inclementimmigrantDragon Quest creator Yuji Horii says English translations inevitably strip away a lot of a game's "flavor"
This reminds me of anime subtitles from the 1980s. Most of those I’ve seen are simplistic, boring, and sometimes misleading.
Bad translations still exist today, of course, but I don’t run into them as often. I’m guessing that the growth of anime popularity in the west, along with increased translation budgets, have something to do with that. Better translators are probably doing some of this work now.
Losing a game’s flavour in translation might be a challenge to overcome, but I don’t think it’s inevitable. Suggestion: Don’t make translations an afterthought when producing a game. Instead, recognize that the words used to tell your story and illustrate your world effectively are your story and world, and seek out translators who are especially talented at conveying nuance and feeling. Accept that they are probably better than you are at communicating in their language. Give them room to be creative. Pay them well. You will probably get better results.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 This is the main reason I prefer dubs to subs. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon especislly loses flavor in the subtitles that do get translated in the dubs. Every line in the sub is basic and just barely enough to understand the plot. But it lacks the poetry of language that make it good dialogue.
So, I’m a Cantonese speaker and watching films sub vs dub, I want to say that it really doesn’t matter if your reading the subtitles or having a English voice over, there are just certain nuances that you’re not going to get because of any type of translation.
Best way I can describe it would be the English meaning of -ish when it comes to time. It’s kind of casual, implying that it means I’m not committing to a set time and when you translate it to something in Cantonese, that sense of casual isn’t quite there.
I think that’s where this guy is coming from in a bit of a dick-ish way.
A hundred percent this, especially comedies like Stephen Chow films. So much gets lost in the translation.
samus12345I haven’t found this to be true in general. Dubs are more restricted by having to match the mouth flaps.
That only bothers me if the audio is so completely out of sync that it’s not eveb sjowing the right person speaking on screen. Especially when it’s not even in anothet language to begin with.