Rant about English translations

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

Don’t mind me, this is purely a rant. If you want, let off some steam in here as well.

One of the things I hate about some English translations is that they obviously aren’t complete. For example, I won’t name names, but some games expect you to believe that a three to four sentence statement full of emotional tone translates to “I like you.” I don’t speak Japanese, but I’ve learned enough from these games to know when a translation is obviously wrong.

Another thing. If you’re going to refer to sexual parts, please, for all of our sakes, use some class. Nothing ruins a touching love scene like using the word “cooter”. We are not 5th graders, please do not treat us as such.

Also unacceptable:
Knockers, bazookas, poontang, beaver. (Are you SERIOUS?!), cooch, jugs, hooters, ta-ta’s (please…), twat, and others.

There are plenty of reasonable alternatives to these that can be used. Honey box, love slit, delicate flower, pussy, etc. are all much better at fitting a romantic mood.

Less common is improper male slang. However, it is still annoying.

I don’t care for dong, but I’ll let it slide. If you use pork sword, however, you have lost the right to create dialog. In this case, sword is acceptable, especially when paired with the feminine sheath, but the pork section is just pushing it.

Let’s apply a simple test to your dialog. If you think a random five-year old would laugh at the dialog, you have failed the giggle test, and must rewrite it. If you read your script and think to yourself “Hmm… I can’t imagine anyone in a sane world actually saying that during sexual intercourse.”, then do us all a favor and fix it.

#2

I was saying something along the lines of your rant recently in a PM conversation, though in a much more compact form.

#3

I wrote this after playing Let’s Meow Meow. I loved most of the game, except for a few minor points.

One was the instances in which the dialog was as stated in the above. The other was that Shinju ended up acting all… domesticated and subservient. I liked her because of her original attitude. I also think the whole walking her in the park section was unneeded.

#4

I would know nothing about that as I don’t have that game, and I don’t really care for nekomimi (or any other kind of kemonomimi). On a completely different note, I think a better title for this topic would be “Rant About English Translated H-Scenes” or something similar, considering the only issue here is with the wording in such scenes. At any rate, I imagine we may get at least one comment here from papillon, given what she said in another topic…

#5

Seconded.

When I played it, I got to that park scene. All the sudden, Ibuki decides to “get mean”. And I’m thinking, “Why am I doing this? This is completely out of character…” I think someone had a extra leash fetish they needed to stick into the game.

The Shinju path was a bit of a let-down since, like you, I enjoyed Shinju’s original attitude. I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had kept her original attitude and did nice things for Ibuki, but she just turned into a seemingly spineless domestic servant. Kinda weakened the end, IMO.

#6

The translation quality for some earlier games was terrible. Peach Princess generally does a good job. Unfortunately, many others did not. GC before they went under and got acquired by PP did the “several sentences → a few words” thing. It seems like their “translators” just threw stuff out or let poor writing stand. Come See Me Tonight 2 is the example that comes to mind right off.

If these new guys at MangaGamer take “liberties” (i.e. “gut”) their games in the same way – and we’ve already seen reports that they do – then this is a serious black mark against them.

#7

Oh sure, I’ve always said the sex scenes in most hgames are just dreadful, but since I have so little knowledge of Japanese I’ve never been sure whether they were similarly dreadful in the original. I mean, they are written from the male perspective, and almost all erotic fiction I’ve read that doesn’t suck is written by girls (often FOR girls as well). There’s plenty of similarly awful (by my standards) smutfic out there and people still seem to read it. And write it.

I mentioned elsetopic that the first sex scene I’d encountered in YMK (Mizuki in the student council room) was probably the first such scene in an h-game that I’d actually allowed to play through at its own speed rather than embarassedly skipping through it. Considering all the details involved, though, I don’t think that’s simply a matter of translation… I’m pretty sure that scene was better written to begin with.

I know when I’ve done quick and dirty translation patches for a few demos, I’ve been more focused on getting a coherent storyline than on being accurate. Sometimes this means cutting back bits of one line so that the flow of responses makes sense. Of course, this is also because I can’t speak Japanese and my translation is fueled by the power of babelfish and a kanji dictionary. I try to get the gist and then weave the rest whole-cloth. I also mostly do games with no voices, which gives me more leeway to fudge it. :slight_smile:

IIRC the only one I’ve done with voicing, I did also play the voice samples when writing lines, in order to check intonation so that the translation would not look too out of place (and listen for the words I can recognise by hearing but not by reading…)

#8

A large amount of the time, I’ve noticed that the meanings weren’t there. They were shortened and stripped of a lot of detail. In some cases, the programmers have gotten lazy and deleted entire sections of speech just to get to the sex, and you’d never know without playing the Japanese version. (X-Change 3, tutoring jobs).

Let’s Meow Meow had great potential translation-wise, but the child-like vocabulary and improper translation when I highly suspect it should be more detailed language, which would do wonders to adding to the erotic…ness.

Again, I’m still miffed over Shinju’s ending. However, that’s not something the English company could control.

A side note… why the heck is the voice section of Let’s Meow Meow censored? It’s the first Japanese game I’ve ever played that actually censored erotic words with tones. It makes no logical sense.

#9

Really? A number of eroges are like that. While I can’t just rattle off a list, certainly Koibito Doushide Surukoto Zenbu comes to mind. I don’t know why they do it, but it doesn’t really affect the game itself, to me.

#10

I too thought that the bleeping was par for the course. Even the parody song that comes on the YMK disc has bleeping. Which is part of why I found it amusing, considering that from what I know of the Japanese language so far, what they bleep out is fairly tame compared to bleeped out words in English.

#11

It’s the first voiced game I’ve played that censored speech.

Games played before with no bleeping:
X-Change 2.
X-Change 3.
Yin-Yang.
I’m sure there were others, just can’t think of them right now.

#12

I’m not sure whether the bleeps are mandated by the EOCS etc in a similar way to mosaics (they have recalled games in the past because the company accidentally overlooked an unmosaiced image). The bleeping could just be a nominal form of censorship, but I think it’s more likely that the words could be part of a ‘not suited for broadcast’ list or something similar.

#13

I highly doubt it. It seems to be more used for vaguely humorous effect.

I mean, come on, these games are 18+ already =p

Anyway, the majority of voiced eroges (I’ll go through everything I’ve currently got installed and give you a % stat) do not censor with bleeping or anything like that, so it’s certainly not regulated. Just a stylistic choice.

#14

Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re just trying to be funny. It’s kinda like the black censorship bar you sometimes see in humorous depictions of sex or violence (games, TV, etc.)

#15

Yep, it looks like you and Lancer-X are right :). I had a look through the scenes from several games + demos across some different genres, particularly for ???, which seems to be the word bleeped out about 90% of the time. In Beat Blades Haruka though, I came across one scene where ??? was left intact and wasn’t bleeped out, with the first ? replaced by a circle. I didn’t see anything specifically mentioning word censorship in the EOCS regulations either, so it seems like this is intentionally done by the companies.

#16

Hmm. I find it really annoying. They should keep copies of the original audio for overseas markets. Also, I just found out the EOCS has no page on Wikipedia. Someone needs to fix it, as I know very little about it.

#17

Why? The ‘censoring’ has nothing to do with the fact that the game was originally released in Japan.

#18

Because the last thing I want while trying to enjoy a sex scene is listening to this: http://differentfrequency.ytmnd.com/

#19

I’ve found the move to audio censorship odd. Particularly since Peter tells us fairly regularly in his newsletters that the only bad word in Japanese is for the female genitalia. But who knows? Maybe they think it is “cute”?

#20

Come to think of it, that’s actually a separate issue. I’d like to see more of a dedication by companies against mangling sex scenes.