There is one Sevens student explaining the joke telling you that is meant to be a pun with kuzu.
seriously? that's pretty odd, considering that a pun with kasu makes tons more sense. i had come to the same conclusion as teapirate, that it would be 滓高/カス高. you're saying it is actually カス校, with the kasu being based on 屑, not 滓, though... i mean, you sure?
a. Argument 1 = Translation must be translated to show intent of original authors, heretofore known as audience A.
b. Argument 2 = Translations must be localized for enjoyment of new audience, heretofore
known as audience B.
what is the difference? you can't effectively show the intent of the authors unless it is localized so the new audience can understand the intent. you can't somehow translate into english while still leaving things as japanese as possible and have the new audience understand the work just as well as the original audience understood the original work. unless your new audience speaks only english while still trying to be as japanese as possible.
so as i see it, broadly speaking, you're either a) localizing, b) not effectively conveying information to your target audience, or c) targeting weeaboos. obviously there are exceptions and whatnot, but they are exceptions and not the norm, imo.
I believe there are situations where compromises and rewording would need to be made, but this is proportional to the skill of the translator(s). Basically, if you need to do a lot of rewording, then something is wrong.
i just totally disagree with this. i just can't see how a more skilled or experienced translator could somehow magically squeeze more japaneseness out of a translation and have to use less rewording to deliver the appropriate experience. obviously, this would be true to an extent, but any guy with a few years' experience can do it. where skill lies is actually editing the translation to deliver the experience that ought to be delivered, or translating it like that in the first place.
I don't see how this applies to the matter of Policenauts, either way. Way too much content was changed without sufficient reasoning, and it seems like you're trying to justify a personal bias instead of conceding that a more literal approach would have been perfectly fine in this case.
not that i've played it, but going off of the opening that DS posted... that is in no way unjustified. a more literal approach would have sucked ass. seriously, just read DS's translation of it. i'm not knocking his translation at all... it seems pretty decent. however, it isn't the sort of text that should be put into a game. i don't just mean that it should be polished a tiny bit to make sure the grammar and punctuation are fine, and then shoved in there. i mean that the text shouldn't read like ass. and to make it not read like ass, some things will need to be shifted around. it's called editing... editors do it to improve crappy english scripts. why wouldn't you do it to improve english scripts that are crappy because they were translated from another language entirely?
if your argument is that it OUGHT to read like ass, because "the japanese version was like that", please show me quotes from japanese people that say "man this game reads like ass. another fine work from kojima-sensei!" (or if you don't feel like trawling for quotes, just think about how silly that is for a moment.) now ask yourself this: which is truly a greater departure from the japanese version, a few lines being shifted around, or the game suddenly reading like ass? this is a question that asks you to look further than the superficial interpretation of how close a translation is to the source language.
if your argument is that if you just fix up DS's translation a tiny bit, it will sound like perfectly good english, and therefore there's no need to change the text further, then there's not much more we can discuss. i would have to vehemently disagree and would point you towards any other accepted forms of writing, such as novels, magazines, newspapers, academic papers, articles, textbooks, essays, etc. etc. etc. to get a better feel for what constitutes well-written english.
here is a major sticking point -- if you have a decently good grasp on what constitutes well-written english, then fine. but if you don't, how are you to judge if a script is "good enough" to not need further editing? this is in fact something that requires a FAR GREATER grasp of the english language as compared to the grasp of the japanese language required to translate it. (i'm not saying you don't have such command; i'm just making a general observation and providing a possible explanation for why the more extreme purist weeaboo types might think they way they do.)
Topic: Translations: Policenauts for PSX released (Read 40014 times)