Some thoughts on the localisation of the JAST Flowers demo
I won't be giving my thoughts on the content of the story itself because I will be on the Flowers defense brigade more than anything. So you see, totally biased. What I’ll do is highlight some of the things that really bothered me in this demo. I played through the English demo on its own first (ignoring what they say in Japanese) to see if someone without knowledge of Japanese can make sense of it, after which I played through both the original demo and the JAST demo side by side on two screens just to see how good/bad the translations really were.
So obviously, there will be
spoilers for the demo.
Firstly, there is an audio bug in the config page at the title screen. However, this is actually a bug that also exists on the original Flowers printemps. Going into the config at the title screen and trying to leave, switching between windowed and full screen, will cause the audio to bug out. This bug doesn’t occur when you visit the config page from anywhere other than the title page. This was fortunately fixed in the subsequent Flowers été, but they never did patch it in printemps.
Regarding the demo on its own...
There are a number of typos here and there. Not capitalising “I” in “so i don’t really”. An occasional typo. That’s understandable. An unnecessary comma (I’m, so sorry)? Well, alright it didn’t bother me that much. There were grammar mistakes here and there too. This, I’m less forgiving of. I did find myself going “uhh wha?” a number of times, a result I found to be of some not so correctly translated lines. Oddly enough, there were also quite a number of awkward lines in English which turns out, are the result of some very literal translations.
Incorrect translation of that first set of lines aside, If so, no, but…!
(Edit: Ha! Now that I look at the grandfather line again, it actually reads like her granddad traumatised her. Rest assured, her grandfather simply taught her that it's a place where a lot of people hide their secrets in general. So it's bad manners to go probing)
And of course, there’s also this:
Maaaybe it’s a typo. But then…
Arghhhh. Pet peeve. They do use “you’re” properly at times so either Rikka has bad English (I kid, Mayuri did it at least once too. Bad Mayuri), or there is someone on the team who does. Shame on the editor/QC for not catching it either.
On its own, I suppose it’s barely serviceable. You would probably be confused by some lines that really don't make sense.
Well no. Suoh just likes messing with you, Rikka. But in truth they actually got the lines mixed up. It's Rikka who suggests fingerprints, not Suoh. Basic Japanese yo.
So how bad is the translation?
Right off the chapter monologue, I could tell that JAST has taken quite a few shortcuts in their translation, choosing to drop some words and choosing to just get the general message across. Your mileage may vary on this but as someone who likes to pick at every single sentence and nuance, it is not something I like. I do admit that I am on the extreme side of things when it comes to this (like manner of speech of each character in Japanese, but it’s likely hard to preserve that in English). The general audience that doesn't know a lick of Japanese probably won't notice how the voiceovers are saying just a teeny bit more than what the subtitles give, but it's a fact that quite a few lines have been lost in translation. This would probably evolve into a liberal vs literal translation debate but I feel even the most liberal of translations could have been done better. And as I mentioned before, their translation do get very literal at times so it isn’t solely about that.
Let’s take a look at the chapter’s opening monologue in the demo.
the original (pun not intended) said:
確かな個を持ち、
相手の心を傷つけることに躊躇はない、
絶対的な命により処刑されてゆく彼女らを見ても、
精神的虐殺を行う振る舞いをみても、
私は王女こそが処刑台を心待ちにしているように思えた
JAST's take on it said:
She is filled with certainty
She holds no hesitation at hurting her partners
Looking at this girl who has given the death penalty...
... a slaughter of the spirit...
...she is like the queen at the gallows
The general meaning of the original here is about a
Princess who doesn't think twice about hurting the feelings of others, sends girls to the gallows on her absolute orders, and slaughters others mentally/emotionally with her behaviour... but looking at all that, Suoh can't help but feel that it is actually the Princess who seems to be anticipating the gallows herself. Tell me, did you get most of that from their translation? Leaving aside whether or not it was a deliberate switch to Queen or an honest mix up of the Kanji 王女 (Princess) vs 女王 (Queen), would you find such a translation acceptable?
My other issue with JAST’s translation is their choice of wording. This one is minor but using “Whoa” instead of “Oh my” or “Oh dear” when Suoh says “ara”. This is probably more of my personal view of Suoh but she doesn’t strike me as the type to say “Whoa”. There are a number of other words which I would gladly change to make it sound better but this would probably come down to translator preference. The only kind of wording, or mistake, I cannot look past is the type that
affects how you would view a character’s personality.
So you deserve it? I knew you wouldn't get it? Did JAST just turn my dear Mayuri into a major bitch? because that is definitely not what she said.
Often times, and this is a rather common problem in translations, they mix up the person doing the action, or the person the text is referring to. The Japanese language can be a little ambiguous at times, and as the reader, you have to use linguistic cues or the context as a whole to clue yourself in to who/what they are referring to. But for translations, you often find the translator interpreting it for you. Unfortunately, that also means that the translator may offer the wrong interpretation, be it due to the lack of skill in identifying said cues or because they do not get the full context of the text being translated. While the latter was sometimes the reason cited for video game localisation (out of order text, etc), I highly doubt that such a text heavy and dependent genre is translated in that manner.
Which brings us back to the purely incorrect sentence I mentioned before…
the original said:
だから、
何故こんな事に、
？？？「それってどういうこと……？」
静かな、抑えた声というのはこれ程恐ろしいものなのかと、
怒鳴りつけるよりも強く、張り詰めた緊張感が場を支配した。
JAST-san said:
So
Why this?
???: What does this mean?
She says in a calm, restrained voice, which only helps emphasize the severity of this.
Because of my frantic yelling, tension fills the air.
your humble quick and dirty translator said:
So
How did it turn out like this?
???: What do you mean by that……?
To think that a calm, restrained voice could be this terrifying.
It filled the air with a tension stronger than any yell could
So... like I said, Suoh didn’t yell. It would really be quite out of character for her to imo. She was remarking upon how terrifyingly angry this person, which you will know is Rikka in a bit, sounds even though she wasn’t shouting. JAST’s translation also sorta misses its mark in terms of conveying Rikka’s anger at what she assumes to be Ichigo accusing her of stealing the books. “What does this mean” sounds more like she was confused and wasn’t sure what was going on. That Rikka thinks Ichigo is accusing her is something they explicitly confirm several lines after.
They also fumble some of the lines in that scene with stuff like:
JASTOOOO said:
Ichigo talking to Rikka: This morning, when you found the missing books on the class president’s bed, weren’t you happy you found them?
Ah.. uhm. It’s unnatural to refer to “you” (Rikka) and then “class president’s bed” (also Rikka) in the same sentence. Literal translation at play again. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that she was suddenly talking to Suoh instead! How rude! I suspect that there’s also a mixup of subject though. Ichigo didn’t specifically mention who it was who found the books in Japanese, but we all know that it was Suoh and Ichigo based on the scene prior to this, or perhaps it could be the school in general looking for the books. Using “we” instead of “you” here would make a lot more sense (We found the missing books on your bed this morning. Aren’t you glad we found them?), especially since Rikka then points out “wouldn’t that imply that it was I who stole the books?” (Ichigo is a little dense and comes to the realization that oh yeah, it would imply that). So that's why she was so angry before... HMMMMmmmm.
冗談じゃないわ
This is not a joke
I know it’s not a joke but I laughed at this one. You can't be serious. 冗談じゃないわ
Overall, I would have to say that this occasionally feels like a rather lazy translation, where the translator occasionally skips entire words when they feel like it. Some of the words skipped don’t really matter that much (Ichigo didn’t just touch Suoh’s hips and belly, but her breasts too!), but some of them do (the princess who wants to be on the gallows herself; Ichigo helping Suoh up after she caused her to fall on her ass. She’s not that big a bitch). Imagine reading a book that carefully describes to you details that help you form a mental image. Every cough and every twitch the character feels (not to the point where it is overdone, mind you). Then imagine if JAST removes the majority of that so that you don’t get to see as much as you were supposed to. I understand that not everything can be captured in a translation but not to this extent… Odd lines here and there are left out every now and then, for reasons I cannot comprehend. It’s not difficult to incorporate some of those words into the sentence.
And did I mention how bad some of the lines sound?
original but I was too lazy to go SS it said:
感情がコントロールできずに手は震え、頬と言わず首元まで朱く染まった。
Reading that gave me a headache. A quick and dirty edit would be…
Unable to control my emotions, my hands shook. Needless to say, my cheeks and even my neck reddened (It’s past tense in the original).
There really is a lot more that I could mention but that would make this post a lot longer than it already is. And to be honest, I got tired comparing them side by side and mostly stopped somewhere in the library (aside from those two Mayuri SSs, which grabbed my eye on my first play through of the English one). I'm sure there were a lot more horrendous text after that but I figure anything more would just be me kicking a dead horse.
Translations aside...
They have also skimped on presentation of the chapter monologue text. In the original, the text appears in narrative caption boxes on the screen, appearing all over the screen, flowing from right to left. JAST leaves all of that out and uses simple subtitles. I kind of recall Sugina Miki tweeting about the effort they put into the presentation there years ago so it's sad that it didn't survive localisation. Thankfully, the other speech bubbles do remain.
On a more positive note, I give them props for bothering to find the right quote from “The Public Enemy” instead of translating from the Japanese version of it, which could have potentially lead to a quote that wouldn’t match the original word for word in English.
Music is as glorious as I remember at least. Thank MANYO. That's one thing localisation can't screw up.
I actually really do wish that JAST operates on JAST time. Delay it dammit. It's not ready for March 2016.
