Comparing game localizations

[KingMike]

Mato has now released his Google Translated Final Fantasy IV patches.
Beware that Mato has released the patches with the uncensored machine translations (though sometimes altered for space limits, though I think he let a machine also alter for space limits. Perhaps to have as little human intervention in the content as possible). Yes, Google sometimes had a very dirty mouth, to give a warning.
http://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-fantasy-iv/

Two versions since it resulted in two very different kinds of nonsense.

[Tomato]

Oh yeah, I forgot to update about that, thanks! What makes it especially interesting is that I did the translation just as Google was updating its system to use neural network A.I., so I wound up with two versions of the game: one translated before the Google switch and one after.

The whole project was so weird and surprising that I went and wrote a book about it. It even includes a few pages of ROM hacking discussion!




Oh yeah and I did an entire book about bad game translations earlier in the year!

[KillerBob]

Nice redesign of your site. Those FFIV-fan translation examples in your latest update looks like a bad parody. Very interesting as always.

Are you still planning to make a LOL-book out of your Super Mario Bros. article? Perhaps too little material to make into a book, but it would be awesome.

[KingMike]

It sounded like a part of Mato's SMB book would be talking about not just the game itself but its cultural impact. And why he/Fangamer had amassed as many copies of the game from around the world as they could.

[KillerBob]

It sounded like a part of Mato's SMB book would be talking about not just the game itself but its cultural impact. And why he/Fangamer had amassed as many copies of the game from around the world as they could.

Ah, ok. Sounds great.

[ObiKKa]

Oh yeah, I ordered Tomato's '...Be Book Bad...' book last October of 2017 and picked it up in November, I think. Hilarious. Must-have!

Oh, hang on. The first three photos from Tomato's post above actually shows his OTHER newer book which I detected on the new stuff page of that shop, while the bottom two photos are for the book that I ordered before the newer book came out. That's why I didn't know about the newer book.

It's called: press start to translate: This is what happens when you let a computer translate a video game?

[Chronosplit]

Ah, I see!  Some of these are shaped in a way that would make sense.  Wait a minute, they all start with H... theorizing here, but maybe everyone knew after all but thought both words were too obscure to use with the target audience?  It's been known to happen.

Oh boy, I thought this convo had died in the general.  Wish I knew that I could've dug it up while talking about Hurricane in Personal Projects.  Oh well, it got nailed right either way.

[KingMike]

To me it sounds like a rather specific question that maybe had enough discussion for its own thread.

[thepatrickinator]

The reason why Bad English exists is because of censorship and deadlines as said by reading This be book bad translation, video games!

[KingMike]

Those are certainly two common reasons but others can include budgeting or inexperience (as was common in the 8-bit era, they often clearly hired people who knew English well enough to communicate but not on the same level of understanding as most native speakers). I don't think it was until the '90s that there was much concern to polish the translations so they sounded natural.