18th April 2005, 4:55 PM
Quote:Well, immigration laws in Europe have become more strict in recent years because 9/11 and the terrorist attacks in Spain. It's much more difficult to move to Holland now than it was just five years ago, for instance. But there's definitely far, far less xenophobia in Europe than in the U.S. You'll find movies from all over the world doing well in just about every country in Europe, and people being much more open to different cultures than they are over here. The EU has strengthened this sense of diversity of community even further.
Definitely, within the EU... the countries of Europe are pretty understanding with eachother. It's the countries who want to send people to Europe that they have problems with. :) The main issue right now is probably Muslims... lots of them want to immigrate to Europe and the Europeans don't really want them to come. They'll do it in a way that is probably less overtly xenophobic than Americans generally are (and sure, they might well watch movies from Africa with much more willingness than we will. They are more accepting of other cultures, after all.), that is true, but results are results... and it says that it's not an unqualified win for them.
Quote:You said that you prefer dubs whenever possible. That's preferring your entertainment to be as close to American as possible.
Not quite, I think... if you wanted it as close to American as possible you probably just wouldn't watch anime. So it's more diverse than 'as close as possible'. Dubbed anime is, usually, still anime... but yes, it is putting it into a form that is more acceptable to mainstream American culture.
Quote:Exactly my point, you see this as a "minor" thing. You don't seem to see the importance of language in cultures, and it appears to be all the same to you if it conforms to your culture.
Pretty much what I said. :)
Quote:Poppycock! (I love that word) First of all it wouldn't be a lot of work. Not for Microsoft. They already translate their games into a dozen different languages, including voice work in many cases. And keeping the humor is a non-issue. You keep the English script, get it translated and voiced in another language, and there you have it. Simple. And a big deal. The whole point of voice acting is to immerse the player in the game, but when it's utterly ridiculous then what's the point?
Actually, that's a good point: humor. Or, more appropriately, societal context (humor, allegory, cultural references, etc). When anime is translated, the humor is often some of the hardest part to translate... either you need explanation subtitles to explain the subtitles or you change the jokes to something someone in the target culture would understand... but changing the jokes doesn't work with subs, just dubs.
Anyway, my point. In the case of a game, would it make sense to make the game in nation Y, for nation Y, set in nation X, in the language of nation X... but with a script written for nation Y audiences? Seems like it could be a bit weird, if you think about it... and I could never expect a writing team in nation Y to be able to write something that fully understands and is set in nation X's culture. The best they could do is what they think nation X's culture is like... I guess that'd have to be good enough. If you've got good enough writers it should work (and Bioware does).
Quote:Who's talking about ethics and offending people? I don't care what the Chinese think of Jade Empire. I care about the integrity of videogames as a whole, and I care about how much I can get into the experience. You lose all integrity in the work when you try to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Movies about Russian submarines where the entire crew speaks English in a Russian accent, or movies about ancient Rome where they speak in British English. How can these movies be taken seriously? I always laugh at such movies and pay no respect to them. For some people it makes sense, because they've lived their entire lives surrounding by a single language. So they don't even think about how silly it is. I don't ask for 100% accuracy, just 30%. And language takes up 70% in my book.
But hey, I'm not trying to force my opinion down your throat. If you don't feel this way then so be it, that's fine by me. I'm just defending my original criticism, which you contested.
I don't feel quite as strongly about it as you do... I mean, it is funny when a crew of a German submarine speaks with British accents. It's annoying. You've just got to get used to it and ignore it... which can be done, I'd say. You can get engrossed. But of course it'd be even better if it had been in German.
Quote:You're saying the same thing DJ said. Who's asking for 100% realism? Jade Empire is fantasy. But it's a fantasy version of ancient China, and making everyone speak American English makes zero sense even within the context of this fantastical setting. To expand upon ABF's point, there needs to be realism within context. Like he said, ED is realistic. Fable is realistic. Jade Empire isn't realistic within its own absurd context.
As I just said, I wouldn't go that far. You can have realism with false aspects if you just learn to accept the unrealistic aspects... it doesn't totally ruin it for me -- I loved ED despite the flaw of it being 99% in English, for instance. So I'd be a bit more qualified, while agreeing that it hurts the realism.