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Valentin posted:I think Woolsey's a lot better than he's often given credit for. It's not a huge surprise that a lot of people on the internet don't like him (esp. given that the kinds of people who have localization discussions tend to be the same ones who think that NOA Treehouse is unambiguously terrible), but I think there's no question that he's a huge part of why FF6, Chrono Trigger, etc. are so well remembered in the west. It was funny seeing so much Ted Woolsey griping leading to the random untranslated Japanese terms in the FF5 fan translation, and then Sky Render's FF6 retranslation: 
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Dec 9, 2016 23:20
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Any issues with the accuracy of Woolsey's translation should be blamed on how terrible the process of translating a game and the tech available to him was, the dude deserves a ton of credit for not only translating but localizing games in an era where actual native English speaker could never touch a game's translation and having dumps of untranslated garbage text were still a regular occurrence.
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Dec 9, 2016 23:45
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Valentin posted:I think Woolsey's a lot better than he's often given credit for. It's not a huge surprise that a lot of people on the internet don't like him (esp. given that the kinds of people who have localization discussions tend to be the same ones who think that NOA Treehouse is unambiguously terrible), but I think there's no question that he's a huge part of why FF6, Chrono Trigger, etc. are so well remembered in the west. Also, he gets blamed for legitimately bad things like the FF4->FF2US translation, which he had nothing to do with.
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Dec 9, 2016 23:58
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I think there are some choices he made that were just straight up bad, not to mention some errors on his part, but he did a lot to improve the standard of game localization at the time and a push for more natural dialogue is always a good thing.Valentin posted:(esp. given that the kinds of people who have localization discussions tend to be the same ones who think that NOA Treehouse is unambiguously terrible)
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Dec 10, 2016 00:01
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I really liked this article from awhile back http://kotaku.com/the-man-who-wrote-earthbound-1188669175 Basically the guy who localized earthbound had no way of knowing anyone liked it at all for years and now he does 
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Dec 10, 2016 00:06
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Super Dan posted:It's been a while since I've played it, but I believe you can actually get him to say something different. If you go through the Black Omen, and defeat the Queen and the first form of Lavos, there is a Gate that you can use to return to the End of Time. If you talk to Gaspar at that point, he'll say something to the effect of "All that's left to do is defeat Lavos. Good luck!" The speculation I heard was that the "person you need to find" was not Schala, but actually Magus's mother, the Queen, and you've just saved her from her life of insane immortality. Guy Mann posted:Any issues with the accuracy of Woolsey's translation should be blamed on how terrible the process of translating a game and the tech available to him was, the dude deserves a ton of credit for not only translating but localizing games in an era where actual native English speaker could never touch a game's translation and having dumps of untranslated garbage text were still a regular occurrence. I do have a few niggling issues with Woolsey's work, but given that he was basically the only person working on entire scripts in what was, I want to say, an average of a couple of months per project (if that), he did some really astounding work. Honestly for all the liberties he (and others with a similar, looser style of localization-- lookin' at you, Working Designs, god I miss you guys) took, it honestly irritates me much more for fan translation projects to come in looking down their nose and explaining why this is so terribly incorrect before providing proof of a script that they've probably been tacking away at for the better part of a year, or years, and have left dry as a sack of potatoes. I'd much rather have a loose localization dripping with personality than somebody cleaving too close to the original work. (Mind, it's really interesting to see the differences between the original and the translation, so these projects definitely have substantial merit, but... it's one thing to say 'this is the original script, check out the differences' and 'Ted Woolsey ripped the very soul out of this game this is unacceptable!')
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Dec 10, 2016 00:13
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CoolFish88 posted:It was funny seeing so much Ted Woolsey griping leading to the random untranslated Japanese terms in the FF5 fan translation, and then Sky Render's FF6 retranslation: lmao
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Dec 10, 2016 00:15
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NonsenseWords posted:I'm not sure I remember seeing a 'you've completed all sidequests, go fight the final boss!' message (I don't really doubt it, I just don't recall), but I can confirm that 'find this person' doesn't refer to Queen Zeal. That was/is a common theory, but the message will appear even if you don't have Magus in your party (since he would be the only person close to Queen Zeal), and will still appear if you tackle the Black Omen first among the sidequest bloc. Ditto for addressing Lucca's mother promptly. On the other hand, the fan localization of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 was pretty loving masterful, and absolutely full of flavor and life. So at least some groups seem to understand that stuff.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:48
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On the other other hand, the recent Sailor Moon RPG Lets' Play showed just how horrible fan translations can be, to the point that there are significant stretches where pure machine translation may have been an improvement.
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Dec 10, 2016 00:53
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CoolFish88 posted:It was funny seeing so much Ted Woolsey griping leading to the random untranslated Japanese terms in the FF5 fan translation, and then Sky Render's FF6 retranslation:   sky_render.tripod.com/ff6script.txt"Don't overexert yourself. This is a Circlet of Mind Enslavement, or a Slave Circlet. With this on, the wearer can no longer control their actions, and are forced to follow orders." 
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Dec 10, 2016 01:19
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I'm gonna get people mad at me for this but I have the same issues with the re-translation of FFT. Yeah it's better in a lot of places but it's also hammy as poo poo and adds a lot of words that don't need to be there so it can sound fancy
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Dec 10, 2016 01:21
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Billions of words have been written in academic circles on the difficulty of 'truly' translating poetry and prose. When I studied Dante's Divine Comedy we read 3 English translations simultaneously - one was more literal, one more poetic, etc. I'm not suggesting any videogame is worth that kind of effort, but a Let's Play of FF6, Chrono Trigger or Earthbound that way might be fun!
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Dec 10, 2016 01:27
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CoolFish88 posted:It was funny seeing so much Ted Woolsey griping leading to the random untranslated Japanese terms in the FF5 fan translation, and then Sky Render's FF6 retranslation: Wasn't the fan-retranslation the one that ended up naming Kefka "Cefcea"? NonsenseWords posted:I do have a few niggling issues with Woolsey's work, but given that he was basically the only person working on entire scripts in what was, I want to say, an average of a couple of months per project (if that), he did some really astounding work. Honestly for all the liberties he (and others with a similar, looser style of localization-- lookin' at you, Working Designs, god I miss you guys) took, it honestly irritates me much more for fan translation projects to come in looking down their nose and explaining why this is so terribly incorrect before providing proof of a script that they've probably been tacking away at for the better part of a year, or years, and have left dry as a sack of potatoes. I'd much rather have a loose localization dripping with personality than somebody cleaving too close to the original work. If you (or anyone else) enjoys this sort of look into localization poo poo, I really recommend checking out Legends of Localization. The person behind it has been a fan-translator for a long time (on projects like Mother 3) and an actual professional translator for a bunch of other poo poo for a handful of years, and he's gotten a lot of knowledge of how everything works. He also just put out a gigantic book about Earthbound that's a really fascinating examination of that game's localization. Stefan Prodan posted:I'm gonna get people mad at me for this but I have the same issues with the re-translation of FFT. Didn't they also retranslate FF6 when they rereleased it on the GBA? I'd be interested in seeing how that one differs.
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Dec 10, 2016 01:37
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Count Chocula posted:Billions of words have been written in academic circles on the difficulty of 'truly' translating poetry and prose. When I studied Dante's Divine Comedy we read 3 English translations simultaneously - one was more literal, one more poetic, etc. I'm not suggesting any videogame is worth that kind of effort, but a Let's Play of FF6, Chrono Trigger or Earthbound that way might be fun! it was left incomplete about halfway through the game, but the guy behind the mother 3 fantranslation went through ff4, comparing the original to all the translations.
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Dec 10, 2016 01:39
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Gale Raziya posted:This can't be real. Yeah I think I'll stick with the original.
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Dec 10, 2016 01:43
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Stefan Prodan posted:I'm gonna get people mad at me for this but I have the same issues with the re-translation of FFT. I feel they went a little too far in that style for FFT, but their Tactics Ogre localization for PSP felt a lot more natural. It still had that pseudo-old English feel going on, but I think they had it at the right spot. Either way I like both translations of both games.
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Dec 10, 2016 01:55
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Zamujasa posted:Didn't they also retranslate FF6 when they rereleased it on the GBA? I'd be interested in seeing how that one differs. It's actually largely the same in tone, which is neat. Kefka's personality was actually largely done by Woolsey (he was really non-clownish in the original Japanese), and that intepretation itself has become canon to the series, being more what he's based on in stuff like Dissidia as well as in the retranslation. It does do away with most of the famous lines, though. There's one change I can specifically remember that I think was for the better. One of Kefka's more famous lines, after Celes stabs him, went from: SNES Kefka posted:Ouch!! to: GBA Kefka posted:Ouch! B-blood... Blood! Blood!!! You vicious brat! Argh... Grrr...! There's something about how it flows that I really enjoy here, since it's right at the point where Kefka's supposed to go from 'antagonistic fool' to 'main villain'. EDIT: If you want to compare the scripts yourself, I found transcripts of both of them. SNES GBA They've used the GBA translations of the older Final Fantasies for all re-releases since. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Dec 10, 2016 |
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Dec 10, 2016 02:00
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Stefan Prodan posted:I really liked this article from awhile back I can't find it so I'm assuming he took it down to use in his book, but Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin (the guy who fan-translated Mother 3 and runs Legends of Localization) once did a fairly lengthy write-up about the origins of the Pencil Eraser and Eraser Eraser items in Earthbound and seeing how that guy managed to take a Japanese pun about dolls and octopuses and carry it over to a different language in a way that kept the joke intact is nothing short of amazing.
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Dec 10, 2016 02:07
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Guy Mann posted:I can't find it so I'm assuming he took it down to use in his book, but Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin (the guy who fan-translated Mother 3 and runs Legends of Localization) once did a fairly lengthy write-up about the origins of the Pencil Eraser and Eraser Eraser items in Earthbound and seeing how that guy managed to take a Japanese pun about dolls and octopuses and carry it over to a different language in a way that kept the joke intact is nothing short of amazing. That part is here: quote:In the base hidden beneath Stonehenge is another statue blocking your way. E: okay, so maybe not a lengthy writeup about both, but this covers the other half. I'd assume the octopus part is in the relevant section, too, though.
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Dec 10, 2016 02:15
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rujasu posted:Also, he gets blamed for legitimately bad things like the FF4->FF2US translation, which he had nothing to do with.  Stefan Prodan posted:I'm gonna get people mad at me for this but I have the same issues with the re-translation of FFT.  It was presented to us as a rewrite job; I think someone else had already (re-?) translated it, but SQEX wasn't happy with the quality of the finished product. They asked for "cool Middle-Ages-style dialogue like you'd read in The Lord of the Rings," saying that the game would be "meaningless" without it. I thought it was ridiculously flowery when I was rewriting it, but I guess they liked it in the end.
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Dec 10, 2016 02:19
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Mato just released a book on Earthbound's translation and it's amazing and worth the price if any of you are halfway interested in the subject. https://www.fangamer.com/products/legends-of-localization-book-2-earthbound It even includes recreations of the original scratch and sniff cards.
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Dec 10, 2016 02:20
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Hirayuki posted:This is what inspired me to become a (game) translator, actually! And not because it was bad (I mean, it was, but to me it was just charming), but because I loved the game so much and his name was in the credits. It sounds like you agree with me then? I think it is ridiculously flowery also! I'm sure you did a good job with the parameters they gave you
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Dec 10, 2016 05:17
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Yes, we agree; I'm just adding some background info. 
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Dec 10, 2016 05:51
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SeANMcBAY posted:Mato just released a book on Earthbound's translation and it's amazing and worth the price if any of you are halfway interested in the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv6tmRkhJhI&hd=1
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Dec 10, 2016 06:25
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I feel they went a little too far in that style for FFT, but their Tactics Ogre localization for PSP felt a lot more natural. It still had that pseudo-old English feel going on, but I think they had it at the right spot. Either way I like both translations of both games. I think they were from different teams. Tactics Ogre's localization came from Alexander O. Smith's Kajiya productions, who've handled just about every Yasumi Matsuno game...except for Final Fantasy Tactics, it appears. Edit: My mistake. Their website lists FFT with Joseph Reeder, the other member of Kajiya, as a translator. The FFT credits sure have a lot of people listed in various translation/localization/editing roles. Colin Williamson was the editor for the retranslated FFT, according to the credits. He was also editor for a bunch of Square games, though the only one with a similar flourish is Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. Did you work on that one as well, Hirayuki? Kid Fenris fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 10, 2016 08:13
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Kid Fenris posted:Colin Williamson was the editor for the retranslated FFT, according to the credits. He was also editor for a bunch of Square games, though the only one with a similar flourish is Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. Did you work on that one as well, Hirayuki?
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Dec 10, 2016 08:31
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If I did, whoops. The FFT credits list a bunch of translators, though.
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Dec 10, 2016 09:08
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CoolFish88 posted:It was funny seeing so much Ted Woolsey griping leading to the random untranslated Japanese terms in the FF5 fan translation, and then Sky Render's FF6 retranslation: The Skyrender translation wasn't intended to be superior, or a replacement, of Woolsey's though. It came about because people were doing a comparison of the Japanese text to the Woolsey translation, and they decided to make it a patch. The release info explicitly said it was weird and not intended to be better, but I still see people here on SA complain about it? Maybe they all just found the same one guy who was like "nippon text is superior, baka gaijin" or whatever.
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Dec 10, 2016 09:23
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So is it supposed to be literal at all costs, is that the idea of that one?
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Dec 10, 2016 09:41
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Yeah, because it's not meant as an actual translation to replace the localization with, but as a dry, literal translation so you can see where the official localization made changes. It's a comparative tool in the form of a patch, not an actual retranslation.
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Dec 10, 2016 09:47
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My personal white whale has always been Solar from Secret of Mana. You go through a series of long-winded, if simple, steps (mostly involving grinding your magic EXP) to get really disappointed. I mean, it had all the hallmarks of believability and the menu screen fits it--hell, the game itself had secret ninth-level weapon orbs, to say little of the hidden alternate "ninth level" spell animations. I wanted Solar to be the realest and coolest element in an already mindblowing game. But it was never meant to be. How holy grail is it for me?   Well, it is enough that I absolutely wanna make an opaque, long-winded method to obtain it in a real game  the npc who teaches it to you would explain that it's mana as in the hawaiian word for spiritual energy and the cheevo for learning it would be "secret of mana" because i'm a piece of poo poo
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Dec 10, 2016 10:13
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Kid Fenris posted:Colin Williamson was the editor for the retranslated FFT, according to the credits. He was also editor for a bunch of Square games, though the only one with a similar flourish is Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume. Did you work on that one as well, Hirayuki?
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Dec 10, 2016 19:40
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Kurui Reiten posted:On the other other hand, the recent Sailor Moon RPG Lets' Play showed just how horrible fan translations can be, to the point that there are significant stretches where pure machine translation may have been an improvement. Awww. Thanks! Although I think I may have been one of the people being griped about in the opposite direction, I just looked better next to a very bad patch. (To save anyone the trouble: the patch slams together what is at least two separate translators' work with one chunk between the apparent ones very possibly being machine translated it's such garbage. Unlike people who get anal about and "improve" translations of modern games, nobody has ever revisited or obsoleted that piece of poo poo.)
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Dec 11, 2016 03:47
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Count Chocula posted:Billions of words have been written in academic circles on the difficulty of 'truly' translating poetry and prose. When I studied Dante's Divine Comedy we read 3 English translations simultaneously - one was more literal, one more poetic, etc. I'm not suggesting any videogame is worth that kind of effort, but a Let's Play of FF6, Chrono Trigger or Earthbound that way might be fun! Translating is kind of a fascinating subject, whatever the medium. Anyone who's never seen Anthony Burgess's subtitle translation for the 1990 Cyrano de Bergerac movie has missed a treat. Related to games, there was an interesting interview with the guy who translated Metal Gear Solid on an episode of the 8-4 Play podcast a while ago. Apparently a lot of the "iconic" phrases of the MGS series got invented by him on the fly during translation, since he thought the Japanese script was a bit flat and American players would be more accustomed to military-sounding phrases like "weapons and equipment O.S.P.", for example. I believe it was this episode of the podcast.
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Dec 11, 2016 04:23
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CoolFish88 posted:It was funny seeing so much Ted Woolsey griping leading to the random untranslated Japanese terms in the FF5 fan translation, and then Sky Render's FF6 retranslation: Hahaaaaa Zamujasa posted:If you (or anyone else) enjoys this sort of look into localization poo poo, I really recommend checking out Legends of Localization. The person behind it has been a fan-translator for a long time (on projects like Mother 3) and an actual professional translator for a bunch of other poo poo for a handful of years, and he's gotten a lot of knowledge of how everything works. He also just put out a gigantic book about Earthbound that's a really fascinating examination of that game's localization. I liked his FF4 series, which seems to be abandoned now, where he discovers that about half of the fan translation is the original translation rewritten to include cusses 
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Dec 11, 2016 04:53
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Endorph posted:Yeah, because it's not meant as an actual translation to replace the localization with, but as a dry, literal translation so you can see where the official localization made changes. It's a comparative tool in the form of a patch, not an actual retranslation. That's actually a really cool idea, it's a shame that people are making GBS threads on it out of context
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Dec 11, 2016 06:34
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Except I've heard folks hold it up as the "one true and best possible" translation of the game. Those are the folks we're making GBS threads on, not necessarily the translation itself. Coincidentally, these are the same people who scream "HER NAME IS AERITH"
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Dec 11, 2016 06:39
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Coincidentally, these are the same people who scream "HER NAME IS AERITH" Endorph fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Dec 11, 2016 |
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Dec 11, 2016 07:06
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Final Fantasy 7's translation as a whole is pretty messed-up but since we were all 12 when we played it back in the day we never noticed it.
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Dec 11, 2016 07:08
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Coincidentally, these are the same people who scream "HER NAME IS AERITH" Well, Square-Enix certainly think it is, so uh. Anyway  
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Dec 11, 2016 07:12
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