Pretty much just don’t be Namco and you’ll be fine.
Tales of Xillia 2 is out! And as reasonably good as the localization seems in other regards (available now for your PS3!), I can’t help but groan at the recent continuing trend of absolutely miserable Arte naming. This will be another boring post where I rant obsessively about how Namco screws up yet another minor facet of our beloved series for all us hardcore nerd fans, etc., so if you aren’t interested, I would recommend leaving now as I won’t have anything else of interest to say. Still here? Good!
A Brief History of Arte
Let me start by recounting the series history as it pertains to Arte naming. The first Tales game to come out in English was the original Tales of Destiny for the PSX back in 1998. That game had some really goofy Arte names (e.g. Missile Sword for Majinken/Demon Fang) as well as names that have endured to this day (Tiger Blade for Kogahazan). I can’t recall which was the next game to be available to English speakers, the fantranslated Tales of Phantasia for the SFC/SNES or the officially localized Tales of Eternia (then called Destiny II, not to be confused with the forthcoming Destiny 2), but both used an entirely different Arte naming schema than the original Destiny — Phantasia because Destiny’s naming often made little sense, and Eternia because lol Namco. In case you’re not familiar, Eternia had gems like Demon Hammer for Tiger Blade and Sonic Blade for Demon Fang, and was also the first game in the series to use the word “Arte”, though it wasn’t adopted as the official series terminology for all characters’ special moves until Abyss.
The point is, this was an era when the names weren’t standardized and varied from game to game. When it first came out, Symphonia seemed no different — it ignored most of the previous Arte names to establish its own naming system. Fantranslations of the time (e.g. Phantasia PSX by Phantasian Productions as well as my own Narikiri Dungeon menu patches) pretty much just assumed they would change it again with the next game and either stuck with the romanized spellings of the Japanese Arte names (e.g. Majinken for Demon Fang) to avoid confusion among fans or translated the Japanese to form their own names, e.g., Demon Blade, Tiger Fang, and Lion’s Roar instead of Demon Fang, Tiger Blade, and Beast, respectively.
But then Legendia was released. Lo and behold, Legendia stuck with the Arte naming conventions established in Symphonia. And then later on, Abyss did too. What black magic was this? I hope I’m not giving too much credit where it’s not due, but this was the magical Peter Garza era — the time when Namco figured out that changing your names around every game willy-nilly is probably not a great idea if you want fans to be able to connect and share their experiences across entries in the series. Cless of Phantasian Productions also switched the Arte names used in his Phantasia fantranslation over to the official name set early in this era, as he realized that Namco essentially got its crap together and now knew what they were doing. Let’s keep in mind that Destiny and Destiny II (Eternia) were low-budget affairs, though still relatively well-localized, and they sold rather modestly. Symphonia, from what I recall, received significant localization support from Nintendo, who wanted a killer JRPG for their Gamecube, and a much higher quality localization with top voice actors. It sold very well and paved the way for high-end localizations of future titles.
To be fair, there were some issues, like Symphonia calling the combination of Tiger Blade and Lightning Blade Lightning Tiger Blade, even though the Japanese name of the Arte was actually totally different from its component Artes and referred to an Arte that Cress from Phantasia got early on. This became awkward when Phantasia GBA was released in the West and Cress learned Lightning Tiger Blade before learning Tiger Blade. But it was easy to see how that happened — a lack of foresight and/or series familiarity caused the Symphonia localization team to make a decision that seemed to make perfect sense at the time. It wasn’t a huge blunder. Radiant Mythology and Phantasia GBA had some questionable Arte names as well, but as they were budget/escort titles, it didn’t really count.
By and large, fantranslation teams as well as the Tales community embraced the new Arte naming schema. It represented a sort of core logic common to all games in the series, where you could pick up a Tales game and find something familiar even if each game has a different story, setting, and characters than the other games in the series. Fans brainstormed and came up with proposed Arte names for the Artes that hadn’t yet been christened by Namco that would mesh well with the existing system. The Absolute Zero fantranslation of Tales of Innocence is especially notable for doing this since it was actually completed and released to the public, but there was also much discussion by fans regarding what the Arte names should be in Destiny 2, Rebirth, Destiny R, Hearts, and Graces (before Graces f was announced for the West). I know this because I participated in every one of these discussions like the true Arteist I am.
But then something went wrong. The official Tales series forums (sometimes known as TOSF) sputtered several times before finally dying, fragmenting the fanbase as well as consigning much Arte discussion to the abyss of the internets. Xillia came out and it had some incomprehensible Arte naming decisions, which I already talked about. What we’ve seen of Hearts R is even worse. Symphonia had some questionable Arte naming decisions because the series wasn’t big yet and the localization team either wasn’t aware of Phantasia, didn’t think Phantasia would ever come out in English, or didn’t really have the time to consider the impact of its Arte naming decisions on every unreleased game in the series. What was Xillia’s excuse? It managed to muck up for no reason whatsoever a long-established Arte that had been consistent ever since Symphonia (Light Spear > Tornado Drive), it randomly changed Arte names that didn’t need changing (Round Edge > Shimmer Spin), and it managed to make awkward messes out of Arte names that would be used in the game’s direct sequel, which was already out in Japan and which Namco was probably already planning to localize! (Hello, Ludger and your water-element Tide Bullet Arc Fire.)
Which brings us to the main topic of conversation, Xillia 2. How did it fare?
Kangaroo Returns: Tales of Xillia 2(014)
Right from the start, Xillia 2 has Arte names that I can only describe as staggeringly incompetent. I’m sorry, whoever approved this, but it needs to be said. It’s not even the Japanese-to-English translation that was the problem here, though that is part of it… it’s just common sense. What kind of everyday JRPG hero starts with a move called TIME DISINTEGRATION? Like, seriously? Hey, guy dressed in a shirt and tie, let’s see if you’ve got what it takes to join our company. Oh, you know Azure Edge and TIME DISINTEGRATION? Alright then, drop off your resume and we’ll get back to you. Huh? I’m really not getting this. What Artes did the other applicants for the job know? Finality Deadend and World Destroyer?
But let’s talk about the translation aspect of this Arte. In Japanese, it was Nakishigure (鳴時雨), which means roughly “Crying-Rainshower”. If you’re any kind of astute in the Arte of Arte Naming, you’ll know that this sort of name tends to refer to the Sword Rain line of Artes — the original Arte was Cress’s Akisazame (秋沙雨), or “Autumn-Sand-Rain”, which became Sword Rain: Alpha. Sure enough, if you check previous Artes in the series, you’ll see that a previous Arte shares the final two kanji with our friend TIME DISINTEGRATION. That Arte is Lloyd’s Zankou Shigure (斬光時雨), or “Slice-Light-Rainshower”, which became Sword Rain: Beta. What does the Arte actually do? It’s a series of slashes that ends in a final slash, sort of like Sword Rain: Beta. So the obvious choice of translation would be something that refers to Sword Rains, maybe even Beta. Maybe Sword Rain: Lambda? Maybe Crying Rain? Falling Rain?
Oh, but this is if you interpret the final two kanji together! If you separate them out, you get a meaning of “Crying-Time-Rain”. Oh! Time! Yes, definitely sounds like we need to call it TIME DISINTEGRATION. I’m not sure if I can communicate in this space how disgusted I am with this. It’s a failure on all fronts. The translator somehow saw the “Time” kanji and thought it had to do with time. The editor (or is this still the translator?) decided that it should then be called TIME DISINTEGRATION, instead of Interminable Rain or something else that would make sense given “Crying-Time-Rain”. Where exactly did this notion of Disintegration come from? The quality assurance guys (did they actually play the game?) never raised an issue that a move that is just a bunch of slashes is called TIME DISINTEGRATION, nor that it seems inappropriate that this is a move you have from the start of the game when you are supposedly just an everyday normal guy, before you even get any fancy space-time powers. (Or maybe they did raise this issue but it was never addressed?) I could have come up with a better name for this Arte without seeing the kanji, the description, or the move in action. Hell, I could just jam popular Arte name keywords together. For example, off the top of my head… Fangstrike Megablast Storm. Perfect! I jest, but this is really how I imagine it went at Namco’s offices. Except worse. How exactly did this make it into the final release of the game?
But at least that Arte didn’t already have an English name. They had to wrangle a name out of them Japanese kanjis. Sure is tough to do that, right? Well, let’s see how they did on some other Artes! One of the characters’ High Ohgeez is named Cruel Gravity (クルーアル・グラヴィティ). You’ll note that the Japanese looks different — it’s not using the Chinese pictograph writing system. It’s literally Cruel Gravity, in English, written out phonetically using katakana. There’s no way to mess this up. So, drumroll, please… what it is called in the English localization? I don’t know!
What do you mean, I don’t know, you ask? Well, obviously the localization team didn’t, so how can I? It’s written as Malign Gravity, but the voice actors shout Malignant Gravity. Well, that’s just great. How did this happen? Once again, it’s an abject failure on everyone’s part. The number one rule of translation everyone learns is Don’t Translate Names Never Ever. Oh wait no, I’m not a blithering weeaboo — it’s Don’t Fix It If It Ain’t Broke. Your goal is to provide an experience commensurate with that of a native speaker of the original language — in this case, Japanese. This means that if it’s something the Japanese speaker would get but an English speaker wouldn’t, you have to translate it. If it’s not, then don’t touch it unless you have a good reason. The reason this is such a failure starts with the fact that a name change wasn’t needed in the first place. There is nothing Engrish or wrong about Cruel Gravity, so why change it? If you’re going to change it, you should have a good reason. From the name they chose, Malign Gravity, it’s obvious that they didn’t — it means basically the same thing and is not any less objectionable nor more accurate to the Arte effect. Further, malign is not often used as an adjective; it’s usually used as a verb. It sounds really awkward to name a move that a character is going to shout in such an awkward fashion. But don’t take my word for it — just look at the fact that the voice actors presumably also thought it was awkward as hell and changed it on the spot. Of course, either they forgot to tell the text guys to change the name to match, or the text guys didn’t bother to do it. And, naturally, the QA testers once again didn’t catch the error.
Do you see how this is a failure on so many levels? If it weren’t changed in the first place, there would be no mismatch. If it were changed to something non-dumb-sounding in the first place, the voice actors wouldn’t have had to change it on the fly, and there would be no mismatch. If the text guys made sure to make the change, there would be no mismatch. If the QA team caught the error, there would be no mismatch. But there was a mismatch, and it’s all over a change that was dumb and pointless in the first place. Why is Namco creating more inconsistencies rather than trying to reduce them? The effect may be slight, but it adds up. Don’t you think it gets awkward to have a conversation like, “Man, isn’t (spoilers)’s MA so cool… you know, Cruel Gravity?” “Oh, you mean Malign…gnant… Gravity? Is that what it was? Uhhh…” Whenever there’s a chance for players of the Japanese version (including importers!) and players of the Western versions to have an overlapping experience, shouldn’t you promote that instead of pointlessly squandering it?
Here it comes, you’re thinking. Kaji, how could this possibly get any worse, is what I’m sure you’re thinking. Naturally, it gets worse! At least Whatever Gravity was a new Arte not previously localized. At least Tornado Drive was only previously localized in Vesperia, which was several years prior… I mean, a couple years is a long time, right? At least they had to look it up and cross-check different characters’ Arte lists for that one — at least, if their translation memory software didn’t already contain it. Well, for my next example, I am going to present an Arte that they failed to correctly copy and paste from the previous game’s Arte list. And then they retranslated it incompetently. That, or they decided the previous name was no good and purposely retranslated it — again, incompetently.
That Arte is Jude’s Arcane Arte, Garou Houko (臥狼咆虎). In Xillia/Xillia 2, Arcane Artes are particularly powerful and rare, and most characters only have one or two total, which are also used to perform High Ohgeez. One could say that these Artes are more deserving of attention than most and are supposed to be more grand, almost as a character’s penultimate Arte. In Xillia, it was named Savage Roar. Jude does a couple flip kicks into the air and then punches the ground, sending a shockwave forwards. In Xillia 2, they saw fit to rename this Arte Recumbent Wolf. Once again, I am astounded by the incompetency on various levels. First of all, purely from an English standpoint, how is that supposed to sound penultimate? I could understand if it were a “lie in wait and then counter when the enemy’s guard is down” kind of move, but what exactly is Recumbent about flip kicks and a shockwave? Doesn’t Savage Roar fit that a lot better? Why change it? Well, okay, Kaji, you say, maybe they wanted to make the translation more accurate. Let’s examine that, shall we? The kanji mean “Recumbent-Wolf-Roar-Tiger”. Aha! So that’s where Recumbent Wolf comes from! Case closed!
Sure, if you suck. First of all, that ignores the other half of the kanji, which I’d say changes the meaning quite a bit. Looking at it from that perspective, Savage Roar really isn’t bad… I’d say pretty good, in fact. But second, you should look at what is between the lines. “Recumbent-Wolf” (臥狼, Garou) is really a reference to “Recumbent-Dragon” (臥龍, Garyuu), which refers to a hidden genius. Jude is a precocious young man who is already on his way to becoming a top medical researcher at the age of 15. I would say that’s pretty relevant. It’s also present in another of Jude’s Artes, Garyou Kuuha (臥龍空破), which was Dragon Shot. So what we should really be interpreting this as is “Genius-(Wolf)-Roar-Tiger”, or perhaps “Roar of the Savant Tiger”. Perhaps if they were interested in amending the original Arte name to make it more accurate, something like Acute Roar or Keen Roar might convey that meaning better. Instead, we have Recumbent Wolf, a name that neither matches the effect of the Arte, nor the real meaning of the kanji, nor what was used in the prequel to this very game. Bravo.
To quickly throw out a couple of other Arte name issues from this game: Chronos Collider (correct, but technically, it should be Chronos Blast to match Vesperia); Zetsuei (絶影) > Dark Projection (which sounds lame and is also not a projection of any kind); Matter Destruct[ion] > Form Destroyer (???); Shuukihou (集気砲) > Spirit Circulation instead of Center (Abyss) or Vital Flair (Graces f), though it’s true that it has slightly different kanji than the traditional version (集気法); Absolutedomination being shouted even faster than last time…
Am I supposed to praise this? Am I supposed to kowtow and say, “Be glad we’re getting the game at all!”, like so many of the fanbase who appear to be shameless enablers of this sort of subpar localization performance? I know this is only one small part of the game, but two things: One, it’s a part that most previous fantranslation projects have agonized over for quite a while and have managed to do a much better job on. It really hurts to see Namco pretty much just phone it in when the fans put a lot of thought and effort into it. And two, I think it speaks volumes about the localization process as a whole. One reason I’m highlighting Artes is that they’re easy to analyze because it’s easy to see the Japanese and English side by side without having access to the source files. It’s not so easy for the other aspects of the game, like menu text (e.g. item and Arte descriptions) or dialogue. It’s possible that the team is superb at delivering an excellent localization on these fronts but not for Artes, but is that really that likely? I’ll leave you with this armor description throughhim413 found in Xillia 2: “Reinforced around the chest to prevent having the wind knocked out of one.”
The wind knocked out of one, indeed. Step it up, Namco. I assume Hearts R is nearing completion and Zestiria is next on the list… cutting corners on the localization is only going to hurt you in the long run. Do it well and do it right. If that means leaving a bit of extra time in the schedule to let the team gel it all together, then you should probably do it. Idolmaster probably made enough money on the DLC to cover it, after all! Or if it’s because all the work is subcontracted out, you might need to make sure there’s a solid team inside Namco to handle all this consistency and QA stuff. Companies like Cup of Tea and 8-4 do fine work, but they don’t necessarily have the big picture, and in some cases they may not even be that excited about the game. In that case, you’ve got to be the ones to be excited. If Namco isn’t excited about Tales, why should prospective buyers be?
Thanks for reading yet another of my long-winded monologues, and keep an eye out for more Tales! Hopefully Hearts R and Zestiria will follow in the vein of Destiny R and not Phantasia GBA. I guess we’ll see.
EDIT: Here’s one more, which is either yet another poor showing, or actually really clever: Wild Combination (我威留怒・魂微音維紫苑, a phonetic kanji amalgamation/trainwreck that spells out Wairudo Konbineishion) becoming Sound and Fury. I’ve bolded two kanji; those are “Anger” and “Sound”, respectively. Presumably that is the inspiration for the name. They could have attempted to translate the kanji, which, if you interpret them through the filter of what the move actually does, very roughly suggest a meaning along the lines of “Authoritative Anger — Spirit Shard Garden”. But the Japanese players would know that the kanji are basically ignorable and only chosen to spell out Wild Combination. They’re only really there to lend a sense of Japaneseness to the move, since it’s Gaius. So it would make more sense to ignore the kanji and name the Arte based on its phonetic reading and given furigana, Wild Combination. This would mean naming it, well, Wild Combination, or maybe Wild Coalescence or Wombo Combo or something if they feel the original name is too awkward. In terms of translation/localization accuracy, doing that would have been a much better decision.
All of this is forgivable, though, if they knew what “Sound and Fury” was referring to and were trying to poke fun at Japanese Arte names and the idea of naming and shouting out your attacks in general. Sound and Fury essentially means a “silly and ultimately meaningless exercise” (see: Macbeth). I can certainly imagine the translation team seeing a bunch of these kanji trainwreck Artes, especially coming off of the base name of this Arte, Senkenzan’u Gaou Senretsukou (閃剣斬雨・駕王閃裂交), seeing another trainwreck, getting frustrated, and wanting to make fun of this quaint Japaneseism. Of course, given the previous examples, I can just as easily imagine the translation team seeing “Anger” and “Sound”, throwing their hands up in the air in frustration, and going, “Let’s call it Sound and Fury!” without any conscious idea of the meaning behind that phrase. In the former case, the Arte name is clever and fitting (if inaccurate), and in the latter, it’s just pathetic. It would be awesome to get confirmation on which one it is, but I don’t know if anyone from 8-4 will want to comment given my unrelenting bashing of their Artework, assuming they’re the ones working on it and not an internal team at Bamco. 😛 (It’s all in good fun!)
EDIT 2: (Arena cameo battle spoilers!) Oh, and can you make up your mind on whether ToP GBA is kosher or not? You used Distortion Blade from there, but not Dark Blade, instead opting for the wildly inaccurate Eternia name of Final Justice. And then, hilariously, you named Cress’s Kuukan Shouten’i, which was the badly-named Lunge in ToP GBA, Chaos Lunge, which is the name of an entirely different Arte (Ten’i Souhazan). Even though the Arte was also translated in Eternia with a much less stupid and therefore usable name, Eternal Slasher, in case you felt the admittedly understandable need to call it something other than just Lunge. Meanwhile, Stahn is rocking the Thunder Beast mistranslation from Radiant Mythology; it should have been Fiery Beast as it was in Symphonia and Graces f. Because, you know, nothing screams “thunder” like a giant fiery explosion.
What the hell is going on over there? Have you considered consulting with fans for handling series references like this? Between this and the cats it seems like you need a hand.
August 27, 2014 at 2:48 pm | Permalink
Are you crazy Kaji? You should be grateful for having a Tales game in glorious english!
August 27, 2014 at 6:01 pm | Permalink
Now tell us how you feel about Chromatus.
August 28, 2014 at 1:53 am | Permalink
No idea; is there an actual meaning behind the name? If they were like, “Oh, Chro- totally means time so let’s go with that!” then it’s bad and they should feel bad. If there’s a meaning and it means basically the same as the Japanese then it’s good. If it means something different then it’s still okayish if they had a good reason to change it — what that reason may be, I don’t know. The original Japanese was Gaikaku (骸殻), which was popularly called “Corpse Shell” by fans but I would say the meaning is basically exoskeleton (“shell for one’s body”). I might have gone with “Exscel” as a bastardized Latin reference cum lame pun, I dunno.
August 28, 2014 at 7:28 pm | Permalink
They’ll hire you some day. Keep shooting for the sky *thumbs up*
August 31, 2014 at 6:50 am | Permalink
I’m Japanese and thought of Time Disintergration as a totally-cool translation for NakiSigure.
Oh yeah, for example Fall from Grace as Shining Fang Drop in Vesperia is a bit odd to me because the 4 kanjis doesn’t include any meanings of ‘grace’, but it still sounds cool and I would be throwing away my Xillia 2 now if Namco translated it like Drop of Shining Spirial.
Sure, Shining Spirial Drop is fine, but sounds literally-translated. You know being literal is utterly different from being respectful. In this way Malign Gravity is better than Cruel Gravity. Fall from Grace exists as an actual idiom, even.
August 31, 2014 at 3:28 pm | Permalink
For the most part I’ve actually really enjoyed Xillia 2’s localization, at least in regard to a lot of the item and title descriptions. The main game itself appears to be pretty faithfully adapted as well, but I’m not intimately familiar with the Japanese script. I don’t doubt some of the arte translations are probably pretty awkward, but for me the most glaring flub has been with Kitty Dispatch. Most of the cats that are supposed to be references to previous protagonists seem to be rather sloppily translated. For example, there’s one that’s clearly supposed to be a reference to Natalia that’s instead named “Natalina” for some reason. Apparently the Stahn cat is also named “Stallone”. And the Woodrow cat is named Woodrow, which would be fine except they’ve been calling Woodrow “Garr” for sixteen years just to maintain internal consistency and now suddenly they’re not. And then there’s the one I can only guess is supposed to be Gaius as he appears in Xillia 1 and for some reason it’s named “Bilbo”. That one might be a reference to an entirely different character and I’ll never know because every time I try to figure out who it’s named after I just end up thinking about hobbits.
September 2, 2014 at 1:20 am | Permalink
Here’s an idea. Why not fix it yourself? Aaron from the Tales of Vesperia translation team coded an app called r3volution that modifies files on-the-fly. You can fix every arte name and whatever localization errors namco made and provide an r3volution script for Xillia 2. Of course this would require a PS3 with CFW.
September 2, 2014 at 5:38 pm | Permalink
I’ve added another section at the bottom regarding Gaius’s Linked MA.
September 8, 2014 at 5:06 am | Permalink
So, any new project since this project is dropped/abandoned/on hold/no progress?
How about Tales of rebirth or Tales of destiny 2?
September 8, 2014 at 9:00 pm | Permalink
Hey you guys know how dark protection…and Raiginga, oh im sorry “Blue Jet” are both strikes from the sky? Well…what if we called raiginga…LIGHTNING PROTECTION! GENIUS! And Falling Snow and Sejinzeppa…are like…the same move…so how about we call Sejinzeppa…Falling Snow! And Shings mystic arte…is like “lightning Protection” so well call it…Super Lightning Protection!
September 10, 2014 at 3:50 pm | Permalink
I’m sorry, the Tales series is dead. RIP Hearts
September 13, 2014 at 9:09 am | Permalink
Geez, Namco’s been dropping the ball on their localizations a TON in the past year or so. Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn, Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment, and now this AND Hearts R. Not sure what’s been going on over there.
September 15, 2014 at 4:34 pm | Permalink
I’ve added another section at the bottom regarding the arena cameo battle. (Spoilers for who is in it, naturally.)
September 16, 2014 at 5:47 pm | Permalink
So what is the deal with the cats? Why are some just named after the actual Tales characters (Lithia, Guy, Luke, for example) but there are others like Trigger, Natalina and Bilbo. Were they half and half on whether they should be direct references or that the player should try and figure it themselves? What the hell was going on there, I don’t understand the thought process here? Could they not have just chosen one or the other?
September 18, 2014 at 2:56 am | Permalink
This is very insightful. I hope someone from the ranks of Bamco is actually reading this, maybe they can learn a thing or two!
September 18, 2014 at 8:10 am | Permalink
The translation company actually have a twitter account and do regular podcasts so I wouldn’t be surprised if they had seen this.
September 18, 2014 at 9:04 am | Permalink
The more stuff that surfaces, the more I get the impression that the company in question (8-4) isn’t behind the Arte naming. These sorts of errors don’t seem to be something they’d turn out.
September 18, 2014 at 11:51 am | Permalink
I would pay money for a documentary on how Tales games are localized. It could go into the voice recording process, translation process, and Namco’s localization philosophy.
September 22, 2014 at 11:48 am | Permalink
Ludger and Milla have a linked a linked arte called “Luminous Revolver” yet, the voice actors say “Luminary Revolver”.
September 23, 2014 at 5:45 am | Permalink
And let’s not start on the obvious translation mistakes that have existed since the very first localizations, like “grave” instead of “glaive”… Seriously, it’s a bunch of rock spears piercing through the target, I get the “earth element => grave” idea but the translators obviously never played the game to name it that.
In Eternia there’s even a frikkin halberd named “grave”! (and no, it’s not even an earth-element weapon, just a crappy transcription of the katakanas… like the spell, really)
September 23, 2014 at 9:34 am | Permalink
8-4 are also behind the Hearts R translation as well. (As to be expected of course)
September 28, 2014 at 6:54 pm | Permalink
One thing I have to say about Namco Bandai (Or Bandai Namco, I have no idea) is that they are really not giving a flying “f” about their games, at least in the western side.
I mean holy crap okay, Tales of Xillia 2/Tales of Hearts R, its just localization inconsistencies, still unforgivable but you can at least understand most of the words, and it has correct grammar (Well, correct me if I’m wrong, I havent played ToX2, and don’t plan on ToHR, there are games that have better translations that I can play). Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment was just a “We don’t give a ****!~” kind of move/attitude. They (apparently from what I’ve heard) took the Asian version English translation and just released it here and that is the end of it. Wow. I literally cannot fully understand most of the dialogue, and some things are either just Romanized or poorly translated… Like for example “Depth Impact”. It’s a sword skill. Um, I can see where that would work but “Death Impact” sounds WAY better. I don’t know the original script so I can’t say much on that. Also an enemy move is called “Kumo no ito” or “Neneki”. First one by a spider, and second by a slime enemy. I honestly don’t know what the hell is wrong with Namco Bandai but they need their crap together because I will literally never buy a game from them again if this keeps up.
October 9, 2014 at 3:39 pm | Permalink
I’m happy I gave up with Tales after learning of Zestiria. The outdated cast, the trying-too-hard fantasy story, Everything. Not even a bad ass older character, if I were young I wouldn’t care, but I’m not. I like to see things from different perspectives, that’d require a variety of cast. It’d be fine if they went Rebirth, but nope, SPIRITS!!! Dragons being neither good or evil? Envoys of destruction, eh? That means they’re bad and must be stopped from destroying the world in some form or way. Couldn’t make one a party member? They have a budget to make cameo hi ougi’s a pre-order bonus.
Let’s not forget the whole.. they’re going to feature a lot of new things, so that’ll break any SPIRIT of the game. I’m still peeved over Rowen’s ‘incant’, if you will. It’s Italian, yet they chose new Italian words. That is shameful to Italy.
I like to think of Xillia as the start of the Kangaroo era.
Also, Nakishigure, could be twisted as.. in English, you’re slicing up the enemy badly to the point where they’re crying, a shower, if you will.
And really, telling Kaji to do things? You know, he kind of is pointing out, gee, I don’t know.. VOICE ACTING? The lines, they’re said. What is said does NOT match what is written. THAT SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. Did they add any periods to emphasize abbreviations in their names? If they did, that’s the only plausible one for lengthy names. BUT, THEY DIDN’T ADD THOSE.
I mean..to make a script to re-work Xillia 2? What’s the point? It’s not even that good of a game. It’s not Ar Tonelico II ranked, and doesn’t need the re-localization effort. But, here’s the difference. Xillia 2 should’ve had effort put into it to begin with.
As well as, you think he can fix the voice acting? In Xillia 1, they have major speech problems. IS IT WINDMEEL OR WINDMILL? IS IT GOLEM OR GOLUM? I am never forgetting those two skits. To think, it was a special pre-order version on day 1. Not worth it.
There’s supporting your favorite series, and then there’s supporting bad translations.
Hearts R doesn’t look to be very good. You can say BE GLAD WE GET ENGLISH TALES.
But, you’re an idiot. We’re not receiving English Tales. We’re receiving a butchered portion of it.
When a character speaks 1 sentence, but fills out the WHOLE TEXTBOX in ENGLISH, it’s not Tales. Fans are not idiots. They’re not brain-dead. However, when they stop caring in both languages, what’s the point of being a fan?
October 22, 2014 at 5:23 pm | Permalink
Uhhh @RG you know that lines in Japanese lake up more space than in English.
October 30, 2014 at 3:44 am | Permalink
Aww, been a while since your last post Kajitani. How I miss them.
I will also be quite saddened if you’re patch is never released. As in ever. Of course not before or near the launch of Hearts R in the US as you could be attacked for interrupting sales, but sometime later at least.
I will buy the game, again as I have an import, but I’m not sure what to think on that. While I want them to know that there are fans of the “Tales of” games and hope that they keep bringing them over, I don’t want to support such poor translations, localizations and voice acting. So buying it can send the wrong message that they are allowed to do sub par work and still make money. Yet if no one buys it, they can use that as an excuse not to bring over any, thinking no matter what it won’t sell in the US.
I also want to play with not only a good translation that is faithful to the series, but also the original voice acting (something we still don’t get with our localized copies, and they cannot claim there is a lack of disc space anymore). On top of that, the battle system in the DS and the Vita version are different, and I was looking forward to some old school sidescrolling “Tales of” fights like in the old days (not to say I don’t like the 3D ones, love them, but it was nice to see a sort of blast from the past). On top of that, normally in localizations such as these with cameo characters, they are normally cut because of licensing rights. I would like to play through the game in my native language with all the content in tact.
To bad the menus are not voiced or I could go through the game completely on my own. Pretty good at the spoken (understand about 80-90% of what is said), but my reading comprehension is quite lacking…. So many import games without any voice acting at all sadly don’t work to well for me until I learn more (which I sadly don’t have the time for at the moment).
I appreciate all the work you’ve put into this and understand that you owe nothing to anyone to get this out. It’s hard to find people who are willing to put so much of their time into something without getting bored or quitting before even making it half way through.
Like with the Innocence fan release, I’ve not only played that, but own an official import of that as well. And would still buy it again if officially localized to show my support (at least toward the series at least).
– Kat
October 31, 2014 at 5:31 am | Permalink
Needlessly nitpicky and borderline weeaboo as always, not that some of the issues you bring up aren’t valid.
November 3, 2014 at 2:06 pm | Permalink
There’s hope for 2015 get hyped.
November 3, 2014 at 7:57 pm | Permalink
The vita ver looks so shitty the more screens I see.
Kaji, please save us ;_;
November 4, 2014 at 1:22 am | Permalink
@beck
I don’t think you understand what the term “Weeaboo” means. The term is used for people who want to be wish to be Japanese. They are obsessed with both Japan and it’s culture so much that they act as if they are from there and treat it all as it is better than every other culture.
I have not seen Kajitani act like that once. Instead he has been quite logical in his explanations and has shown his dislike for what has been shown of the translation. Without going on about anything about being fanatical about Japan itself, he has just shown that he is a fan of the Tales Of series and he clearly appreciates consistency and proper use of grammar.
– Kat
November 5, 2014 at 6:13 pm | Permalink
I want to hear your thoughts on Zestiria, Reve Unitia and all the new Hearts R screens and vids. Please give us another posting soon.
November 16, 2014 at 9:25 pm | Permalink
[…] This is not because they didn’t have some incomprehensible Arte naming decisions that make Xillia 2’s debacle look like a masterpiece, but because unlike Xillia 2, there is so much wrong with the core […]
March 19, 2015 at 8:04 pm | Permalink
I don’t believe the amount of adverse feedback you’re receiving for this (I’ll call it an) article.
March 19, 2015 at 9:43 pm | Permalink
(As I feared, that reply was posted without allowing me the convenience to clarify the following:)
I’ve (among others, I’m sure) shared your feelings for quite some time as well. Hearts R is out, and as you’ve seen, the arte names didn’t get much more accurate.
My favorite bastardization—if even that, by definition—is the translation they gave to 桜花鶺鴒・鼓星, literally “Cherry Blossom Motacillidae (Wagtail/Longclaw) Drum Star”. They named it “Beauty and Beast”. Not “Sakura Longclaw Starshot”—or “Star Bang” (however one would make use of “drum”). They made it “Beauty and Beast”. Absolutely no priority went into ‘any’ of the kanji. They decided, “Hey, she’s a ‘beauty’ and he’s a ‘beast’. Such contradiction. Yeah, that’ll be it.” Hardly any moves utilized the actual Japanese names as a basis for the translations, now that I think about it!
I could write an entire speech just as you have about this matter (matching your message) and clearly so could a lot of other fans, as we’ve see above. I think of artes (that you learn, use, and strategize with) as a good sixth of any Tales game experience (a realistically significant portion). Their translations deserve some damn attention. Symphonia was my first game in the series, and, however inaccurate the translations were, the artes, how you learned which by doing what, and their names, were the habitual focus of my enthusiasm.
March 20, 2015 at 9:53 am | Permalink
I guess it could be argued that there’s SOME relation there since Ouka fits with Kohaku’s theme with the (cherry) tree references and Sekirei fits with Hisui with the bird references… but one still has to question why they didn’t just translate that instead of coming up with something totally random. I guess it would end up sounding pretty random in English, like Longclaw Blossom Pulsar, but it’s not like they didn’t go out of their way to make other Artes sound random (see: Impact Event, Blue Jet, etc.).
I wonder if whoever is in charge of Arte naming these days (or the dialogue writing, for that matter) subscribes to the philosophy that a good localization means you can just sort of handwave and come up with some sort of English text that is only loosely related to the Japanese text. It’s just the opposite. A good localization process would take the effort to understand every facet of the Japanese text and create a translation that sticks as closely to it as possible while still being well-written English, THEN modify away from that in individual cases if it’s deemed necessary due to cultural differences, a need to make a joke work, conveying the right mood/feel, etc. If the editors/writers don’t have an accurate baseline to start from, it’s hard for them to know exactly where they stand and far too easy to veer wildly and unnecessarily off track.
March 22, 2015 at 10:31 pm | Permalink
=^.^= Good to see that at least you’re alive.
– Kat
June 20, 2015 at 7:32 am | Permalink
[…] covered the history of Arte naming in the West in my post about how Xillia 2’s Arte names sucked. (They were still better than Hearts R’s.) I also talked a bit about how to go about naming […]
January 17, 2016 at 5:22 am | Permalink
[…] It would be almost as bad as naming a base arte something ridiculously over-the-top like Time Disintegration or something. Still, we need it to sound damn cool in ToDR, so we need a name that leaves some room […]
February 4, 2017 at 1:22 am | Permalink
Am I supposed to kowtow and say, “Be glad we’re getting the game at all!”, like so many of the fanbase who appear to be shameless enablers of this sort of subpar localization performance?
Wow, you’re kind of being an asshole with this comment. A lot of the fanbase doesn’t consist of “shameless enablers of subpar localization”. Many folks are aware of these inconsistencies, but what are we supposed to do once the game is released? Protest? People would rather play and enjoy the game than get caught up in things. Sure it’s annoying and inconsistency is horrible, but it’s not fair to point your finger at everyone else and call them the root cause of the problem.
February 4, 2017 at 2:49 am | Permalink
Oops, you’re right. I can’t say for sure what I was thinking 2 years ago, but I think what I meant to say was that “a chunk of the fanbase is made up of shameless apologists” (who literally say that quote), not that “most of the fanbase is made up of shameless apologists”. And I didn’t mean to imply that they’re the root cause, as if it’s so horrible that you should boycott the game and not doing so causes this mess. I just mean that they defend Bamco on the internets when it’s totally unwarranted. Which, of course, probably means zilch in terms of how Bamco handles the localization, regardless of whether they defend Bamco or not.
February 7, 2017 at 5:21 am | Permalink
You’re alive =^.^=
And wow, just did my monthly check on the site (cause I still have hope that you’ll get back to it and release it someday, I still cannot understand my Japanese copy well enough to enjoy the story and while I have the Hearts R edition, it’s so bad I couldn’t play through it all) and there are a handful of horrible bashing. That never gets anyone anywhere.
While Kajitani-Eizan is (probably) not going to release it (sad as it is, but I still cannot help but checking), swearing, name calling and the like isn’t any way to get someone to do what you want. If anything, personally, I would become more stubborn the more people are an ass. But that’s just me.
February 14, 2017 at 4:16 pm | Permalink
Could you finally take care of all the troll comments in the post you made last April? In case you haven’t noticed, someone keeps posting false information about a link to a full Tales of Hearts patch he claims you hid on this site.
February 25, 2017 at 1:49 pm | Permalink
Ahem, yeah, that person should be ashamed of themselves.
*Goes back playing ToH DS.
March 1, 2017 at 2:34 am | Permalink
Well, at least you’re admitting you should be ashamed of yourself.