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Originally posted by atholbrose:
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Originally posted by Made in DNA:
[b]As a translator (fortunately of none of the above games) I have to play devil's advocate here. Unless you can speak and understand Japanese REALLY WELL, how can you tell that the translation is wrong/bad?
There are some things that you can tell with only a little working knowledge of Japanese, when there are spoken lines. It's pretty obvious when a double-mouthful is translated to a one-word answer, or when you hear common words that in no way appear in the line in text. (One that bugs me a lot is when people's names are changed in dialog -- dammit, if someone calls someone by their family name, the family name should be what's in the translated line. Same with honorifics. I freely admit that's pretty picky, but important for some things, like, say, Kimagure Orange Road.)
Also, for bishoujo games, it's pretty obvious when "Ah! Ah! Ah!" is translated in a very vulgar way. (See Divi-Dead for the most extreme examples of this.)
US fans of Japanese gaming also tend to use 'translation' to mean 'script'. I try to keep the two seperate when I'm writing about localized games, but it is hard sometimes, especially when you doubt that the game would have had such a poor script if it hadn't been translated/localized poorly (see Final Fantasy Tactics).[/b]
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But are you sure the translation isn't correct?
I think since we are talking only vagueries here, without specific examples (I have never played any of these games with the exception of editing XC2), it's hard to really say. As a translator, I have often left out common words for the sake of better dialogue and more natural sounding English translations. And I'd do it every time.
Made in DNA
[This message has been edited by Made in DNA (edited 06-15-2003).]