It's already in the thread title anyway, and Skies of Arcadia fits the theme despite what you personally think about it being high quality or not. The localization team really went rogue with that game about as much, if not more than Working Designs.

 

[Strategist]

...You forgot that Xenogears was translated by ONE person, not the entire team, not even any editors. With only given 3 months to finish two whole disc of already gigantic text amounts.
It's kinda dry narratively and had quite a lot of errors sure, but it sure beat most other Square games localizations at the era, much like Ted Woolsey's works.

I disagree. Xenogears translation is outright illegible at certain points. Ted Woosley worked under the same constraints as the Xenogears translator and delivered a grammatically correct mostly error free script. Granted, the Xenogears script has a lot more text, so that is an extenuating circumstance. But at the end of the day, Woosley's FF6 text is a lot cleaner than Xenogears.

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Grammatically correct and error free scripts are overrated anyway.
FF VII PSX had as much, if not more translation faults compared to Xenogears and it's still regarded by most people as the best game of the era

 

[Strategist]

Grammatically correct and error free scripts are overrated anyway.
FF VII PSX had as much, if not more translation faults compared to Xenogears and it's still regarded by most people as the best game of the era

Well, you are talking about a different thing. FFVII and Xenogears had two of the more memorable stories ever put into a video game. That has nothing to do with the quality of the localization, more of the source material. There's no doubt in my mind the localization would've been better if Woosley was still working with Squaresoft in that era.

 

[MasterEn]

It's already in the thread title anyway, and Skies of Arcadia fits the theme despite what you personally think about it being high quality or not. The localization team really went rogue with that game about as much, if not more than Working Designs.

do you have some links to show off how they went rouge? it doesn't matter what the thread title says. i want to know about the differences between what we got and what the Japanese audience got.

 

[TheREALBLUEdragon]

It's fine in a vacuum but the western version of the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is legendary for how hard the localisation team screwed themselves over when it came to adapting the sequels.

A story so good they wrote it twice!​

The original version of the game is set in japan but for the western release Capcom's localisation team decided to rewrite the game to have it set in California instead. This wasn't a huge issue as the vast majority of the game is set in locations that could pass for somewhere in or near the city of Los Angeles. There are some uncanny parts of the plot that do give away the game's original intended location, but it's mostly ignorable and doesn't distract you too much.

Ah yes, America. Known for its Samurai themed tokusatsu TV shows.​

The real problems start in the sequels. A large part of the second game takes place in a traditional Japanese village called Kurain Village which is the home town of one of the main characters, Maya Fay, who is a Shinto priestess and spirit medium in training. As you can imagine, this was not a problem in the original Japanese script when the game was set in Japan, but since Capcom decided to localise the western versions to be set in the US... suddenly it's a huge problem for the localisation team.

Pictured: Somewhere near LA... apparently​

To their credit, the localisation team stuck to their original vision and through sheer stubbornness and desperation somehow managed to make all the narrative ends meet and the story (while still uncanny and obviously set in "not Japan" ) does make some kind of strange sense in the end, without ruining the subtleties of the plot or introducing too many plot holes.

You did it to yourselves, localisation team. Nice recovery though!

​

 

[MasterEn]

It's fine in a vacuum but the western version of the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is legendary for how hard the localisation team screwed themselves over when it came to adapting the sequels.

View attachment 13360
A story so good they wrote it twice!​

The original version of the game is set in japan but for the western release Capcom's localisation team decided to rewrite the game to have it set in California instead. This wasn't a huge issue as the vast majority of the game is set in locations that could pass for somewhere in or near the city of Los Angeles. There are some uncanny parts of the plot that do give away the game's original intended location, but it's mostly ignorable and doesn't distract you too much.

View attachment 13375
Ah yes, America. Known for its Samurai themed tokusatsu TV shows.​

The real problems start in the sequels. A large part of the second game takes place in a traditional Japanese village called Kurain Village which is the home town of one of the main characters, Maya Fay, who is a Shinto priestess and spirit medium in training. As you can imagine, this was not a problem in the original Japanese script when the game was set in Japan, but since Capcom decided to localise the western versions to be set in the US... suddenly it's a huge problem for the localisation team.

View attachment 13376
Pictured: Somewhere near LA... apparently​

To their credit, the localisation team stuck to their original vision and through sheer stubbornness and desperation somehow managed to make all the narrative ends meet and the story (while still uncanny and obviously set in "not Japan" ) does make some kind of strange sense in the end, without ruining the subtleties of the plot or introducing too many plot holes.

View attachment 13372
You did it to yourselves, localisation team. Nice recovery though!

​

i remember that. it was during that weird era where kids weren't allowed to know that other countries existed for some reason.

 

[TheREALBLUEdragon]

i remember that. it was during that weird era where kids weren't allowed to know that other countries existed for some reason.

Companies used to think stories set in foreign cultures were less marketable for some reason, so would constantly mess with scripts to make them "less foreign". Thankfully we live in better times.

 

[MasterEn]

Companies used to think stories set in foreign cultures were less marketable for some reason, so would constantly mess with scripts to make them "less foreign". Thankfully we live in better times.

View attachment 13381

i think that's more reflective of their mindset. they aren't interested in other countries, so they assume that kids wouldn't be either.
kind of hilarious that most of what i watched and played came from japan. the only america stuff that i watched was cartoons and a handful of movies. the first time i actually read an american comic book was in my mid twenties.

 

[Strategist]

i think that's more reflective of their mindset. they aren't interested in other countries, so they assume that kids wouldn't be either.
kind of hilarious that most of what i watched and played came from japan. the only america stuff that i watched was cartoons and a handful of movies. the first time i actually read an american comic book was in my mid twenties.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Americans that are deeply uncurious about the rest of the world. I've met a few of them during my lifetime. They buy into the hype and think everyone should speak English and America is the best at everything. To be fair, there are a lot who aren't that way.

 

[MasterEn]

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Americans that are deeply uncurious about the rest of the world. I've met a few of them during my lifetime. They buy into the hype and think everyone should speak English and America is the best at everything. To be fair, there are a lot who aren't that way.

it happens. not much you can do about it.

 

[mel]

(There is no official localization for this game, this is from the most commonly used english patch. Hopefully that counts?)

From what I've found there's nothing remotely close to this said in the original dialogue...

 

[Strategist]

(There is no official localization for this game, this is from the most commonly used english patch. Hopefully that counts?)

From what I've found there's nothing remotely close to this said in the original dialogue...

View attachment 16218

That tracks, I doubt the Japanese are into Lucadris.

 

[hazys]

Level-5 games tend to suffer from bad localizations even today. Since their games are aimed at kids, the localization team feels the need to insert insufferable toilet humor and stupid memes into everything. The Snack World has a hub called "The Covfefe Cafe."

To be clear, I'm sure the original Japanese scripts are not exactly high literature either, but I could do with 20% fewer toilet jokes and wordplay involving the word "crap"

 

[Strategist]

Level-5 games tend to suffer from bad localizations even today. Since their games are aimed at kids, the localization team feels the need to insert insufferable toilet humor and stupid memes into everything. The Snack World has a hub called "The Covfefe Cafe."

To be clear, I'm sure the original Japanese scripts are not exactly high literature either, but I could do with 20% fewer toilet jokes and wordplay involving the word "crap"

One of the worst things is when the localizer tries to insert humor into the script while also not being skilled at writing comedy. That's when you get the low hanging fruit of toilet humor and dated pop culture references.

 

[CardcaptorEd2019]

Pft, guess the Doll wasnt macho enough? They already tried badassifying the cover art

HE'S PISSED NOW
View attachment 12958
View attachment 12960

Same with Kirby

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Same with Kirby

View attachment 16243
View attachment 16251View attachment 16252

Oh everyone knows that one, I'll do you one better

A whopping 3 american flags for good measure

 

[hazys]

Oh my god, I can't believe Search and Destroy was a secret Choro Q game. The 2000s were truly the Wild West.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Oh my god, I can't believe Search and Destroy was a secret Choro Q game. The 2000s were truly the Wild West.

I love the flags, just in case you thought it was japanese or something

I mean the game is still the same, you can tell its at least related to choro q bc of the chibi tanks, so the international cover art is really false advertising

 

[MasterEn]

Oh everyone knows that one, I'll do you one better
View attachment 16300View attachment 16302


A whopping 3 american flags for good measure

I love the flags, just in case you thought it was japanese or something
View attachment 16303

I mean the game is still the same, you can tell its at least related to choro q bc of the chibi tanks, so the international cover art is really false advertising

hmm... i don't know. are you sure that this was made by Americans? it doesn't have hot dogs, burgers, grills, fireworks or chicks in bikinis with guns on it. still looks like the Japanese cover to me. slightly more detailed render, but still anime like.

 

[Stookymalarkey]

That tracks, I doubt the Japanese are into Lucadris.

The pointless cursing reminds me of the localization of the original Yakuza on PS2. They added so many f-bombs to the script that it seemed like you couldn't go 3 sentences without running into one. Still can't believe anyone in the 2000's thought that adding copious amount of swearing to a game would make it seem MORE mature.