I’ve decided to go with Sieg for the main character’s name in Tales of Hearts. I’m sure many will object, but I feel that this is the right decision from a localization standpoint. As I’m sure you’re aware, primarily because I discussed it last time, the character names in Tales of Hearts were just temporary placeholder names that ended up sticking around longer than expected. The fact that these names ended up being used in the final version of the game clearly brings great pain to the Japanese developers. As I’ve already noted, never before in the Tales series have non-ninja main characters had Eastern names. This is certainly not the time to start. As such, I will be following the developers’ wishes and using the names they were planning on using.
Henceforth, Xing Meteoryte is a figment of the past. Let’s all give a hearty welcome to Sieg Meteorit! His name means “victorious meteorite” in German, which is clearly the meaning intended by the development team, as it signifies his determination to rise above all odds and stand victorious as a defender of truth, justice, and the American way. By the way, the names of your favorite brother and sister duo are now Anna and Lucio, just as the developers were intending.
In other news, I have finally completed a feature that will bring greater accuracy to KAJITANI-EIZAN’s Patch Site’s translation of Tales of Hearts: Translator’s Notes. Often known as “TL Notes”, these notes will pop up on screen any time additional explanations that cannot fit into the text are required. I feel that this was a necessary feature to be able to deliver a truly accurate Tales of Hearts experience to you, the audience. Tales of Hearts is a Japanese game, and as such, it is chock full of rich historical Japanese bunmei (culture) that will be lost on many of you. Unless, that is, I can pop up a TL Note to explain what you would otherwise be missing. This will allow Tales of Hearts to become the most pure and accurate fan translation of a game to date.
On a related note, I reviewed the translated script thus far and realized that it was far too liberal in its translation. It deviated too far from the purity of the Japanese script to even be called the script to Tales of Hearts; rather, it is as if it is a bad fanfiction about Tales of Hearts written by some foolish gaijin (dirty foreigner) who wants the characters to sound like they’re speaking conversational English. They are not; they are speaking Japanese, because that is the language that people of the planet Celland speak. Thus, I have revised the script to be more accurate and true to the pure Japanese script. For example, I noticed that people were not calling each other -san and -kun, as has been traditional in Japan since the Meiji era, so I added these honorifics (titles suffixed to people’s names to convey a sense of Japanese honor and spirit, known as bushido) back to the script. This, together with the TL Notes, should deliver a pure Tales of Hearts experience that best conveys the true story of Sieg and Anna just as the developers intended it.
I am guessing a small minority of you may be against these changes, but whatever; I can’t please everyone. I simply have to please the vocal majority of the fanbase and do whatever sticks closest to the Japanese original source and I will be doing the right thing. Tsurai asa o sukue (follow your heart every morning), as they say, according to an ancient Japanese proverb. And anyway, I’m confident most of you agree with me in that these changes are very much for the better. Just one thing… which style of TL Notes do you guys prefer? Would you like the way it is above, or the style below?
Please let me know what you think in the comments, and o-saraba da, teme-ra (until next time, friends)!
March 31, 2011 at 11:17 pm | Permalink
Just according to keikaku
also i’m 99% sure you’re joking
March 31, 2011 at 11:31 pm | Permalink
o w o about the TL Notes i like the above style better
March 31, 2011 at 11:57 pm | Permalink
no jk tag and this wasnt even posted on april 1
oh boy you better be kidding about the honorifics and the tl notes
March 31, 2011 at 11:59 pm | Permalink
well, technically is april 1 in my country, but the post does say april 31
who am i kidding
April 1, 2011 at 12:42 am | Permalink
Your probably joking, but I’ll reply as if your serious.
I could pretty easily deal with the Sieg name change, but definetly not Anna and Lucio.
I’m more then happy with added suffixes like -kun, -san, -sama, -chan, etc etc. Though i REALLY surprised you didn’t include something like onii-san in there as well.
As for the TL notes in game, i can’t look at it as anything more then a joke, especially with it being in battle(imagining it showing up every time you use an attack). If your in any way serious about the TL notes, just make a text file with all the translation notes, if someone is that interested or clueless about that, they can always use the search function.
April 1, 2011 at 12:58 am | Permalink
Well.. I’m glad that I can actually appreciate these jokes now, lol (though of course this one won’t fool anyone). Great April 1st post, and I love how this (sort of) parodies AbsoluteZero’s post detailing Luca’s name. And TL notes, whether genuine in any way or not, sound like horrifyingly distracting popups 😐
Thanks for the lols, and good luck working on the patch
April 1, 2011 at 1:49 am | Permalink
I don’t know.. I’m suspicious about the use of Sieg. I mean, Sieg means victory, yes. But if there is… something that is victorious, a horse or something its not the Sieg Pferd (Pferd = horse) but the Siegerpferd. Sieger is a rather stupid name, since Sieg (another form of Siegfried) is actually a Name and Sieger is not (afaik), so thanks for going with Sieg. Altough the translation would rather be “victory metorite” not “victorious meteorite”.
As for the others.. oh well, Anna is quite boring and I think it doesn’t fit Lucio, since Anna is Hebrew and Lucio is rather Latin. I think the origins of their names should be more connected. They should all be called old German names like Siegfried. Something like Meinhard(m) and Otthild(f)!
But you know, it would look rather stupid if those old-German-named-Heroes speak japanese… So yeah, I don’t know. I just noticed your post makes fun of itself since in the first part you’re like “no japanese” and in the second part like “more japanese please!”. That doesn’t fit my plan of od German names conquering the world, so change the japanese parts to german or something!
April 1, 2011 at 2:45 am | Permalink
i actually liked the names kohaku and hisui, …anna and lucio do not fit at all, as for TL note in battle , it would be annoying if it keeps showing up whenever a skill is executed . i hope this is a joke or else i m gonna have nightmares X_X
April 1, 2011 at 3:21 am | Permalink
Why should he be joking? I mean today is Aprils 1st, a perfectly normal day like every other day in the year.
I’d also vote for Sieg.
Sieg ftw!
April 1, 2011 at 3:28 am | Permalink
LOLL. I could tell this was a joke when the name Sieg came up before I clicked on this post.
If you do implement the TL Notes, please let us opt out of it, by the way x.X
April 1, 2011 at 4:12 am | Permalink
Kaji, while you are making a good effort with the translation notes, they are terribly difficult to read. I would really appreciate it if you could make them a bit bigger. I mean, the DS has two screens. You could easily use the second screen for the notes and use a larger font. Also, I’m a bit concerned about being able to read all of them. How long will the note persist on-screen? I want to be sure that I am squeezing every drop of Japaneseness out of my Hearts playthrough.
April 1, 2011 at 5:13 am | Permalink
Ara ara!
This is just like my Japanese animes!
April 1, 2011 at 7:50 am | Permalink
This is not japanese enough! I hereby request you hire the efforts of a graphic designer to change that american looking logo for one stating the game’s true name “Kokoro no Monogatari” in full kanji of course, and no furigana, cause furigana is for gaijin that dont try hard enough. Also want for you to add a TL note when the logo appears because “Kokoro” depending on the context can mean, Heart, Soul, Mind or even Will and we wouldnt like that to be lost in this foolish thing people have been going over lately called “localization” (rolls eyes). I swear that concoction only delays projects, with people obssesing to make our glorious japanese games sound like everyday english, making draft after draft to no end.
Ted Woolsey did it the right way!
April 1, 2011 at 8:25 am | Permalink
Great Post! The “Lucio Hearts-Kun” coming from his sister really made me laugh. I think adding translator notes would be interesting for Japanese learning purposes but, due to screen space constraint, hard to implement in a visually aesthetic way.
P.S: I can assure you 手前ら doesn’t mean friends, hehe.
April 1, 2011 at 10:07 am | Permalink
Oh, and I wonder: couldn’t we have a karaoke effect for the artes? I mean, I simply HATE when battle subtitles are bland and look just like every other subtitle in the game. I really love when they are colored like its user’s hair and bounce in the screen in an exaggerated manner! It adds DEPTH, y’know!
Onegai shimasu, Enzan-sama!
April 1, 2011 at 11:31 am | Permalink
Great Work !
I’ll just say that your work on this epicness is greater than the epicness of the original work.
To get this straight, if I had to tell what is the epicest work done on Tales of Hearts i should say that this one is above the other.
Great Great !
Arigato Gosaimazu for this work Konoyaro !
(This means that I’m a real fan.)
April 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm | Permalink
It’s a joke, as always. I bet this guy is only trolling us.
April 1, 2011 at 1:11 pm | Permalink
^your comment is kind of contradictory, you think?
Anyway at least we can change the in game names :/
April 1, 2011 at 1:50 pm | Permalink
I second the request for karaoke arte names! Maybe have the romanized karaoke name along the top of the screen, and show your localized name along the bottom. And then maybe show the original Japanese character spelling for artes along the side of the screen.
You should also make sure the game pauses for at least 10 seconds every time a TL Note is on screen to make sure we have time to read it.
On that note, the top screen is good for TL notes. I would make sure to center them on the top screen, so they don’t cover up speech bubbles, arte names, or battle stats, which seem to stick to the top and bottom of the screen.
April 1, 2011 at 3:03 pm | Permalink
> Anyway at least we can change the in game names :/
Since when were you under the impression that you could still do that?
April 1, 2011 at 3:57 pm | Permalink
xD
April 1, 2011 at 4:36 pm | Permalink
Aw man, considering your history of joking around with us, I was expecting your April Fool’s joke to be a legitimate update post. It would really have confused people. 🙂
“Wait, it’s April Fool’s and Kajitani isn’t playing a joke on us. HE MUST BE UP TO SOMETHING!”
April 1, 2011 at 5:19 pm | Permalink
Hey Kaji
on a similar serious tone as your post:
the progress bar doesn’t seem to go forward. Are you making any progress at all?
April 1, 2011 at 6:21 pm | Permalink
I’m pretty sure the Progress Bar in itself is a joke. I mean, a name like, “A Progress Bar” doesn’t make it particularly convincing that it even has anything to do with the project in the first place.
IIRC, the progress bar was only added to this place because people kept bothering him for one.
April 1, 2011 at 7:18 pm | Permalink
Not to mention how it once advanced a little… and then regressed. It’s obviously not being actually used.
April 2, 2011 at 12:19 am | Permalink
>Since when were you under the impression that you could still do that?
I was jokng.
April 2, 2011 at 5:22 am | Permalink
I know this post is a joke, but you know, now that I think about it, the only person with an eastern name I can think of off the top of my head in the entire Tales series until now is Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia.
I think a better name name than Seig Meteorit would have been
Fleck Schweifstern.
Just kidding, of course.
April 2, 2011 at 5:23 am | Permalink
I know this is an April Fool’ss, but I actually really wouldn’t mind mind the TL Notes feature.
April 2, 2011 at 1:07 pm | Permalink
it got the J/K tag
April 2, 2011 at 2:09 pm | Permalink
@Anonymous: Of course you would.
April 2, 2011 at 2:50 pm | Permalink
@Vercalos
There’s also Suzu Fujibayashi from Phantasia.
April 2, 2011 at 3:00 pm | Permalink
@yalue
Oh yeah, forgot about that. But both games take place in the same world, if I remember correctly.
April 2, 2011 at 3:18 pm | Permalink
And there’s also Chitose, from Innocence.
…And I can’t remember any more.
April 2, 2011 at 7:03 pm | Permalink
I haven’t posted in a while but I feel it’s necessary… I actually prefer the name Seig to the name Xing, Anna to Kohak, and Lucio to Hisui… Innes should be the next to receive a name-change, her name reminds me too much of an annoying boss fight in .hack//Mutation and again in .hack//GU//Reminisce…
You’re welcome to include the TNs but I feel as though many of us are familiar enough with Japanese culture to understand the honorifics without them being explained… So, might I suggest including them as something that can be turned on and off via the Options menu?
April 2, 2011 at 10:18 pm | Permalink
this is obviously an april fools joke, but kaji usually does jokes, so this is an anti-joke?
April 3, 2011 at 1:55 pm | Permalink
What about Innes and the others. I don’t think their names will suit them after the change. What about changing the plot too? I also think those TL notes are way too small. They should (as said in other comments) be bigger and to stop the game so that we can read them. Oh, and of course they should appear every single time we get to see the terms as we could forget them and repeating them could help us to interiorize the concepts they represent.
Looking forward reading your next update. 😉
April 3, 2011 at 2:01 pm | Permalink
The comment above should have started: “What about Innes and the others?” (though it’s probably obvious).
BTW, why don’t you localize the game to German instead. Almost nobody nowadays speaks English anymore. The game should appeal to the bigger audience: German-speaking people. Don’t you think?
That’s it. Bye. ^o^
April 3, 2011 at 2:43 pm | Permalink
@rewritten
I know, that’s why I opened with “on a similar serious tone as your post:”, which yes btw, I know, is a gramatically incorrect sentence. Sue me 🙂 ;).
April 3, 2011 at 9:39 pm | Permalink
I never succeed in forcing myself to laugh at Kaji’s jokes, but I always lol at throughhim’s or Tempus’ replys! X’D
April 3, 2011 at 11:44 pm | Permalink
Make all the names 100% westernized, so it’ll feel like you’re not holding a DS in your hand, but rather you’re sitting on your couch and watching an American film, or you’re out with your friends Americaing:
Name Innes to Deepjugs (seee it’s funnie because “jugs” means “boobs”!) and Kunzite to just “T1000,” because of how he’s liek a saiborg and he fights stuff, liek teh treminater. THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH AMERICANIZATION!!!
April 4, 2011 at 1:04 am | Permalink
… Is Kysafen joking? Since he’s pretty much anti japanese everywhere else its hard to tell =/
April 4, 2011 at 1:41 am | Permalink
> BTW, why don’t you localize the game to German instead.
I totally agree!
April 4, 2011 at 5:10 am | Permalink
Now that the day has passed, I’m a bit disappointed that throughhim didn’t pull any pranks (I mean, didn’t he say he loved the day?). I could swear this year he would announce a Tales of the Tempest multi-language fan-translation.
April 4, 2011 at 7:52 pm | Permalink
AZT is so dead right now the prank would be a failure anyway, specially if compared to the last April 1st before the patch was released.
April 5, 2011 at 6:09 am | Permalink
Silly ç, AZT isn’t dead. It lives in our hearts, in its music, and in a trailer park outside Milwaukee.
April 7, 2011 at 9:44 am | Permalink
@ Sahgo: I believe he tossed in a new quote on the site about Kaji.
Either that or I just never noticed it until now.
April 7, 2011 at 3:44 pm | Permalink
I am also extremely fond of Tv-Nihon translation efforts, Kajitani.
April 8, 2011 at 9:34 am | Permalink
I lmao’d
April 9, 2011 at 4:00 am | Permalink
AZT has to wait for PP to finish Phantasia so they (or he) can resume activivies, granted, that will take a long, long time.
April 9, 2011 at 10:58 am | Permalink
Great patch… i played the demo and i loved it… really good translation… only bad thing is that you really need much time to translate this…. is the progress bar to the right of the screen up to date? if yes, i am very disapointed but stil you are working for nothing and i think you should set up a donation button 🙂 if there are about 1000 people who spent 1€ you also get a motivation in keep on working 🙂