Loek van Kooten, MA

@[email protected]
93 Followers
84 Following
977 Posts

MA Japanology. 1st Prize at national Japanese Speech Contest. Judo black belt.

Japanese / Chinese / English - Dutch game translator.

Married to Japanese wife, father of two wonderful sons. Foster parent of equally wonderful 16-year old Chinese poor rural girl, whom I (video)chat with multiple times per week.

Game translator for 27+ years: www.loekalization.com

Developer of Cattitude, the newest CAT tool in town: www.c4ttitude.com

Owner of Japanese language school: www.japanology.nl

translationwww.loekalization.com
developmentwww.c4ttitude.com
language schoolwww.japanology.nl
game developmentwww.dragonception.com
Loek van Kooten, MA2h ago

RE: https://mastodon.green/@gerrymcgovern/116272452447529462

According to exhibitions and media reports, the claim that “half of the members of the samurai class in the Edo period were women” does not refer to “samurai as warriors,” but rather to the entire families belonging to the samurai class (shizoku).

In other words, it is a demographic explanation based on social classification, indicating that women made up half of the population when including the wives and daughters of samurai households.

Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA4h ago
Kiko practices 30,000 words with you on learn.japanology.nl, including gajumaru. We start with the easy stuff, but trees like this are waiting further down the path. #Japanese #LearnJapanese #Kanji #JLPT #WordOfTheDay #Japanology #Banyan #Okinawa #Nature #Trees #GajumaruTree #ChineseBanyan #JapanCulture #Folklore
Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA4h ago
Befriend it, and it brings you fish. Anger it, and it sits on your chest while you sleep. 舗装を突き破るほど強靭な気根を伸ばす細葉榕 (gajumaru) を前に、人は自然の力を思い知らされる。 Hosō wo tsukiyaburu hodo kyōjin na kikon wo nobasu gajumaru wo mae ni, hito wa shizen no chikara wo omoishirasareru. "Standing before a gajumaru with aerial roots strong enough to crack pavement, you feel the raw power of nature. " What's the most awe-inspiring tree you've ever stood in front of?
Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA4h ago
The 細葉榕 (gajumaru, the Chinese banyan) drops roots from its branches. They grab walls, crack pavement, and fuse into massive trunks. One tree can look like a whole forest. The word gajumaru is pure Okinawan. The characters tell a Chinese story: 細 (fine) + 葉 (leaf) + 榕 (banyan). That last kanji combines tree (木) with 容 (form), because once you see a gajumaru, you never forget it. In Okinawan folklore, a kijimuna (a red-haired tree spirit) lives inside every old gajumaru.
Loek van Kooten, MA4h ago
This tree eats cities alive.
Loek van Kooten, MA1d ago
The Real Reason Crimson Desert's Localization Failed Multiple Languages at Once
Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA1d ago
The Korean word 창 means both "spear" and "window. " In Crimson Desert, translators picked "window. " It appeared in a weapons menu. That one error, repeated independently in two languages, tells you everything about what went wrong. https://www.loekalization.com/blog/blog/2026/03/22/the-real-reason-crimson-deserts-localization-failed-multiple-languages-at-once/
The Real Reason Crimson Desert’s Localization Failed Multiple Languages at Once – Loekalization Blog

Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA2d ago
You would never ship a game with placeholder art. Why are you shipping it with placeholder language? We specialize in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Three language families, one focus, thirty-one years of getting it right. loekalization. com English · 日本語 · 中文 · 한국어 · Nederlands
Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA2d ago
Judged in six characters by someone who can tell the difference between a translator and an algorithm in the first sentence. CJK is not a checkbox on a feature list. Japanese has three writing systems, context-dependent readings, and honorific registers that change the entire tone of a character. Chinese has homophones that turn a heroic quest line into a joke. Korean has speech levels that, if wrong, make your NPC sound like it is insulting the player.
Show threadLoek van Kooten, MA2d ago
Your localization budget was whatever was left over. You picked the cheapest vendor. They routed Japanese through English because nobody on their team reads Japanese. They ran Chinese through a machine and had an intern "check" it. Korean was an afterthought bolted on two weeks before launch. Day one. Steam reviews. "机翻，非常糟糕。 " Machine-translated. Absolutely terrible. Your million-wishlist game. Your years of work.