I don’t always buy a PeaPri title because I like it - or else I’d also own the Japanese version – but to see if I would have translated dialog the same.
No. No. I’m not whining. I’m quite pleased with most of the works – especially more recent titles: but it got me wondering a little…
If it doesn’t hurt to know the answer: How are translations done at PeaPri? It is like the 'ole Squaresoft days, when one person did all the work (like Ted Woolsey) – or is it a team effort with multiple people involved (or at least comparing translations). In case of the latter: a body of equals who vote on common consensus, or a group of underlings whom a boss makes the final decision when translations conflict.
Ahh, the age old argument about keeping honorifics, name order and whatnot.
It seems like a lot of companies avoid using Japanese honorifics or other cultural stuff for whatever reason. It doesn’t make sense to me since a lot of mainstream novels and movies keep foreign honorifics and words… but the source language just happen to be Western. I’ve seen some translated novels with 20-30 page translation notes. But again, the source language was not Japanese. It seems like companies translating Japanese works treat translation differently from the rest of the world.
I understand that if the story doesn’t take place in Japan, there’s a legitimate reason not to use honorifics, but if it does take place in Japan, why not follow what pretty much the rest of the world is doing and keep the original culture intact? The current practice makes even less sense in eroge since it’s extremely niche.
Oh well. What can you do? You just have to wait for companies that translate Japanese products to catch up to current trends of keeping the original culture intact. Maybe they’ll finally realize that people can understand foreign culture differs from their own, just like novel publishers have.
I can hear the honorifics in the speach and most of the time it sticks in my head with out it bieng in the text.
I starting to get a sense for when a charcter is bieng impolite by not using them as well.
I think the companies that do the translations are afraid they may lose potential customers if they were to go hybrid.
I think Yume Miru Kusuri had a pretty good mix, and it was important to some of the character development, or showing the level of the relationship anyway. So that when the given name was used, it actually meant something.
The final word on this ultimately has to come from Peter, but my understanding of our translation philosophy is that we try to make the games as accessible to as broad a user base as possible without sacrificing the fundamental cultural flavor that makes them unique.
It’s not my position to defend or attack the decisions of individual translators who operate within the broad parameters we give them, but my personal opinion is that a superabundance of honorifics and common Japanese words would, in most cases, obscure the textual flow and rhythm of a game at best, or be cloying or incomprehensible at worst.
That said, I think there are times when the retention of honorifics in translation can be useful to convey meaning that is otherwise difficult to translate. When I find myself responsible for translation work on our projects I add them in these cases (when it doesn’t break with an already established pattern from other translators on the project).
That’s about all I personally can say on the subject, other than that the time we have to revise translations once complete is limited, and going over them with a fine-toothed comb to judge subtle inflections of honorifics becomes slightly less of a priority in the face of other production concerns. We aim for the highest quality translation possible given what we receive from our various translation staff, and are constantly striving to improve; we hope you’ll find that improvement noticeable over this coming year!
so no one should translate that