Great article. It really touches on the messiness of direct translations of scripts. Cultural differences are significant. There are certain undertones to dialogue that you'll miss if you don't...
Great article. It really touches on the messiness of direct translations of scripts.
Cultural differences are significant. There are certain undertones to dialogue that you'll miss if you don't have the cultural background of the original lines in mind. Why did X get pissed off at Y when Y used X's first name? A direct translation of "don't act familiar with me" isn't going to make any sense to a Western audience, but a localized translation of "we're not on a first-name basis" will more accurately translate the tone of the dialogue.
Ideally there would be two separate translations--the localized and the direct--so as to provide the option for faithfulness to tone and faithfulness to the original, but these translations are expensive, both in the cost of the translation itself and in the cost of storage for the translated lines.
If you have to choose either one or the other, you can't really fault the translator for opting for localization. You can't really win 100% no matter which choice you make, so you have to make the choice that gives you the bigger win over the other, and localization just happens to be that choice.
I know a little bit of Japanese, and as a result it can be irritating watching subtitled anime or playing a game with Japanese voice acting when the translation is not literal. That being said, I...
I know a little bit of Japanese, and as a result it can be irritating watching subtitled anime or playing a game with Japanese voice acting when the translation is not literal. That being said, I completely understand why it's important to make those changes, especially when the voice acting is going to be localized as well.
There is an old mostly-forgotten Dreamcast game called D2, and the thing most American players of the game hate is it's localization. Some actors don't even try to match their lipsyncing - especially Kimberly, who actually gets the greatest amount of screentime outside of the mostly-silent protagonist.
But you know what? I love that localization specifically because of Kimberly's voice acting. Kimberly is a character born in the real world, and she brings her baggage with her just like a real person does. By ignoring the lip syncing, the voice actress is able to convey so much more of kimberly's character. She has a complete character arch in the game, and it ends in tragedy. We human beings do not like tragedy because we like to feel the pain, but rather because it allows us to experience the strange beauty that makes itself shown when bad things happen. If Kimberly's voice actress had compromised her work by attempting to match unnatural mouth movements, that beauty would have been diminished or extinguished altogether.
Great article. It really touches on the messiness of direct translations of scripts.
Cultural differences are significant. There are certain undertones to dialogue that you'll miss if you don't have the cultural background of the original lines in mind. Why did X get pissed off at Y when Y used X's first name? A direct translation of "don't act familiar with me" isn't going to make any sense to a Western audience, but a localized translation of "we're not on a first-name basis" will more accurately translate the tone of the dialogue.
Ideally there would be two separate translations--the localized and the direct--so as to provide the option for faithfulness to tone and faithfulness to the original, but these translations are expensive, both in the cost of the translation itself and in the cost of storage for the translated lines.
If you have to choose either one or the other, you can't really fault the translator for opting for localization. You can't really win 100% no matter which choice you make, so you have to make the choice that gives you the bigger win over the other, and localization just happens to be that choice.
I know a little bit of Japanese, and as a result it can be irritating watching subtitled anime or playing a game with Japanese voice acting when the translation is not literal. That being said, I completely understand why it's important to make those changes, especially when the voice acting is going to be localized as well.
There is an old mostly-forgotten Dreamcast game called D2, and the thing most American players of the game hate is it's localization. Some actors don't even try to match their lipsyncing - especially Kimberly, who actually gets the greatest amount of screentime outside of the mostly-silent protagonist.
But you know what? I love that localization specifically because of Kimberly's voice acting. Kimberly is a character born in the real world, and she brings her baggage with her just like a real person does. By ignoring the lip syncing, the voice actress is able to convey so much more of kimberly's character. She has a complete character arch in the game, and it ends in tragedy. We human beings do not like tragedy because we like to feel the pain, but rather because it allows us to experience the strange beauty that makes itself shown when bad things happen. If Kimberly's voice actress had compromised her work by attempting to match unnatural mouth movements, that beauty would have been diminished or extinguished altogether.