-
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.
Did Square use an Italian fan translation for TWEWY:Final Remix?
- Thread starter Robin64
- Start date
I phrased my question wrong, sorry. I was asking if square handled the translation themselves or if a third party did it, because its very obvious that one of them they ripped you off.
Keywords is the studio that handled the translations, according to the credits.
Over a decade ago, I've made a fan translation for a free-to-play game. It was nothing particularly special since it wasn't exactly a game full of texts or dialogues, but I figured Italian people would appreciate playing the game in their own language. The game was free and I didn't seek money either, nor I could for something like this of course, and I just released it all on the game's community. There were a couple typos in there I didn't bother fixing (I already spent a lot of hours on it to gain nothing out of it, so understand my relief when I was done, spellcheck was the last thing I had in my mind), but overall it was a solid and fair translation that a lot of people thanked me for.
A couple months later, an Italian publisher approaches me, telling me they are planning a disc version release of the game including some extra (community-made) content and, of course, a translation: it would be far easier for them to use mine, so they asked for permission. From the discussion I had with them it seemed to me they didn't really need much of a permission, it was more a courtesy to give my blessing and also get my name in the credits. Clearly they would not be paying me, in this case: I'm merely allowing them to use something I distributed for free on the Internet, so they really have little in terms of obligations. They ended up using my translation after all (after clearing up the errors I could find), my name was put in the game's credits, I was sent a copy of the disc version of the game with a thank you letter signed from their manager, and it was all fun and games. We were in talks for a translation of another (paid) chapter of the game but ultimately it fell through for a variety of reasons.
Unless copyright, fair use, etc. laws changed drastically since then, it is my understanding Square was in their rights to use this translation, as it's a freely available content that is part of the community now. They could have and, imho, should have asked the author anyway, please him with a signed copy or whatever, it really wouldn't have cost them a lot of effort and it would have generated some possibly positive press as well. That they chose to stealth download a fan translation and not bother with telling anyone is lame. Legal probably, but also rather lame.
A couple months later, an Italian publisher approaches me, telling me they are planning a disc version release of the game including some extra (community-made) content and, of course, a translation: it would be far easier for them to use mine, so they asked for permission. From the discussion I had with them it seemed to me they didn't really need much of a permission, it was more a courtesy to give my blessing and also get my name in the credits. Clearly they would not be paying me, in this case: I'm merely allowing them to use something I distributed for free on the Internet, so they really have little in terms of obligations. They ended up using my translation after all (after clearing up the errors I could find), my name was put in the game's credits, I was sent a copy of the disc version of the game with a thank you letter signed from their manager, and it was all fun and games. We were in talks for a translation of another (paid) chapter of the game but ultimately it fell through for a variety of reasons.
Unless copyright, fair use, etc. laws changed drastically since then, it is my understanding Square was in their rights to use this translation, as it's a freely available content that is part of the community now. They could have and, imho, should have asked the author anyway, please him with a signed copy or whatever, it really wouldn't have cost them a lot of effort and it would have generated some possibly positive press as well. That they chose to stealth download a fan translation and not bother with telling anyone is lame. Legal probably, but also rather lame.
I'm guessing the Italian localisation was handled by their studio in Italy, Synthesis International.
Within the world of game localisation, Keywords is a plague. Their priority is acquiring as many projects as they can, without any consideration for quality. Hence the result discussed here.
Last edited:
what are some recent game localizations they've been responsible for?
Octopath (in that game all the internal translators have been credited, it seems).
i guess there was nothing they could steal for that project
are people happy with the spanish/italian/german localization of octopath?
Nintendo actually NEVER does this. They use the original japanese script for the EFIGS tanslations in europe (or at least FIGS when theres dubs). Thats why Wario Ware 3ds localization and dub is a different beast in each country and doesnt even resemble similar to the english ones. And thats why its so fucking good in each country.
Wasnt that a NoE translation though?
I know some square enix games are localised by nintendo (when distributed by them, like octopath), while others by square (and the famous case of nintendo not wanting to distribute KH3ds in europe because sqaure didnt want to pay for FIGS localisation for them to do), and the queality differs a lot.
So if Nintendo didnt distribute this one, the localization was made by square and is probably inferior.
Last edited:
Hmmm maybe you are right
Binari Sonori - a KEYWORDS studio. Maybe it's just a branch.
You're wrong on this one. It's much more common than you think (or at least it was when I worked there). Most translators working for NOE don't even speak Japanese.
Well then why are all FIGS translations clearly based from the japanese script?
Maybe someone translates there the japanese script into plain english and then is how everyone translates it, but if you read the english version the put out, and compared it to the spanish, german, italian or french, they change completely, but you can compare it somewhat to the japanese one when someone tries to make a fan translation.
All? You compared them all?
Maybe you wanted to say Nintendo doesn't do that anymore, in which case I cannot comment either way, but translating FIGS from English was the norm at NoE for a long time.
If they don't do that anymore I guess a lot of people had to be laid off.
Nope, Synthesis was not involved. I have a friend who has a friend working there and he spoke about this whole TWEWY situation, he said that Synthesis was not involved in this.
Is its ok to ask how much time ago you are talking about?
You can see a clear comparison of how far are all the FIGS from the english script and follow more the japanese with their own localization twist for each language (using popular idioms of each one) with the Wario Ware gold localization, but thats the more clear one (i cant talk about the german ones, as that the only language of the 3 i dont undertand, im talking about the spanish, french and italian, but if those 3 are that way, i would be pretty surprised the german is any different), they have been doing this from some time ago (other m spanish script is more similar to its japanese one for example, we dont have "the baby, the baby, the baby" problem for example).
Like I said, maybe they are not really directly translating from the japanese, but someone translates the japanese to english one very plainly, and then every other translators use that for their own language, but that english script is internal and never used as the final translation for the english version of the game.
Although I have to say, some years go (like 5) i saw a nintendo job posting to work on localizations in germany, and they were asking for spanish (as it was a spanish job), english and japanese.
Nice. I hope we can get a comment out of Square-Enix or something.
But you know, there are finite ways to translate text. For you see, language would be out of our league if the possibilities for translating one sentence matched or exceeded 20.
cool, hopefully more sites pick up on it
smh
Yes, but I don't think it applies in this case, since you usually have a lot of context available (either the source text or the actual game) which makes it easier to keep the intended and correct meaning.
It's actually better to deviate slightly from the source to improve the flow of the text in the translated languages, but it is always important to keep the information consistent between them.
Good. Hopefully it garners some more attention and SE gives an official response.
Nope, anyway Keywords was not SE responsability but Nintendo.
No man. As a native italian speaker I can ASSURE you that what is written in the second picture can't be exactly the same by accident, it's a weird sentence to begin with