Translation Misinformation: NISA, Aksys, and More

As I have said before, probably not here in the video game section, I have interviewed for a position on QA team for NISA. I had a friend who worked there for a brief time and I asked him to get me an interview, I got one, they didn't like something, but that's another subject to discuss. Anyways, my friend did tell me in advance to not go into the interview and expect to be able to say you want the job to help maintain the original script/story. Going in with that kind of mind set may hurt you in the interview I was told. They do things their own way and I guess, thinking you can come in and change that, of course would be bad.
*snip*
What he did say, was that apparently most of the towns people/villagers did not have names in the original, so they just added in names for each villager. Names such as: Magnum and Dog, can be seen if you interact with towns people. Not sure if that's such a big deal though, but its something I thought I'd add in.

So, the Ar tonelico 2 English localization has problems. I don’t presume to have a diagnosis for what went wrong, but I can scrutinize the symptoms. Most importantly, I want to help make things better. The real goal of this project is not to accuse anyone for what’s happened; it’s to fix what we can and give fans the best experience that can be had.

My current assignment is relocalizing Cloche’s Cosmosphere. I have found that almost all of the decorum of Croix’s interactions with Cloche has been lost. I’m working pretty hard to restore as much of Cloche’s prim haughtiness and Croix’s respectful humility as possible. Here’s a sample from a scene where Croix has switched to hyper-formal register because he is upset (with himself or with Cloche; it’s up to the player to guess):

Croix(3) :26:26:
JP::いや、そんな無理なさらなくてもいいですよ。
EN::Thanks,　but　no　thanks.
NEW:No,　you　need　not　trouble　yourself　further.

While the English “thanks but no thanks” is certainly understandable in this case, it is distant from the original meaning and, more importantly, terribly rude. It’s what a modern American might say to a stranger when miffed, but it’s not what a Knight of Pastalia would ever say to the Lady Cloche under any circumstance.

Edit: I found another fine example of this later in the day. Actually, the scene that this comes from is quite accurately translated; the localizer clearly had a good grasp of both languages. But they gave Cloche such an unbecoming voice. (This is also the scene that contains the whopping misspellings “intension” and “brake a promise”.) It’s getting clearer that the more important scenes were translated by someone more senior, and others were rushed through by someone else.

Cloche(1) :81:81:
JP::きれい事を…
EN::You're so full of it...
NEW:How eloquent...

As above, the, uh, intention of the line can stay essentially the same while the voice is reversed.

Here’s a case of a line that, even if you could understand it through the poor grammar, still wouldn’t make sense. Its meaning is actually exactly opposite to that of the original Japanese line. To enjoy such a story-centric game, you need to be able to trust the text!

JP::ここはクローシェの精神世界。
クローシェが貴方を本気で殺そうと思っていなければ、彼女の人格の誰かが助けるわ。
EN::This　is　Cloche's　spiritual　world.
If　she　tried　to　kill　you,　her　other　personality　will　save　you.
NEW:This　is　Cloche's　spiritual　world.
If　she　really　hadn't　wanted　to kill you,
she　would've　sent one of her personae to your rescue.

Edit: Here’s another good one.

Cloche(1) :85:85:
JP::もう無理よ！
どうせルカの店に勝ち目は無いんだから！
とんだ無駄骨だったわ！
EN::It's　impossible!
There's　no　way　that　Luca　is　gonna　beat　us,　anyway.
This　is　just　a　waste　of　time!
NEW:It's　impossible!
There's　no　way　we　can　beat　Luca's　restaurant anyway!
What　a　waste　of　time!

Edit: And another; “Jean” Ishikawa is getting in on the exact-opposite-meaning lines.

(142) :29:29:
JP::今回は、つまらなくない物を沢山斬りました。久しぶりに作り甲斐がありましたよ。
EN::I　sliced　many　stupid　things　today.
It　was　well　worth　the　effort.
NEW:I　sliced　quite　a　lot　of　compelling　things.
It'd　been　a　while　since　I　was　put　to　good　use.

If your craving for localization blunders is greater than your aversion to spoilers, I have a pretty momentous topic for you today. One of our own vigilant translators aquagon discovered this alarmingly ill-treated line in an important dialog with Reisha:

Reisha(17) :23:23:
JP::クロアの両親も、レイカが殺してしまったようなものですから…。
EN::Leyka killed Croix's parents, as well...
NEW:Since Reika was like the ones that killed Croix's parents...
OR::It's as if Reika herself killed Croix's parents...

The first relocalization is aquagon’s, and the second is my own attempt to express what’s really going on in this line. What’s most important is that Reisha does not actually say that Reika killed Croix’s parents.

The line was enough to confuse and unsettle the fans in this Gamespot thread. They thought that if such a thing were true, it deserved much more attention in the story, and it certainly demanded more emotional response from the characters.

To be sure that I wasn’t getting things wrong, I checked the lovely Ar tonelico 2 Design Materials book. Right there in Luca’s biography (bottom-left of page 18) was a section on her childhood:

She had a younger sister Reika, who had an IPD infection and collapsed. Her father gave his life trying to protect her from being seized by the Grand Bell. This memory has haunted Luca ever since. […] Croix, too, has an IPD incident in his childhood. At the time of Reika’s IPD outburst, Croix’s mother also became infected with IPD and killed her husband, then died herself. Reisha feels remorse for this and took Croix in.

It’s not at all clear whether Reika directly infected Croix’s mother with IPD. (Indeed, aquagon points out that the scene where she is captured is set deep in Mikry Forest, away from the town.) But even if she did, it’s certainly not true that she killed his parents, as Reisha blurts out in the official localization. One could weakly argue (and Reisha seems to believe somewhat) that she indirectly caused their deaths. But it’s not as if in an IPD berserker episode she slaughtered them with her own hands. She’s simply part of the IPD outbreak that also claimed them.

The line above is the only place where this incident is directly mentioned in the game, from what I can tell. As you can see from the Gamespot discussion, the poor translation of that single line has had huge consequences for fans’ perceptions of the characters and of the game as a whole. If anyone still thinks that a slipshod localization isn’t that big of a deal, I think this is our strongest counterargument yet.