<story><title>Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese</title><url>https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-translations-into-japanese/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tkgally</author><text>Translation is always difficult, but especially so when the translator does not know the overall context and intended use of the text. If one is translating a novel, most of the context necessary to understand, say, a line of dialogue is right on the page. According to a talk I heard about twenty years ago by a game translator working between Japanese and English, however, at that time all translators usually had to work with were isolated bits of text in Excel files. No wonder so many mistakes have crept into localized video games.&lt;p&gt;In her talk, she stressed the importance of actually playing through the game while translating, but said that the finished game often wasn&amp;#x27;t available and that deadlines or low translation rates could make that unfeasible.&lt;p&gt;I was a freelance translator myself at the time, mostly doing business-related texts, and her talk did not make me want to go into video game translation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Legogris</author><text>One great example of that was how in some later Sims game (2 or 3), one of the actions possible on a bonsai tree in the Swedish version is &amp;quot;Katrinplommon&amp;quot;, translated from &amp;quot;prune&amp;quot; - unfortunately, prune as in a dried plum, not the pruning of plants.</text></comment>
<story><title>Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese</title><url>https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-translations-into-japanese/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tkgally</author><text>Translation is always difficult, but especially so when the translator does not know the overall context and intended use of the text. If one is translating a novel, most of the context necessary to understand, say, a line of dialogue is right on the page. According to a talk I heard about twenty years ago by a game translator working between Japanese and English, however, at that time all translators usually had to work with were isolated bits of text in Excel files. No wonder so many mistakes have crept into localized video games.&lt;p&gt;In her talk, she stressed the importance of actually playing through the game while translating, but said that the finished game often wasn&amp;#x27;t available and that deadlines or low translation rates could make that unfeasible.&lt;p&gt;I was a freelance translator myself at the time, mostly doing business-related texts, and her talk did not make me want to go into video game translation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PhasmaFelis</author><text>I recently played through a PC platformer called Rive. The voice actor was actually really good (and voiced both protagonist and the antagonist in &lt;i&gt;completely&lt;/i&gt; different styles), but it was painfully obvious that (a) English wasn&amp;#x27;t the dialogue writer&amp;#x27;s first language, and (b) they&amp;#x27;d given the the script to the voice actor as standalone strings, so his tone and emphasis didn&amp;#x27;t always make sense in context.&lt;p&gt;Not quite the same thing, but another consequence of the person creating the final dialogue not having access to context, and there&amp;#x27;s really no excuse for that. Even if the dialogue is only available as a spreadsheet, the writer should have included context cues and stage directions.</text></comment>