Source
r/KotakuInAction•
Caderfix

Examples of localizers disrespecting the source material

I heard about this issue recently and wasn't familiar with the problem, then I came across this thread on X(Twitter) showing quite a few examples. In case you were wondering about such cases, like I was, this will give you aome insight.

The most telling case, to me, was the localizer saying "I am a story teller, not a robot" to defend his inclusion of memes into the script.

https://twitter.com/BoundingComics/status/1741000080889720927?t=9q13RsqUX1MMVrMo3wCP7g&s=19

Posted Dec 31, 2023, 12:47 PM UTC

35593
Sleep_eeSheep•

"I am a story teller, not a robot"

-Inserts tired-ass memes into a story he didn't write, something even ChatGPT could do-

The AI Revolution cannot come for this asshole's job soon enough.

203
Potential-Balance99•

"I am a story teller, not a robot"

That's not even true. You are a translator, not a story-teller. The story-teller is the original artist, and by putting yourself on the same tier as the author, you are being extremely disrespectful...

131
joydivisionucunt•

I'm starting to wonder if these people actually have something to do with translation because they can't be so ignorant of what translating a work actually is.

31
KrustyDanmakuFellow•

They're translators and localizers only in name. That's their job title.

They're actually just activists

37
capncapitalism•

Translator is also just them thinking highly of themselves. They've shown that they can't even translate properly. What localizers do is tantamount to drawing a dicbutt on the Mona Lisa and calling it art.

27
aZcFsCStJ5•

I would not say tier, it's a different hierarchy. Translation is its own art and requires good understanding of both the source and destination culture and the work being translated.

15
Potential-Balance99•

Yeah the right word is escaping me here. Not a native speaker.

7
RadioHeadache0311•

Quick, someone find this brawny foreign dude a localizer so I can know exactly what this beautiful, athletic, boss bitch, strong female Reddit user just said and how it can help topple the patriarchy.

"I am so tired of this oppressive world built for men that gives absolutely no consideration for the quality of life for the women!"

if momma ain't happy, nobody is happy.

"Okay smart ass, but that's obviously just a goof. It's not like there are other examples that uplift women if they aren't mothers. Because historically women are just property and treated as nothing more than brood mares and it's time that we..."

Happy wife, happy life

"Shit. Okay, but still...the power imbalance in society is clear and obvious. Men have all the power and impose their will at their sole discre..."

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

"Oh please...like there aren't a million similar cliches that uplift men"

Father knows best

"You fucking misogynistic pieces of shit"

16
voidcrack•

Can you give examples of that? I would think that translation isn't really an "art" because how is it any different than when a bilingual person switches a sentence from one language to another?

Like if I were translating German to English and came across a word like 'schlaraffenland' I'd rather leave the word in and put a footnote explaining it. Whereas I feel a modern translator would be like 'lol Disneyland' Same with anime I'd rather just be told what Japanese cultural reference is being made rather than literally white-washing it.

5
joydivisionucunt•

IMO, the biggest difference is that translation often requires the person to know more about linguistics, at least in my country that's what it's taught in order to get a degree on that, but I'm not sure how it is in other countries.

7
h-v-smackerThomas the Daemon Engine•

"I am a story teller, not a robot"

This phrase hasn't aged well...

59
StormTigrex•

"Fine then, time to use some robots."

34
h-v-smackerThomas the Daemon Engine•

— and that's exactly what happened.

17
CrankyDClownGroomy Beardman•

If you're a storyteller, tell your own tales.

Because you got paid to translate someone else's tales.

45
Aurondarklord118k GET•

In Granblue Fantasy vs Rising, a lolcowizer literally REVERSED the meaning of what a character said to insert their politics and make it "white skin bad" instead of "white skin good".

202
aZcFsCStJ5•

Wow that slang totally fits that setting. What art.

76
cloud_w_omega•

Sounds like he wants to give her the D

what a gross thing to say

49
KrustyDanmakuFellow•

That is 100% what the "localizer" was trying to imply. Make Lowain out to be an "objectifying creep! Ewwwww!!! Yikes!", and "white bad" in one fell swoop. Killing two birds with one activist stone.

These people are losers

59
cloud_w_omega•

oh my God they can't make a COLOURED PERSON a creep, omg, problematic, hurts DIVERSITY

28
Fun-Strawberry4257•

Looking back on things,purposefully miss translations were really the beginning of this woke garbage.

​

Taking complete creative control of a foreign medium (anime) that the vast majority of people wont ever natively understand,most likely emboldened these clowns and it was off to the races ever since.

82
LewdKytty•

I remember refusing to buy awakening because of how fucked the translations were. My friends just couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t buy the game over that. Now, a decade later they finally understand.

Jesus we didn’t know the damn parasite we were dealing with back then.

46
KrustyDanmakuFellow•

We all used to think Brock and his jelly donut was just a funny meme.

It was actually a warning

31
CrustyBloke•

It sounds like localizers have become an industry parasites who can't create anything original themselves, and try to convince themselves that they're somehow artists for commandeering someone else's work to spread their agenda.

73
mbnhedger•

Heres one that is going to go under the radar because its so mild, but its a perfect example of the problem

This season theres an anime based on a manga coming out:

魔都精兵のスレイブ

In romanji this title becomes:

Mato Seihei no Slave

A rough direct translation of the romanji to english becomes:

Demon city soldier Slave

If you properly clean up that translation to be more natural in english you would go in the direction of something like:

Slave of the Demon city soldiers.

What the localizers decided on for the english title:

Chained Soldier

This english title comes about solely for a single reason, the localizers want to remove the word "slave" from the concept of the show. A show about a boy who gets sent to a forward operation base in another dimension to be the maintenance man and general caretaker for a battalion of superpowered girls fighting off the invading monsters. He cooks, he cleans, he eventually ends up as a literal weapon. Hes literally their tool...

The problem is that not only are the localizers inserting their ideological preferences into their translations, they are doing it in completely lazy ways that alter the contexts of the content.

Example: If they just wanted to remove the word "slave" from the title, there are ways to do that without destroying the context. Servant, Weapon, Tool, Assistant, Butler, Lackey

Any of these words combined with "...of the Soldiers" would accurately confer the intention of the title, that the MC is not the Soldier himself, but an agent of the soldiers that they deploy when needed.

Like i said, this is one of the tamer examples but it isolates the problem in an easily demonstratable and presentable manor. They literally butchered a descriptive and direct translation just to avoid and prevent using the word slave...

69
Amaze-A-Vole•

Removing "slave" from the title of this series sort of ruins part of the fun of it, since though the mc is essentially a "slave", a significant part of the series relates to how the female characters literally become slaves to his (often) sexual desires after they make use of his abilities. Maybe they toned that down in the anime though.

37
mbnhedger•

This...

Its how you know the original title is deliberate and intentional as its extremely descriptive in telling you what the story is about, but as the story unfolds you gain the understanding that who "demon city soldier slave" or "slave of the demon city soldier" is actually rather vague as the roles are constantly shifting as they all rely and are bound to serve one another in different ways to different degrees.

The title is extremely on brand, and the localizers miss the point and dumb it down with "chained soldier." Its almost like they never actually read/watched the thing before making the decision.

23
cemelc•

This one pisses me off, I've been playing trails from zero for a bit and let me tell you there are some god awful translations in there.

Thank god there is no English dub, it made me appreciate sub more than ever

40
bidenisdemented•

Trails from Zero is supposed to be a fairly good translation/localization.

Falcom hired Geofront, who had unofficially translated Zero and Azure, and used their translation as the basis for the official release.

Trails is a series where a decent amount of liberties are taken with the localization, but generally, they are all accepted. You won't find too much woke BS in Trails games.

13
skygz•

they got rid of Randy's "bruh moment" moment at least

11
Izeyashe•

My GF is getting mad at me for consantly talking about this PC and SJW current year bullshit but even when I'm actively trying to avoid it I get shit like this: be it agenda driven translations (WHY?) or shoehorned PC topics where it doesn't fit at all with the narrative (LOU2, majority of indiegames nowadays, and so on).

I want my old world back.

38
Ambitious-Doubt8355•

Oh I've gone through that, believe me when I tell you it's not much use to talk about those topics to her if she doesn't get it. It's better to save your breath and just leave it at "I didn't like it". Explain if she asks further, but otherwise it's like talking to the void.

There's certain people that don't need much to be impressed, concepts like narrative cohesion and fidelity to a setting go over their heads. They just want to pay half attention to flashy things on a screen, while also looking at the flashy things on their phones.

I want my old world back.

You and me both, brother.

23
JRosfield•

If she's getting mad at you, perhaps you need someone else to vent to about it.

16
KIA_Unity_News•

A story teller in the role of a translator is called a liar.

33
KarmaWalker•

Boy I miss not needing a twitter account to scroll the site.

30
AboveSkies•

https://nitter.net/BoundingComics/status/1741000080889720927

17
LegitInfinitum•

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1741000080889720927.html

3
devil652_•

In the anime adaptation of, dangers in my heart, they use the term: "manplaining"

A term not used anywhere besides california

26
DestroyedArkana•

Just check out the Varishangout thread for a lot of examples.

24
CaderfixOP•

Ill check it out. Cheers 🍻

9
Ehnonamoose•

Wow that's egregious. I went into reading this thinking it can't be that bad. But it is.

To back up what they are saying in just the first article with The World Ends with You:

The first original text is: このグラフィチィ何？「104」かな？ん…何か気に入らない！上書きしちゃお

Sentence breakdown:
この - Kono - "this"
グラフィチィ - "graffiti" in Katakana
何 - nani - "what"
かな - kana - "is it" or "maybe" when used at the end of a sentence
ん… - n - "hmm"
何か - nanika - "something"
気に入る - kini iru - "I like it"
ない - nai - negative. In this case it's negating "I like it" making it "I don't like it"
上書く - uekaku - verb "to overwrite" very literally "over/up" and "write"
ちゃお - chao - auxiliary verb "to do." It is a casual way of saying てしまお (teshimao). It has a reckless implication and is less formal than します (shimasu)

Nowhere is capitalism mentioned at all.

I get that it's super hard to translate some stuff between Japanese and English. And that sometimes one needs to go beyond the purely literal with Japanese to properly convey the meaning of something.

Japanese is very contextual, and if it were always just literally translated, it wouldn't make sense often. A simple example is something like:

Person 1: 会いしますか？
Person 2: 会いします

Literally it would translate to:

Person 1: Will meet?
Person 2: Will meet.

There are no pronouns and the topic of the sentences isn't in the text. But what's implied by those sentences is better translated as "Will [you] meet [me]?" And "[I] will meet [you]."

I say that because I've seen a few people suggest that translations should be as literal as possible. Which I mostly agree with. But Japanese is really tricky to translate from because so much is implied or based in context. They spell out stuff less than we do in English.

The example from The World Ends with You, though, seems pretty egregious. That's going beyond context and seems like the translator is injecting left-of-center, American culture into the translation.

19
InverseFlip•

Crunchyroll Removes Gendered Language From English Localization Of “ONIMAI: I’m Now Your Sister!”

How though? The whole premise is that the older brother turns into a girl

18
akiaoi97•

Eh, there’s some validity to the idea that a translator has to be a storyteller - part of their job is to make the work digestible in the target language. Storytelling skills are definitely necessary for that.

However, you have to be good at it. Inserting memes where none existed is not good storytelling. I hate to use the word, but I think it works in this context - it’s cringe.

The problem is extremely low quality translators. Quite frankly, most don’t get paid enough for it to attract actually decent talent in all but a few cases.

I have a Japanese degree, and took some units in translation, but I don’t particularly want to become one as I’d like to have some sort of liveable pay.

15
CaderfixOP•

But making the work digestible is not the same as telling a story. It is keeping the original idea while using familar terms. One thing is to adapt something to the closest possible sentence, another is to actually add your own unrelated idea

18
akiaoi97•

Eh, yes and no, and it depends on the style of translation - and there are many.

Do you go word for word, phrase for phrase, sentence for sentence? What are the relative importances of readability/fluidity and fidelity?

Then there's the localisation question, which is a genuine one. For instance, if you were translating from English to French and came across an idomatic cricket-based metaphor, do you leave it in or change it for something more familiar to the French?

Both might be ways of trying to preserve authorial intent. In some ways, you're trying to replicate the experience into a new language and culture. Cricket is familiar to the English, but is alien to the French - tennis, instead, might be more familiar. So there's an argument that says that while the cricket metaphor is literally closer, an equivalent tennis metaphor might better replicate the experience and convey the author's original intent.

But then again, you have to be careful about incongruity (such as the infamous pokemon jelly doughnuts incident), and you can't totally adapt the whole setting - that'd be an adaptation rather than a translation.

There's definitely an art to it, and part of that art involves storytelling. Even translating relatively directly (and I'm personally a fan of minimal localisation), you have to do a bit of crafting and shaping to get the sentences to sit right, especially when the source language is as different as Japanese. It also involves a fair bit of "loss" and "gain" (wordplay and double-meanings, for instance, are often lost), and necessarily has to go through the translator's interpretive lense to some degree.

To put it all more simply, while you're not writing a new story, you do have to tell the story using a different language. So a big part of being a good translator of stories is being a good storyteller. It's probably best exemplified in good translations of things like the Iliad and the Odyssey.

5
mbnhedger•

Eh, there’s

some

validity to the idea that a translator has to be a storyteller - part of their job is to make the work digestible in the target language. Storytelling skills are definitely necessary for that.

Understandable cooking analogy but I dont think its used correctly here.

The translators job is not to make the work digestible, the translators job is to make the work using local ingredients. Yes the translator needs to also be a chef but their job is not to alter the flavor. What they are doing is taking ingredients on hand and matching them to the original recipe.

Being "digestible" has become a bit of a slight of hand term, used by these localizers attempting to justify their own existence. Digestible media is subjective to the person viewing it. They arent making anything more "digestible" they are simply butchering IPs and grinding down the scraps into their own formless, tasteless, patty. Imagine: You go to japan, claim americans cant "digest" wagyu, so every steak needs to be ground up into burgers.

The problems all start because these translators think they are better storytellers then the authors and artists who have made these original works. They think they can do a better job making these stories by butchering things that already exist and mixing them with pandering to their own niche cult.

11
Luffydude•

Their job is to simply translate yet these soya warriors slip in their shitty politics

I played world ends with you last month and was wtfing at the anti capitalist line those rediteds shoehorned in

13
wharpudding•

The entire 3rd season of Shin Chan

Pure shit

9