Stop Defending Bad Localization

In this video we talk about the ongoing localization war and how by defending bad localization you're actually making games worse for everyone. Hopefully the argument I put forward here gets through to at least a few people. Ack out!

#localization #pokemon #xenoblade

[AzuriteGaming]

Duped is the right word.

Before learning Japanese I was in the camp where I'd just say the localization is great / better than Japanese, I had full faith in localizers doing their jobs. Then I learned the language and realized how you are playing entirely different games with different characters.

Localization is never going to get better, if you want to experience the story developers intended, learning Japanese is your only option. Until then all you are ever going to get is a fanfiction english version.

[PepsiMan]

It's sad that this is still so relevant. Never stop fighting for better localization.

[Devilsblight]

The problem is that many on the other side thinks poorly on us thinking these things:

1. They have convinced themselves that many of us don't play any of the games in question, when we do. Even if we show them, they shout "That isn't enough! Show me your play history! If you don't have a certain number of hours playing this game, then you're not a true fan!"

2. They believe that many of us don't even speak Japanese. Even if some of us don't, they don't seem to realize that if we all didn't, then how would we know if something is unfaithful to the Japanese script? Because there are those of us who do speak Japanese and point these flaws out.

3. They believe that we are all the overweight middle-age balding virgin nerd stereotypes like Bubble Bass from SpongeBob. I actually find it humorous when they get mad to learn that not all of us are like that and are very well-adjusted.

4. They think that we're all pedos or coomers because alot of things that get censored in localized Japanese games also have scenes that they consider "coomber-bait" (i.e. sexy costumes, pervy scenes, all that jazz) or lolis and all that.

5. Localizers have convinced them that we are all alt-right. Remember when localizers got mad at Wayforward when they had an option to play River City Girls Zero with a script that was more faithful to the original Japanese script? Many of them said that Wayforward was appealing to "bad people who are part of the alt-right." Not true, many of us are many different cultural background. Shit, I'm Black and while I'm no longer left-leaning, I'm definitely not right-wing either. But now this whole thing went political.

Add in with the fact that localizers tend to
be friends with game journos, things get even worse. Remember how the original Persona 5 was pretty faithful with the Japanese version of the game and every Persona fan praised it? Game journos (who are pretty racist towards Japan. Look up what that Kotaku editor did when Nintendo decided not to give Kotaku a review copy of Tears of the Kingdom thanks to their Metroid Dread debacle) actually complained about the faithfulness to the script. And they've constantly defended bad localizations and painted the people demanding faithful translations in a bad light and their already thinking that a direct literal translation is somehow "boring" in their pretty much closed off mind.

Only way this can end is if these people actually took a look for themselves to see that yes, these localizations are horrible, but that probably won't happened since right now, the programming from localizers and gaming journos who are already pretty hostile against gamers as a whole is too deep.

[minute]

This reminds me of the meltdown that happened when a Solo Leveling anime was announced. They changed the main character's name, race, and will delete this big story arc that was basically a battle between Japan and Korea. The Solo Leveling fans complained the heck out of it while the general anime fans defend it with "shut up it's just localization."

[jase]

Considering the lack of quality control in general in the west, specifically America as this is only an English problem so far, I prefer to just not have localization at all and just have the pure translation. Too many hacks get hired into these positions who don't even like Japanese media or culture and in turn make everything fanfiction. I know Japanese and I'm constantly disgusted by the lack of discipline from these localizers. People can just rewrite entire scripts into worse versions and get away with it. Now that Sony is trying to take control of basically all Japanese media in the West and sterilize it I'm even more against localization now more than ever. I don't see why western politics and slang should be shoehorned into Japanese media.


The problem is these people can't write and have no talent, so they try to leech off of the nearest thing that's made by actually talented people. And since the creators are all the way in Japan they figure they can just get away with it and develop some form of God complex. It's sickening.

[starvoltnexus]

Kingdom Hearts III Has a scene with very very bad localization and it’s one of the most important thing Long story short it made Xehanort seem like an Evil Eraqus What he actually wanted to do was basically destroy all of reality when he couldn’t balance light and darkness like he wanted

[dood]

I appreciate the way you put things at the end of the video. I don't expect everyone to feel as strongly about faithful localization as I do, or go on a big crusade about it. But at the very least, I expect them to stop constantly making excuses for it and actively getting in the way of those of us who do care. I'm yet another person who's been learning Japanese in recent times, partially because I don't expect to see these changes any time soon.

[NoraNoita]

The reason at 3:00 is exactly how I feel about this.
And yeah when you're a kid you didn't know anything about Localization, and unless someone tells you later and removes the veil from in front of your Eyes.
Some people are just blissfully ignorant and took the (insert the matrix pill that makes them believe everything is correct and fine here), but also seem to be patriotic with the localization team and defend them unreasonably, which is just insane to me.

[niedlichundlustig]

I always find the statement from localizers and their defenders that you'll understand their choices as you learn japanese to be really funny. As you learn japanese you can hear and spot every dumb change made with greater ease and from experience no the changes don't make more sense, they are more infuriating knowing what the original was.
It should also be a red flag that localizers are more concerned with THEIR creative freedom rather than the creative freedom and choices of the artists and writers who entrust their hard work to them.

[shiprek]

I generally much, much prefer when localizations try to stick as close to the original as possible. I can accept jokes, names, or statements that don’t translate well being adjusted to better suit the target location no problem. But if there’s going to be any sort of significant change, like switching out an entire line of dialogue or recharacterizing one of the characters, I firmly believe it should only ever be done with the direct approval of the original team because *they* feel it does not fit the target location for one reason or another. Significant creative changes like that should never be left in the hands of another party because it always leads to things being needlessly messy or totally unrecognizable from what they were originally intended to be

[_Pikahiiri_]

Sadly I know several people (including people who moved to japan) that would prefer the right version.
They say things like "Localizing things means you're getting a closer experience to what a japanese gamer would get, as even names or cultural aspects don't have the same impact on you as they would a JP person so they should be changed to fit things a non-japanese person would relate to more."
I prefer more faithful translation, however in order to combat bad localization, we need to listen to what the other side considers important when making changes or it'll mean we talk past each other.

[jing]

It's great to hear some one that understand. Like you mentioned I love the Xenoblade series, but the localization It's horrible, and other rpg are suffering from this type of localization too. I am learning Japanese to stop supporting bad localization and enjoy Japanese media the way its intended. I wish more people understand this

[JomasterTheSecond]

I don't know why but part of me wants to blame a lot of this stuff on Working Designs for popularising the carte-blanche localisation of games.

[Tsiri]

I've seen a lot of localization replace gender-referencing sentences lately.
Simple things like "It's a man's duty to-" or "A woman shouldn't be out here at night" all get reduced to some gender-neutral phrase so as not to offend the perpetually offended.

[FerLopez]

The simple fact that localizers now seek to region lock the localization into Japan, so the consumer can't have access to original content, speaks volumes about their character, intentions and motivation

[Hambs]

I used to have a vendetta against dubs in general when I first started to notice the changes in localizations. Basically I blamed the voice actors' bad performance being the reason behind these changes. Now I know that they aren't (always) at fault.
It's funny, cuz not matter how far back you go, you still find bad localizations all over the video game history, with many different reasons as to why over the decade.
And I know people want to make it political since a lof of the changes we see nowadays are made by extreme left-wing agendas, but forget that in the past it was mostly extreme-right wing groups spewing obnoxious censorship and changes all over different products. So, no, I don't think it's a political issue, it's simply bad professionals.
I remember reading an interview from an old-timer localizer reflecting back on his first jobs during the PS1 era, and how easy and fun it was to change parts of the script, and how no one at the team criticized his actions. But when the fans started to complain about these changes, he immediately changed his stance to treat his job more seriously and the players were overall more happy. He said that it's highly unprofessional, but typical of newcomers to do these kinds of things, and they need to take the criticism to heart.

[jahrfuhlnehm]

Some good examples of bad (in this case lazy) localization/translation is when they just decide to leave things out completely. In Breath of the Wild in Japan Link had a diary that offered his thoughts on various things, excised in English and with just a basic quest log. Going much further back, Dragon Quest IV, DS version, had idle party banter when moving around the map in Japanese that is completely absent in North America. And characters who spoke normally were given these godawful, unreadable and goofy stereotypes for accents for their dialogue. A screenshot I saw showing the difference between the NES version, the Japanese DS version and the American DS version, in the latter most a king has lines written out like terrible Scottish dialect that makes Mike Myers' seem authentic. Remember Working Designs? They were infamous for awful localizations back in the day that would be rewrites full of goofy crap, and outdated pop culture and contemporary topic references (Bill Clinton jokes, Austin Powers to refer back to Mike Myers again). I hold Victor Ireland responsible for the influx of creative writing rejects taking up localization jobs and doing terrible work today.

[toki_madoushi]

Great content! I think the biggest issue with the abundance of liberty in the localization world is mainly because the vast majority of the audience won't even realized that changes were made to the original product. Because, well... they will only experience the localized product that they got. Unless there's a lot of really bad changes or obvious ones, it's pretty much impossible for the peoples to know if it's a good localization or not. Hence the lack of pressure on localization teams to stick as close as possible to the original script.
I'm also trying to bring awareness to this issue but in the Anime world, because this is also a big conflict that is happening very often. A lot of "translations", or I should rather say localizations, often have a lot of questionable changes that can sometimes seems to push a certain agenda...
But a lot of Anime watcher doesn't care and even prefer watching them in the English dub, and if someone points out that there's some discrepancies, they often get on the defensive and even argue that the localization is better.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to have a good localized dub, but it's already a big challenge to translate a script from Japanese to English, but when on top of that you add the need for the voiced lines to fit with the character's lips moving, etc. it becomes near impossible to not lose any meaning.
In my opinion, all media should be consumed as close as the original product as possible to really experience what the original concept was.
I perfectly understand that no one should be expected to learn a completely new language to experience a media in its original language, but I'm always confused when people says that they don't care and would choose a localization that makes big changes over one that tries to stick as close as possible to the original language and culture.
I won't put too much hope that in the near future the localization teams will become more strict, but I hope that at least the consumers are gonna be more aware of the issues, to then put more pressure on the localizations. And your video helps with that! Thanks!

[akaiaokakesu]

You pretty much mirrored my exact experience when I learned about localizations as I grew older. The modern internet quite literally made me feel "duped". I am almost certain that when casual consumers buy a Japanese product, people who may not be as involved in Japanese media as us, the vast majority of them are going to be none the wiser and expect an accurate translation. If that wasn't the case, people wouldn't have dialogue such as "why do the Japanese X, and why do the Japanese Y". Most people are going to say "Wow, I love the Japanese writer for Z" and not "Wow, I love the localization editor for Z, I hope they write for more media they didn't actually make". People don't care about the localization team, unless the team did REALLY bad. Because when people consume Japanese products, they have the assumption that they are having... a foreign experience; an exotic experience; a Japanese experience, whether or not they truly are.

[DeeeFoo]

Interesting video! Linguistics is fascinating, and I'd say that I would gravitate towards localization as opposed to a direct translation. I was hoping you would give some more specific examples of what you consider to be bad vs good localization.