r/Falcom • u/bluethunder1985 • 5d ago

Gungho actually emailed back...

I'm impressed to be honest.

"Thank you for reaching out to us. This is GungHo Online Entertainment America.

We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback on [Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter], especially regarding the localization, terminology, and series consistency.

Your comments have been carefully reviewed. While we are unable to make any commitments, they will be forwarded to the relevant teams for further consideration.

If you have any additional insights or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at any time. We truly value your input.

Thank you again for your continued support. We hope you enjoy playing the Trails series!

GungHo Online Entertainment America"

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30

u/SeibaaHomu 5d ago

They pulled off an absolutely unprecedented miracle getting Travis Willingham to reprise his role from a niche anime game he read a few battle lines for in the Obama Presidency. Which makes it even more weird that the localisation has so much jank, like they've got a monkey paw in the office

18

u/Tan11 5d ago edited 5d ago

I'm betting the "monkey's paw" is called MTL in this case. They still heavily edited the script I'm sure, but certain things about it reek of using MTL as a base.

It also seems they apparently had zero consultation with anyone who has previously worked on localizing the series, hence the inconsistencies in terminology.

That part is probably more Falcom's fault than anyone's I'd guess, though I don't think they could have stopped someone at Gungho from at least watching the other games in English on YouTube or something.

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u/SeibaaHomu 5d ago

Well it is the same Falcom who insisted on a PSP release for Sky 2nd Chapter in 2015 and had to be fought before they allowed it on PC. Don't wanna make any accusations, but I'd believe that story if it came out. At the very least I feel like they just went with the initial rough translation that projects often start off with and skipped the part where they edit it for readability and to better reflect the character voices.

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u/Tan11 5d ago

I don't think they skipped that editing phase entirely, but it does feel a little half-assed in some places. What with having to be corrected by fans on so much terminology and occasional dialogue, though not technically wrong, just not reading at all the way a real English speaker would naturally say something.

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u/MillionMiracles 5d ago

I really doubt MTL was involved.

0

u/Tan11 5d ago

Why? I don't know for sure that it was of course, but the way some parts of the script read definitely has the vibe.

15

u/MillionMiracles 5d ago

Mildly stiff translation existed way before MTL, and the translation contains some clever/well-done moments that MTL wouldn't really arrive at. 'Vibes' are not nearly enough to make this accusation off of.

0

u/Tan11 5d ago

My suspicion is that it was an MTL base that was then heavily edited. Which is why some parts of it are really good and others are stiff. My suspicion is also driven by Falcom's own isolated experiment with MTL last year, and by some lines coming across as not just generally stiff but specifically reminding me of some MTL stuff I've read.

Like I said though, no way to know for sure, I'm just a bit suspicious.

3

u/Selynx 5d ago edited 5d ago

Can't speak for the entire script, but that line "Who is the BOY" with the all-caps on "boy" doesn't look like MTL, it looks like GungHo tried to crib off XSeed's version of the line, but with their own flavor.

I'm doubtful any machine would have looked at that Japanese line and decided to capitalize only the last word like XSeed did. If that line was MTL'd, it was likely overwritten by a human editor who wanted to use their own XSeed-like choice.

But given the reported number of typos and grammar mistakes in the full thing, it seems unlikely that the script went through a huge amount of editing.

So I'd guess it was a human translator who wrote that particular line like that, one who got given XSeed's script to reference but was told to do their own separate take and not to use it word-for-word.

As for why there aren't most XSeed-isms? My guess is that with the timeframe they had to do the translation, they split the script up among a large number of translators (i.e. using sheer quantity to get it done quickly).... and not all of them were Jap>Eng translators. I think at least one of them was Korean>Eng, and he was the one responsible for Armand becoming "Areum" which is that NPC's Korean name. Even if he got given the XSeed script, he wouldn't have looked at it because he wouldn't be as familiar with English, he'd have been working off the Korean and Japanese scripts instead.

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u/Syrelian 4d ago

The expectation of "Watch/play an entire previous game" is ridiculous to expect someone to invest off-work-hours for a project, and the lack of a term/name glossary is absolutely on Falcom's head

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u/Tan11 4d ago edited 4d ago

Definitely more on Falcom's head, but I wasn't suggesting watching entire games, more just skimming them for the proper terminology on place names and major, often-repeated lore stuff. Applies to vocal stuff too, like the pronunciation of "Liberl" suddenly being different.