{"id":17344,"date":"2018-04-13T23:34:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-13T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/316573"},"modified":"2018-04-13T23:34:00","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T23:34:00","slug":"okage-shadow-king-or-satan-king-how-tricky-terms-get-translated-in-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/04\/13\/okage-shadow-king-or-satan-king-how-tricky-terms-get-translated-in-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Okage: Shadow King or Satan King? How tricky terms get translated in games"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“In English, we don\u2019t have a solid, common equivalent of ma\u014d or daima\u014d. But you can\u2019t just ignore the words when translating, so you have to come up with something. There are at least five main approaches to the problem.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

– Clyde Mandelin, writing<\/a> about the process of translating tricky words in games.<\/em><\/p>\n

Longtime translator and author Clyde “Tomato” Mandelin\u00a0has kicked off<\/a> a neat new series of articles on his Legends of Localization blog which aims to show folks how localizers tackle the task of translating words into a language that has no clear equivalent.<\/p>\n

Mandelin’s perspective is informed by the fact that he’s spent well over a decade localizing Japanese films and games, including the\u00a0Mother 3\u00a0<\/em>fan translation<\/a> for which he’s arguably best known.\u00a0His first post focuses on\u00a0the terms\u00a0ma\u014d and\u00a0daima\u014d, which he says are common in Japanese games but not easily translatable into English.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s difficult to explain with a single word in English, but a\u00a0ma\u014d\u00a0is basically a term for a supreme supernatural being that\u2019s usually super-evil. It\u2019s a generic term that\u2019s extremely common in Japanese fantasy settings,” write Mandelin. “In short, if you\u2019re playing a game that\u2019s clich\u00e9 enough to have a chosen knight or a hero of light, there\u2019s great chance there\u2019s a\u00a0ma\u014d\u00a0too \u2013 and it\u2019s probably the final boss.”<\/p>\n

He then walks through five different approaches a translator might take, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each. It’s an intriguing read, and he follows it up with a fun look at how various games (everything from\u00a0Actraiser\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0The Legend of Zelda\u00a0<\/em>to Zener Works’ PlayStation 2 classic Okage: Shadow King<\/em>) have handled it through the years.<\/p>\n

“The\u00a0Zelda\u00a0<\/em>series is full of\u00a0ma\u014d\u00a0references. It\u2019s also a good example of how inconsistent those references can be in translation,” writes Mandelin. “First, in the original\u00a0Zelda\u00a0<\/em>(1987) game, Ganon is called a\u00a0daima\u014d\u00a0in Japanese. The instruction manual localizers went with \u201cPrince of Darkness\u201d while the actual game developers went with \u201cPrince Darkness”….in\u00a0A Link to the Past<\/em>\u00a0(1992), Ganondorf is now just a basic\u00a0ma\u014d\u00a0in Japanese and \u201cthe evil King of Darkness\u201d in English.”<\/p>\n

There’s lots more great examples in the\u00a0full<\/a> blog post<\/a>, which is well worth a read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In English, we don\u2019t have a solid, common equivalent of ma\u014d or daima\u014d. But you can\u2019t just ignore the words when translating, so you have to come up with something. There are at least five main approaches to the problem.” – Clyde Mandelin, writing about the process of translating tricky words in games. Longtime translator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}