inclementimmigrantDragon Quest creator Yuji Horii says English translations inevitably strip away a lot of a game's "flavor"
Having done it myself, I find several big issues with Japanese -> English translation:
- Honorifics. Referring to someone with -kun or -chan or -sama or -bucho all have very different connotations. Sure, you could just include the honorifics as is but I don’t think that many people unfamiliar with the Japanese language know what -kohai means.
- Culture: Even if the translation is perfect, characters may act in bizarre ways for Westerners. “He knows that guy is evil, so why doesn’t he shoot him?” “Shooting people is very serious shit in Japan.” "Well no one told me!"
- Puns: The big one. To give an English -> Japanese example, how do you translate the joke, “I no that!”? Joke being, the “no” implies that the speaker doesn’t actually know what “that” is, with the “no” taking the place of “know” since they sound the same. “No” in Japan is “iie”, and “know” is “shiru”. They don’t sound alike at all, so how do you do it? Japanese is filled with puns like this, and most of them are completely lost on Westerners.
That said, I do support translators for giving Westerners a variant of the Japanese version. But there’s no mistake that a lot is lost.
creatureUnlike places like the US, people in Japan aren’t really supposed to have guns. So if some dude kicks your door in, threatens you with a knife, and then you shoot him with a gun you’re not supposed to have, you could still go to jail for illegal possession of a gun.
Even the Yakuza are hesitant to use guns.
If the cops really want to bring you in particular down, sure. But there are certain no-go areas in the US where you can absolutely own a gun illegally because the cops don’t want to mess around there unless they have to. Here’s an example of one such place. Many of the public housing projects are home to some illegal gun owners as well, like this one.
Japan, by contrast, is much more peaceful. It is very unlikely that you’ll be shot dead for walking into the wrong place in Japan compared to the US. The criminal elements there don’t want to risk pissing off law enforcement, since defendants tend to be screwed if a charge is ever brought to trial.
