Game Censorship & Localization General Thread

[Waifu Denier]

It's a shame because there are definitely things AI won't catch, like use of ateji, weird same-pronunciation kanji substitutions, or katakana sounding out obscure foreign words. So you can't rely 100% on AI depending on the script in question.

If it was a competent translation it would have at least an editor who is there doing exactly that, AI or not. But I guess you then run right back to the problem of unreliable people in translation.

 

[Coolio55]

Are there any programs for local AI onscreen translation?
I know that Ross Scott used one to review a German point and click but that was server based.

I for one can't wait to gorge myself on PC ENGINE and X68000.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I guess you then run right back to the problem of unreliable people in translation.

That's the real problem. I doubt anyone would have issue with the occational creative translation, edit, or even a once in a blue moon re-write of a scene. But they couldn't help themselves. They had to censor based on morals, political bullshit, and to hijack the work of others to pretend they are famous creatives too.


A bit of a late one for the thread. A game called Metal Max Xeno Reborn came across my Steam page and sure enough, it was censored from the original Metal Max Xeno. What's strange about it is the original game isn't that old. Supposedly it was a Vita game from 2018.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

A game called Metal Max Xeno Reborn came across my Steam page and sure enough, it was censored from the original Metal Max Xeno.

What'd they censor?

 

[X Prime]

What'd they censor?

The game had some horny scene art.

I seem to remember something about a woman being captured by a spider and strung up in webbing mostly naked.

 

[Sniperwoof]

How come we can translate ancient Egyptian which is literally lithographic pictographs and not even a proper written language but "I love you Senpai stay with me" in Japanese becomes

Skibidi Skibidi pawappa patriarchy cheese poggers fragile masculinity?

I fucking hate these people.

 

[SiccDicc]

It's a shame because there are definitely things AI won't catch, like use of ateji, weird same-pronunciation kanji substitutions, or katakana sounding out obscure foreign words. So you can't rely 100% on AI depending on the script in question.

You might be able to if you had Japanese AI engineers or whatever they're called to correct them as it learns with a professional linguistics professor. Of course, you'd need a company willing to do that instead of just buying from whatever Silicon Valley shits out.

 

[Summoned Skull]

It's a shame because there are definitely things AI won't catch, like use of ateji, weird same-pronunciation kanji substitutions, or katakana sounding out obscure foreign words. So you can't rely 100% on AI depending on the script in question.

I can't 100% rely on AI. But the percentage I can rely on the current crop of translators to do their damn job is close to 0. A few cases multiplied into dozens, until eventually I couldn't depend on anything with a Japanese origin to be presented correctly to me. The machine will make mistakes, but they won't be filled with hatred for the work it's being put to. It's a pity it has to be this way.

 

[Jaimas]

That's the real problem. I doubt anyone would have issue with the occational creative translation, edit, or even a once in a blue moon re-write of a scene. But they couldn't help themselves. They had to censor based on morals, political bullshit, and to hijack the work of others to pretend they are famous creatives too.


A bit of a late one for the thread. A game called Metal Max Xeno Reborn came across my Steam page and sure enough, it was censored from the original Metal Max Xeno. What's strange about it is the original game isn't that old. Supposedly it was a Vita game from 2018.

Back in 2017, I was playing Etrian Odyssey V, and ran into a quest called "Spooky Scary Skeletons," in which a mother is trying to scare her child into behaving correctly by threatening him using pictures of the game's skeleton monsters. The quest, fittingly, ends with the mother making a joke that there was a skeleton in her son right now and scaring the wits out of him. To my infinite amusement, when I went looking later, I found out that this was a direct translation, and that the Japanese version had, essentially, this very same joke and was pleasantly surprised.

The fact that I had to go looking to see whether or not that was in the original, however, says volumes.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I can't 100% rely on AI. But the percentage I can rely on the current crop of translators to do their damn job is close to 0. A few cases multiplied into dozens, until eventually I couldn't depend on anything with a Japanese origin to be presented correctly to me. The machine will make mistakes, but they won't be filled with hatred for the work it's being put to. It's a pity it has to be this way.

Exactly right. The technology will only improve anyway.

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

That's the real problem. I doubt anyone would have issue with the occational creative translation, edit, or even a once in a blue moon re-write of a scene. But they couldn't help themselves. They had to censor based on morals, political bullshit, and to hijack the work of others to pretend they are famous creatives too.


A bit of a late one for the thread. A game called Metal Max Xeno Reborn came across my Steam page and sure enough, it was censored from the original Metal Max Xeno. What's strange about it is the original game isn't that old. Supposedly it was a Vita game from 2018.

What's censored in Reborn?

 

[BananaSplit²]

I find funny that the translator in charge of this item from Elden Ring forgot to take account of という ("it is said to") at the end of the last sentence, which pretty much changes the usefulness of the helmet as nothing more than a fancy tinfoil hat.

Clearly people need to hunt down and screencap another hundred examples or it just doesn't count.

That's why this thread was made for the purpose to collect evidences into one place.
But I'm not surprised to see that the "professional" English localization scene is nothing more than a den of snakes.

It's a shame because there are definitely things AI won't catch, like use of ateji, weird same-pronunciation kanji substitutions, or katakana sounding out obscure foreign words. So you can't rely 100% on AI depending on the script in question.

There are things I can't see AI doing well since machine translations already struggle on them in the first place, so someone as an editor would be very much required to double-check the results (which goes back to what @Waifu Denier said earlier about the editor being compromised or simply someone with a poor grasping of the English language).

• Casual conversations since the Japanese language can easily drop parts of the sentence (pronouns, main subject, etc.) in anything that isn't newspaper and explanatory text. There is of course the matter Japanese third-person pronouns (he and she) don't have the same importance as they do in English, so they can easily be dismissed or replaced by variants such as someone's name or title (considered much more polite overall), あのひと (ano hito lit. 'this person'), あいつ / こいつ / そいつ (aitsu - koitsu - soitu, "this or that guy/gal/thing", either familar or vulgar).

Source: J.B. Harold no Jikenbo #2 - Manhattan Requiem

• Shortened / slurred words.

Source: Earth Defense Force 6 (cenorexia's translation)


Source: Blue Archive fan-comic (artist: hagyouayumu)
Aru is forcing herself to drink black coffee because she thinks it's cool (her whole character shtick is to be a hard-boiled bad girl despite how pure she is), and the last bubble is a shortened にがい (nigai - which means "bitter") with っ added for emphasis. Machine translator believes it's written 'Nigga' as seen in the second pic however.

• Puns and word plays, although this is the bane of every translator regardless of the foreign language. Not exclusive to Japanese even if it can go an extra mile with its writing systems.

Source: Kanan-sama wa akumade choroi (Volume 5)
Jeanne (yes this one famous maiden) is being called "moe" (萌え - 'cute' in modern slang) but this pronunciation is shared by the other and more classical "moe" (燃え - burn). It is explained in the 4th panel anyway in order to dispel the misunderstanding as the girl has an instinctive fear towards anything related to fire, even the mere mention of it.

And as you mentioned, there are multiple cases of synonym/homonym kanji characters being very similar but still designated to specific cases:

ayamaru - 謝る (apologize) vs. 誤る (to make an error, a mistake)
hakaru - 図る (to plot or scheme something, even something relatively benign, but also "to aim / seek for") vs. 謀る (only ever used in the context of murder)
katai - 固い (hard like firm, unyeilding or someone stiff / formal) vs. 硬い (hard in the sense of hard to break like a rock or ice) vs. 堅い (figurative 'hard', 'strong' or 'firm')
koeru - 超える (to exceed or go over a certain numerical unit) vs. 越える (to go beyond a physical thing, to pass or cross over)
okasu - 犯す (to perpetrate/commit a crime or rape someone) vs. 侵す (to violate someone's rights, invade one's property, etc.)
sagasu - 探す (searching something you want) vs. 捜す (searching something you lost or cops searching after a criminal)
taeru - 耐 (tolerate in a physical sense like bulletproof or withstanding rough labor) vs. 堪 (tolerate in the moral sense)

Could be fine for the machine translator/AI if they're written in Kanji as intended but cases where the words are instead written in hiragana/katakana for any reason is going to make them go haywire.

A bit of a late one for the thread. A game called Metal Max Xeno Reborn came across my Steam page and sure enough, it was censored from the original Metal Max Xeno. What's strange about it is the original game isn't that old. Supposedly it was a Vita game from 2018.

Xeno Reborn is indeed a big downgrade from the original Vita game Xeno on the visuals department.
The art of Oda Non (a known Japanese R-18 artist) has been replaced by someone else which also alters scenes like in the third pic as a result.
I recall reading it's possible to switch back to the original drawn portraits in Xeno Reborn but only after completing a playthrough once.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

It's a shame because there are definitely things AI won't catch, like use of ateji, weird same-pronunciation kanji substitutions, or katakana sounding out obscure foreign words. So you can't rely 100% on AI depending on the script in question.

I've played at least one pirated game that used an AI translation, and it was very mixed results. It was pretty accurate on a lot of things, including onomatopoeia, but it would consistently fuck up relationships. In one conversation, you'd go from friend to relative to teacher and back.
Unless AI gets worked on more and in a dedicate fashion, it's still going to need someone to give it a quick once over just to catch the small mistakes. Thankfully, you could pay an intern that is able to read English to just glance through instead of paying a twitter faggot to ruin it.

Makes me so happy to see these people get laughed at like this. All they had to do was their job, and that was too much. Every single time one of them says they are an "artist", I laugh.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The machine will make mistakes, but they won't be filled with hatred for the work it's being put to. It's a pity it has to be this way.

At least at first. I imagine game journos and ex-localisers will complain until the AI also censors scripts. Another possibility is that they will move on to be "sensitivity readers" like Sweet Baby and edit Japanese works that way.


As for the Metal Max Reborn censorship. @BananaSplit² already covered most of it. The remake supposedly cut two thirds of the story (not just sexy stuff either, but gameplay stuff like repairing a shield), and replaced Oda Non's art with someone else's. Everything I've seen from my initial search was already posted, except this.

While I've seen people argue the remake designs are better/more detailed, there's also the simple fact that skin is slightly darker, the style is "less anime", and everybody has had a boob reduction and a bmi increase. The most damning thing is the bottom character. Her personality is obvious in the original design, but the redesign makes her look like a simpleton.

The art of Oda Non (a known Japanese R-18 artist) has been replaced by someone else which also alters scenes like in the third pic as a result.
I recall reading it's possible to switch back to the original drawn portraits in Xeno Reborn but only after completing a playthrough once.

Supposedly Oda Non is legendary in the hentai scene (I've never heard of him, but I'm not a hentai guy.). I'm guessing this is why the original art is unlockable so they can still lean on his name to sell the game.

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

skin is slightly darker

Not terrible, I'll be honest I just assumed the artwork was based on different lighting.

the style is "less anime"

Shame, the anime designs looked good. The new ones aren't bad, but the feel is different. Especially on the purple one, her design implies what I'd expect to be a different personality.

everybody has had a boob reduction and a bmi increase

Just fucking why? It'd be one thing if they just wanted to tone down the sex appeal, but even the character that looked the most tame with the smallest boobs is not as flat as a board. What the fuck.

 

[X Prime]

I personally like the style of the new art, except for the derp face on the bottom character and the chest reductions.

I can kind of understand wanting to stand out a bit.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

everybody has had a boob reduction

Someone will pay dearly for that decision

 

[Spud]

Exactly right. The technology will only improve anyway.

Depends on who is overseeing the AI, what if the localizer is the one who oversees the AI?

 

[Peru oso donas]

Depends on who is overseeing the AI, what if the localizer is the one who oversees the AI?

That's exactly what i think will happen. Everyone says AI shit is gonna get globohomo hacks jobless and things will be based and redpilled, but in reality they probably will just get the same nepo babies to look over the AI text and pull up the same bullshit they always do.

 

[Der weiße Teufel]

That's exactly what i think will happen. Everyone says AI shit is gonna get globohomo hacks jobless and things will be based and redpilled, but in reality they probably will just get the same nepo babies to look over the AI text and pull up the same bullshit they always do.

True and it all depends on how it's handled. If they already bother to invest in proper MT (machine translation), they'd have to instruct post-editors that they are not supposed to rewrite things and only fix actual mistakes or there is no point. An MT engine also needs to be trained and cannot learn by adding incorrect translations. The client or management would have to keep an eye or follow up on what edits were made and reject anything that strays too far from the source without a proper reason, but that's not happening with that crowd. If they cannot hire un-pozzed editors, they can only go full MT and hope the mistakes won't be too bad.