Nothing new here: English localization is terrible.
I'm a purist through and through, and I'll say what others have said to me: If it bothers you that much, play the game in Japanese.
My written Japanese is terrible and I'm committed to doing just that after playing the demo in English and then in Japanese.
Doesn't mean I can't dream for literal English translations~
I really hate when the meaning is changed or a character is misconstrued because of the localization team's prerogative.
Your perspective changes a lot when you understand both languages. For those who understand even a little bit of Japanese: Check out Winnie the Pooh's Japanese VA. Yikes.
I do not understand how you people don't understand this.
A literal translation is often literally the opposite of a good translation. A literal translation can sometimes completely mess up the meaning of something.
Languages are more than just word swaps.
You cannot keep a translation pure. It is impossible. Any act of translation fundamentally changes something. You are not a purist dude. Fundamentally what you are asking for is the opposite of purity. Translating something from one language into another changes the meaning and conveys a different message.
Asking for a 1:1 translation is impossible because swapping out words is not a 1:1 translation of meaning. A proper localization will more effectively convey the same meaning as the original than a literal translation.
It's a meaningless standard to appeal to. Words are only as good as their meanings. Swapping out words as literally 1:1 as possible does not equal translating meaning, and yes that includes rearranging for grammar, I'm obviously not talking about literal word swaps. And meaning is far more than just the verbal concepts expressed. You are not preserving anything. You are using different words no matter how you slice it. You are replacing them with their analogues from a completely different system. There is nothing pure about it.
For the sake of demonstrating Chettlar's very good point, I will present the thread with a "pure" and "direct" translation of the gender dialogue I translated above.
The Japanese is: 本当の美しさは心持次第。いいか、クラウド？ 美しさに女も男もない。物おじせず進む。
We can break this out into the syntax blocks based on grammatical markers.
本当の || 美しさは || 心持次第。|| いいか || クラウド？|| 美しさに || 女も || 男も || ない. || 物おじせず || 進む。||
Breaking this into the fabled, distilled, so-called "pure" 200 proof japanese, we can translate as such:
Of Actual || As for Beautyness || Heart Feeling Dependence || Question: Yes? || Cloud? || To Beautyness || Woman or || Man also || are not || Without Scary Things || Continue.
I hope this satisfies the requests of all people asking for direct, literal translations. Thank you for attending my TED talk.
EDIT: Additionally, I'd like to note something about translation that many people who don't study translation don't really understand even if they are fluent in multiple languages: Language fundamentally changes the way we understand the world and think. Sapir-Whorf is often exaggerated, but on a linguistic and technical level it is very, very integral to how we perceive and decode language and concepts. When I read Japanese, I read it as the "pure" translation above, but I don't
understand it that way. My understanding naturally is very different, more in line with how my original translation was. We think in syntax and meaning, not in words -- So any translator doing a good job with what they do will translate the
meaning, not the
syntax or words. Meaning is entirely subjective, and is filtered on a person by person basis. It is only through
societal consensus and in-group decoding that anyone can truly understand the basis of a cultural meaning and context, and even then, that is malleable and changes constantly.
A good way to demonstrate how this works: the above word 物おじ is translated as "coward" in most contexts. In English, the word "coward" implies someone who is fearful of confrontation or scary things, someone who cannot stand up to challenges, someone who is weak-willed. In Japanese, this is different -- 物おじ literally means "Scared by Things". Japanese actually has another word for "Coward" as well -- 弱虫, "Yowamushi". Yowamushi translates directly into "Weak Bug". The difference between thoughts between these two words is actually quite wide: Calling someone a Mono-Oji has etymological roots in the idea that someone takes fearful ideas or preconceptions with them. Someone being called a Yowamushi is literally being compared to a weak little bug, unable to confront a fear or a challenge that is bigger than them.
So why do we translate both the same way? Because language is about meaning, and in English, Coward implies both things. This does not make Coward a bad translation for either word, even though the etymological understanding of both of these terms is different in Japanese than it is in English. This is how Sapir-Whorf can help explain why language forms the basis of an experiential understanding of both language and social reality.
