here we can babble about localizations and translations

zel

zel

probably quit [see about for info]
Pronouns
she/her
for either video games, tv shows, books, whatever!!! im not sure what board this thread fits in in this case but if i misjudged it feel free to move it!
i find localizations for anything super interesting so yea!

anyway im kinda making this thread cause we kinda derailed my ask thread into a discussion on dora the explorer localizations so im moving it here
El Gran Gordo said:
Good but I mean there's no need. It's not like Dora ethnically resembles a Russian girl anyway (?).
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yea i dont really get this either (context: in the russian version her name was changed to be way more russian for some reason, becoming даша/dasha)
 
Yeah, in Go Diego Go, they kept his name (Диего), so...weird consistency...
 
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Lol nice.

I mean I don't think any Russian people look like that, unless there's, like, Mexican inmigrants in Russia that happen to have Russian names.
 
El Gran Gordo said:
Lol nice.

I mean I don't think any Russian people look like that, unless there's, like, Mexican inmigrants in Russia that happen to have Russian names.
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I think the closest types of people common in Russia who would look like that are the Caucasians (and I mean, literal people from around that region, not the way we use it to refer to "white" people).
 
I was thinking about Turkmenians or Armenians? Maybe Mongolians but no lmao. Thinking about the skin color here.


I don't know why this is a conversation, but I like it.
 
i have no idea what name they coulda picked for diego too that was more russian if they really wanted that. except for like. дима/dima (diminutive for dmitry)
 
Speaking of localizations, for Left 4 Dead 2, Russian is literally the only language that uses names translated to its language for the Special Infected, except for Tank and Jockeys. Every other language uses the same words (French, Spanish, and German)

It's like this for Russian:

Boomer (called that because they explode when you kill them) = Толстяк (tolstyak, literally just "fatty" or "fat man", and that's a nickname the English version occasionally uses)
Hunter = Охотник
Smoker = Курильщик
Spitter = Плевальщица
Charger = Громила
Jockey = Жокей
Witch = Ведьма
Tank = Танк

Also, Russian is the only language that gets clips from extra DLC from The Passing, every other language doesn't get it.
 
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yknow what lemme ramble about a lil mistranslation in the russian version of rayman legeds
me on discord said:
the name for mystical pique for some godforsaken reason was translated to something along the lines of "mysterious decoration" (таинственное украшение)
i dont have a slightest clue how this happened especially since it was perfectly fine in origins (mysterious pique as it should be) and the translations between both games are consistent otherwise
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ill provide a pic from legends itself tomorrow if i dont forget so look out for that
 
The grass feels like pants in Kirby's Epic Yarn, but only in the North American localization. In the UK the grass feels like trousers instead.

Most of the Japanese Kirby fandom never saw Kirby: Right Back at Ya! with all the funny character accents and it's strange to think about.

Also in Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, the Star Warriors are elite members of a greater army known as the Galaxy Warriors. The 4Kids dub calls both these groups the "star warriors", hence the confusion with Kirby and Meta Knight suddenly not being the last Star Warriors (these are the only two living characters referred to as such in the Japanese version).

The vast majority of Kirby Air Ride's soundtrack originates from the Japanese version of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, but 4Kids replaced the entire soundtrack of the show for other language dubs, so international audiences would not have recognized these tunes back then.

In order to promote Kirby Air Ride, episodes 96 and 97 of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! were aired much earlier in the series in North America (episodes 50 and 51). Most people seem to believe that the air ride machine battle being a dream was the localization attempting to correct the continuity, but this plot point is present in the Japanese version as well!

The original Kirby's Dream Land is known as Kirby of the Stars in Japan. Since then, every mainline Kirby game has had the Kirby of the Stars prefix in the title, though because of the name change with the first game, no such prefix could be used to distinguish the mainline games in English without causing inconsistency.

Since l's and r's are interchangeable in Japanese, in Paper Mario: The Origami King, Olivia's name can also be transliterated "Orivia". This is lost in translation and it's kinda sad.

Also I'm not leaving without posting the blatant MS Paint Photoshop that is the North American boxart for Kirby: Squeak Squad:

box-art-battles-the-kirby-series-20110907021418993.jpg
 
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Québec Simpsons dub is famous (or infamous if you live in the hexagon) for how heavily it was localized, but it was nothing compared to what we did to King of the Hill. We took a show about small town life in the US south town and localized the shit out of it. The fictious town of Arlene, Texas suddenly was the very real Sainte-Irène, Québec (Télétoon's official website pretended it was still set in Texas and the US iconography in the show proper was not edited, not that it fooled anyone) a setting change that was ignored every other episode because it broke logic so much. Every character's beside Bobby names were changed (Hank became "Henri", Boomhauer became "Papineau", etc). Despite how insane all of this sounds, it was a great with a natural script and great voice performance by many top-tier actors.

Unfortunately, the dub was cancelled after 7 seasons, uit you can bet your ass the show's name is still "Henri pis sa gang" to me.

(They also used the fact most of the VAs also did the quebec dub of The Simpsons for this masterpiece of an in-joke .

 
i've been watching all of yugioh with a friend because we're morons and it's fascinating to see the changes

not just the big ones such as THE SHADOW REALM but there's a lot of minor ones, such as character dynamics, character motivations, what a specific duel is about, etc

and some of them were even for the better! motivations were improved by the dub rewriting, actions made more sense, etc. now, not all of them, far from all of them (boy i could go on) but it's fascinating how it seems to cut both ways
 
Whenever a game uses British English, even in America, I have a higher opinion on it. Two examples that come to mind are Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Dragon Quest VIII. Mainly because it's kind of the the norm for Americans to use American English. As a bonus, Xenoblade Chronicles even kept the British voice acting, and I truly loved it for that. These type of scripts indicate that the UK translated the script first, so instead of doing double work, it was used.

It would not be surprising if Nintendo's decision to have separate US and UK English translations was due to Mario Party 8, a game that used a specific word (even if it rhymes) that is considered insensitive. One result of this is Splatoon (1), which has a lot of flavour in the US version but the UK version is comparatively more plain. Take for example, the standard cheer is "Booyah!" but it's "Nice!" in UK (because that's how the Japanese version is like). I suppose the UK adapted some choices from the US, because they adopted "Booyah!" in the sequel.

Thank you for reading.
 
Glowsquid said:

Québec Simpsons dub is famous (or infamous if you live in the hexagon) for how heavily it was localized, but it was nothing compared to what we did to King of the Hill. We took a show about small town life in the US south town and localized the shit out of it. The fictious town of Arlene, Texas suddenly was the very real Sainte-Irène, Québec (Télétoon's official website pretended it was still set in Texas and the US iconography in the show proper was not edited, not that it fooled anyone) a setting change that was ignored every other episode because it broke logic so much. Every character's beside Bobby names were changed (Hank became "Henri", Boomhauer became "Papineau", etc). Despite how insane all of this sounds, it was a great with a natural script and great voice performance by many top-tier actors.

Unfortunately, the dub was cancelled after 7 seasons, uit you can bet your ass the show's name is still "Henri pis sa gang" to me.

(They also used the fact most of the VAs also did the quebec dub of The Simpsons for this masterpiece of an in-joke .

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I had no idea about any of this so that's really cool.

Anyway, in the French version of Homer's barbecue pit the French instructions get ruined and he has to use English ones. "THE GRILL???"

 
Speaking of Simpsons, I derive an unhealthy amount of pride from the fact the Quebec dub was the only one to dub the Steam Hams theme song. Because we are the chosen people (just ignore you can still hear the original audio under it...)

 
ZelenPixel said:
yknow what lemme ramble about a lil mistranslation in the russian version of rayman legeds

ill provide a pic from legends itself tomorrow if i dont forget so look out for that
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IMG_20200603_182756.jpg

here it is. you can see Таинственное украшение/mysterious decoration at the bottom there. and the proper name just above. how does this even happen
 
Kersti said:
The grass feels like pants in Kirby's Epic Yarn, but only in the North American localization. In the UK the grass feels like trousers instead.
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You forgot to mention the fact that they changed the narrator, which is a change I like. The narrator sounds far more like a man who would narrate a show for children, which I feel fits the tone of the game.
 
Before we got the dub for Sailor Moon that we all know and love, Saban tried to make its own version of the show that was half live-action and half animation. It didn't get through the pitch process, mostly because production for it would've been way too expensive at the time. This video explains why it went down in favor of dubbing the original episodes.

 
Can't watch the video rn so I don't know if it covers it, but a couple years ago Kotaku went looking for the American-made Sailor Moon and found out there was a SECOND American-made one. This one called Team Angel.

www.kotaku.com.au

We Tried To Uncover The Long-Lost 'American Sailor Moon' And Found Something Incredible

In 1993, before the magical girl anime Sailor Moon was released in the US, there was an alternate vision for it. It was an American vision. A total remake of the show with Saturday morning-style animation, intercut with footage of real-life, all-American high school teens. “Politically correct”...
www.kotaku.com.au www.kotaku.com.au

youtu.be

The Lost American Sailor Moon - Team Angel

Read the full story here: https://kotaku.com/we-tried-to-uncover-the-long-lost-american-sailor-moon-1827695456 Before Sailor Moon came to the United States, ...
youtu.be youtu.be
 
In the heavily edited and Americanized dub of Doki Doki Precure, they decided to rename the character Alice Yotsuba to Clara Yotsuba.

Yes they just replaced her already Western first name with another Western first name and kept her Japanese last name unchanged.

I don't get it.

Also don't really get why they decided to dub a series where literally every episode is plot relevant and cut out thirteen whole episodes and combined several more so there's nineteen episodes missing out of 49
 
ZelenPixel said:
here it is. you can see Таинственное украшение/mysterious decoration at the bottom there. and the proper name just above. how does this even happen
Click to expand...

"Pique" is a cognate too, how the heck....
 
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