Worst Fan Translations

[Leon]

I'd say the worst i saw was a translation of final fantasy 6 in english that made terra a prostitute, otherwise i can't remember many others.

 

[marxcore]

Any translation is better than none, it's just nitpicking when people sit behind their keyboard arguing about these. If you know nothing about translating then you should be thankful to have one in the first place. if you do know something then be the better person and make your translation or work with whoever made that translation instead of being a turd behind a keyboard. We must respect that someone or a group of people spent there free time or there own money to release a free translation for the public.

 

[Ocarina]

I see. Never knew. Thanks for the explanation. I'll always use "jpn" from now on! Shit, when I think about all the times I've used the other abbreviation, unaware of its political implications! Well, what's done is done...

Not derogatory in Singapore.

People here say it as it is without having the intonation it's a slur.

 

[GoodWall_533]

I haven't really played a fan translation i thought was bad to be honest. Also, it's really funny seeing people trying to virtue signal about stuff like this. "NOOO YOU CAN'T CRITICIZE ANYTHING. JUST SHUT UP AND BE GRATEFUL" Like we're not insulting their person here dude. Calm down lol.

 

[fake-kun]

Not derogatory in Singapore.

People here say it as it is without having the intonation it's a slur.

Great for you, but it doesn't change the fact it IS a racial slur.

 

[Yousef]

Great for you, but it doesn't change the fact it IS a racial slur.

100

 

[RageBurner]

I haven't really played a fan translation i thought was bad to be honest. Also, it's really funny seeing people trying to virtue signal about stuff like this. "NOOO YOU CAN'T CRITICIZE ANYTHING. JUST SHUT UP AND BE GRATEFUL" Like we're not insulting their person here dude. Calm down lol.

Thank you for voicing my thoughts. Bad is still bad, wrong is still wrong. What is being addressed is a piece of work, not the people making it, and accuracy is an objective metric.

 

[Taukyrie]

Less bad and more "you can tell the team got really lazy", but the original Namco X Capcom English translation.

While I do understand that it's a long game and has a lot of dialogue, I think that should make it more of a reason to proofread your translations. Like there are some translations that are good, but there are a lot of moments where it looked like it wasn't proofread, or it was put through a machine translator.

I rambled on about this in a post on Tumblr I made after finishing it, but here are a few unedited screenshots from my playthrough of the game:

I'm still trying to figure out what this is supposed to mean.

Thankfully, I think someone is trying to make a patch that improves on this translation, and I think this game really does need it.

 

[videogamemimi]

The worst ones I've seen were those that are obviously machine-translated, with no other work done to it (obvious spelling errors, changing pronouns for the same character, redundant phrases, etc).

 

[RageBurner]

The worst ones I've seen were those that are obviously machine-translated, with no other work done to it (obvious spelling errors, changing pronouns for the same character, redundant phrases, etc).

Yeah, my take is that MT should be used as a supplement, not the main effort.

 

[dropsmegamega]

I remember this interesting line in DeJap Tales of Phantasia (snes) fan translation
View attachment 11727

I know this isn't the hot takes thread but I unironically enjoyed the DeJap Tales of Phantasia translation, I'd rather take a translation with some flavor rather than these dull 1:1 stuff (but that pic is kind of an extreme example lol)

 

[RageBurner]

I'm actually the opposite, I'll gladly take a "dry" but accurate script, down to names and terminology, than one filled with creative escapades.

 

[dropsmegamega]

I'm actually the opposite, I'll gladly take a "dry" but accurate script, down to names and terminology, than one filled with creative escapades.

It depends of the nature of the work for me, for a game with a more serious message it would seem very disrespectful to do that kind of translation, but for a Tales Of game...

 

[RageBurner]

It depends of the nature of the work for me, for a game with a more serious message it would seem very disrespectful to do that kind of translation, but for a Tales Of game...

I completely understand your stance, yes! for me though, accuracy is the ultimate decider, no matter the subject in question. There's an old Italian saying, I believe it was: "To translate is to betray.", in other words, there will be concessions when translating something, but I firmly believe these differences need to exist within reason, and not to satisfy empty vanity or for the sake of a laugh.

 

[miguk]

Any translation is better than none, it's just nitpicking when people sit behind their keyboard arguing about these. If you know nothing about translating then you should be thankful to have one in the first place. if you do know something then be the better person and make your translation or work with whoever made that translation instead of being a turd behind a keyboard. We must respect that someone or a group of people spent there free time or there own money to release a free translation for the public.

Sorry, but you're flat-out wrong. And you'd know that if you ever heard of the whole Daikaijuu Monogatari fanslation scandal. The bad J2E and DeJap translations look 日本語上手 by comparison. Dynamic Designs' WildBill is basically the Uwe Boll of fanslating, down to ruining whatever he touches on purpose because he thinks fanslating is a good platform for pushing his politics on others. (An utterly thoughtless conclusion, given that even the politically interested among us don't play retro games to listen to an out-of-touch geezer rant.)

https://legendsoflocalization.com/galleries/political-references/
(Check the section on Daikaijuu Monogatari.)

The fact of the matter is, some fanslators (particularly those who built themselves a bad reputation) can't be trusted to translate correctly. Some, like J2E and DeJap, aren't/weren't mature enough to do it right. Others, like Dynamic Designs, are so obsessed with the Working Designs formula (the worst translation method of the 90s, as it's basically anti-translation) that they are a product of a previous time rather than their own. Still others like WildBill have malicious intentions and not only can't be trusted to give the audience the correct experience of the game, but end up dragging the game's name down with them. (Daikaijuu Monogatari is now reputed more as "that crazy political rant game" than as a hidden gem of the SNES.) Malicious work does not deserve respect no matter how much effort it takes.

You're being way too dismissive of legit complaints. Re-translations are rare, even in the fanslating community. Almost all re-translations are for the biggest-name games (Final Fantasy, Mana, etc), while the smaller-name ones get ignored once they have either an official one or a fan one. And it's a lot of work to fix those mistakes, so you shouldn't give such a dismissive attitude of "if you don't like it why don't you do something." Might I add, many of us do not want to work with the likes of DeJap or WildBill for a good reason.

And one more thing: this forum is for civil conversation. Try to follow that standard if you want to stay here. Calling us "turds behind keyboards" in an attempt to dismiss legit discussion hardly counts as civil, and has resulted in you getting reported.

 

[IyoTheHelpfulWolf]

I don't know if it counts as "Poorly made" since it was clearly a deliberate shitpost, but Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V Tag Force Special. It was written like a YGOTAS episode with slightly more slurs.
Grandpa: Don't pick Dark Worlds. Dark Worlds are for assholes.
Random Opponent: You know you're a (F-Slur) right?
I thought it was funny because I have the sense of humor of an edgy preteen, but it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Certainly caught me off guard as I was expecting a serious translation. Either way, it was still very playable as the card translations were accurate.

 

[Valcrist]

Anything using machine translation. It discourages real translators from picking certain games up. Some have even dropped projects over MTL releases.

 

[miguk]

Anything using machine translation. It discourages real translators from picking certain games up. Some have even dropped projects over MTL releases.

That's an understandable complaint, but some games just aren't getting translations at all. Until just recently, the fanslation community practically ignored the best-selling Tengai Makyō series. There was a MTL of Tengai Makyō: Daiyon no Mokushiroku recently, and I can't really complain too much, given that nobody was picking it up despite all the hype it got. And there's tons more out there that nobody's doing, including games going back to the early 90s (if not further back).

Now if the translation is bad, then that is kind of an issue. But the people working on translations already could make corrections to the MTL as they find errors.

 

[RageBurner]

Machine translations aren't ideal, but they are a start, at least. Perhaps one such existing could drum up enough interest from someone to better polish it.

 

[Leon]

That's an understandable complaint, but some games just aren't getting translations at all. Until just recently, the fanslation community practically ignored the best-selling Tengai Makyō series. There was a MTL of Tengai Makyō: Daiyon no Mokushiroku recently, and I can't really complain too much, given that nobody was picking it up despite all the hype it got. And there's tons more out there that nobody's doing, including games going back to the early 90s (if not further back).

Now if the translation is bad, then that is kind of an issue. But the people working on translations already could make corrections to the MTL as they find errors.

Honestly MTL aren't bad on the face of it, as long as you say up front it's MTL, what does suck however is when the mtl is used and NOT edited to make sense.
If i can read completely MTLed games or manga, it should be simple for the person doing it to edit it to make a bit of sense, mtl's on the surface aren't bad, the problem is the machine cannot understand context, but a person could and save alot of criticism that way.

Imo we need 3 categories to tackle MTL's, pure MTL for no editing done to the script, Edited MTL for MTL's that have had someone go through the translation and fix oddities and the like, and finally MTL assisted fan translations, for translations that are mostly done by a person, but had a bit of MTL assistance for some of the more difficult dialogue.

 

[χKai]

I dare not complain, lest I get asked if I want to produce a better translation.

 

[fishboneKiller]

i guess this isn't the exact kind of bad you're looking for, but i recall playing the fan translation of digital devil story megami tensei for nes a while ago, and because of the way that the fan translation injected its code, sometimes the game would freeze with corrupted graphics. this was especially rough considering how brutal that game already is, and having a random chance for it to crash at any time just made things worse

 

[BassForever]

In 2025 any obvious AI or machine learning translation is cringe.

 

[Valcrist]

That's an understandable complaint, but some games just aren't getting translations at all. Until just recently, the fanslation community practically ignored the best-selling Tengai Makyō series. There was a MTL of Tengai Makyō: Daiyon no Mokushiroku recently, and I can't really complain too much, given that nobody was picking it up despite all the hype it got. And there's tons more out there that nobody's doing, including games going back to the early 90s (if not further back).

Now if the translation is bad, then that is kind of an issue. But the people working on translations already could make corrections to the MTL as they find errors.

Tom said he was going to pick that one up until the MTL so he cancelled his project.

No offense to the guy who uploaded the 7 Molmorth MTL release, but it is the worst thing I've ever seen. Even if people edit a MTL translation, MTL does not understand context.

 

[χKai]

I'd say the worst i saw was a translation of final fantasy 6 in english that made terra a prostitute, otherwise i can't remember many others.

Please share.
It's for research purposes.