@Edu23XWiiU Thanks for confirming! I’ve watched most of the videos but not all of them (and it’s been a while since I logged onto Xitter) so I’m not fully in the loop!
It’s been clear since shortly after the series’ inception that this was conceived a singular project with a planned end, and not a new long-term career for the Smash man.
For one thing, people usually try to make money from their careers, whereas I can’t see how Sakurai has made a penny from this venture. None of the videos are monetised, and all of them require editors and translators who are presumably compensated. I can only assume he financed the entire project from his own pockets. (Correct me if I’m wrong!)
It’s really impressive that he’s managed to keep putting these videos out in such quality and quantity, and I’m sure they’ll act as a valuable resource for years to come.
I hope it’s provided him with a welcome diversion from the grind of game development and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next — if anything at all!
EDIT: See @Edu23XWiiU’s post below for less speculation and more useful information!
@Samalik The character designs date back to the original manga released is 1998, several years before the first Ace Attorney game and well over a decade before Marvel vs Capcom 3.
I don’t imagine that game — or the devs behind it — played a large a role in shaping these characters’ designs.
I must remark that I also find myself in the most phlindipitous position of being an avid imbiber of camellia sinensis var. assamica and find its effects upon the constitution to be most pronounced when enjoyed in the following manner:
Big mug of Tetley’s with two sugars and half a packet of Jammy Dodgers.
I am a worm and so my stupid tiny worm brain could not appreciate this review but I did like how the given score resembles a curly wurly worm embedded in its own midriff.
I wonder if the review copy was played before launch day patches?
I haven’t really experienced any technical hiccups either — though I don’t doubt the whole experience would be a bit slicker (especially the 3D sections) on more powerful platforms.
@Deviant-Dork Do you mean there’s no point in the book, or the review?
I’ll assume the latter (the former seems absurd).
…To which I would counter, even if the majority of NL’s readership won’t be able to read the book in its original state, this review still performs a number of useful functions.
It alerts people to the book’s existence, informs them it will likely come to western shores eventually (if the previous book is anything to go by), and also gives a thorough look at its contents.
Maybe some will want to jump the gun and buy it now. It’s full of pretty pictures, and Google Lens should at least provide a vague idea of the contents. That alone makes it work as an exotic coffee table book/collector’s item. And for those waiting for an official English release, this rundown offers a useful preview of what to expect.
Those all seem like perfectly good ‘points’ to this write-up and I’m really struggling to see what the harm is.
@GameOtaku I’m not arguing with your examples. I’m not arguing that localisations often differ, sometimes significantly, from the original.
I’m asking what AI changes about this.
Let us suppose that localisation teams and development teams are A) entirely independent and B) working in opposition to each other: that there is mutual enmity between the two groups.
Perhaps then we can envisage a scenario is which dev teams can now run their game through a computer and voila, they finally have the version of the game they want to sell to an overseas audience and GameOtaku and friends can rejoice.
But this ignores that fact that for many major game companies, the localisation and game dev teams are different arms of the same machine, often working in close collaboration.
If your argument were ‘now non-Japanese-speakers can read the original Japanese text through Google Lens and get a somewhat less nonsensical translation than before’ or ‘now fan translations can be done much quicker and we can read those instead of the official localised version’ I would completely understand.
What I don’t understand is how the advent of AI will bring official localisations closer to the original text, when these changes are very conscious and intentional to begin with.
If this is not the argument you are trying to make, please do tell me.
The way that video game companies choose to localise their games is usually a very conscious. The motives may differ depending on game and company (wanting to avoid certain age ratings in certain regions, etc.) but it’s rarely an afterthought.
It’s naïve to think that AI will magically restore cleavage in overseas games (even if the technology is capable of it) when this has never been an issue of technology.
If anything, the localisation teams being paid to do relatively ‘free’ translations are less likely to be usurped by AI than those doing relatively ‘direct’ ones because the ‘cultural issues’ they’re working around require a degree of cultural understanding that is harder to synthesise or automate.
@GameOtaku But in many cases — especially for video games — the localisation department and the development team are under the same umbrella.
The people working on the English (etc.) and Japanese versions of the Ace Attorney games are employed by the same company, work in the same city, and are in frequent contact.
The reason we get ‘localisation’ as opposed to more direct or ‘literal’ translation styles is because that it the version that company wants to sell to an overseas market.
‘Direct’ translation styles are nearly always easier to produce compared to the effort that rewriting puns, changing character names and all the other stuff that goes into a ‘localised’ product. And yet game companies have decided it’s in their interests to invest in this.
I don’t see how AI really changes this. Yes, it can produce more direct, straightforward translation styles with relative ease and increasing accuracy, but if that’s what game companies wanted, we’d already have it.
AI is a tool, but from a purely economical perspective, so are people. Between the cheap, malleable tool and the stubborn, fleshy one which asserts its rights and joins unions and digs is feet in, the former will likely win out in an unregulated system.
In order the survive the coming decades there are fundamental questions we need to to consider about the nature of production that go even deeper than AI.
We already live in an age of hyper-production, where GDP is the primary indicator of a nation’s status and success. We aspire to ever increasing growth, in spite of evidently finite and dwindling resources. We have become progressively divorced from ‘process’ and hooked on ‘product’ fed to us at volumes we can barely digest.
AI obscures and minimises the relationship between process and product further. It is a ‘black box’. Not even its creators can fully explain its workings. The line between ‘tool’ and ‘agent’ has never been more blurred.
There is undoubtably huge potential for ‘good’ in this technology, but many of its current applications seem insidious at best and downright dangerous at worst. Bad faith actors are in no short supply and now they have a powerful and accessible new toy.
The revolution is underway. Here’s hoping we can adapt, even if that means challenging some long-held assumptions and societal priorities.
@littlegreenbob I’m pretty sure that’s referring to the frame type rather than the contents of the picture itself!
You can see decorative sakura petals to the top right and bottom left of the picture, but they’re just part of the frame. Notice their absence in the picture with the ‘Inked’ frame (which is instead a bit ‘blotchy’ around the edges).
@RiccyBobby @CazSonOfCaz The flowers pictured are hydrangeas, not cherry blossoms!
They could have started by teaching the specific vocabulary for ‘hydrangea’ (アジサイ/紫陽花) before ‘flower’ (花) but it’d be a bit like learning to run before you can walk.
I suppose my main point, if I have one, is that ‘you can’t please everyone’. It’s less about accusing a specific individual of hypocrisy, and more about pointing out how difficult is it to appease ‘gamers’ as a whole.
Perhaps this is such an obvious point that it doesn’t need stating, but I had my fun with a little tongue-in-cheek comment.
Also, I took issue with the statement, “no one asked for this”. Obviously no one specifically asked for Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club — just as no one is currently requesting Bimbee’s Bodacious Adventures in Bagland for PS6 — but it seems worth pointing out that Emio does actually fulfil a lot of requests people have been making for a while: it has a mature theme, it explores Nintendo’s legacy, and it’s relatively novel (in every sense).
It might not be a AAAA blockbuster, but I personally think it’s neat that Nintendo can explore old franchises that people assumed were dead (or never knew about in the first place). If anything, it gives me hope that F-Zero and Star Fox haven’t been written off entirely. And the fact that it’s not a AAAA blockbuster means it probably wasn’t too resource intensive to make.
@WaffleRaptor01 To be fair, I don’t think playing Shadow the Hedgehog — the internet’s favourite one-dimensional edge-lord — really demands much ‘range or versatility’.
In that respect you could argue it’s a perfect casting.
@WhiteUmbrella I doubt they’ll cover the every inch of the museum so there should still be plenty left to enjoy in person.
Nintendo has spent years building this thing so it’s natural they want to promote it as widely as possible with an online broadcast.
‘Nintendo Direct’ is just the name Nintendo give to their online broadcasts. It’s established branding and there doesn’t seem much point in creating a whole new term specifically for broadcasts about museums.
Equally, it’s hard to promote a museum without taking a look inside the building: that is, giving a ‘tour’ of some description.
Yes, Nintendo usually promotes games with its Directs because Nintendo is fundamentally a games company. But not exclusively so. The only reason why ‘film’ and ‘museum’ Directs aren’t that common is that Nintendo films and museums aren’t that common.
Just make all the cards Double Colorless Energy cards because you can’t detect them even with a scanner because they are not just colorless but double colorless and even if you could scan for them there’s no point because you know all the cards are just Double Colorless Energy cards anyway.
@Ade117 The games are technically available to a worldwide audience as soon as they’re released on the eShop (with the caveat that you might need to make an account for that region). The barriers to accessing games from around the world have arguably never been lower.
The sticking point is language. Localising a game takes time and money; the exact amount depending on the quantity of text and the quality of translation.
Capcom has a sizeable in-house team who produce extremely high-quality localisations which no doubt pay for themselves thanks to the increased global audience the games are afforded.
In contrast, Genius Sonority has only 22 staff in total and I’d be surprised if any of them worked on localisation full time. I don’t know exactly how the latest Denpa Men game came to be localised, but my guess is that not a lot of money was spent, and… well, the results speak for themselves. It’s on another level when compared to something like The Great Ace Attorney.
I’m sure Konami could localise the Momotaro Dentetsu series, but they didn’t seem to consider it financially viable given the potentially niche appeal of the game to an overseas audience. And to be honest, I can’t really blame them.
In an ideal world every game would be localised into every language — and I hope more games get localised in general — but ultimately it’s a financial decision and there will always be always games that deemed ‘too niche’ to warrant the expenditure (even they’re popular in their home country).
I recall a certain Nintendo developer saying they start with a fundamental gameplay idea and build from there. If a certain IP fits the idea, they’ll use that. If it demands and an entirely new IP (like Splatoon, which went from tofu blocks to rabbits to squid kids) then they’ll develop the IP around the core concept.
It seems a lot of modern media takes the opposite approach: start with an IP, try to haphazardly bodge it into something resembling entertainment, then hope it sells on brand power alone.
Sometimes it works. (The Lego Movie, Barbie). More often than not it doesn’t. (Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider, Warcraft, Ratchet and Clank, Sonic, etc.)
We’ll see how the Twister and Battleships movies pan out. I don’t have particularly high hopes.
@Oppyz666 @Vivianeat The services won’t end. You can keep playing Splatoon 3.
The Splatfests are fun little events to get excited over, but really they’re just turf war with a fresh lick of paint + a voting system. Neat, but hardly fundamental to the core experience.
There were nine years between the original Splatoon’s release and its online services being shut down. Given the amount of content packed into that game, I hardly felt short changed. Who knows how long it’ll be into the Switch‘s successors’ life before the OG Switch’s online services get pulled, but I reckon will we’ll be able to play Splatoon 3 for a good while yet.
@Samalik I sympathise with your living situation and appreciate that learning a language is not something that happens overnight. It would be disingenuous to say ‘just go learn the language’ and leave it at that.
It is, however, a necessity if one demands a translation that is 100% faithful to the original text. For the only possible translation that meets this criterium is in fact not a translation at all: it is the original text. Translation is by definition an act of change.
Yakuza/Like a Dragon is an interesting example because of the sub/dub options. This brings it closer to media like TV shows/films than largely text-based media like novels.
Subbing and dubbing are notably different forms of translation with different goals and demands:
Subbing requires that the text be clear, easy to understand, and unobtrusive. It doesn’t matter how detailed and accurate the translation is if the viewer can’t read and digest it before the next line comes in. It should distract from the video as little as possible, which is why translated subs are generally more concise than the original spoken line. They’re aiming to be comprehensible, not comprehensive.
In contrast, the main demand on dubs is that they sounds natural when spoken by a human being in the context of the video. Timing is vital when conveying comedy, suspense, or even just the flow of basic conversation. Mess it up and everything sounds stilted and weird.
I’m sure you don’t need another essay — especially not on the minutiae of different translation styles — but the point is this: LaD has two translations because it’s closer to an interactive movie than a visual novel. This allows for separate dubbed and subbed versions, each with different characteristics. I don’t think the point was just to provide ‘strict’ and ‘free’ localisations for different audiences.
It’s not impossible that Ace Attorney could turn into something similarly cinematic — necessitating a sub/dub split — but… it does seem like a lot to ask.
Anyway, sorry for another essay. I just find this stuff really interesting and happen to have time on my hands for the first time in a while… which I’ve clearly decided to spend arguing with strangers on the internet.
I hope your living situation gets a little less messy and frustrating! Huge walls of text probably won’t help, but… well, yeah, sorry!
@boxyguy This seems a very balanced take. I’m certainly not arguing that the official localisation is the one, ‘true’ way of representing these games in English — and it’s clear that Capcom have shot themselves in the foot with a few of their earlier decisions. But they’ve regained composure and the series’ inherent silliness helps smooth out most of the bumps.
Ultimately Capcom wants to sell its games beyond the domestic market, and wants the games to sell well. The characters ‘Phoenix Wright’ and ‘Miles Edgeworth’ have worked their way into the hearts of millions of fans worldwide. Perhaps NARUHODŌ Ryūichi and MITSURUGI Reiji (names not written in western order to minimise risk of ~localisation~) could have done the same. We’ll never know. But the Anglicised names don’t seem to have hurt their success.
I’m afraid I took the words ‘original text’ to mean ‘original text’. If you’re implying that I should have interpreted your statement more loosely so as to infer what you ‘meant’ rather than what you ‘said’, then you’re essentially making an argument for a freer, less literal translation — which is exactly the sort of the thing you’re purporting to be against.
Perhaps Capcom should be exclusively pandering to the Venn-diagram intersection of ’weebs who are very passionate about Japanese culture’ and ’weebs who are not sufficiently passionate about Japanese culture to bother learning the language’. Instead, they seem more interested in writing silly puns and likeable characters that actually make sense in the target language.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t being entirely facetious when I pointed out that this game does contain the original Japanese text. I genuinely thought it might be useful. (For one thing, this is not consistent across AA games: the 123 Collection is fully multilingual, whereas the language options for Great Ace Attorney Collection vary by region.)
You could feasibly play this game with Japanese text and read it through Google Lens. It would be slightly cumbersome, but would get you a more literal (if at times nonsensical) translation.
Or you could harness your apparent ‘keenness’ for all things Japanese and take up learning the language. This game would be a good study aid and you’d finally be able to enjoy the ‘original text’ in its unadulterated glory.
@Samalik I believe the game does contain the original text. The official website lists the supported languages as ‘Japanese, English, French, German, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese’ so you should be able to switch your system settings and play it with in the original Japanese text!
If by ‘original text’ you mean ‘a completely different text’ (i.e. English or another language written in Latin script) but want some form of ‘pure’ or ‘unadulterated’ translation, then I would recommend reading David Bellos’ book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear.
Translation is in itself an act of radical change. It involves uprooting something and attempting to graft it onto a completely different object. It’s a fascinating, frustrating, meaningful, and above all, messy endeavour.
Sometimes that messiness can cause issues. There are many examples of ‘heavy handed’ localisations which can end up backfiring as a series develops. You could fairly argue that recasting the original AA games in a western setting was a bridge too far, leading to continuity issues down the line. I feel there’s room for legitimate debate on that.
What doesn’t leave much room for debate is that idea that there can be such thing as a 100% pure, unadulterated, genuinely meaningful translation of a game of this scale. You’re basically asking someone to translate it for you without translating it, so you can understand the ‘original text’ without having to learn the meaning of the original text.
Games, err… ’exist in the context of all in which they live (?) and what came before them’. They are ultimately remembered for their impact — both on individuals and the industry as a whole.
The superlatives surrounding BotW basically wrote themselves (’legendary’, ‘a breath of fresh air’, etc.). Not everyone loved it, but it left an undeniable mark on the gaming landscape.
Tears was never going to match that, no matter how neat the crafting mechanics. It also happened to launch in the same year as a game that, much like Breath, shifted expectations for what was possible in its genre.
TotK was clearly a labour of love and has a lot of fine features. But it doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t top nearly as ‘Game of the Year’ lists as its predecessor.
I think a character can still be ‘expressive’ while still leaving room for the player’s own personality.
Wind Waker Link with his big googly cat eyes is one of the most expressive protagonists out there, despite not having a single line of spoken dialogue.
@Hck I suppose the key difference is that Nintendo literally invented this sport and the players are playing at the World Championships on the company’s terms. They made the game; they make the rules. And if one of the rules is, ‘don’t be racist’ then the competitors just have to suck it up.
The entire competition is a PR exercise for the sport and the company, and anyone who wins the tournament is automatically a ‘brand ambassador’ — whether that was their initial intention or not. If they can’t represent the brand by… say, not being openly racist, then the brand is at liberty to cut ties and do what it can to erase them from its records.
One can try to argue against this decision on ethical grounds (though it’s difficult to find solid ethical footing for blatant racism), but ultimately this is about business. And business rarely bends.
Nintendo, as a brand, seemingly doesn’t want to be associated with open racism. As a brand ambassador, it would be pertinent to keep that in mind.
If it were 100% machine translated there shouldn’t be any spelling errors like ‘wituout’. I imagine there’s a degree of human input, but I also imagine the human in question isn’t fully at home in the English language.
We’ve already had this for years, but with the added functionality of grips.
If this new device charged multiple sets of Joy-Cons then I might be tempted, but I can’t see what this does that a charging grip doesn’t!
EDIT: @Not_Soos Yes!
ANOTHER EDIT: Oooooh! You can’t stick the Famicon controllers in the charging grips! I imagine that’s why this is being released now, and currently only in Japan*.
The Japanese physical edition of the Famicon World Championships comes bundled with controllers that won’t fit the standard grips. This provides a charging option other than directly connecting them to the device itself. Standard Joy-Cons have had better charging alternatives for ages (which is why I don’t think this comes ‘late’) so it must be the expected uptick in Famicontrollers that has caused this rather niche product to be released.
YET ANOTHER EDIT: *This is now also shown to be false.
@Liam_Doolan I think it’s worth mentioning that the Japanese text 笑み男 reads ‘Emio’ and that ‘Emio’ means ‘smiling man’.
…More or less. I mean, if you asked someone to backtranslate ‘smiling man’ into Japanese you’d probably get ‘笑っている男’ (waratteiru otoko) which would be pronounced very differently, but you can see that the first and last characters are the same!
Anyway, the point is that the text at the end is just ‘Emio’ written in Japanese — not really new information.
Comments 2,986
Re: Masahiro Sakurai's Excellent YouTube Series Is Coming To An End This Month
@Edu23XWiiU Thanks for confirming! I’ve watched most of the videos but not all of them (and it’s been a while since I logged onto Xitter) so I’m not fully in the loop!
Re: Masahiro Sakurai's Excellent YouTube Series Is Coming To An End This Month
It’s been clear since shortly after the series’ inception that this was conceived a singular project with a planned end, and not a new long-term career for the Smash man.
For one thing, people usually try to make money from their careers, whereas I can’t see how Sakurai has made a penny from this venture. None of the videos are monetised, and all of them require editors and translators who are presumably compensated. I can only assume he financed the entire project from his own pockets. (Correct me if I’m wrong!)
It’s really impressive that he’s managed to keep putting these videos out in such quality and quantity, and I’m sure they’ll act as a valuable resource for years to come.
I hope it’s provided him with a welcome diversion from the grind of game development and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next — if anything at all!
EDIT: See @Edu23XWiiU’s post below for less speculation and more useful information!
Re: Hunter x Hunter's Fighting Game Delayed Until 2025, Now Adding Rollback Netcode
@Samalik The character designs date back to the original manga released is 1998, several years before the first Ace Attorney game and well over a decade before Marvel vs Capcom 3.
I don’t imagine that game — or the devs behind it — played a large a role in shaping these characters’ designs.
Re: Feature: Here's 10 Games We Played At TGS 2024 Coming To Switch
@HammerGalladeBro I was thinking the same thing. Might be worth tagging @Lowell to confirm.
Re: Indie Game 'Ahro' Launches With A Community Giveaway For Japanese Tea
I must remark that I also find myself in the most phlindipitous position of being an avid imbiber of camellia sinensis var. assamica and find its effects upon the constitution to be most pronounced when enjoyed in the following manner:
Big mug of Tetley’s with two sugars and half a packet of Jammy Dodgers.
Re: Miyamoto: Nintendo Won't Be Opening Museums In Other Locations
@KBuckley27 Compared to the last few decades or so, this is probably an entirely accurate statement. The yen is not exactly strong right now.
Re: Review: Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition (Switch) - Digital Eclipse Unearths Another Total Classic
I am a worm and so my stupid tiny worm brain could not appreciate this review but I did like how the given score resembles a curly wurly worm embedded in its own midriff.
Re: Sonic Adventure 2's Biolizard Is Getting A LEGO Set
@DripDropCop146 I’ll get you the LEGO set if you give me your first born Chao.
Re: Video: SEGA Celebrates 'Batman Day' With Shadow The Hedgehog
Shatman is now officially a thing.
Re: Review: The Plucky Squire (Switch) - Enormously Charming, But Not So Plucky On Switch
I wonder if the review copy was played before launch day patches?
I haven’t really experienced any technical hiccups either — though I don’t doubt the whole experience would be a bit slicker (especially the 3D sections) on more powerful platforms.
Re: Nintendo Download: 12th September (North America)
@rjejr To be fair, they made it the cover picture for this article and have done exclusive features/interviews on the game previously.
I must admit I was expecting a bit more pre-release fanfare though — the game has snuck up on me!
Re: Japanese Charts: Switch Dominates As PS5 Price Hike Kills Momentum
@johnedwin Europe is not a bigger gaming market then Japan.
…
…It is a bigger gaming market than Japan.
Re: Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition Physical Switch Release Confirmed
Can you have @Robokku review this so we all get to be called worms again?
Re: Konami Reveals More Game Boy Titles For Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection
C’mon Konami, give us Donkey Kong 94 already!
DK was never the same after you turned him into a spiky haired Egyptian anime boy/man/god/thing.
Re: Book Review: The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: Master Works - Monumental, But Still Leaves Questions
@Deviant-Dork Do you mean there’s no point in the book, or the review?
I’ll assume the latter (the former seems absurd).
…To which I would counter, even if the majority of NL’s readership won’t be able to read the book in its original state, this review still performs a number of useful functions.
It alerts people to the book’s existence, informs them it will likely come to western shores eventually (if the previous book is anything to go by), and also gives a thorough look at its contents.
Maybe some will want to jump the gun and buy it now. It’s full of pretty pictures, and Google Lens should at least provide a vague idea of the contents. That alone makes it work as an exotic coffee table book/collector’s item. And for those waiting for an official English release, this rundown offers a useful preview of what to expect.
Those all seem like perfectly good ‘points’ to this write-up and I’m really struggling to see what the harm is.
Re: Bayonetta Star Jennifer Hale On The SAG-AFTRA Strikes: "AI Is Coming For Us All"
@GameOtaku I’m not arguing with your examples. I’m not arguing that localisations often differ, sometimes significantly, from the original.
I’m asking what AI changes about this.
Let us suppose that localisation teams and development teams are A) entirely independent and B) working in opposition to each other: that there is mutual enmity between the two groups.
Perhaps then we can envisage a scenario is which dev teams can now run their game through a computer and voila, they finally have the version of the game they want to sell to an overseas audience and GameOtaku and friends can rejoice.
But this ignores that fact that for many major game companies, the localisation and game dev teams are different arms of the same machine, often working in close collaboration.
If your argument were ‘now non-Japanese-speakers can read the original Japanese text through Google Lens and get a somewhat less nonsensical translation than before’ or ‘now fan translations can be done much quicker and we can read those instead of the official localised version’ I would completely understand.
What I don’t understand is how the advent of AI will bring official localisations closer to the original text, when these changes are very conscious and intentional to begin with.
If this is not the argument you are trying to make, please do tell me.
Re: Bayonetta Star Jennifer Hale On The SAG-AFTRA Strikes: "AI Is Coming For Us All"
@GameOtaku I still don’t understand how the existence of AI reduces the degree of creative freedom that companies afford their localisation teams.
It’s not as if humanity has been unable to differentiate between a relatively ‘direct’ translation and a relatively ‘free’ one until the advent of AI.
(I’ll try not to say ‘literal’ as a literal literal translation would end up sounding something like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/BxF6yvAH6oY?feature=shared)
The way that video game companies choose to localise their games is usually a very conscious. The motives may differ depending on game and company (wanting to avoid certain age ratings in certain regions, etc.) but it’s rarely an afterthought.
It’s naïve to think that AI will magically restore cleavage in overseas games (even if the technology is capable of it) when this has never been an issue of technology.
If anything, the localisation teams being paid to do relatively ‘free’ translations are less likely to be usurped by AI than those doing relatively ‘direct’ ones because the ‘cultural issues’ they’re working around require a degree of cultural understanding that is harder to synthesise or automate.
Re: Bayonetta Star Jennifer Hale On The SAG-AFTRA Strikes: "AI Is Coming For Us All"
@GameOtaku But in many cases — especially for video games — the localisation department and the development team are under the same umbrella.
The people working on the English (etc.) and Japanese versions of the Ace Attorney games are employed by the same company, work in the same city, and are in frequent contact.
The reason we get ‘localisation’ as opposed to more direct or ‘literal’ translation styles is because that it the version that company wants to sell to an overseas market.
‘Direct’ translation styles are nearly always easier to produce compared to the effort that rewriting puns, changing character names and all the other stuff that goes into a ‘localised’ product. And yet game companies have decided it’s in their interests to invest in this.
I don’t see how AI really changes this. Yes, it can produce more direct, straightforward translation styles with relative ease and increasing accuracy, but if that’s what game companies wanted, we’d already have it.
Re: Bayonetta Star Jennifer Hale On The SAG-AFTRA Strikes: "AI Is Coming For Us All"
AI is a tool, but from a purely economical perspective, so are people. Between the cheap, malleable tool and the stubborn, fleshy one which asserts its rights and joins unions and digs is feet in, the former will likely win out in an unregulated system.
In order the survive the coming decades there are fundamental questions we need to to consider about the nature of production that go even deeper than AI.
We already live in an age of hyper-production, where GDP is the primary indicator of a nation’s status and success. We aspire to ever increasing growth, in spite of evidently finite and dwindling resources. We have become progressively divorced from ‘process’ and hooked on ‘product’ fed to us at volumes we can barely digest.
AI obscures and minimises the relationship between process and product further. It is a ‘black box’. Not even its creators can fully explain its workings. The line between ‘tool’ and ‘agent’ has never been more blurred.
There is undoubtably huge potential for ‘good’ in this technology, but many of its current applications seem insidious at best and downright dangerous at worst. Bad faith actors are in no short supply and now they have a powerful and accessible new toy.
The revolution is underway. Here’s hoping we can adapt, even if that means challenging some long-held assumptions and societal priorities.
Re: Mini Review: Can Of Wormholes (Switch) - A Very Worm Welcome For This Ingenious Puzzler
Haven’t felt this well represented in a video game since the Worms series of video games which featured a great many worms.
Those games worm my favourite games of all time on account of all the worms I could relate to as a fellow worm.
Hopefully we don’t get blown up as much in this game.
Re: 'Shashingo: Learn Japanese With Photography' Snaps Up September Release Date On Switch
@CazSonOfCaz ‘Sakura’ is one of the themes for the photo frames. You can see decorative cherry blossom petals around the corners of the picture.
The ‘Inked’ theme of the other frame is more subtle but you can see it’s kind of blotchy and ’artsy’ at the top and bottom.
The game lets you personalise your snapshots with various border themes.
Re: 'Shashingo: Learn Japanese With Photography' Snaps Up September Release Date On Switch
@littlegreenbob I’m pretty sure that’s referring to the frame type rather than the contents of the picture itself!
You can see decorative sakura petals to the top right and bottom left of the picture, but they’re just part of the frame. Notice their absence in the picture with the ‘Inked’ frame (which is instead a bit ‘blotchy’ around the edges).
Re: 'Shashingo: Learn Japanese With Photography' Snaps Up September Release Date On Switch
@RiccyBobby @CazSonOfCaz The flowers pictured are hydrangeas, not cherry blossoms!
They could have started by teaching the specific vocabulary for ‘hydrangea’ (アジサイ/紫陽花) before ‘flower’ (花) but it’d be a bit like learning to run before you can walk.
Re: Review: Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Switch) - A Stylish Mystery With One Foot In The Past
@Bratwurst35 You are, of course, correct.
I suppose my main point, if I have one, is that ‘you can’t please everyone’. It’s less about accusing a specific individual of hypocrisy, and more about pointing out how difficult is it to appease ‘gamers’ as a whole.
Perhaps this is such an obvious point that it doesn’t need stating, but I had my fun with a little tongue-in-cheek comment.
Also, I took issue with the statement, “no one asked for this”. Obviously no one specifically asked for Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club — just as no one is currently requesting Bimbee’s Bodacious Adventures in Bagland for PS6 — but it seems worth pointing out that Emio does actually fulfil a lot of requests people have been making for a while: it has a mature theme, it explores Nintendo’s legacy, and it’s relatively novel (in every sense).
It might not be a AAAA blockbuster, but I personally think it’s neat that Nintendo can explore old franchises that people assumed were dead (or never knew about in the first place). If anything, it gives me hope that F-Zero and Star Fox haven’t been written off entirely. And the fact that it’s not a AAAA blockbuster means it probably wasn’t too resource intensive to make.
There are plenty more games to go around.
Re: Review: Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (Switch) - A Stylish Mystery With One Foot In The Past
“Nintendo should branch out into more mature games”
“Nintendo should do more with their legacy content”
Nintendo releases an M-rated sequel to a series of Famicom detective games.
“…Nintendo should stop doing those things and give us Star Fox Zero To The Power of Zero instead”
Re: Sonic The Hedgehog 3 Movie Trailer Finally Reveals Keanu Reeves' Shadow
@WaffleRaptor01 To be fair, I don’t think playing Shadow the Hedgehog — the internet’s favourite one-dimensional edge-lord — really demands much ‘range or versatility’.
In that respect you could argue it’s a perfect casting.
Re: Hands On: Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club - Rated M For 'Murder'
@N0SEGaming Rated W for Whoosh.
Re: Nintendo Announces 'Nintendo Museum Direct'
@WhiteUmbrella I doubt they’ll cover the every inch of the museum so there should still be plenty left to enjoy in person.
Nintendo has spent years building this thing so it’s natural they want to promote it as widely as possible with an online broadcast.
‘Nintendo Direct’ is just the name Nintendo give to their online broadcasts. It’s established branding and there doesn’t seem much point in creating a whole new term specifically for broadcasts about museums.
Equally, it’s hard to promote a museum without taking a look inside the building: that is, giving a ‘tour’ of some description.
Yes, Nintendo usually promotes games with its Directs because Nintendo is fundamentally a games company. But not exclusively so. The only reason why ‘film’ and ‘museum’ Directs aren’t that common is that Nintendo films and museums aren’t that common.
Re: Feature: Here’s How Trading Card Companies Could Stop CT Scanning In The Future
Just make all the cards Double Colorless Energy cards because you can’t detect them even with a scanner because they are not just colorless but double colorless and even if you could scan for them there’s no point because you know all the cards are just Double Colorless Energy cards anyway.
Re: 'Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club' ESRB Rating Summary Reveals Horrific Themes
@JohnnyMind I also found the claim that “糞/くそ doesn’t literally mean sh*t” strange, given… that’s exactly what it means.
…At least insofar as ‘exact’ equivalents exist between languages.
I don’t believe there’s any English word closer to ‘糞‘ than ‘sh*t’ or any Japanese word closer to ‘sh*t’ than ‘糞’.
…Maybe ‘crap’? But you’re really splitting hairs at that point.
Maybe I shouldn’t give a 糞, but it did seem rather odd statement to make, especially seeing as it can be so easily fact-checked.
Re: Good-Feel's Goemon-Inspired Switch Game 'Bakeru' Is Getting Localised
@Ade117 The games are technically available to a worldwide audience as soon as they’re released on the eShop (with the caveat that you might need to make an account for that region). The barriers to accessing games from around the world have arguably never been lower.
The sticking point is language. Localising a game takes time and money; the exact amount depending on the quantity of text and the quality of translation.
Capcom has a sizeable in-house team who produce extremely high-quality localisations which no doubt pay for themselves thanks to the increased global audience the games are afforded.
In contrast, Genius Sonority has only 22 staff in total and I’d be surprised if any of them worked on localisation full time. I don’t know exactly how the latest Denpa Men game came to be localised, but my guess is that not a lot of money was spent, and… well, the results speak for themselves. It’s on another level when compared to something like The Great Ace Attorney.
I’m sure Konami could localise the Momotaro Dentetsu series, but they didn’t seem to consider it financially viable given the potentially niche appeal of the game to an overseas audience. And to be honest, I can’t really blame them.
In an ideal world every game would be localised into every language — and I hope more games get localised in general — but ultimately it’s a financial decision and there will always be always games that deemed ‘too niche’ to warrant the expenditure (even they’re popular in their home country).
Re: Round Up: The First Impressions Of The Borderlands Movie Are In
I recall a certain Nintendo developer saying they start with a fundamental gameplay idea and build from there. If a certain IP fits the idea, they’ll use that. If it demands and an entirely new IP (like Splatoon, which went from tofu blocks to rabbits to squid kids) then they’ll develop the IP around the core concept.
It seems a lot of modern media takes the opposite approach: start with an IP, try to haphazardly bodge it into something resembling entertainment, then hope it sells on brand power alone.
Sometimes it works. (The Lego Movie, Barbie). More often than not it doesn’t. (Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider, Warcraft, Ratchet and Clank, Sonic, etc.)
We’ll see how the Twister and Battleships movies pan out. I don’t have particularly high hopes.
Re: Warner Bros. Is Reportedly Looking To Sell A Stake In Its Games Business
Suicide Squad at least lived up to its name. They sent that game out to die and killed much more than the Justice League in the process.
Re: Random: Everybody 1-2-Switch! Was A Best-Seller In July 2024
BREAKING NEWS: Somebody 1-2-Switched
Re: Feature: The Next Splatfest May Decide Splatoon 4's Future, So We Make A Case For Every Team
@Oppyz666 @Vivianeat The services won’t end. You can keep playing Splatoon 3.
The Splatfests are fun little events to get excited over, but really they’re just turf war with a fresh lick of paint + a voting system. Neat, but hardly fundamental to the core experience.
There were nine years between the original Splatoon’s release and its online services being shut down. Given the amount of content packed into that game, I hardly felt short changed. Who knows how long it’ll be into the Switch‘s successors’ life before the OG Switch’s online services get pulled, but I reckon will we’ll be able to play Splatoon 3 for a good while yet.
Re: Review: LEGO Animal Crossing - K.K.'s Concert At The Plaza - A Pleasing But Pricey Set
@dartmonkey
Unless Lego debit is a new form of brick-based currency, I believe there might be a small typo in the first paragraph!
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@Samalik I sympathise with your living situation and appreciate that learning a language is not something that happens overnight. It would be disingenuous to say ‘just go learn the language’ and leave it at that.
It is, however, a necessity if one demands a translation that is 100% faithful to the original text. For the only possible translation that meets this criterium is in fact not a translation at all: it is the original text. Translation is by definition an act of change.
Yakuza/Like a Dragon is an interesting example because of the sub/dub options. This brings it closer to media like TV shows/films than largely text-based media like novels.
Subbing and dubbing are notably different forms of translation with different goals and demands:
Subbing requires that the text be clear, easy to understand, and unobtrusive. It doesn’t matter how detailed and accurate the translation is if the viewer can’t read and digest it before the next line comes in. It should distract from the video as little as possible, which is why translated subs are generally more concise than the original spoken line. They’re aiming to be comprehensible, not comprehensive.
In contrast, the main demand on dubs is that they sounds natural when spoken by a human being in the context of the video. Timing is vital when conveying comedy, suspense, or even just the flow of basic conversation. Mess it up and everything sounds stilted and weird.
I’m sure you don’t need another essay — especially not on the minutiae of different translation styles — but the point is this: LaD has two translations because it’s closer to an interactive movie than a visual novel. This allows for separate dubbed and subbed versions, each with different characteristics. I don’t think the point was just to provide ‘strict’ and ‘free’ localisations for different audiences.
It’s not impossible that Ace Attorney could turn into something similarly cinematic — necessitating a sub/dub split — but… it does seem like a lot to ask.
Anyway, sorry for another essay. I just find this stuff really interesting and happen to have time on my hands for the first time in a while… which I’ve clearly decided to spend arguing with strangers on the internet.
I hope your living situation gets a little less messy and frustrating! Huge walls of text probably won’t help, but… well, yeah, sorry!
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@boxyguy This seems a very balanced take. I’m certainly not arguing that the official localisation is the one, ‘true’ way of representing these games in English — and it’s clear that Capcom have shot themselves in the foot with a few of their earlier decisions. But they’ve regained composure and the series’ inherent silliness helps smooth out most of the bumps.
Ultimately Capcom wants to sell its games beyond the domestic market, and wants the games to sell well. The characters ‘Phoenix Wright’ and ‘Miles Edgeworth’ have worked their way into the hearts of millions of fans worldwide. Perhaps NARUHODŌ Ryūichi and MITSURUGI Reiji (names not written in western order to minimise risk of ~localisation~) could have done the same. We’ll never know. But the Anglicised names don’t seem to have hurt their success.
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@Samalik
I’m afraid I took the words ‘original text’ to mean ‘original text’. If you’re implying that I should have interpreted your statement more loosely so as to infer what you ‘meant’ rather than what you ‘said’, then you’re essentially making an argument for a freer, less literal translation — which is exactly the sort of the thing you’re purporting to be against.
Perhaps Capcom should be exclusively pandering to the Venn-diagram intersection of ’weebs who are very passionate about Japanese culture’ and ’weebs who are not sufficiently passionate about Japanese culture to bother learning the language’. Instead, they seem more interested in writing silly puns and likeable characters that actually make sense in the target language.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t being entirely facetious when I pointed out that this game does contain the original Japanese text. I genuinely thought it might be useful. (For one thing, this is not consistent across AA games: the 123 Collection is fully multilingual, whereas the language options for Great Ace Attorney Collection vary by region.)
You could feasibly play this game with Japanese text and read it through Google Lens. It would be slightly cumbersome, but would get you a more literal (if at times nonsensical) translation.
Or you could harness your apparent ‘keenness’ for all things Japanese and take up learning the language. This game would be a good study aid and you’d finally be able to enjoy the ‘original text’ in its unadulterated glory.
Re: Hands On: 'Ace Attorney Investigations Collection' Devs Discuss California Rolls, Chibi Sprites & Puns
@Samalik I believe the game does contain the original text. The official website lists the supported languages as ‘Japanese, English, French, German, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese’ so you should be able to switch your system settings and play it with in the original Japanese text!
If by ‘original text’ you mean ‘a completely different text’ (i.e. English or another language written in Latin script) but want some form of ‘pure’ or ‘unadulterated’ translation, then I would recommend reading David Bellos’ book, Is That a Fish in Your Ear.
Translation is in itself an act of radical change. It involves uprooting something and attempting to graft it onto a completely different object. It’s a fascinating, frustrating, meaningful, and above all, messy endeavour.
Sometimes that messiness can cause issues. There are many examples of ‘heavy handed’ localisations which can end up backfiring as a series develops. You could fairly argue that recasting the original AA games in a western setting was a bridge too far, leading to continuity issues down the line. I feel there’s room for legitimate debate on that.
What doesn’t leave much room for debate is that idea that there can be such thing as a 100% pure, unadulterated, genuinely meaningful translation of a game of this scale. You’re basically asking someone to translate it for you without translating it, so you can understand the ‘original text’ without having to learn the meaning of the original text.
Re: Review: Thank Goodness You're Here! (Switch) - A Face-Achingly Funny British Romp
@CartoonDan Depends on your feelings towards soggy bottoms.
Re: Review: The New Denpa Men (Switch) - A Simple, Goofy RPG With The Usual F2P Irritations
An underwhelming (if broadly inoffensive) game, but a really nice (and entirely inoffensive) review.
Probably won’t play the game, but I’m glad I got to enjoy the read!
Re: Soapbox: 20 Years After His Last Mainline Appearance, Tingle Deserves A Comeback
tingle is
#YearOfTingle #2025 #GoGoGreenFairyMan
Re: Random: Zelda: TOTK Meets Super Mario 64 In Latest Ridiculous Ultrahand Creation
@Ralizah Exceptionally well put.
Games, err… ’exist in the context of all in which they live (?) and what came before them’. They are ultimately remembered for their impact — both on individuals and the industry as a whole.
The superlatives surrounding BotW basically wrote themselves (’legendary’, ‘a breath of fresh air’, etc.). Not everyone loved it, but it left an undeniable mark on the gaming landscape.
Tears was never going to match that, no matter how neat the crafting mechanics. It also happened to launch in the same year as a game that, much like Breath, shifted expectations for what was possible in its genre.
TotK was clearly a labour of love and has a lot of fine features. But it doesn’t surprise me that it didn’t top nearly as ‘Game of the Year’ lists as its predecessor.
Re: Dragon Quest Creator On The Challenge Of Silent Protagonists In Modern Gaming
I think a character can still be ‘expressive’ while still leaving room for the player’s own personality.
Wind Waker Link with his big googly cat eyes is one of the most expressive protagonists out there, despite not having a single line of spoken dialogue.
Re: Nintendo Strips Team Jackpot Of Splatoon 3 World Championship Win
@Hck I suppose the key difference is that Nintendo literally invented this sport and the players are playing at the World Championships on the company’s terms. They made the game; they make the rules. And if one of the rules is, ‘don’t be racist’ then the competitors just have to suck it up.
The entire competition is a PR exercise for the sport and the company, and anyone who wins the tournament is automatically a ‘brand ambassador’ — whether that was their initial intention or not. If they can’t represent the brand by… say, not being openly racist, then the brand is at liberty to cut ties and do what it can to erase them from its records.
One can try to argue against this decision on ethical grounds (though it’s difficult to find solid ethical footing for blatant racism), but ultimately this is about business. And business rarely bends.
Nintendo, as a brand, seemingly doesn’t want to be associated with open racism. As a brand ambassador, it would be pertinent to keep that in mind.
Re: Random: The New Denpa Men Is Getting Roasted For Its Translation Issues
If it were 100% machine translated there shouldn’t be any spelling errors like ‘wituout’. I imagine there’s a degree of human input, but I also imagine the human in question isn’t fully at home in the English language.
Re: Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition Hololive VTuber Tournament Announced
@Liam_Doolan
Minor spelling error in one of the tube… people’s names, I believe: Shirakami Fubki → Shirakami Fubuki
Re: Nintendo Announces Official Switch Joy-Con Charging Stand
https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en/nintendo-switch-joy-con-charging-grip-000000000002510566
We’ve already had this for years, but with the added functionality of grips.
If this new device charged multiple sets of Joy-Cons then I might be tempted, but I can’t see what this does that a charging grip doesn’t!
EDIT: @Not_Soos Yes!
ANOTHER EDIT: Oooooh! You can’t stick the Famicon controllers in the charging grips! I imagine that’s why this is being released now, and currently only in Japan*.
The Japanese physical edition of the Famicon World Championships comes bundled with controllers that won’t fit the standard grips. This provides a charging option other than directly connecting them to the device itself. Standard Joy-Cons have had better charging alternatives for ages (which is why I don’t think this comes ‘late’) so it must be the expected uptick in Famicontrollers that has caused this rather niche product to be released.
YET ANOTHER EDIT: *This is now also shown to be false.
Re: 'Emio' Includes A Lot Of Horrific Mature Themes, According To Its Rating
@Liam_Doolan I think it’s worth mentioning that the Japanese text 笑み男 reads ‘Emio’ and that ‘Emio’ means ‘smiling man’.
…More or less. I mean, if you asked someone to backtranslate ‘smiling man’ into Japanese you’d probably get ‘笑っている男’ (waratteiru otoko) which would be pronounced very differently, but you can see that the first and last characters are the same!
Anyway, the point is that the text at the end is just ‘Emio’ written in Japanese — not really new information.