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Message: [QUOTE="Gorse, post: 6914, member: 73"] Just to be clear (not that it matters): I don't consider myself ideologically-driven in any regard, and [I]especially [/I]not when it comes to video games. I play this stuff (and Japanese games especially) to get away from the real world's socio-political issues, which is why I can't stand alterations that remind me of them. This is an entirely different thing altogether: Robotech, and those 80s mash-up anime like it, was [I]never positioned [/I]as a translation of any of the material it was based on. It was an entirely different series that used footage from several unrelated TV shows, combined with original animation, to create something new, so it can't really be judged on accuracy. The video game equivalent of this would be like one of those Flash games that mixes Mario and Sonic sprites together in a World of Warcraft map or something – it's not sold or presented as representative of an "original" text. I personally assure you that the Pokemon anime series' changes were [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3KNAtmHov0']massively ridiculed[/URL] both at the time and today. Again, these were baddy-bad changes, and people rightly disliked them (well, in Pokemon's case specifically, they were made fun of because they were so stupid, but the point's the same.) Hey, you didn't post that video until after I made my initial reply! ;) I actually didn't plan on watching it, because regardless of what the guy says, I'm still holding fast to the arguments I've been making all along – that the changes made in the 90s were made because nobody knew any better yet, that we [I]should [/I]know better by now, and that those changes were still very, very bad and shouldn't have been made in the first place – but I skipped ahead to the "Censorship" section and it honestly kind of boiled my blood. The host rephrases "censorship" as "collaboration" to sneakily make his point seem easier to digest (a common communicatory deception tactic, and one I know quite well), and the guy being interview just nods and agrees. Neither one convinced me, because they both clearly had a defined position from the start that they weren't interested in deviating from (especially insufferable when they condescendingly refer to their audience as misinformed). I've said it before and I'll say it again: [B]Customers don't want censorship, and they're the ones the game is being made for, so whatever these bozos have to say really doesn't matter. [/B] Oh my god, the interviewer in this video is giving me a migraine. There isn't just one writer in a video game? Are you out of your fucking gourd, you bearded idiot? I personally am going to remove the part of my brain that contains the memory of this video so I never have to think about this guy again. Let me lay out my objections to this line of thinking in as clear a manner as possible: [LIST=1] [*]I simply don't believe that this is what's actually happening, because I've seen firm, objective, non-biased evidence to the contrary in several cases, including those I've already linked. [*]The people who say this are people who have something to gain by doing so – the translators whose jobs are (rightly) threatened by AI and their followers who agree with them ideologically. [B]I've never seen a video game developer – someone involved with the actual [I]development of the game [/I](or even a publisher!) [/B][I][B]–[/B][/I][B] come out and say, in official material or otherwise, that they ask Americans to change or censor things about their games. [/B] [*]If this were true, I'd expect every individual Japanese developer who's work has been affected by this to state clearly that they're asking translators to censor their games. I say "individually" because there's no standardized board of video game localization that administrates these things, and these issues have cropped up across a wide range of different Japanese developers. [B]The one constant in all of these cases is ideologically-driven translators, so why wouldn't they be the issue? [/B] [/LIST] Incorrect! Out of the [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises']top five[/URL] highest-selling video game franchises, #2 is Call of Duty and #5 is GTA, both M-rated games, instantly invalidating your point. (This line of thinking doesn't even make sense – if it did, no one would make M-rated games.) ❌ It was wrong then, and it was wrong now. The difference is – say it with me now – [B]we should know better now, and that ideologically-driven translators are both clearly present and the constant. [/B] As an absolute matter of fact, I have – [I]professionally! [/I]I'm actually a software copywriter myself, and my work is translated and published through AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Google Translate on a daily basis. It's approved by native speakers at my globally-operating company, who admit that – gasp! – the AI [I]does better work than they can, because, despite speaking the language, they aren't very good translators! [/I]Imagine that. For the record, as a writer, I trust AI translators to bring across accurate versions of my work far more than politically-insane real people. WELL, THAT DISQUALIFIES ALL PROFESSIONAL JAPANESE-TO-ENGLISH TRANSLATORS, THEN!!!!!!! ::winnie::winnie::winnie::winnie::winnie Because, you see, they're all angry nerds, and I dislike them. I could ask you the same question! Who [I]are [/I]these daring white knights, fighting the good battle against those gosh-darnable internet bullies who go to such extremes as to – gulp – [I]complain on the internet? [/I]If the translators are doing it themselves, see my comment immediately above – if it's their fanboys, that's just extremely pathetic. The difference is that people who don't want censorship are [B][U]THE CUSTOMER. [/U][/B] See that game I linked in my reply to Gingervitis. I absolutely have played it – I actually played it when it first came out – and I was [I]floored [/I]by how good the translation was. I imagine there had to be some hiccups somewhere – this was from the initially-released version of ChatGPT, which wasn't as advanced as it is now – but I sure as heck didn't see any issues. In fact, I thought it was as good as a professionally-translated game... and now we've come full circle. You're not wrong – Japanese developers being influenced by American cultural moors more generally certainly is an issue that AI can't fix (yet) – but that's not what we're discussing here, and for the reasons I've stated in roughly seven trillion words above, attempting to phrase it like that is A) factually incorrect and B) utterly manipulative. Thanks! I like to thank I've proven my point with several examples. For the record, I've never used Twitter (or any other form of social media) in my life beyond seeing screencaps of these tweets on Internet forums. But that leads me directly into the crux of my argument, which is this: Strategist, I want you to read this line over again. Then again. Then again and again and again and again. [B]Do you see what I'm trying to say? Do you understand that this is what [I]you've [/I]done, because you agree with them? Please, say yes. [/B]I don't want to make assumptions about you, but I like to think I have a pretty strong understanding of your own ideological biases from this conversation alone, and – like a video game translator trying to convince people that he's not at fault after being caught ruining translations – you have an incentive to agree with yourself and people like you. If you can't see that, then I really don't see how this conversation can continue. [/QUOTE]

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