Quote:...no...
I was talking about Eternal Darkness.
See what I mean about quotes? Without them the context of what you are saying can be pretty hard to understand sometimes.
Quote:But we're quoting each other!!!
Yeah, of course, you're right, that makes it an argument... to anyone too lazy to actually read what we're saying.
Quote:Still, it would have been neat to hear more accurate voices. But since this was a Nintendo game, the very fact that it had good voice acting at all was amazing.
Nintendo would rather that it's still 10 years ago and no voice acting in your major releases is a perfectly acceptable thing... they really need to catch up with the times.
Quote:Where are you talking about, precisely? The only parts of Europe I've been to that were unwelcoming to foreigners were some of the poorer Eastern countries, but that mostly stems from fear and ignorance.
France, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, etc... the major Western European nations. They talk good, but have you ever read those stories about how hard it is to actually become an immigrant there? It's almost as hard as it is in Japan, and that's saying something! Now, the racism probably isn't quite as strong as it is in Japan (especially in the case of Koreans in Japan...), but there is some, especially for Muslims. Like all the issues with the Turkish "guest workers" in Germany...
Quote:Of course, but the changing the language (when it doesn't make sense to) takes away much of what makes it uniquely Japanese, obviously.
Just in the vocal sense. Not in the complete presentation... hopefully it's still got the same artwork, and the same story, and the same themes... and those mark it as Japanese. Though of course some animes have been altered (Americanized) more than others...
Quote:The translated vocal track would be as accurate as possible, so think of it as reverse-dubtitling, if that makes sense.
... so it'd SOUND like Chinese but they'd be speaking essentially translated English? I don't know... only if the writing had been done (and well) to be fitting with the setting.
Quote:I don't know a billion other languages, and reading subtitles is very easy. But if you're fine with being pandered to, by all means...
I know a couple words in a couple foreign languages... not much in any. It's not exactly a strength of mine. But you don't need to know the language to watch something subtitled... it might help a bit, but really that's a completely different issue.
Quote:Konami does the same thing Microsoft did. Metal Gear sounds very funny in Japanese.
What's worst is animes set in "America" which have nothing to do with it... *shudders at the memory of those episodes of ... what was it, Miami Guns or something like that?* It's just as stereotypical as American shows about Japan often are. Oh wait... it's not. It's basically just set in Japan. :D At least the US episode of ... uh, that other police show... made a stereotypical attempt to be American (that is, everyone has lots and lots of guns...)...
Quote:Insulting? Confrontational? DJ, just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that they are insulting and/or being confrontational. You need to learn this.
You must admit, OB1, that you often take statements that disagree with what you've said it a pretty confrontational way... but here, that isn't true, and I don't know why DJ thinks it is.
Quote:Anyway, there is one other thing. OB1, you seem to not understand the details of the translating issues. Bringing their games to other countries, yes they do that, but that doesn't apply here, because that is done after the original language version is released. Now, why not do it DURING? Why don't they do such things during any game's creation? Well, they have a deadline to keep, for one. This is a very important point. To delay it for several months to translate it would alienate a lot of people, and more than that, it would result in a lot of lost sales, for very little gain. They've dropped actual gameplay features for less of a time delay than that. Further, to actually translate the script side by side with the script writer just doesn't work. You've read the interviews on IGN before, scripts are rewritten countless times during game creation. All the work translating it bit by bit would be lost, and that's lost effort on the part of the hired work and lost money on the part of the ones hiring them. Just not a good idea... It's the details of creating the game, that's the issue.
I think you would, of course, have to have it as a gameplay feature from the start... dealing with all the translation issues definitely would affect the script and add time, so it couldn't just be something you add on at the end, that is true... but it's not impossible.
Quote:And perhaps you misunderstand me ABF. Regarding subtitles, a lot of the time, it's not a big deal, but sometimes, things pop up. In a game specifically, a lot of the time characters will shout things at me. The entire point of the character shouting stuff is so I don't have to read something and possibly die. So, they better say "watch out for the cannon!" in english so I know what the heck they are saying. As for emotion and tone, well, that's troublesome too. Since language is more than just word definitions, but grammar too, sometimes there is the issue of matching their tones to what the translation on the bottom of the screen is. If, for example, turning something into english means putting the beginning of their sentence at the end of our's, this can cause problems. I might end up wondering why he just screamed when he said his mother's name, if that would also make sense in such a scene. Again, too much effort to do something minor.
Most emotions are surprisingly similar across human cultures... The only question is lining up the current word being said with what you're reading, and that's teh subber's job (to line them up well) which hopefully was done well... Japanese does have a different sentence structure from English, this is true. And it is probably true that people who are more serious about understanding their anime will learn at least a few basics of Japanese (a few words, perhaps sentence order... probably not much more than that). But that isn't necessary, really... if the person's screaming, it's going to be clear why. :)
And once again, it's not minor. Not the biggest factor in the game (or film), but definitely not minor. Anime, for instance... in almost every case, it seems so much better when watched in Japanese... the English is just ... wrong ... most of the time. Most anime fans agree on this (though not all, to be sure). :)
