are the subtitles on the intro to disgaea 3 accurate?

[luffy4]

i was just watchin it for like the hundredth time and i still kinda feel as though some of the subs are off, so are they or what?

[Elin]

i was just watchin it for like the hundredth time and i still kinda feel as though some of the subs are off, so are they or what?

Haven't played the game, but if you mean this, then they're perfectly accurate. Ever so slight liberties taken in places, but a largely direct translation. If you want something really inaccurate, look at the English versions of songs in the games Working Designs brought over in the Playstation era. I love their localisations, but they basically just threw away the Japanese lyrics entirely and made up their own.

[luffy4]

that is what im talking about, the main part that bugs me that seems inaccurate is at about 1:51 it sound like they are saying "seishin, oppai, something something, jaku etc.." doesnt seishin mean transform and oppai breasts? (which would make sense since the image on screen at the second is a succubus)

[Slacker Magician]

Haven't played the game, but if you mean this, then they're perfectly accurate. Ever so slight liberties taken in places, but a largely direct translation. If you want something really inaccurate, look at the English versions of songs in the games Working Designs brought over in the Playstation era. I love their localisations, but they basically just threw away the Japanese lyrics entirely and made up their own.

Judging on what I've seen in subtitles, songs would sound like a dyslexic kid did the song writing if the lyrics weren't changed .

that is what im talking about, the main part that bugs me that seems inaccurate is at about 1:51 it sound like they are saying "seishin, oppai, something something, jaku etc.." doesnt seishin mean transform and oppai breasts? (which would make sense since the image on screen at the second is a succubus)

Is it an official video from NISA?

[Cosmic]

are the subtitles on the intro to disgaea 3 accurate?

yes

[luffy4]

i went and ended up finding some other guys translation next to the original japanese lyrics, his translation is slightly different from the offical video but mostly the same

http://www.animelyrics.com/game/disgaea3/mjg.htm

[Inferno.]

i went and ended up finding some other guys translation next to the original japanese lyrics, his translation is slightly different from the offical video but mostly the same

http://www.animelyrics.com/game/disgaea3/mjg.htm

You couldn't have done that before making this thread?

[luffy4]

i did, and i had that exact link i found, however for some reason it showed up in japanese and spanish, also when i was searching before i couldnt find anything but the video

[Krisan Thyme]

The thread should have honestly ended with Mimori, she knows her stuff on this believe me. Besides, yea, I can attest to its accuracy myself. Nippon Ichi is actually pretty good about their translations in all honesty, you can generally trust their stuff without much worry.

[luffy4]

i have been told that they tend to suck with script translations and will throw out half the script and make up the rest, also there are the glitches they leave in games like ar tonelico

[Krisan Thyme]

I've never played that game personally, but from all I've heard it stands as the exception. Their games are otherwise translated pretty well.

[Elin]

Judging on what I've seen in subtitles, songs would sound like a dyslexic kid did the song writing if the lyrics weren't changed .

You've got to do some tinkering for sure, but there's a happy medium between translating something completely literally and just making something up. Though in fairness to WD, it's a task that becomes substantially more difficult when you're trying to fit your new lyrics to an existing tune instead of just slapping subtitles in.

that is what im talking about, the main part that bugs me that seems inaccurate is at about 1:51 it sound like they are saying "seishin, oppai, something something, jaku etc.." doesnt seishin mean transform and oppai breasts? (which would make sense since the image on screen at the second is a succubus)

You have to remember that the vast majority of people working in videogame localisation nowadays are professionals who are pretty good at what they do. When I started learning Japanese, I used to try and pick holes in commercial translations too, but it's doubtful that you'll be able to spot mistakes without quite a high level of Japanese, and nine times out of ten the 'errors' you perceive will just be your ears playing tricks on you, a lack of understanding on your part, or a conscious choice made by the translator to change something for the better. There are times where it's just an honest mistake too, especially during early gaming eras where you had people working on games who weren't necessarily fluent in Japanese (nor English, for that matter... :'D), but actual translation errors tend to be a lot rarer than some people want them to be. Without meaning to sound like a jerk, most people who'll tell you otherwise don't speak Japanese well enough to provide any more than anecdotal evidence, and aren't in a position to critique how good or bad any translation is.

The thread should have honestly ended with Mimori, she knows her stuff on this believe me. Besides, yea, I can attest to its accuracy myself. Nippon Ichi is actually pretty good about their translations in all honesty, you can generally trust their stuff without much worry.

<3~

Haven't played any N1 translations myself, but it seems like they have a bad reputation founded mostly on the admittedly disastrous Ar Tonelico 2. The rest of their translations seem to get relatively good press, and I remember them being highly praised for their translation of Sakura Taisen, which is impressive considering how text heavy that series is. The odd bug sneaks into their work, but you've got to remember that they're working with lower budget games, which aren't necessarily that stable or well-programmed to begin with. Example? Amidst all the fuss about Ar Tonelico 2's bugs, people seem to forget that the Japanese version of Ar Tonelico 1 had a game-breaking bug too. It was really, really easy to trigger it, and really, really easy to overlook the fact that you had triggered it, and if you saved your data afterward you were permanently stuck. It's easy to lay the blame at NISA's feet, and in Ar Tonelico 2 it sounds like they did make a mess of things, but the original developers aren't always infallible either.

[Wyrm]

I went through and listened to the song myself, and from what i could understand from that terrible quality video that Mimori posted (lolMimori ) its definately correct.
Im rather fluent in Japanese myself, as Mimori can attest to (for the most part).
And as Krisan said, this thread shouldve ended with her.

[Krisan Thyme]

<3~

Haven't played any N1 translations myself, but it seems like they have a bad reputation founded mostly on the admittedly disastrous Ar Tonelico 2. The rest of their translations seem to get relatively good press, and I remember them being highly praised for their translation of Sakura Taisen, which is impressive considering how text heavy that series is. The odd bug sneaks into their work, but you've got to remember that they're working with lower budget games, which aren't necessarily that stable or well-programmed to begin with. Example? Amidst all the fuss about Ar Tonelico 2's bugs, people seem to forget that the Japanese version of Ar Tonelico 1 had a game-breaking bug too. It was really, really easy to trigger it, and really, really easy to overlook the fact that you had triggered it, and if you saved your data afterward you were permanently stuck. It's easy to lay the blame at NISA's feet, and in Ar Tonelico 2 it sounds like they did make a mess of things, but the original developers aren't always infallible either.

Ar Tonelico seems to be their only fumble, and it was a gigantic fumble at that from all I've heard (never played it myself). I'm not sure how that ever even happened.. The rest of their games have had excellent translations, honestly. I can't attest to every single other NISA title - unfortunately - but the many games from them that I've played have had exquisite writing to them, and even delightful VA work. Their reputation doesn't deserve to go down the toilet for the mistakes they made on that series - it just isn't fair when the rest of the games I've played of theirs have been so wonderful. I do understand how one or two bad apples can get the wrong word around, though..

Anyways, they may take some liberties on their dialogue at times compared to the original, but it's incredibly rare that a direct translation will even make sense anyway, and their liberties aren't so drastic that it loses meaning from what the original script intended. I think the worst culprit I can even think of is some subtle censor-work they did in La Pucelle, where they notably removed crosses from the game and reworded a thing or two that might have otherwise seemed to be a direct reference to Christianity - which in the end didn't hurt the dialogue, as they ended up relaying the same message. They just did some footwork around some buzzwords, and for that I can't really blame them. The crosses being removed really didn't matter either, as they played no relevance in the game whatsoever, and were just there to give the game a more overtly "religious" look.

Really, their localizations are pretty amazing all things considered - the Ar Tonelico series excluded. I honestly highly recommend playing something like ZHP or the original PS2 version of Disgaea (the later remakes are technically better in terms of content, but they did a VA swap on one of the characters that I actually didn't care for as much as the original) - if the dialogue in those games don't leave you in stitches, something is wrong with you.

[Elin]

(lolMimori )

<3

*snip*

Yeah, I've seen clips from lots of the English versions of their games on Youtube, and Ar Tonelico aside, their localisations seem to be quite charming, completely retaining the cute, quirky humour of many of the titles they handle. I'm not really in a good position to judge whether they're good or bad at what they do, but I always got the impression that many people kind of jumped onboard the NIA hate train after AT2 and just started slamming everything they released for no good reason.

And to be honest, even AT2... Well, it's a game I'm fond of in Japanese and I'll be the first to admit that my jaw kind of hit the floor when I heard about how much of a train wreck the English version was, but that one ridiculous freeze bug aside (which again, isn't hugely worse than the one that was in the Japanese version of the original game, and is possibly less dangerous in that it can't destroy your data), is it worse than the disastrous voice acting and copious spelling errors of a game like Grandia, which itself was nowhere near the low point of localisation during that era? Not saying that the AT2 fiasco was acceptable, mind. Just that I think people probably only made such a big deal out of it because the bar is set that much higher nowadays.

If I'm being annoyingly nitpicky, though, while both La Pucelle and Disgaea PS2 were N1-developed, both predate the founding of their American arm, and the translations are the work of other companies. The former was translated by Mastiff and the latter by Atlus USA. :'D