Thoughts on the localization changes?

[Zeyphrus]

I’ve sunk a lot of time into this game because I had plenty of free time when it launched, and I enjoyed it. The music, the gameplay, the dialogue and voices, I can’t really find anything to immediately complain about.

 

Now, I’m seeing a lot of chaos on the birdapp, twitter, about translation changes, censoring, and things that were almost completely removed. For the most part I just raise an eyebrow at it but I’m wondering what do those of you who’ve kept up with things think about it?

[Azz]

Besides the changes to some of the supports, mainly S supports to make them more platonic (especially with the characters who are coded in the game to be underage), I'm not too sure what else was changed exactly.

In regard to the changes to the S supports, I'm all for them. You shouldn't be able to romance someone like Anna who is supposed to be 14 or Jean who is like 10. I do agree with some people raising an eyebrow at how Alear can't romance units who are supposed to be 17 (like the younger royal siblings, Rosado etc) yet can romance characters who are older than them (Alear is supposed to be 17 according to the game files). Personally I'm not too miffed so whatever, headcanons exist also,

Spoiler

I was always gonna give the bond ring to Veyle anyways cause family and shit

But in regards to changes, that's all I know about

[DefyingFates]

19 hours ago, Azz said:

also,

What kind of heartless sociopath WOULDN'T go with that, anyway? I know that's what I made a beeline for as soon as the option opened up.

I didn't hear about any localization stuff (I don't know if @Coolmanio is interested in Engage but this kind of thing is right up their alley). That said, I am curious if Engage was meant to have an equivalent of the face-petting/ teatime observation mechanic. Whenever you get woken up, the screen fades to black from the waker-upper's face but then fades right back into them, which just screams "cut content". The 3H version was admittedly kinda weird conceptually, but if there was a cut I'm surprised since I didn't think that was as awkward (especially for Western audiences) as Fates' thing.

Edited January 30, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Acacia Sgt]

If it was cut, I feel it was moved to the "polishing rings" bit. lol

[King Marth 64]

I don’t think there was any cut or edit non-dialogue localization changes in Engage since Engage did had in a Worldwide Release like the other Fire Emblem Switch titles and few months from Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. I do think the developers wanted intended to have something non-offensive things in worldwide releases now a days.

I think the developers would make any future patches for Engage similar to like Three Houses to fix some stuff that wasn’t intended from launch like Bernadatte’s support conversation to Byleth about her father being cruel for leaving her a few days, but it wasn’t in the Japanese version as an example. I do think Engage might get something similar like Three Houses handled.

Edited January 29, 2023 by King Marth 64

[Acacia Sgt]

Maybe not modified for localization, but modified mid-development. Since that is possible too. But well, who knows.

[Alexmender]

I'm not going to touch the S-support stuff because it's pretty inconsequential and only amounts to 3 to 4 lines in the ending cards, and I frankly don't care about the marriage stuff if it doesn't have any gameplay benefits (I can always play fake marriage stuff in FEH with any character). 

I played the game with the NA translation and Japanese voices and from what I could understand (Engage's story is very standard shounen anime so I could sort of pick up on what the characters say despite knowing jack all of Japanese) the translation differs from what's being said quite a few times. I may be wrong but I got the feel the localization team tried to change the anime feel for a cartoon-ish one to make it easier to get for the English audience. Whether the changes are a good thing or not will depend on the person, personally I wasn't the biggest fan because it seemed the translation tried to keep the game more upbeat while some stuff was going down, for example (late game spoilers so don't look if you're not there):

Spoiler

When Zephia kills Marni in the script Mauvier is just shocked and screams "aaah", while in the voiceover he's clearly angry and says "Kisamaaa" as in "Damn you". It's not that big of a deal because right after the script shows Mauvier is angry and wants to kill Zephia for what she did but it felt jarring considering that was a pre-rendered cutscene. 

There's some other times where the translation puts a whole line while the character only says something like "yes", "I see", "Hmm", etc. I don't mind those changes because trying to infer the meaning from those sounds can be tough. 

I'll try the British translation next to see if it is more faithful, and then the Latin American one. 

That being said, even if the NA translation seems to have taken quite a few liberties (from what I experienced, I know jack all of Japanese so I'm probably wrong here) I didn't see anything egregious or that radically changes the overall plot or feeling of a character so it's mostly a matter of preferences. It's nowhere near the stuff with 4Kids and the Onigiri=Jelly Donuts stuff they pulled in Pokemon.  

[scigeek101]

"Kisamaaa"

Since it's Fire Emblem they really should have it in the localization notes to translate this into "dastard" every time. 

 

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'm not sure what all of the changes are, but I think it's a good thing that the localization changed it so you can't romance young teenagers and children. That's very bad and very problematic, to say the least.

[scigeek101]

1 hour ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'm not sure what all of the changes are, but I think it's a good thing that the localization changed it so you can't romance young teenagers and children. That's very bad and very problematic, to say the least.

Wasn't a problem for stuff like Game of Thrones but I'm guessing they want to try to keep the game rating as close to all ages as possible and if changing one or two lines of dialogue is the difference between a T and an M rating that justifies the increased sales most likely. 

Personally I'd rather see the the series pivot away from the very fan service style of anime inspiration and go back to the more serious fantasy settings of say, Mystery of the Emblem, or Tellius. But I think once they banked in on the Moe Moe Kyu side of the otaku fan base they basically have it where that's the cash cow. 

I think most of the complaints about how the localization changed things tends to basically go down the path of people online nitpicking things, especially these days where if you don't like the English translation for whatever reason you can switch to Japanese from the menu. 

Awakening and before basically nobody complained much about translation changes. I guess twitter wasn't really a thing yet. Awakening changed a bunch of stuff in the localization, sort of , you had stuff like "Chrom's Mercenary Group" getting changed to "Shepherds" and what not to try to spice up an already bland script which imho was a big improvement over the Japanese version. Especially since Awakening was already so light in the script department compared to the Tellius games. Or even the GBA games. 

 

Shadow Dragon also got a fairly hefty script rewrite but it was mostly excellent. Japanese version basically used a modified SNES script but the English version really did a lot with word choice to make it sound more refined. 

I think they want to avoid big words nowadays cause I guess they think that it lessens the sales potential? Makes the game seem less approachable. This script just feels very simple and childish. I don't think we'll be seeing words like "suzerain" appear much in the future titles. 

[Zeyphrus]

Honestly the changes I’m thinking of are really minute things that I doubt I’d have noticed if they didn’t get shoved in my face because of twitter algorithms.

 

The main example of a change between translations that I keep defaulting to whenever pointing them out is Louis, who in the English version is just a very chill dude who goes “people watching”, nothing odd there right? In Japanese however he specified that he only watches women. He doesn’t seem to have any desire to talk or interact with them — just watch them.

 

It very clearly doesn’t change the story as a whole or anything important but it’s one of the changes I raise an eyebrow at.

 

Another example would be Goldmary and how she talks about having the “gazes of men” on her, and very clearly happy about it, but when translated they removed any mention of it and instead had her do a little song of “wash, rinse, dry, starch, fold…” while doing chores. Again, it’s a meaningless change that doesn’t really do much besides reinforce that Goldmary likes feeling validated. Another example to come to mind with her is in a support with Framme she made comments about her own body and in the localization she instead talks about how Framme was gonna bathe.

One last example I recall is Panette having any sign of calling herself a maiden or being womanly for one reason or another, notably in a wake up event, being removed. It’s just odd 

 

I heard a lot of little things got axed or changed for being “problematic” but haven’t really seen anything worth being called that besides the romances that shan’t be named  with the kids. Which I honestly don’t care about being censored or changed. Actually, maybe I’m a little thankful that it was altered if anything.

 

Like I said other parts just make me raise an eyebrow. Doesn’t matter much at the end of the day when I can just chuckle and have fun with the game. Just wanted to hear what others thought in this neck of the woods.

1 hour ago, scigeek101 said:

Awakening and before basically nobody complained much about translation changes. 

Although I don’t care much about localization here, I will be the basically nobody and say that part of Awakening’s localization upset me in hindsight. Notably, the cheapening of Henry’s character in his supports with Olivia — I won’t go off on my tangent about that though because that’s off topic here. 

[scigeek101]

28 minutes ago, Zeyphrus said:

Honestly the changes I’m thinking of are really minute things that I doubt I’d have noticed if they didn’t get shoved in my face because of twitter algorithms.

 

The main example of a change between translations that I keep defaulting to whenever pointing them out is Louis, who in the English version is just a very chill dude who goes “people watching”, nothing odd there right? In Japanese however he specified that he only watches women. He doesn’t seem to have any desire to talk or interact with them — just watch them.

 

It very clearly doesn’t change the story as a whole or anything important but it’s one of the changes I raise an eyebrow at.

 

Another example would be Goldmary and how she talks about having the “gazes of men” on her, and very clearly happy about it, but when translated they removed any mention of it and instead had her do a little song of “wash, rinse, dry, starch, fold…” while doing chores. Again, it’s a meaningless change that doesn’t really do much besides reinforce that Goldmary likes feeling validated. Another example to come to mind with her is in a support with Framme she made comments about her own body and in the localization she instead talks about how Framme was gonna bathe.

One last example I recall is Panette having any sign of calling herself a maiden or being womanly for one reason or another, notably in a wake up event, being removed. It’s just odd 

 

I heard a lot of little things got axed or changed for being “problematic” but haven’t really seen anything worth being called that besides the romances that shan’t be named  with the kids. Which I honestly don’t care about being censored or changed. Actually, maybe I’m a little thankful that it was altered if anything.

 

Like I said other parts just make me raise an eyebrow. Doesn’t matter much at the end of the day when I can just chuckle and have fun with the game. Just wanted to hear what others thought in this neck of the woods.

Although I don’t care much about localization here, I will be the basically nobody and say that part of Awakening’s localization upset me in hindsight. Notably, the cheapening of Henry’s character in his supports with Olivia — I won’t go off on my tangent about that though because that’s off topic here. 

I think a lot of characters in Awakening got their personalities changed around a bit in the localization. Personally I prefer it overall since it makes them more memorable imho. But it's not like I care about the characters or story in that game to begin with though. 

Just a lot of the complaining around the localization to me seems like nitpicks on how it was localized rather than actually pointing out overt changes or mistakes. Happens a lot online. I remember with Breath of the Wild there was this rumor going around that the English localization totally changed the game because it switched the quest log from 1st person in Japanese to 2nd person in English, which is not entirely wrong, but doesn't really change the character of the game, because it's just a quirk of grammar, mostly stemming from the fact that English needs an overt subject to not sound terrible. And Japanese doesn't. So the English localization has to pick a tone and stick with it for the whole game while the Japanese quest log can just leave out a subject the whole game and be more or less perfectly understandable. Is it first person or second person? Depends on interpretation. Is the tone basically exactly the same as the English version? Yes. 

[CompteSecours]

I play in French, but it's translated from English, with the Japanese voices.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo of America decided to translate this game like a 80'/90' dub anime. Almost every character says the stupidest shit ever, it's funny. It's even funnier with English voices 😂. I watched some support clips in English, how can you not feel disturbed by it ? Every actor overplays.

So yeah, they did some character dirty like Yunaka. In Japanese, she doesn't say a weird catchphrase every sentences.

However it's fun. The story is boring af, the characters too. They went full cringe in this localization and I like it.

 

Concerning the romance stuff, it's weird. The player cannot know the age of the characters without Internet. Alear is 17 yo. He cannot romance a 17 yo girl, but can romance a 45 yo dude ? Mmmhhh.... Weird. (The "but he is over 1000 yo !!!" doesn't work, sorry).

They should have make Alear 18 yo, all the 17 yo characters 18 yo, and for Anna/Jean/Framme/Clanne, make the S rank a family thing (like you are a brother/sister to me).

[Fire Emblem Fan]

21 hours ago, scigeek101 said:

Wasn't a problem for stuff like Game of Thrones but I'm guessing they want to try to keep the game rating as close to all ages as possible and if changing one or two lines of dialogue is the difference between a T and an M rating that justifies the increased sales most likely. 

 

Cool, I've never read or watched anything Game of Thrones and know next to nothing about it aside from its name.

[Fabulously Olivier]

40 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Cool, I've never read or watched anything Game of Thrones and know next to nothing about it aside from its name.

If it helps, imagine an M-rated version of Geneology of the Holy War and you'll pretty much have it. Even some of the major characters have similarities.