A couple of months ago, I applied for a localization editor job over at XSEED games, a smallish publisher of niche Japanese games in America. The most popular game that XSEED brought to America was The Last Story, but they're also responsible for a lot of other lesser-known titles. I didn't end up getting the job, but it was still a great experience for me. As part of the interview process, I was given a test that consisted of actual examples from previous projects and was formatted just as if I were looking at the examples on the job. Today's example (and likely the next few) will be from that test.
Before I get to the example, though, I should fill you in on the format of the test. Basically, I was sent an Excel sheet divided into three sections: miscellaneous, short dialogue, and long dialogue (today's example comes from the short dialogue section). In each section, I was given the original Japanese text and a "raw translation", which was representative of a first attempt at translation by someone else that I needed to spruce up, if necessary. Some of the raw translations were already correct, some were essentially correct but awkwardly phrased, and some seemed correct but were actually mistranslations of the original text.
One of the hardest parts of this format was that I wasn't given context for any of the lines that I had to correct, since I was seeing them in Excel rather than the games themselves. As inconvenient as this was, it's something that I would have had to deal with on the job: according to XSEED's localization blog, "When you’re editing a game’s script, which usually comes to you as a batch of Excel files (sometimes with a Japanese build of the game handy for reference, but only sometimes) it’s not always easy to tell where in the game a particular line will appear, which other lines will appear around it, or even, at times, what the line is referring to."
With that in mind, let's get to today's example:
Before I get to the example, though, I should fill you in on the format of the test. Basically, I was sent an Excel sheet divided into three sections: miscellaneous, short dialogue, and long dialogue (today's example comes from the short dialogue section). In each section, I was given the original Japanese text and a "raw translation", which was representative of a first attempt at translation by someone else that I needed to spruce up, if necessary. Some of the raw translations were already correct, some were essentially correct but awkwardly phrased, and some seemed correct but were actually mistranslations of the original text.
One of the hardest parts of this format was that I wasn't given context for any of the lines that I had to correct, since I was seeing them in Excel rather than the games themselves. As inconvenient as this was, it's something that I would have had to deal with on the job: according to XSEED's localization blog, "When you’re editing a game’s script, which usually comes to you as a batch of Excel files (sometimes with a Japanese build of the game handy for reference, but only sometimes) it’s not always easy to tell where in the game a particular line will appear, which other lines will appear around it, or even, at times, what the line is referring to."
With that in mind, let's get to today's example:
If you're like me, your immediate thought was, "what the heck are 'rubis'?" Surprisingly, that's a technically correct translation, even though it's a very esoteric word. Rubi is a term used to describe smaller text used above the normal text in Japanese or Chinese writing to inform readers of the phonetic pronunciation of the word in question. The term comes from British typography - ruby text was the name for type with a certain height, and ruby became a term in Japanese, which was then transliterated back into English as rubi. (Source)
When you're localizing a video game for another country's audience, the most accurate translation isn't always the best translation. Even though XSEED could probably rely on its customer base of niche Japanese game players to be familiar with more common Japanese words like honorifics put at the end of characters' names, I wouldn't expect the majority of them to have heard the term rubi - I studied Japanese for four and a half years as a major in college, and had never once heard the term ruby text, let alone rubi. We just called it furigana, the Japanese word for the same thing.
Furigana is a word that I'd be slightly more confident in XSEED's customer base to be familiar with, but it's still not the kind of word that is commonly used in anime, so I would still be very hesitant to use a literal translation in this case. Instead, it would be better to try to make a substitution for another word that would make just as much sense when placed in the same place in the dialogue. In this case, we would need another term for something that seems like it could answer the question of "what's written in a book, but outside of the text", but is actually incorrect because it's still technically in the text, unlike page numbers.
Well, shit. There isn't really anything that fits that bill, is there? The closest that I could come up with was "footnotes", but that would be confusing because although the supertext number directing you to the footnote would work for the purposes of the riddle, the actual footnote would be outside of the margin of the text, and therefore a correct answer to the riddle. We need a wrong answer.
So now we've got a situation in which we have an untranslatable word that can't be replaced by another word that fits the conversation in the same way. So what do we do? We can't replace the word, and we can't leave it untranslated - what other options are there?
We have to change the entire riddle.
The first thing to note is that the new dialogue have to follow the same flow as the original, so that it still fits into the game the same way. That means that it needs to follow the following format:
When you're localizing a video game for another country's audience, the most accurate translation isn't always the best translation. Even though XSEED could probably rely on its customer base of niche Japanese game players to be familiar with more common Japanese words like honorifics put at the end of characters' names, I wouldn't expect the majority of them to have heard the term rubi - I studied Japanese for four and a half years as a major in college, and had never once heard the term ruby text, let alone rubi. We just called it furigana, the Japanese word for the same thing.
Furigana is a word that I'd be slightly more confident in XSEED's customer base to be familiar with, but it's still not the kind of word that is commonly used in anime, so I would still be very hesitant to use a literal translation in this case. Instead, it would be better to try to make a substitution for another word that would make just as much sense when placed in the same place in the dialogue. In this case, we would need another term for something that seems like it could answer the question of "what's written in a book, but outside of the text", but is actually incorrect because it's still technically in the text, unlike page numbers.
Well, shit. There isn't really anything that fits that bill, is there? The closest that I could come up with was "footnotes", but that would be confusing because although the supertext number directing you to the footnote would work for the purposes of the riddle, the actual footnote would be outside of the margin of the text, and therefore a correct answer to the riddle. We need a wrong answer.
So now we've got a situation in which we have an untranslatable word that can't be replaced by another word that fits the conversation in the same way. So what do we do? We can't replace the word, and we can't leave it untranslated - what other options are there?
We have to change the entire riddle.
The first thing to note is that the new dialogue have to follow the same flow as the original, so that it still fits into the game the same way. That means that it needs to follow the following format:
Here's where the lack of context comes into play. Does the answer to this riddle have to be "page numbers"? Is that some sort of clue that the player needs to solve a larger puzzle? Just to be safe, let's try to think of another riddle with the same answer. Here's the version that I sent to XSEED:
Even that isn't necessarily a perfect option, though - what if there aren't beepers or cell phones in the game's universe? Without more information about setting of the game and the context of the quote, it's impossible to find a perfect fit. There are some situations in which it's necessary to make a note to keep an eye on a particular line and wait to hear back from QA to determine whether or not it fits into the game properly.
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