Have you played games with a crap translation after playing them in their mother tongue first?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨SilentSparrow@multiverse.soulism.net⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve played Norn 9 in Japanese first (during the PS vita’s prime) as well as the Switch port in 2018 before it was localized for a US release, at the time the translation in English is just plain garbage (I’ve heard the localizers back then were on a tight deadline), the text felt like they’ve just copied & pasted it via Google Translate but for the Switch re-release, the translation is improved as a new team of translators were hired.

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nafzib@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Not exactly, but when I play World of Final Fantasy, I HAVE to play it with Japanese voices. One of the characters has a stereotypical anime quirky saying that’s not a real/normal Japanese word or conjugation, which i do not find annoying in Japanese, but… The way they decided to “translate” it into English did NOT work out at all. They just threw the word “the” randomly in front of other words where it doesn’t belong to represent this particular quirk in English and it is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard.

FYI, there is no equivalent to the word “the” in Japanese, so this was just a super weird choice by the translators.

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Kojichan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I honestly felt confused by the English localization of Norn 9.

I’ve played a lot of Visual Novels. Shuffle! is one that I felt had a better fan-translation.

Been training my Japanese to try and read one without translating.

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ISOmorph@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think a lot of eurojank games fit the bill. Gothic is better in german than in english for example

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MufinMcFlufin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Not exactly the same, but I played Cave Story with a fan translation for years before it had an official English localization. For the most part I don’t recall any specific differences which indicates the fan translation did a pretty good job, but the official translation did change one thing that I really liked.

One of the antagonists in the game, Balrog, always shouts something when entering any cut-scene. The fan translation said “Huzzah!” which I always liked because it’s not a common thing to shout, especially not during an entrance, so it was pretty easy to identify with him. The official translation translated it as “Oh yeah!” aka the exact same thing the Kool-aid man shouts before breaking through a wall.

Balrog does indeed break through a wall the first time you meet him, so the official translators seemed to be making a reference, but because of it now I’m thinking of a commercial with a giant jar man every time the comes on screen (even when it’s not through a wall) instead of the character actually in front of me.

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