Forum - View topicINTEREST: Ace Attorney Live-Action Film's Cast Photo Published
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TitanXL
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I seriously don't see how Spear or Nuou is going to alienate people yet Pikachu and Mankey are not. Especially when you have things like Abomasnow where they just took Abominable Snowman and cut out a few letters. If they can accept that, they can accept Spear. Not to mention some of the English names mess up the whole thing of Pokemon, like applying gender to Geodude or Mr. Mime when they can be female... and just sound stupid to begin with. A lot of the English names are just unpleasent. Tepig and Snivy for the new Best Wishes dub, for example. They lack the cuteness of Pokabu, and the elegance of Tsutarja. Snivy makes me think of Snidely Whiplash, or that one character from Sonic SATAM with the funny voice and big nose. But yeah, what ArsenicSteel said, if we're going to put personal preferences like 'flare' into it, then it's not like the debate will go anywhere. You keep saying 'keeping the immersion', but that doesn't consider all the companies out there that don't change things around and do so just fine. If you truly don't think it has anything to do with 'dumbing down' then you're very misguided with how things work in America. More often than not it truly is about making the names easier for little kids to say, or Americans not to find Japanese names funny. I'd just like to point out Stan Marsh's name in the Japanese version of South Park is Stan Marsh, not Taichi Numa (Tachi being Stand, and Numa being 'Marsh') Japan apparently has no problems with it, yet we have this need to Americanize everything, because Mayoi eating Ramen is completely unrelatable because we all know no American would ever eat ramen, yet eating Burgers, a German food, is totally understandable. Pointless at best, and xenophobic at worst, that pretty much sums up changes like these. If people really need Japanese names dumbed down to Bob and Alice for them to enjoy them, then maybe that's their own problem and not the games. A lot of people seem to enjoy the Japanese version of Persona and Pocket monsters judging by the popularity of the subs and stuff. I doubt they would have been flops if they kept things the same, but it's kind to impossible to know. Though I can look over at the Beyblade dub and see characters with names like Ginga, Madoka, Benkei, Kenta, Tsubasa, and Kyouya and etcetera and Beyblade is a pretty big thing here. I doubt Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi would have doomed the franchise. |
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Haterater
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Its not just about alienating people. There's more to names also. I already explained the mouse family and legendaries earlier, but there is also trademarks/copyright, space limitations, and names in the past that the people who thought them didn't know what will happen in the future. For example Geodude and Mr. Mime, the people who came up with them didn't think that in a future game, gender differences were going to happen. Remember reading somewhere that the guy laughed at the idea of the tech happening, but it did. Unfortunate, but it was alright at the time. If they can go back in time, they would have changed it, I'm sure.
 Abomasnow still has it "unique" enough to keep it from being a generic term like "Spear" and more marketable to sell merchandise(still think Nintendo has something to do with not being direct with war stuff like with how they named Braviary and changed some of Gyarados's Heart Gold entry). Then you run into situations like Kadabra, where it was named came from a real person, and that person didn't like to be associated with it. And now we don't see Kadabra in other media and censored for all versions for trade and stuff due to that. As for Tepig and Snivy, sure, not "Cute" but Snivy made you think of a whiplash, and given that its a grass type with grass whipping moves along with the sly smile, it did its job. Pokabu and Tepig, I've been a fan of the German name more.  But all are valid names and since are starters, Nintendo will do its darnest to see whatever they come up with is good to market for many.
I just don't see it that way. When I read something, I want to be in the shoes on how the person experiences it. Its like explaining a joke, and you don't get it if its too far out there or it has to be explained to you, taking you out of the immersion. Sure, some things are for marketing reason, but I feel if you are truly good at what your doing on giving that same experience to multiple people, then it'll shine through. Based on audience, the work, the presentation, etc. Don't let this fall into a "Boy's Club" thing too much. If I see an easily translatable word left in or not even try to give a different speech in the way a character is talking, that's bad and very easy to convey. For South Park, either way would be fine to me. I would be the type of person who translate fantasy setting names like Tales of Hearts and Land Before Time to the country its being translated for so that when a pun or explanations have come, it'll have a stronger echo. Not a popular opinion, but it made a longer impression to me and got what the original were trying to mean in them. I did express the thing with Ramen though. Looking at other factors and such, I just don't see it as a big doom and gloom thing. Not sure how I would go about fansubs as a sign of popularity though. Not a flop I would guess, but it could go the way of Digimon. Used to be all time high then just fizzled out and needs to compensate in strong marketing to combat whatever misgivings took place. @ Gon*Gon Thanks for the explanation. Seems like Atlus didn't see this would get a sequel, let along in a different area. Since they want to keep it as something to remember, they kept that name for marketing reasons, most likely. |
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ArsenicSteel
 Posts: 2370 |
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That's called being short-sighted and while the creators of these products can also be short-sighted they, the creators, have a lot more wiggle room in correcting or hiding their mistakes. Although gender issues were always present because the earliest mention of a Pokemon Breeder was Brock/Takeshi. The "breeder" part might not have caused the kiddies watching to think twice but the adults handling the localization should have considered the implications of creating gender defining names. Being short-sighted and overly aggressive by spicing(so some dialogue might come across dry, everything isn't supposed to be hammy) up scripts completely screws up all I need from a translation. |
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Haterater
Posts: 1727 |
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But that's the thing, the anime was never into consideration at the time. This was all Nintendo translators people, doing game names. Not to mention the breeder thing wasn't in the games, let alone planned the idea of gender differences. But I do agree with you. Its the same way of people thinking things couldn't possibly be done and just left it as is, while the future(like with all the smart phones, internet, etc) proved things should have been in consideration.
Here's an example of the reverse that happened with Lunar PSP. Final Fantasy Tactics for the PSP. Even though they redid the translation to be much better than the original, some people didn't like it. Mainly it was "too overdone." But if you got that type of speaking, things flowed much better in speech and such. My problem with that translation was that a meaning did not carry over to the new translation. In the newer one, all people sounded the same, while the older translation, had a different speech for the poor/slumps people. That should have been done in the newer translation to convey that not all people are suppose to be "sophisticated." Some of the lesser people were talking poetic and such, so that meaning was lost. |
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