Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

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X Prime said:
So much for "being spot on."
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They tend to be for much of the text, but it's going to vary by which program you use. The same shortcomings such as sarcasm, jokes and, context are the same that fuck up normal human translators. Berseria I do remember Rokouro's lines in end game having the more visible errors due to how he spoke. These were voiced lines that had the text that seemed to be misunderstanding his accent but it sounded phonically close to what he was saying.

One more way MT can benefit your project is translation consistency. When several independent translators work on a text, they may translate certain words differently, so that you end up with different translations. But with machine translation repetitive phrases are always translated the same way, improving the consistency of your text.
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Certain words convey a certain tone, and this is something that we do without thinking, just by feel. So when translating a game, a human translator can sense the overall vibe of the game (or of a specific dialogue) and use not just the original wording but synonyms that better convey the tone and mood. Conversely, a machine is not able to "sense the mood," so in some cases the translation may not sound as natural as it could.
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The reality is it's going to be a how much a company wants to invest in a translation. Machine Translators are already widely used as is due to their low cost and sometimes the quality of being good enough is just fine because the script is simple enough where everything written is very straight forward.
 
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Since the thread has been thrown into a containment board I might as well reply to Marrissa's post.

Games Industry .biz. I've not heard that name for a while. I used to think of it as a site that hipsters who got their game development knowledge from Extra Credits would leave in their bookmarks tab to make them look like a real developer. These days I don't think of them. Given the front page has an article about "developers" condemning the US supreme court, I feel that my opinion was validated.

But enough of that. Did you even read the articles you link?
It may sound like a given, but creativity plays a massive role in bringing games to life, especially when it comes to their translation. A translator might have a sudden flash of inspiration and come up with an unexpected phrasing or wording that resonates with players much better than the original text.
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One more way MT can benefit your project is translation consistency. When several independent translators work on a text, they may translate certain words differently, so that you end up with different translations. But with machine translation repetitive phrases are always translated the same way, improving the consistency of your text.
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But most telling.
Unfortunately, when gaming companies try to release games faster it leads not only to a poor user experience but also to a significant drop in brand loyalty. Many gamers cite poor translations as one of the biggest drawbacks of gaming companies.
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The TL:DR of the article is that machine translation doesn't work for games because it results in low quality shit, but it's cheaper than paying someone to do to. Which implies that the localizers don't deliver enough quality to be worth paying for.
 
Judge Dredd said:
The TL:DR of the article is that machine translation doesn't work for games because it results in low quality shit, but it's cheaper than paying someone to do to. Which implies that the localizers don't deliver enough quality to be worth paying for.
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It's going to very much depend on the game. Localizing media isn't going to go away any time soon(just look how much stuff from all across every spectrum of media gets localized for western countries every month), the machine translators offer a viable alternative for smaller budget developers who can't pay a full localization team.

You've had incidents like the Ys 8 translation which was machine translated and the original one was not the best, however it didn't effect sales and became the highest grossing title in the whole series. The fixed localization came a good while later, however with the original translation it was super literal. To the point where people were finding it funny because the literal translations could be used as innuendo.

For games like top down or side scrolling shooters, they are going to have minimal text. Using a machine translation will not ruffle any feathers.

The whole thing with games is that story is not going to be the primary aspect people are buying it for. People just need to understand the basic gist of what they need to do since everything is objective driven. And I say this as someone who has fully cleared games (that are not visual novels) in languages other than english. If people can understand what they need to do to get from Point A to Point B you've covered the majority of players.
 
All I'm seeing here is projection of what one person likes onto the so-called "majority of players."
 
I'm actually on Team Translating Machine. That said you absolutely need some understanding of the culture or language even then to properly convey.

I use DeepL which is fairly good, but some words will escape you regardless without understanding. Not to translate, but to read some shit. So Marvelous are desperate to fill those spots. Hope it isn't entryism... they've typically controlled their autism from what I've experienced.
 
X Prime said:
All I'm seeing here is projection of what one person likes onto the so-called "majority of players."
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If you call it projection and that it somehow is a minority opinion, that means that all the Personafags are right.

SiccDicc said:
I'm actually on Team Translating Machine. That said you absolutely need some understanding of the culture or language even then to properly convey.

I use DeepL which is fairly good, but some words will escape you regardless without understanding. Not to translate, but to read some shit. So Marvelous are desperate to fill those spots. Hope it isn't entryism... they've typically controlled their autism from what I've experienced.
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Considering that Marvelous/Xseed's next huge game may wind up being Fate/Extra Record you're not going to need a whole lot of understanding any type of real culture for that one.

It's like saying you need an understanding of American culture in order to translate The Avengers, it's a work of fiction that's taken so many creative liberties with it's setting and characters that it's removed from any real historical canon. It's mostly going to boil down to needing an understanding of language structure more because Fate Extra already features shit like Nero Claudius but as a girl.

There's a good amount of arguable comparisons that people make between english and japanese, it can even extend to Chinese and Korean where people argue the similarities of structure between them all. There's a wide array of opinions that are out there debating the similarities and traits.
 
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Marissa Moira said:
Considering that Marvelous/Xseed's next huge game may wind up being Fate/Extra Record you're not going to need a whole lot of understanding any type of real culture for that one.

It's like saying you need an understanding of American culture in order to translate The Avengers.
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Hmm, possibly, but I'm more worried about the professionalism of who they hire. Ah well, not like I really play Fate anyways not that they should fuck with it, but I am worried about Rune Factory.
 
SiccDicc said:
Hmm, possibly, but I'm more worried about the professionalism of who they hire. Ah well, not like I really play Fate anyways not that they should fuck with it, but I am worried about Rune Factory.
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Rune Factory's gay choices was something made by the devs themselves that was also long requested by fans. The recent game did better than any other previous entry, so they're probably not going to deviate much from the previous formula for the next one. The series already had things like androgynies characters long before the recent one.

Fate's whole world building is a clusterfuck, it's to the point even if they screw something up nobody would probably notice or be able to determine it fully. Thomas Edison is a 8 foot tall Lion furry in the mobile game due to multiple ass pulls.
 
Marissa Moira said:
Rune Factory's gay choices was something made by the devs themselves that was also long requested by fans. The recent game did better than any other previous entry, so they're probably not going to deviate much from the previous formula for the next one. The series already had things like androgynies characters long before the recent one.
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Eh, that was lazy too. I'm mostly disappointed in the love interest choices and wondering if they'll make it worse somehow by fucking with the dialogue. Bad enough I can't date the MILF, but like... I don't need meme shit or lectures or something utterly inane because they have no idea what's supposed to go there. Like I said before they typically controlled their autism before.
Fate's whole world building is a clusterfuck, it's to the point even if they screw something up nobody would probably notice or be able to determine it fully. Thomas Edison is a 8 foot tall Lion furry in the mobile game due to multiple ass pulls.
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Oh, they notice. They always find out.
 
Judge Dredd said:
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That's really funny. Similar things could happen in the past when the game script wasn't pure lines of the stored in the game because of space limitations. Instead the ingame text were made from references to a "dictionary" stored in the game, if you know how basic compression works it's like that I guess.

This could be a head scratcher for the translator because context wasn't always obvious and words with different meanings in one language could have very different meanings in others. One game I remember was a Shadowgate-like on the original Gameboy and the word "chest". In english it can be used to refer to the anatomic chest or treasure chest, very different things. In meatball it can be the (human) chest, (chicken) breast or... tits. Among other things but they are all anatomical.
To make the kind of chest you put loot in or other similar chests the proper word be coffin(kista).

The translator gambled and lost.

And in a compound word heavy language all kinds of things can happen depending on if a word is open or closed(I think that's the term). A single space in is the difference between "cashiers" and "lousy employees", "physiotherapist" and "sick gymnast". Does anyone else have some good memories of odd translations to local languages?
 
Smaug's Smokey Hole said:
And in a compound word heavy language all kinds of things can happen depending on if a word is open or closed(I think that's the term). A single space in is the difference between "cashiers" and "lousy employees", "physiotherapist" and "sick gymnast". Does anyone else have some good memories of odd translations to local languages?
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tales-of-phantasia-kangaroo-ragnarok.png


It was an MS Word mixup allegedly
 
ICametoLurk said:
The Culture Wars are proof that the Taliban are the good guys and the Jewish States of America are the bad guys.
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The Taliban would cut you asshole to appetite just for being a gamer, don't be a dumbass.
 
ICametoLurk said:
Dunno, I watched Kurds fighting ISIS and saw video games in their base and Osama Bin Laden had Japanese games on his computer.
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Who in the Taliban is gonna tell Osama "No" ?.

Video games are haram to radical Wahhabis. Reject Camelfuckers. Even if you ain't a fan of the Great Satan, at least they aren't going to beat you to death with clubs for your waifu games.
 
Wormy said:
Reject both. Women in functional armor is sexiest.
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Female warriors in antiquity were very much a rarity to begin with.

You can look up battles and entire legions were wiped out that were entirely male. You can't find a battle where 50,000 women warriors died but you can easily find ones when it relates to men.

The trend is to push towards countries who kept most of their history oral and didn't write it down as far as realistic female warriors go. It's so they can take more creative liberties until archeological evidence gets around and becomes part of the common mindset.
 
Marissa Moira said:
Female warriors in antiquity were very much a rarity to begin with.
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Your point?
Marissa Moira said:
You can look up battles and entire legions were wiped out that were entirely male. You can't find a battle where 50,000 women warriors died but you can easily find ones when it relates to men.
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Again, your point?
Marissa Moira said:
The trend is to push towards countries who kept most of their history oral and didn't write it down as far as realistic female warriors go. It's so they can take more creative liberties until archeological evidence gets around and becomes part of the common mindset.
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Annnd, I need to let this affect my personal artistic tastes, why again? Am I not allowed to enjoy a certain style in the fantasy I consume because it didn't play out that way often in history?
 
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