• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Aug 26, 2018
3,732
日本
I'm going to have to go with if it's subs only, maybe. It'd be congruent with what people are hearing. But, even then, it's shaky because...
i remember the first time i played persona 4 i didn't know what -chan -kun or senpai meant. i was so confused lol

The point is to make things easily understandable. Just rewrite the script if you need to make relationships more clear even with no honorifics.
 
Nov 8, 2017
3,532
I work with Japanese colleagues, and it's normal for them to refer to non-Japanese people in English using honorifics (e.g. writing "Dear Martin-san" in an email).

So it's easy to just think of the characters as Japanese people who are speaking English.
 

J75

Member
Sep 29, 2018
6,617
Despite the fact that some of my favorite games like Shenmue and Yakuza use honorifics in their localization, i've never been a big fan of em. I always feel adding honorifics nichefies your product a great amount more than needed. Most games with em are not gonna appeal to most people to begin with but i feel you are scarring potential people off further by throwing all these terms they might not be familiar.

Is not just simple -san honorifics anymore either (which i feel almost everyone is well familiar with since even the Karate Kid movies had them in the 80s) But now you got the less known stuff being thrown around such as the very region specific ''-han'' in Yakuza 0 (which even i was oblivious of when i first heard it), that would turn off some casual people that would've enjoyed the game and been fine with just more simple honorifics and it's a shame.

I blame the popularity of fan subs and simulcast anime streams for having this widespread usage of honorifics on professional translations and sadly i don't see things improving either.
 
OP
OP
rednecked_crake
Nov 21, 2017
220
I did a few translations of dialog in the latest Blazblue and would try to replace 'chan' with 'dear little...', but even then I don't think it really fits or goes well.

I'm not sure if it's really possible to carry the same meaning for a lot of things 100% of the way.
 

ohlawd

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,307
Phantagrande
there are some localizations I've seen - none for games iirc but I see it sometimes in anime subs - that have characters refer to other characters by their last name but the text would say their first name. and that's totally fucked up. automatic F- localization right there. stuff like sissy = onee-sama or adding dear to a name to change from -chan I'm okay with that. I get the intent
 

thetrin

Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,652
Atlanta, GA
Having worked in localization myself, I think keeping honorifics in is terrible. That's not localization. Localization should make the player feel that their target language was the source material for the title. It should feel natural, as if they're getting everything using their own cultural context.

From what I can remember, all the translation professionals I know feel the same way. That's definitely how we handle localizations at DANGEN.
 

Famassu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,186
There are other ways of bringing out the same meaning of either respect/more formal behaviour with the elderly/higher-ups or more casual camradery with peers. If the game has voice acting, this can be achieved with not only what words are being said but how it's said. No need for sans and samas and chans.
 
Oct 25, 2017
3,789
Depends on the audience. If you are going broad, I'd drop them, if you know that your audience is 70%+ weeb then it's fine to keep if it makes sense for setting. The thing is that these honorifics and some of those trope-y anime words are well understood in certain groups. A lot of people have grown up with Japanese media and the the rest aren't as stupid as you pretend they are. Japan has significant softpower and English takes loanwords and memewords from it. It's all according to keikaku.
 

Palazzo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,007
there are some localizations I've seen - none for games iirc but I see it sometimes in anime subs - that have characters refer to other characters by their last name but the text would say their first name. and that's totally fucked up. automatic F- localization right there. stuff like sissy = onee-sama or adding dear to a name to change from -chan I'm okay with that. I get the intent

That's language. Japanese doesn't switch between given and family names in the same situations English does, so just like how idioms frequently need to be reworked or replaced in English translations in order to communicate the original intent properly, switching up which name is used to refer to a character can be wholly appropriate.
 
OP
OP
rednecked_crake
Nov 21, 2017
220
Czmcs3v.png
 

Jonathan Lanza

"I've made a Gigantic mistake"
Member
Feb 8, 2019
6,818
I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping Japanese things in a localization. We're all fine with "Kaioken" instead of "King Kai's Fist" or "Hadouken" instead of "Wave fist" and so on, and frankly I think anyone who would get upset by those things is a little bit off.
As for honorifics, it depends on both your audience and just how unrecognizable of a phrase are we talking. If it's the basics like sensei or onee-san then you'll be fine translating those but if it's something a bit more nuanced like

3nlaSsx
3nlaSsx.jpg

then I honestly have no idea how you would tackle this without sounding completely insane.

Another interesting example is in the the Ace Attorney franchise, the character Simon Blackquill uses the -dono suffix as he speaks as if he is an old samurai. This was a localization decision and in the Japanese version he doesn't use -dono.
 
Last edited:
Oct 27, 2017
3,826
No, you quite literally can't translate some things. That's the issue with translation sometimes. Honorifics are a big example because Mr/Mrs simply does not mean or denote the same thing at all. Often it's better to leave some of those things untranslated since they've already entered into common knowledge while playing Japanese games.
This sentiment is ignorant at best and orientalist at worst. You absolutely can translate everything, and this divide between "translation" and "localization" is mostly artificial. Words are a means of one person communicating ideas to another, and ideas are universal among all human beings because all human beings are fundamentally the same.

More literal translation =/= more accurate translation, necessarily. There is more being expressed in communication than the dictionary definitions of the words used.
 

ZeroDotFlow

Member
Oct 27, 2017
928
This sentiment is ignorant at best and orientalist at worst. You absolutely can translate everything, and this divide between "translation" and "localization" is mostly artificial. Words are a means of one person communicating ideas to another, and ideas are universal among all human beings because all human beings are fundamentally the same.

More literal translation =/= more accurate translation, necessarily. There is more being expressed in communication than the dictionary definitions of the words used.
You seem to both not understand how Japanese works nor do you understand that I was not advocating for literal translations.

If you think you can absolutely translate everything, then you should go into translation. Language is a means of communicating ideas and culture. Not all cultural idioms or ideas are going to cleanly translate, and if you attempt to force said idioms (like for example, using 'Mr and Mrs' in place of honorifics) then you've managed to completely bungle up your translation because you've lost the context. Not all ideas are fundamentally universal because people are going to grow up in entirely different cultural contexts. Maintaining that context is important for a translation, depending on the context of the world within the game.

The entire reason why loan words is because sometimes things are better expressed in the context of where they came from. If you encountered the term 'Deja Vu', how would you translate that?
 

Deleted member 5334

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,815

Yeah, my buddy, Windii, who's translation is in the above image, they are working on a project to re-translate the Sonic games from the Japanese version. Some of the games are absolutely fine (Sonic Unleashed is a good example of this), but some are... Well...

Sonic Adventure 2 has... a lot of issues in the localization. A lot of "Good Arms" errors (basically the translation is "right", but not in the context), among with outright mistranslations. This is one of those said issues. I heard what happened a lot of times is the Japanese interfered with the localization of the game, as well as making voice actors make Japanese yells and stuff, which just doesn't... work in English. Even anime dubs avoid these sounds at times.

Sonic Adventure 1 also is... Well, I'm not sure what happened there exactly. The writing and that is fine, but it almost seems like the English writing team got a very rough translation of the in game dialogue and had to re-write it as a result. The English dialogue barely resembles the Japanese (if at all)to the point it's an entire rewrite at times. Windii and one other person actually re-translated the whole thing from scratch.

You can check Windii's Youtube channel for the retranslations. It should be noted that they also did the translations just to showcase how they differ even on the games that were originally written in English (Sonic Lost World, Sonic Boom, etc.,).

Either way, my thoughts on localization: It should be done to make it easy for the audience to come in and understand. While I have my own thoughts in regards to changing of names and stuff (I previously made a topic about this), the bulk of the actual writing and text should at least be in a way that it doesn't confuse the audience. Also, avoiding being too literal at times is absolutely needed, and even sometimes straying from the original Japanese can be good if the actual translation is a bit awkward (such as puns, or sayings that don't work in English if translated literally).

Honorifics is... Honestly, that's really a preference thing. But my rule of thumb is not to use them in any non-Japanese settings. I've seen some anime companies being guilty of this, even for anime set in non-Japanese settings (or at least heavily inspired). Doesn't make sense to have Western character's using "-san", "-chan", etc., in the dialogue.

One Piece is an... odd, case, where I kinda let this slide, given the series uses both honorifics and English sir names. Plus, the series seems ambiguous whether or not the characters are speaking Japanese or not, as there is a LOT of Japanese text, but there's also English littered in it, so... Eh.
 
Oct 27, 2017
3,826
You seem to both not understand how Japanese works nor do you understand that I was not advocating for literal translations.

If you think you can absolutely translate everything, then you should go into translation. Language is a means of communicating ideas and culture. Not all cultural idioms or ideas are going to cleanly translate, and if you attempt to force said idioms (like for example, using 'Mr and Mrs' in place of honorifics) then you've managed to completely bungle up your translation because you've lost the context. Not all ideas are fundamentally universal because people are going to grow up in entirely different cultural contexts. Maintaining that context is important for a translation, depending on the context of the world within the game.

The entire reason why loan words is because sometimes things are better expressed in the context of where they came from. If you encountered the term 'Deja Vu', how would you translate that?

If the audience do not have an in depth grasp of the Japanese language and cultural context, then what do you think gives greater cultural context - "he's my senpai" or "he's a grade above me?" Translation is never perfect, but if you leave in Japanese terminology you are putting the burden of finding meaning on the audience. That's the translator's job. Also, do you think swapping out honorifics for English equivalents is the only way to convey the meaning behind those honorifics? Even when you replace Japanese idioms and cliches with English ones, it can better convey they original tone, meaning, and cultural context than more literal translations. Sometimes you get lucky, though, and it already makes enough sense to where it's not necessary.

And loan words remove the context of where they came from. For example, "otaku" has a different meaning among English speakers than it does Japanese. Same with "kamikaze" (which has additional meaning outside of suicide attacks) or "honcho" (which refers to a specific kind of authority instead of a general term for boss - "hanchou.") If the original Japanese script has an English loanword in it, it may be appropriate to replace it, because it's not the same word anymore.
 

Curufinwe

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
8,924
DE
It's not easy. It takes effort and some actual talent to do this well. It will also not be perfect, just like no localisation-translation of a literary work will ever be. But it will be miles better than the garbage we are stuck with in things like the Persona series.

Sounds like something Mitsuo Kubo might say.
 
Last edited:

ZeroDotFlow

Member
Oct 27, 2017
928
If the audience do not have an in depth grasp of the Japanese language and cultural context, then what do you think gives greater cultural context - "he's my senpai" or "he's a grade above me?" Translation is never perfect, but if you leave in Japanese terminology you are putting the burden of finding meaning on the audience. That's the translator's job. Also, do you think swapping out honorifics for English equivalents is the only way to convey the meaning behind those honorifics? Even when you replace Japanese idioms and cliches with English ones, it can better convey they original tone, meaning, and cultural context than more literal translations. Sometimes you get lucky, though, and it already makes enough sense to where it's not necessary.

And loan words remove the context of where they came from. For example, "otaku" has a different meaning among English speakers than it does Japanese. Same with "kamikaze" (which has additional meaning outside of suicide attacks) or "honcho" (which refers to a specific kind of authority instead of a general term for boss - "hanchou.") If the original Japanese script has an English loanword in it, it may be appropriate to replace it, because it's not the same word anymore.
The thing is, there's always going to be a cultural burden on the audience. Like if you were to attempt to translate a game deriving heavily from Shinto, you can't translate and appropriate the references into say, Christianity because you have an obsession with absolutely removing any and all possible reference to Japanese. The amount of terminology you translate over is indeed up to the translator, which is why we see games leave in honorifics and other games remove them. You could replace the word 'Kami' into 'Spirits' but that would be an entirely incomplete translation because the word itself is heavily ambiguous. In one part of the game it might use Kami in one way and Kami in an entirely different way, and at that point you're muddling up the actual meaning and causing more headache in the process of translation.

In these scenarios I firmly believe it's better to leave some words untranslated and provide a note or cultural reference that can better explain the full meaning behind a word. This isn't something like 'Keikaku means plan' or silliness like that, but striking a proper balance which then allows you to also educate a reader on what the story or text is trying to convey.
 
Feb 9, 2019
2,491
Gacha Hell
Depends on the setting I suppose. I can stomach honorifics and some japanese terms in works set in Japan or heavily influenced by japanese culture.

What I do know is I don't envy the extremely taxing and thankless job of a good localization team. One of those where if you do your job right, no one even knows you were there. If you don't, well...
 

Basileus777

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,203
New Jersey
I don't really feel the need to for honorifics to remain. If the work is dubbed, hearing English voice actors say them is rarely fun. If I'm listening to a Japanese voice track I'm hearing the honorifics anyway so I don't need them in text.

Though I prefer them to be localized in a way that isn't just a bunch of awkward Mr./Miss slapped into conversations that native English speakers wouldn't actually use in that situation.
 
OP
OP
rednecked_crake
Nov 21, 2017
220


One thing I liked about the Negan trailer is how they subbed some of his lines. The first line he speaks is just subbed as I hope you're wearing some pants, which... I don't think makes much sense or matches the English voiceover.