I can't say for sure how XSeed did things, but I suspect that they either had greater QA or more extensive manual labor go into that script. The way localization works nowadays is trying to remove as much of the human element of communication as possible from the task. With the propagation of machine translation, it allows companies to not only save significant labor costs, but also cut down on the number of laborers in the first place by treating the Translation step of a workflow as not nearly as business critical is it is, in theory, so the later steps can work on the quality assurance part of editing. But the fundamental flaw in this methodology is the underlying theory of the case revolves around translation as a decryption exercise, not a creative writing exercise. Every linguist I've ever spoken with has told me a shitty base translation cannot be salvaged with mere editing.
The XSeed translation takes a TON of liberties. Estelle actually has a "dattebayo" (あ、あんですって～！？ back trans. "Wha'd you say?!") and that got completely edited out in English. "Time for ultra violence" is entirely ad libbed. Olivier's offhand reference to a Heimdallr cat named "Mr. Tiddles" is something that got thrown in as a one-off joke, and had to get reconciled later in Cold Steel 1. It's a small miracle they were able to make that work in the first place. If you go back into the script, the cat's name is just ボス "Boss". And we all know about the "this chest is empty" messages.
The people screaming about "literal" translation are the same schmucks who have the audacity to tell language industry professionals how to do their jobs just because they got baby's first 100 on their hiragana test. They drive me crazy. I'm not going to go "in this essay I will..." but I absolutely can. I have dedicated over a decade of my life trying to level grind this skill just so I can make more informed commentary. I have so many feelings about translation and I'm always happy to share. 😊
In general, I don't consider most criticism credible if the critic can't provide reasonable defense for it. What's wrong? On what technicality do you believe it is wrong? What is your proposed replacement? If a commentator cannot answer those three questions, their two cents is just clout seeking behavior.
no subject
I can't say for sure how XSeed did things, but I suspect that they either had greater QA or more extensive manual labor go into that script.
The way localization works nowadays is trying to remove as much of the human element of communication as possible from the task. With the propagation of machine translation, it allows companies to not only save significant labor costs, but also cut down on the number of laborers in the first place by treating the Translation step of a workflow as not nearly as business critical is it is, in theory, so the later steps can work on the quality assurance part of editing. But the fundamental flaw in this methodology is the underlying theory of the case revolves around translation as a decryption exercise, not a creative writing exercise. Every linguist I've ever spoken with has told me a shitty base translation cannot be salvaged with mere editing.
The XSeed translation takes a TON of liberties. Estelle actually has a "dattebayo" (あ、あんですって～！？ back trans. "Wha'd you say?!") and that got completely edited out in English.
"Time for ultra violence" is entirely ad libbed.
Olivier's offhand reference to a Heimdallr cat named "Mr. Tiddles" is something that got thrown in as a one-off joke, and had to get reconciled later in Cold Steel 1. It's a small miracle they were able to make that work in the first place. If you go back into the script, the cat's name is just ボス "Boss".
And we all know about the "this chest is empty" messages.
The people screaming about "literal" translation are the same schmucks who have the audacity to tell language industry professionals how to do their jobs just because they got baby's first 100 on their hiragana test. They drive me crazy. I'm not going to go "in this essay I will..." but I absolutely can. I have dedicated over a decade of my life trying to level grind this skill just so I can make more informed commentary. I have so many feelings about translation and I'm always happy to share. 😊
In general, I don't consider most criticism credible if the critic can't provide reasonable defense for it. What's wrong? On what technicality do you believe it is wrong? What is your proposed replacement? If a commentator cannot answer those three questions, their two cents is just clout seeking behavior.