2225: People Asking for "Literal" Translations of Games Aren't Looking for Google Translate

There's been a lot of discussion over this topic on Twitter recently, thanks in part to the recent release of Fire Emblem Fates and its somewhat controversial localisation by Nintendo of America. There's a lot of noise and ill-informed opinion being thrown around by both "sides" of the debate, so I thought it would be a good time to stick my own oar in and muddy the waters still further.

There are basically two sides to the argument over Fire Emblem specifically. It's actually a little more complicated than that, but for the sake of simplicity we'll look at two core beliefs.

On one side, you have people who are arguing that they want a literal, authentic recreation of the Japanese original, only in the English language. They want character names to stay the same; they want conversations to unfold in the same way; they want all the same content that the Japanese players had in the game.

On the other, you have people who are arguing that during the localisation process, changes are both necessary and inevitable in order to fit the needs of the new market. The exact definition of these needs varies according to who you speak to — some suggest it's to do with a corporation (Nintendo of America in this case) wanting to continue curating a very specific brand image, while others suggest it's a cultural thing: things that are acceptable, palatable or recognisable to the original Japanese audience may mean nothing to an English-speaking demographic.

Both sides have their points. I've enjoyed localised games that err very much on one side or the other. Slice-of-life visual novels, for example, very much benefit from remaining true to the original Japanese as much as possible: interpersonal relationships in particular unfold in very different ways in Japan, and maintaining things like the honorifics in a text help to reflect the different ways people defer to one another according to perceived social hierarchy. Along the same lines, role-playing games that are very much steeped in Japanese culture — the Persona series is a good example — also benefit from remaining as true as possible to the original Japanese script as much as possible, since, like visual novels, the relationships between characters are often dependent on Japanese societal norms rather than Western ones.

On the other side of the fence, some more drastic localisations have been very good, too. Few people would argue that the Ace Attorney series is extraordinarily well written in its English incarnation, but it's very different to its Japanese counterpart, largely because a lot of the puns and jokes in the original Japanese simply wouldn't make sense in English. Same with the Neptunia series, whose original translation by NIS America is the source of some ire for more die-hard fans, but which has also remained the standard by which the series continues to be localised today. And the same with Final Fantasy XIV, whose floridly Shakespearean script was so good in English a lot of the changes actually ended up backported into Japanese.

Personally speaking, my priority for the most part is getting to play games that I wouldn't otherwise have the chance to play. I don't like content being cut and I don't like feeling that the experience I'm having is noticeably inferior to the Japanese original, but if it's a game I want to play and the changes are relatively unobtrusive — Dungeon Travelers 2 is a good example, since this is technically "censored" in places through the modification of a few images, but the changes are minor at best, and the game probably wouldn't have seen release if they hadn't been made — then I'll happily support the efforts of companies who attempt to bring games over as unscathed as possible.

I can't say I feel massively strongly about Fire Emblem Fates in particular because I have no real attachment to the series, but there are a number of issues with the localisation that I really don't like. One is the removal of content that wasn't offensive in the first place — the "head-patting" minigame, which is a reflection of the Japanese tendency to use head-pats as a sign of affection — not necessarily attraction or lust — between characters. Another is the outright butchering of the script that has taken place in a number of parts, most notably the support conversation between two characters which was an in-depth discussion of finding common ground, honour among thieves and whatnot in Japanese, but which has been replaced with four screens of them going "…" to each other in English. That is not, in any way, acceptable localisation, because it's completely changing the original intent of the scene.

Now onto the point I wanted to make with the title of this post: the "localisation means changes" brigade have a couple of favourite arguments. Let's take them in turn.

You want a literal translation? Run the script through Google Translate and see how you like it.

This is by far the most common, and it's based on a flawed assumption: the fact that people asking for a "literal" translation are literally asking for a literal translation, when they're not. In a way, it's their own fault for using the word "literal" perhaps incorrectly; "authentic" or "true to the original" might be a better description, but "literal" is the term that people tend to prefer to use, so let's stick with that for now.

No, as I discussed above, the people who want a "literal" translation are not asking for the text to be run through Google Translate, because, among other reasons, the differences in grammar between languages butchers the original intent of the scene beyond all recognition. What they are asking for is the scene to be correctly translated into its closest possible English equivalent, without any changes based on perceived appropriateness according to Western cultural norms. What they are also asking for is the maintaining of the text's "Japaneseness" as much as possible: that means maintaining the use of honorifics and concepts with no direct translation such as senpai and the use of onii-san/onee-san to people who aren't your brother/sister.

That's not a particularly unreasonable ask, is it? Doesn't that show a degree of respect to the original creators, an awareness of your audience and also has the added benefit of potentially teaching people about another culture? Some games actually run with this concept; visual novel Steins;Gate, for example, features an interactive hyperlinked glossary of Japanese terminology used in the game, including Japanese Internet memes and slang as well as more widespread cultural concepts.

So no. People asking for a "literal" translation aren't asking for the script to be fed through the mangler that is Google Translate. So stop responding to arguments they aren't making.

You want the authentic experience? Just learn Japanese. Oh, I forgot, learning a language is more difficult than complaining.

The whole point of localisation is so that new audiences have access to works from other cultures. Through a culture's art, we can learn about them, understand them, appreciate them — or, in some cases, be happy with what we've got ourselves! By mangling the cultural authenticity of a text, be it by inserting random Internet memes — which not only spoil the character of the piece in most cases, they also date it horribly — or by stripping out elements that made it authentically "Japanese" in the first place, you're doing a disservice to the original work, and to the audience who wants to know more about another culture that they find fascinating.

Moreover, a lot of people who argue in favour of drastic localisation changes are the same people who are constantly bleating on about buzzword of the moment "diversity" — used here to mean "celebrating anything that isn't by a white man". Isn't stomping all over the text of another culture using Western sensibilities the very antithesis of the "diversity" that seems to be the Holy Grail among progressive types at the moment?

Anyway. Asking people to learn Japanese isn't a terrible argument: not only does it let you play the original versions of localised games, it also gives you access to a huge library of titles that never make it across the ocean. But it's also not a particularly practical option for a lot of people. Japanese is a complicated language that takes a long time to learn, and some people simply don't have the right kind of mindset to effectively study a new language, particularly if they're a little older and their brain finds it more difficult to take in entirely new language-related information. Should people who are unable to study Japanese for whatever reason be denied access to authentic experiences? No, of course not.

I've seen both sides of this argument unfolding recently and it's frankly getting rather tiresome — mostly because many of the arguments, as we've seen above, are based on mistaken assumptions. This has been a worryingly growing trend over the last few years, and it's this, in part, that has led to the overwhelmingly negative atmosphere a lot of online interactions carry over their heads these days; everyone is afraid to offend everyone else.

In this instance, I would be inclined to defer to the opinions of people who passionately consume Japanese games and other media, and who want an authentic experience from their localised material. It's not as if we're short of Western experiences for people who find heavily Japanese titles "too Japanese" or otherwise inaccessible for some reason, and ultimately keeping things as true to their original form as possible helps everyone to understand each other that little bit better, which is surely the best possible outcome to all this.

But I'm sure this argument will keep raging and no-one will pay any attention to what I've said here, so what do I know…