I managed to worm my presence into another debate at Shining Force Central about why English translations of Japanese games shouldn’t be discounted entirely. Of course everyone seems to think only the Japanese games “count” even if plot changes or parralell plots are added and created to and for the English games. That place really amazes me. I accused them all of being elitists for descriminating against the English gamers whom have only ever known the English Shining games. Why can’t the idiots there accept the fact that Japanese and English versions of the same games can sometimes be structured differently for different audiences, and that these differences should be taken into account? Additional information and even new plot devices are introduced to an English translation of a Japanese game, sometimes by the creators themselves. Are we to discount those as irrelevant simply because it wasn’t written in Japanese first? Character names are often changed or changed into their closest English equivalents; but hell, those names don’t count, do they?
SFC irritates me to no end.
Setting aside my feelings on the subject, what role do you feel a translated version of a Japanese game can play when set side-by-side with its original counterpart? Should extra plot devices exclusive to a non-Japanese version of a Japanese game be taken into consideration when linking a series, or thrown away as heretic?
Absolutely. In fact we’ve seen it done in the Panzer Dragoon series when…
…Azel and Edge’s relationship is mentioned in the game, and that part of the plot is taken further. Also, other things like the Ancients being definately human in the English versions of the Saturn trilogy weren’t disregarded. In Pandora’s Box it just states “Records of the true identity of the Ancients, as well as the reason for their downfall, were lost with time” - it doesn’t change anything in the plot and state that they were not human. All in all, I think it was very decent of Smilebit to do this and other Japanese developers should take this into account when creating sequels to their games as well.
I love how the English PD Saga script was used to resurrect the series, as opposed to its original Japanese counterpart.
Smilebit cared about their non-Japanese fans enough to clarify all the translation inconsistencies present in the previous trilogy. Like the Ancient Age taking place 10 000 years ago, not 1000 years ago according to the PD1 intro.
Extra plot devices in any translation should not be thrown away and forgotten. A slightly different plotline may run through two versions of the same game to better suit each audience. Everything should be taken into account.
Which leads to another point. How much can we trust game boxes/manuals? I mean any marketing person could have written that on the back of the box without doing to appropriate research, whereas with an in game translation the translator would have had an original script to work from and therefore any changes would be intentional (or mistakes). The person who wrote the back of the Panzer Dragoon box could have just written what he or she thought sounded marketable, without actually consulting the game for facts.
I think that was due to the desire to translate the game as quickly as possible. I’m glad it was cleared up in Orta though. I’m also glad Smilebit cared about a wider audience in that respect.
I’m losing that debate at SFC. So far everyone is clinging to the belief that only the Japanese games count. Sure, this may be true for direct translations, but if extra features, or deliberate alterations, are included in such translations, they cease to be unimportant.
I’m not going to buy games made by companies who only truly care about a Japanese fanbase.
Which leads to another point. How much can we trust game boxes/manuals? I mean any marketing person could have written that on the back of the box without doing to appropriate research, .[/quote]
For my website recently I’ve been doing a lot of work based around what it says on the back of game boxes and a lot of them do seem to be from someone who has briefly played the game but has a good way with words. I mean, I had to make up my own for the games I haven’t got boxes for and it was easier than expected. I just put together what I knew about the game (whether it was a little or a lot) into a good paragraph and it seemed to work.
Anyway, as for translations, didn’t it say somewhere that Yu Suzuki was more proud of the English language translation of Shenmue and people thought that was the original and the Japanese version was the translated one?!
Yes but no decent Shining game has been released since 1998. I’m surprised the community is so huge.
Anything added to a translation by the creators shouldn’t be discounted as meaningless just because it wasn’t integrated into the Japanese original. If a new or changed feature was intended for an English version of a Japanese game, I see no compelling why “the English games don’t count”.
I hope the next generation of Shining games are developed for all Shining fans, instead of just Japan, and the rest of us being on the receiving end of bad translations. I for one won’t feel like a second rate fan in that case.
A brand name carries weight; also, the Shining games are very popular in Japan. The stories of each game are always related, but most relations are subtle. The Saturn games after Shining Wisdom started a whole new story arc.
I’m definately becoming pissed off with many japanese companies who either:
Don’t release the game in the West
Make it delayed 3 months- year
Then they might not release it here
And if it does get released theres a shoddy translation
Plus it is often far more expenisve: price fixing and so on
Nintendo is particulary bad at this.
I guess this is why I’m slowly losing faith in the Gamecube and going much closer to the Xbox. Microsoft do care about western gamers, after all they are a western comapany and have done terribly in Japan (I don’t think they have reached 1 million units sold in Japan yet).
) : why do they keep the same name like Final Fantasy?! >(