Translation errors in English releases often go undetected. Join me as I plunge down the rabbit hole to see how such errors affect the experience.
Seinarukana: A compilation of translation errors in the official English release
This is a prelude to my full review, which should be ready in a few days.
We’ll be addressing some of these issues as the game is prepared for Steam, and a patch will be released for the non-steam version.
@Nicholas said:
We’ll be addressing some of these issues as the game is prepared for Steam, and a patch will be released for the non-steam version.
Excellent. The specific lines I identified should be relatively easy to locate and fix. I reported every major error I noticed. I also quoted your response in the article.
Nnn, even before I found an alternative translation that was more accurate and literal which let me to pick up on errors, the way Elder Ngi seemed at times felt out of character. People who watches wuxia will probably know the type of character a recluse hermit like Elder Ngi is as a literal philosophically wise elder to Ruptuna, a feral-like child whom he raised and taught. So, errors that made Ngi berate Ruptuna just felt wrong.
There are many of Thalia and Sorluska’s banters/exchanges that have errors, with their chapter 2 scenes being among the particulars. Maybe it was the TL’s decision, but some of their insults are too harsh and malicious when it shouldn’t be like that. Perhaps look into changing Nozomi’s affectionate insult (baka) towards Nozomu into something that actually fits her personality too (like dummy or idiot?) cause jackass and such doesn’t suit her personality at all. Changing the name of Nozomu’s Eternity Sword Dawn to Aurora makes no sense and makes the simple thematic connection between Dawn and Daybreak awkward and messy. Another thematic issue that doesn’t stay consistent is the use of the word ruin and destruction in context to the state of a world. I’ve seen few synonyms used, but that’s not correct to do. A world in ruin or will be ruined is/will be a world on the brink of destruction, caused by lack of mana due to various reasons or circumstance. And a world facing destruction or has been destroyed is literally as it sounds.
Anyways, I hope JAST will go over the **entire **script to rectify these and other similar translation errors, and not just only the ones sanahtlig pointed out.
You make valid points but I’m not sure a full TLC pass is warranted or necessary. JAST has limited resources and those need to be spent where they’ll make the most difference. Outright errors should be fixed, but subtle stylistic choices, while worth pointing out, aren’t a reason to call for a complete script review.
It’s not practical with their limited resource, but a person can dream. At the very least I think they should patch up major errors as mentioned above, but also fix terminology that matters to the plot. For example of the latter, Sephirot is the translation used for ??? and that’s wrong in accuracy and isn’t even consistent to the tree cosmology. An accurate translation should be Ideal Trunk or Trunk of Ideals. Trunk is the keyword here to go along with branches and root. And from a world-building perspective some terminology aren’t respected, much less acknowledged. One such example is [Protection] that’s placed on a world. A person who plays the game would never pick that up from story segments because the translation never mentions it, instead it’s only referred to as "barrier in the generic sense.
was the update patch including these fixes for Seinarukana ever released?
I wouldn’t expect a script patch until the game releases on Steam in October.
but there will be a patch for the non steam version, right?
That’s what JAST said above, yes.