His work on Vagrant Story was phenomenal. Japanese scripts tend to be really boring and samey. Without the work of a good localizer, you’d hear the same twenty anime one-liners interspersed throughout the entire game.
I used to see it all the time when I read unofficial transliterations of manga and the translator tried to make the pun work, they’d include a note explaining the joke. Personally I prefer localisation which keeps the spirit of what was meant but the text/lines flows in a much more natural way to a native English speaker.
There are exceptionally few puns that can be translated literally. One that comes to mind is from a Lipton Limone advert, where Miranda Kerr says 「おいチイ」, when I first heard it I thought it was just an accent thing, but the second time I realised it’s a pun; Tealicious.
I don't think anyone would've complained if the localization's quality was on-par with AA or Vagrant Story, but it looks to me like that isn't the case.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Yeah, FFTA was one of Alexander O. Smith’s scripts. He has had some landmark games in English localization, and Matsuno liked working with him.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
His work on Vagrant Story was phenomenal. Japanese scripts tend to be really boring and samey. Without the work of a good localizer, you’d hear the same twenty anime one-liners interspersed throughout the entire game.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Or in the case of his work on Ace Attorney, you wouldn’t understand any of the puns if they were translated literally!
VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I used to see it all the time when I read unofficial transliterations of manga and the translator tried to make the pun work, they’d include a note explaining the joke. Personally I prefer localisation which keeps the spirit of what was meant but the text/lines flows in a much more natural way to a native English speaker.
dojan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There are exceptionally few puns that can be translated literally. One that comes to mind is from a Lipton Limone advert, where Miranda Kerr says 「おいチイ」, when I first heard it I thought it was just an accent thing, but the second time I realised it’s a pun; Tealicious.
xep@kbin.social 6 months ago
I don't think anyone would've complained if the localization's quality was on-par with AA or Vagrant Story, but it looks to me like that isn't the case.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I still can’t find what people are taking issue with here. The article doesn’t really explain.