Hong Kong Pokémon Fans Protest Over New Translation Issues with Sun and Moon

While yes, I do think having Pokemon games officially in Chinese is a great way to expand the user base, I question how cost efficient matching each dialect will be.

Granted, I know virtually nothing about Chinese culture and it's language. So my opinion on this mater is obviously pretty shallow.

I don't understand what the issue is. Not just that I don't understand the protesters' viewpoint, I flat out don't understand what they're arguing about. What does having simplified Chinese have to do with "local traditions"?

@Bolt_Strike I guess it would be like selling the game in all of Latin America with European Spanish as the one Spanish option... (Which is what most games do anyway.)

It's Spanish yes, but the wrong Spanish.

... We don't really care all that much over here, but they seem to.

If they are used to getting their games translated with regional dialects, then getting the next one with a flavorless generic translation probably feels like a downgrade.

So they are protesting because of better localization? I don't get it, it must be one of my Slowpoke's days.

@Kroko they're protesting about cheaper, crappier translation/localisation.There's going to be one, 'simplified chinese' version instead of multiple versions for different regions in the various non-simplified dialects.

So this is about the opposite of localisation, right?

I can see why they are protesting, but it just seems superfluous. It's not as though Nintendo are localising to Chinese for the comparatively small Hong Kong market, compared to the mainland Chinese market.

Also, as a learner of Mandarin Chinese, simplified is so much nicer.

Stay fresh!!

The sign seems to be about naming differences for the Pokemon.

Apparently Pikachu should be Bi Ka Chao, not Pi Ka Qiu.

Kind funny.

@Bolt_Strike A lot of Hong Kong (and I believe other parts of China) are also concerned about names being different in the chinese version ie the Pikachu example given in @Humphries90 's comment, although I believe they just called him Pikachu in China rather than either of those more phonetically correct names. Basically they learned the names one way and this new localization changes more than 100 Pokemon's names and that's what seems to be the fan's issue.

@ASonic3582 Yeah that seems to be the problem; renaming Pokemon they've known for decades. The article really wasn't clear.

......really?

Talking about censorship, localization is also a problem in the west.

Nintendo's localization strikes again, seriously they always around creating controversy, nintendo's localization team needs to get better at what they are doing or get fired, I don't see any other company localizing a game and causing problems to their consumers than nintendo

Lol at the new Chinese translation for Pikachu, roughly translated its new name will be "Elf Pokémon" xD

@Megumi I summon you because you'll lol at this!!! xD

I think it's more to do with changing Pokemon names than it is the change in language. I'm sure Western fans would be pretty annoyed if they suddenly changed the names of a couple hundred Pokemon we grew up with.

That sure sounds understandably annoying. Considering how strongly spoken the Cantonese language is in significant areas of China, they should just add Cantonese-pronunciation-friendly text to the list or at least make an exclusively Cantonese-friendly version for the Hongkong audience (as I'm sure non-Hong Kong Cantonese speakers are probably used to Mandarin dominance by now). It would be insensitive and alienating to a large part of their historically-faithful official audience to not do such a thing.

Yeah, I can get why they are pretty mad about things as unneccesary as these seeing how I am very finicky about names or voices being different from what I'm used to myself.

I still don't quite understand the issue. The pokemon games never had Chinese language before, and now people are upset because one specific dialect has been added. I don't get how that makes it worse.

@crimsontadpoles This article provides good context for the issue: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_in_Greater_China

In short, the Pokémon games may never have been officially released in any Chinese language, but much other Pokémon media has been released officially in Mandarin and Cantonese. So, to change all established and official pronunciations for the sake of one language is annoying and makes many names sound very strange and unusual to non-Mandarin first language speakers (who previously were also used to official, established pronunciations of the Pokémon in their language).

Why is one of the items in Pokemon Red/Blue a Lift Key? It's an American translation, it should be Elevator Key, **** it!

So is it just me or does this article really not explain very much? Or am I missing something?

Lol. They should be glad they're FINALLY, after 20 years, getting the games in Chinese.

The problem as mentioned above was never with the fact that they're using generic Simplified Chinese, but that fans are used to legacy terminology. You'd be pretty annoyed too if 'Fire' as a type suddenly changed to 'Heat' etc. The inidividual differences would most likely be context sensitive to that region, not a linguistic difference.

That being said, it's not Nintendo's
localisation department at fault either, localising into Simplified Chinese alone will be a massive step for them, let alone a massive cost. The mistake was making the previous media so tailored

@KingMike I think a more accurate comparison would be if a new remake of Red/Blue renamed "Lift Key" to "Rift Gai" in its English translation. It's more about that the Cantonese pronunciation of the new Chinese spelling of "Pikachu", etc is nonsensical, not so much about a preferential choice.

@Humphries90 The Mandarin pronunciation nor the use of Simplified characters isn't the issue here. The article NL cites states that the old Cantonese pronunciation for Pikachu ("Bei-kaa-chyu") has been changed by the new spelling to "Pei-kaa-jau", which no longer sounds like "Pee-kah-choo". The Mandarin pronunciation for Pikachu hasn't been affected by the new spelling, on the other hand. Therefore, Hong Kongers are rather annoyed by the preferential treatment applied to Mandarin and complete disregard for Cantonese, since Cantonese is generally their first language and other officially-released Pokémon products in the past had been Cantonese-friendly.

I'll definitely start reading up more about this. I think people need to understand that although the games were never official release in Chinese (whichever dialect) there have been lots of translation of manga, anime etc into the Cantonese dialect and mandarin or other Chinese dialects out there, probably some of it officially sold by the Pokemon company.

@FriedSquid It's a bit more difficult to grasp because dialects in Chinese practically appear to be independent languages in their own right. Essentially, there's never been a Chinese Pokemon game before and now that there will be, all Pokemon related media will be under one language. All previous terms and names that popped up in other media, such as the anime, are being changed to the new standard.

@Gauchorino I was just spitballing with my knowledge of Mandarin. I don't know any Cantonese. I know it doesn't affect Mandarin speakers because I've always known Pikachu as 皮卡丘 here in the mainland. Rather, it seems Cantonese has had it as 比卡超. (Which pronouncing it in Mandarin sounds less like the original Pikachu) It's definitely a strange issue for Nintendo.

I need to understand what exactly has been compromised before I can have an opinion.

Lol I remember the Sun and Moon Direct in which the only information that came out was its Chinese translations, which were largely irrelevant to the rest of the world who was watching.

@Humphries90 Right. "比卡超" sounds much more like "Pikachu" in Cantonese than "皮卡丘" does, while the situation is just the opposite for Mandarin. Even with written Chinese, transliteration can never hope to be uniform across multiple languages. Hopefully Nintendo will properly deal with this issue so that they don't alienate their large and faithful Cantonese-speaking audiences.

@MitchVogel Indeed, its not a dialectal issue, but a language-related one, as Cantonese and Mandarin are not different dialects of the same language, but different languages, altogether. "Pikachu" etc. are being officially transliterated into Mandarin with Chinese characters to spell out the transliteration. Unfortunately, those same Chinese characters that are used to transiterate "Pikachu" (for example) into Mandarin do not also sound like "Pee-kah-choo" when pronounced in a Cantonese reading. So, the issue that Hong Kongers are having is that Nintendo is ignoring established Cantonese transliterations of Pokémon names altogether, even though they speak Cantonese as a main language and the new games are being officially released in their (historically culturally-independent) territory. It would be a different story if we were comparing the Hakka language to Mandarin, but Cantonese has a far broader span in China, especially a major "region" like Hong Kong where Cantonese has always been preferred over Mandarin in everything. It is only due to the PRC's insistence on overshadowing Hong Kong's individuality (which Hong Kong has retained ever since it was brought into the PRC government in '97) that Cantonese is irrationally and obstinately being ignored.

Seems to be part of the even greater penny-pinching being brought in by Kimishima. For example, Fire Emblem Awakening got a British English localisation in the UK, but they didn't bother with Fates. It also looks like they won't even call the new Paper Mario game 'Colour' Splash here.

Wow, that's not an internet protest, that's an actual... protest-protest.

Seems a bit silly to go changing everything when the names have been used the way they are for like 20 years or whatever. But, there's probably a lot more to this stuff than just keeping the same names, I guess.

@Neko_Ichigofan "I am professor Oak, but most people call me elf monster"

I remember when people used to protest things that actually mattered.
This is just... nonsense.

Corruption? Nah, we're good.
Equal rights? Who needs that?
A living wage? No worries; I'll be rich one day.
Having trouble translating a video game? Take it to the street!

Like I said, complete and utter nonsense.

@Gauchorino @Humphries90
Thanks guys! The comment section was very enlightening.

A very pickly situation indeed.
One solution would be to have the game's translation be otherwise the same in all regions except change the names of the pokémon according to the region.
This would save them from retranslating the whole game, but they would still need to produce and ship region specific cartridges. This could be remidified by setting the price of the game higher to account for the cost.
Or maybe they could provide "language packs" as an update on the eShop? (If China even has the eShop)

There really is no cost-efficient way to do this.

@Kirk Yeah, it's a bit political. China has never been a nation state with one people and one language. It has always been a region with multiple people groups and languages, so pushing one unified Simplified Chinese to all doesn't sit well with everyone.

As silly as the idea of people protesting over something like this seems, it's more than just a "regional dialect" issue since Cantonese and Mandarin are more or less different enough to basically be different languages. Still, I DO feel like this protest is a little silly because it's not likely to accomplish anything.

@Moshugan No problem at all. This article didn't explain the issue well enough for me, either.

I think that you're onto something with the retranslation issue. Personally though, I think the whole issue could be resolved by including a Cantonese language option in all versions, with the only change being that this option uses spellings different from the Mandarin option for Pokémon name transliterations. I really doubt it would be so difficult nor costly for Nintendo (of Hong Kong!) to implement such a thing.

Also, just to clarify, I don't think Simplified Chinese characters themselves are the issue here, but rather which characters are used to phonetically transliterate (for example) "Pee-kaa-choo" into Mandarin vs. Cantonese. The new spelling only accounts for a Mandarin transliteration of those sounds, while the same spelling sounds like "Pikajao" when read by a Cantonese speaker, which is why Hong Kongers are calling for the old spelling for their "region", which sounds much more like "Pikachu" to Cantonese-speakers.

Yup. Nintendos fault. Not the company that owns pokemon that demands the games be made, what the dates of release are, who develops them, and owns the individual names and all other media. Nope. TPC doesn't exist.

yeah but the two extra languages are simplified and traditional chinese. I would understand if it was just one kind of Chinese but it is not

I'm definitely confused about the article, as it seems to suggest that the games will only be translated into Simplified Chinese - but one of the big things revered from the initial trailer was that "Pokemon Sun and Moon will be available in nine languages, adding Chinese - simplified and traditional - to the usual English, Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, German, and Japanese choices".

One thing I'm not even sure about is whether it's even right to call 'Simplified Chinese' a language, so much as an orthography for Mandarin, and 'Traditional Chinese' an orthography for Cantonese (which is spoken in Hong Kong).

It's arguably a slightly messy subject if you don't have some level of background knowledge, so it'd be good to get an expert to shine some light on the situation.

As it is though, I'm having difficulty believing that the games WON'T be available in Traditional, as this was explicitly confirmed in the first trailer.

@Bolt Strike It's because they are changing the names of established Pokemon. Pikachu for example in Hong Kong is called is 比卡超, but this translation would have him changed to 皮卡丘.
It would be the same if they decided now to change all the English Pokemon names into their exact Japaneses translations, for example Charizard to Lizardon or Blastoise into Kamex.

@Maxz I believe Hong Kong used Traditional characters to write their languages historically throughout most of the 20th century but is now beginning to adapt to Simplified characters to do the same. Taiwan might be the only independently-governed Chinese-language-speaking nation in the world that still prefers the use of Traditional characters (for writing Mandarin, largely) over Simplified ones, since they never took part in the PRC's character simplification reforms.

The issue here, though, is a matter of proper transliterations of Pokémon names (and terms?) between major spoken languages of China rather than which character system is used to write them (so, of phonetics rather than of orthography). The same spelling for Pikachu would sound different when pronounced by a Mandarin speaker vs. a Cantonese speaker, for example. This is because, of course, Chinese characters inherently express ideas rather than sounds, even though each Chinese language associates its own specific sounds to each character (which makes the phonetic usage of the characters useful for transliteration of foreign words into one's own particular language). For example, "皮卡丘" sounds like "Pikachu" when read by a Mandarin speaker but like "Pikajaoh" to a Cantonese speaker. Thus, Hong Kong players are hating the fact that Nintendo is forcing them to pronounce Pikachu's name as "Pikajaoh" now, etc.

@RainbowGazelle
Maybe I'm a bit anal about these things but that would REALLY grind my gears if they call it color splash, it's just plain wrong!!

Chinese fans: give us the Pokémon games!
Nintendo: ok, we will do a Chinese translation
Chinese fans: How dare you! Give us 40 different Chinese translations!

Guess fans acting brattish and entitled isn't just a Western thing

@YorkshireNed More like 2 translations, both of which had already long been recognized by Nintendo's affliates and official products, 1 of these (Cantonese) which is now exclusively being ignored (and practically mocked) in favor of the other (Mandarin).

I don't think there's a clamouring to have each Chinese dialect catered for.
But the language of Hong Kong is Cantonese, and the disposable income/previous sales in Hong Kong should more than justify the localisation into Mandarin AND Cantonese!

@Gauchorino hear hear

@Gauchorino
Is Cantonese being mocked, though? Or for the Pokemon Company, It is merely a matter of costs - will the game sales in Hong Kong cover the cost of the Cantonese translation?

At the end of the day, the companies may objective is profit.

@FuzzyYellowBalls
So true. A handful of people protesting over a silly game is hopefully where humanity has not finally peaked.

I use the adjective "silly" because when compared to all the injustices in this world, it is silly.

Maybe I am just getting old. Maybe this is the future of being a Nintendo fanboy.

@Gauchorino Aah, that's interesting, thank you. I'd always glued Cantonese with Trad. and Mandarin with Simp., probably because it was just easier to think that way. I wasn't sure if both scripts were being used to essentially write the same thing (much as there's a Kanji/Kana option in some Japanese games), or whether each was trying to get across a different 'language'. It seems like it's more the former, with Cantonese being omitted in thin instance (or 'snubbed', to use slightly more emotive language).

@YorkshireNed Well, to be fair, Europe (or at least the EU) has a population of around half a billion people, and gets five languages (English, Italian, French, Spanish and German), whereas China has a population of almost 1.4 billion, and seems to be getting one language (albeit with two character scripts).

But the point seems to be that Nintendo's decisions are to be going against an already established naming convention that has sprung up around the franchise (even if no games have been translated, a lot of the character names seem to have been). Imagine if you were suddenly told you had to call Charmander "Glumanda" because that's what the Germans do, and English is a Germanic language. It'd be weird at the very least.

I'll try not to get stuck too far into this, as I don't know the details, but I think it's too little to go on to be pointing fingers and making accusations of 'brattishness and entitlement'. It also comes across a bit hypocritical for someone from a country that has been getting fully translated games for the past 17 years to play the 'entitlement' card at a region that has yet to receive a single translated title.

Anyway, @Gauchorino seems significantly more up to scratch on this than most people, so I'll defer to his/her expertise.

@Luna_110 Perhaps not mocked, per se, but openly alienated against (and very possibly misunderstood by Nintendo's non-Hong Kong management). Considering that there seems to be a strong fanbase of Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong (as that's the main spoken language there) who were raised on officially-released Cantonese language Pokémon anime, etc, it would likely be more beneficial for Nintendo's profits to include them in their audience than to exclude them. All it would take is a bit of re-transliteration of certain Pokémon names into Cantonese equivalents and an insertion of that language option into all versions of the game. Presumably, that would be neither very labourious nor costly to do.

@Maxz My pleasure, dear friend. Indeed, both character systems (Traditional and Simplified) can be used to write any Chinese language, including Mandarin and Cantonese. In particular, Cantonese has been spoken and written in Simplified Chinese characters in southern mainland Chinese regions like Guangdong (ie, Canton Province) from the simplification system's origins.

"Simplified Chinese" characters are the creation of the PRC beginning in the 1950s by reducing the number of strokes required to write certain characters for the purpose of increasing the literacy rate across the nation. Nations and territories that were not part of the PRC at that time (such as the ROC (Taiwan) and Hong Kong (owned by Great Britain)) were not under any authority to change the orthography of Chinese characters and as such, continued to write their languages with all classical orthography intact. For some reason, Singapore and Malaysia also use the same Simplified characters of the PRC, despite not having ever been under the authority of the PRC. Hong Kong, having only recently become a part of PRC China, still uses and seems to prefer Traditional characters but is often pressured by its head government to gradually incorporate for Simplified characters for official purposes, likewise with the Mandarin language (though English was the previous official language of Hong Kong in this context).

There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. While Simplified characters are becoming more popular thanks to the PRC's increasing influence on the global economy, I tend to personally prefer the hieroglyphic etymologies and general timelessness preserved by the Traditional characters.

Japan has also simplified some Traditional characters (mostly since the end of WWII) for the sake of national literacy, but their simplifications are far less brazen and numerous than PRC China's are. Most simplified Kanji (ie, of the shinjitai class) are exactly or almost exactly the same as Traditional Chinese characters, with a handful cognate to Simplified Chinese characters. The Korean nations may also have some sort of simplifications applied to some of their Chinese characters known as "Hanja" (for the rare instances that they use them, of course).

@Maxz The gist of what I can understand is that Cantonese Chinese do not like to be grouped in with mainlanders because they find mainlanders to be irritating due to some political tensions that's been raised regarding many of the government policies placed upon by the CCP on mainly autonomous Hong Kong.

There's been subtle hate coming from the Hong Kong Chinese against mainlanders due to this and being lumped together with mainlanders as well as the immense difficulty of adapting Mandarin and the Cantonese language alphabet is pretty much a reason for it.

Hebei and Jiangsu are vastly different from the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi. Let's not forget Tibet and Xinjiang.

@Gauchorino Thank you, that's gone some way to clearing thing things up in my head. I'm an intermediate Japanese student, so I've got a fairly solid knowledge of how the characters function in that language, but it's always intrigued me how the language where the characters originated has developed and changed.

I generally have an aesthetic preference for the traditional script, though I think I'm massively biased from studying Japanese, as I tend to think of any simpler forms of characters I'm familiar with (e.g. 長 → 长, 飛 → 飞) as over-simplistic and 'lacking substance', whereas I think of more complicated forms than I'm used to (e.g. 學→学, 戀→恋) to be overwrought and unnecessary.

So I guess it's very hard to be objective. Apart from maybe with this character:

Which I think most people would agree is 'going a bit far' (and all for the sake of a noodle).

Anyway, I've got a train to catch, but thank you for the short lesson. It's interesting to hear about the influences HK has been under after changing 'ownership'. It sounds like it's really been stretched in a lot of different directions.

Localisation of video games can sometimes be a dodgy matter. I was worried about Style Savvy 3 for a while b/c it was released in the UK well ahead of the announcement for localisation in NA. I was troubled by the non-localisation of the Great Ace Attorney until I learned there's a fan translation project. I assume the protesting is reasonable and I wish my fellow gamers in Hong Kong to get what they deserve.

@Bolt_Strike in Hong Long, Pikachu has been known by a specific Cantonese pronunciation for a long time. With Pokémon Sun and Moon, that will no longer be the case. Pikachu's name will be localized in Hong Kong the same way it's name has been localized in other Chinese regions. Hong Kong has a complicated history with greater China, with most residences seeking complete independence from the country. Being seen as a mere extension of China by Game Freak and Nintendo has caused alarm for this reason. They're afraid of losing their identity, and are suspicious that Nintendo has somehow been manipulated by the greater Chinese government. It's a deeper issue beyond Pikachu simply being known by a different name.

So I've just read the entire comment section (like some kind of mad man) and now I think I understand both sides a bit more now.
So, Nintendo had been translating media into cantonese, despite not having translated any games. They decided they would translate Pokémon games into Chinese (both simplified and traditional), but only Mandarin, meaning the names that the Hong Kongians (is that the right word? I don't know...) knew would be changed into the Mandarin names.
I can understand Nintendo not wanting to translate to both Mandarin and Cantonese of both Traditional and Simplified Chinese, as that would mean translating into four Chinese langauges.
I can also understand the Hong
Kongians (I know that must be the wrong word, but I don't know what the right word is) complaining about it only being translated into Mandarin and not Cantonese, as though they may technically be the same language, as far as I can tell, it's more akin to how all our Latin based languages, for example, use the same alphabet, but when prounced in a different langauge, they sound very different (ie. the French "boeuf" to the English "beef", or just generally trying to pronounce a French or German word with an English accent. It's not the same).

It'll be interesting to see how Ninty handle this.
Also, please correct me on any mistakes I've made; I'm very intrigued by this entire fiasco now.

They'll just pirate it anyway -_-

Something most westerners don't know is that the difference between the many, many dialects in China is very pronounced, to the point of being more like completely separate languages each. This article does a great job explaining this rather complicated aspect of their language: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/ChineseDialectsAndAccents

I'm sure Nintendo will listen, he has two mics.

Not only are Cantonese and Mandarin different but, also the people of Hong Kong despite being forced to learn Mandarin, prefer to speak their native tongue.

"Unifying the nation" is not a good way to put it...
This is more of dictating the fans on what language/dialect they are required to use and enforcing their will upon the general public.

@NIN10DOXD I prefer to speak in my native tongue too, but guess what, no one makes games in my language. So I use english. Just deal with it.

@pokedude583 I think you get the big picture. The article could have been much clearer about the actual issue, for sure. A few corrections, though:

1. It's "Hong Kongers" (don't worry, I made the same mistake until a friend corrected me). It sounds rather informal, but it's apparently correct.

2. Mandarin and Cantonese are two separate Chinese languages, but "Traditional Chinese" and "Simplified Chinese" are not languages but methods for writing all the Chinese languages. @GeminiSaint's link and this article are quite insightful on the subject: http://www.arc-japanese-translation.com/chinese/03tidbits.html

3. Interesting analogy. I hadn't thought of comparing common-root Latin words with common-root Chinese words, but it kinda works, actually... To be clear though, if you read the above link, you know there's usually no confusion caused by reading Chinese characters between different Chinese language speakers unless some of those characters are transliterating a foreign word (like "Pikachu", in this case). An English example of this might be to phonetically transliterate French "Paris" to "Par-ree", rather than to keep it as "Paris" and pronounce it as "Pear-riss", for that's how it appears to be pronounced according to English rules of phonics. In a similar manner, "皮卡丘" is pronounced as "Pikachu" when read in Mandarin but as "Pikajaow" when read in Cantonese. So, you can see how Hong Kongers might be upset because Nintendo is forcing them to either unnecessarily learn a foreign language to start to enjoy Pokémon or to start calling Pikachu "Pikajaow" now, which rule applies to many other of the Pokémon names, too. And just to reiterate, this is worth complaining about mostly because Nintendo previously used Cantonese-friendly transliterations for Pokémon in past officially-released media, but now those are all being forsaken in favor of a Mandarin bias. Had they not localized any media into Cantonese before or if Nintendo wasn't planning on releasing Sun & Moon in Hong Kong at all, Hong Kongers wouldn't have a truly legitimate reason to complain about this.

It's actually more about the history with HK/Ch rather than game. At least that's what I like to think, because protesting because of bideo game and making such big deal out of it looks little sad

So if I understand correctly, this would be like Nintendo releasing a Pokemon game here in America where Pikachu and Charmander and everyone else had new names that we aren't used to?

Yeah... That would suck.

Send the NOA translation team, they'll learn what a ruined translation is.

Wait, doesn't having a simplified chinese translation mean more people can understand and play it?

@Ryu_Niiyama I don't know if it's true: usually people know simplified Chinese can read Traditional Chinese, but not vice versa. My friends from Hong Kong can't read anything in simplified Chinese. And I have some friends from mainland that can read newspaper my HK friends brought from their homes.

I feel like people that already knew simplified Chinese are willing to learn traditional chinese (and they have to if they practice calligraphy); However, people who know traditional Chinese sometimes are a little hostile toward simplified Chinese - they don't want to try to learn.

@RGnsd Well that makes sense. I remember a buddy in college that complained about how his parents refused to learn simplified Chinese (his family spoke Cantonese to boot), so I can see that being an issue for some. Still it seems like it was a decision made to make the game more accessible and would likely bring in more people than it alienates.

@Meowpheel right I was just thinking this. In Italy games aren't translated in Sicilian and normal Italian, they are all done in the officially correct Italian even though some words are quite different. In the US games aren't translated to use Southern slang and traditions in the south. I really fail to see the issue here. Translating for every local dialect is extremely inefficient and, to my knowledge, isn't done anywhere else in the world except apparently Nintendo China.

It should be translated into Mandarin Traditional and Simplified, and Cantonese. Anything more than that is overkill. People in China are used to media not being necessarily in their native dialect, so long as it is in their base language

@coolaggro Totally agree. The spoken Chinese language has many dialects, more than 10 including Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka... (I live in Singapore, which has Singaporean Chinese from these dialect groups.. and even more in Mainland China). However reasonable (or politically motivated) the Hong Kong people's desire of a proper Cantonese translation, they should consider the general goodwill that Nintendo is doing for its Chinese consumers (simplified and traditional Chinese is good enough), and not demanding something too absurd. Imagine Nintendo has to do translation for 10 different Chinese dialect because of it.. It is truely an overkill!!!

@Humphries90 @Gauchorino

That's a decent point, actually. I can guarantee you if a bunch of my favorite Pokemon had to be renamed in order to support a larger demographic, I'd be pretty upset, too. Like if they renamed Pikachu to Pikabloo, or started referring to Sandshrew as Sandchez. Except in this case, I might not be able to namename them to what I'm used to, because they're also switching to a different dialect...

@Ryu_Niiyama The game will feature both Simplified and Traditional Chinese writing systems, so I think it's not so much about the simp/trad divide as the actual languages the writing systems are trying to convey. Post #68 gives a decent run down.

One major linguistic point that appears to be throwing a spanner in the works is that China doesn't appear to have a single, well-agreed upon, PHONETIC-based writing system (unlike Japanese, which conveniently has two). This means many words will inevitably be pronounced differently in different regions.

In previous merchandise and other Poké-related products, Nintendo had taken this into account and adjusted the spellings in Hong Kong so that each Pokemon was pronounced as intended. With the release of the translated games, they appear to have abandoned that practice, and are taking the Mandarin spellings as standard, despite the fact that their pronunciations come out of the wash differently in Cantonese, and so aren't consistent with the names that Hong Kongers have already been told.

So all the Hong Kong fans of the series seemingly have to relearn the names of all the Pokemon (even though Nintendo came up with the first set of names for the region in the first place), which must feel a little strange.

I can see this happening in America too.

_{watch the language...-Megumi}

@Maxz China has a few phonics based writing system, one of them is Pinyin (拼音). Using romanized aalphabets, it is used in many street names in China (together with its Chinese names) and teaching purposes. However, its application is mostly limited to those mentioned uses. Moreover, it can only be used in Mandarin, while Cantonese dialect requires a whole new phonics system as of the greater variation of the tonal voice.

@Sun_wukong Aah, thank you for clarifying. That's very interesting, as I'd assumed Pinyin was mainly used in countries with Latin-based spellings systems anyway (for transliteration and teaching), but didn't get much use anywhere in China itself.

One thing that's been on my mind for ages is how it's made clear when certain Chinese characters are used solely phonetically, with no regards to their semantics. In Japanese you'd just jump between writing systems, so there's no confusion. So 'Thomas', would become 'トーマス', and because each character lacks and 'meaning' beyond the sound it conveys, there's no ambiguity in what it means or how it slots into a sentence.

I've almost zero knowledge of how grammar and general sentence structure function in any Chinese language, so it might be difficult to explain - but if possible, I'd be interested to find out how 'Thomas' would be transliterated (rather than just being left in Latin-script), and how it would be made clear that the characters used to spell the name where only being used for their phonetics rather than semantics.

It's been confusing me for a while...

I'm pretty sure that almost everyone here would be annoyed/bursting out laughing if every new Pokemon generation started sounding like the bootleg Vietnamese Crystal to us. This is more or less what's happening here for Hong Kong. And yes, considering how western countries are in turmoil now, there would be physical protests here, too. Don't act like this wouldn't affect you, to have Pokemon start being called... Elf's World. (LOL) Seriously, just go look up the script in Vietnamese Crystal, it'll make your day...

Then again... Maybe NoA/NoE should try it, just as a social experiment. I bet all those people who keep harping on about others being "entitled, whiny brats" would still somehow manage to lap that **** up and claim that "It represents a bold new direction for the series! If you can't deal with change, you're just a spoiled crybaby!" ...Or some other such hilarious nonsense.

"https://share.mudkip.me/d/text/text.html
I suggest everyone of you could read the article of "Pikachu name dispute"

One aspect I haven't heard anyone talk about is regioning. Many of the people in mainland China who have 3DSs got them either in Japan or Hong Kong, or through gray-market import shops that got them from there, prior to the console ban being lifted (or because they wanted to play the whole library, not just what was let through).

As such, if the Chinese release of Sun/Moon is a different "region", and won't work on Japanese 3DSs, a lot of people are going to find their purchase unusable.

The thing to note here is that Hong Kong has a very difficult and complicated and strenuous relationship with mainland China. Ever since the UK returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, China has been trying to unify Hong Kong with the rest of China, despite the fact that one of the conditions of Hong Kong's return was the right to self rule. This attempt at unification has often been at the cost of not only the rights, but also the culture of Hong Kong citizens. A major example of this is the fact that in Hong Kong, they speak Cantonese not Mandarin, and use the traditional alphabet instead of the simplified one; something which China has been trying to change, pretty much by force. So when Nintendo decides to stop localisation in Hong Kong's language in favour of that used in mainland China, Hong Kong citizens are seeing it as an outside company siding with mainland China over an issue of an erasure of culture, hence the upset. Hopefully that clarifies things a bit for a few people.