
The Story of Metal Gear Solid’s English Translation - danso
https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/18/20696081/metal-gear-solid-translation-japanese-english-jeremy-blaustein
======
sunaurus
I love Japanese entertainment. I'm not a native speaker of either, but I often
use English subtitles with Japanese audio, because my English is better than
my Japanese. As a result of having both languages in front of me at the same
time, I often notice when translators take liberties and sometimes even
rewrite entire personalities of characters, and it has always annoyed me a
lot.

This article was great for helping me understand the motivations for
localizing stories and characters (instead of simply translating them). I
certainly don't blame the author (and other translators) for trying to provide
the American audience with what they think is the best possible experience.
But for anybody who isn't American, the localization might be entirely wasted
- there's a good chance that they're just as familiar with Japanese culture
and history as they are with American culture and history.

What's worse, in cases where the localization is wildly different from the
original, the audience probably doesn't have any way of knowing it. It would
be fair to tell the audience when the localization is inspired by or based on
the original, instead of a direct translation of it. Otherwise, consumers can
be misled to thinking they like or dislike a certain writer, while in reality
their opinion is based entirely on a translator.

Slightly related: in Final Fantasy XIV, a character in the main story was
COMPLETELY changed for the English version of the game. Playing in Japanese, I
grew quite fond of the character, so when the character eventually died in the
story, it had an actual impact for me. A friend of mine plays the same game
exclusively in English, and when I discussed the death with him, he told me
that this character was completely forgettable for him and he didn't even
really remember the circumstances of the death. I'm fairly certain that the
lack of impact for him was entirely because of the localization.

~~~
kace91
I wonder if there's any source of information where I can get specific
examples of this issue. It would be quite curious to see side by side
comparisons on how stories differ, and see if there's any general trend.

~~~
rawTruthHurts
It's not a "source of information" but a "specific example": the robotech RPG
manuals (or at least some of them 90's editions, not the main one but the
companions) had an appendix where they delved into the differencies between
the US and Japanese translations. Looks like not just technical terms, but
some plot lines diverted fairly from the original

~~~
benj111
Wouldn't that have to be the case as Robotech is a US combination of 2
unrelated Japanese cartoons?

------
laurieg
I have had very similar experiences to the author when doing a magazine
translation job from Japanese to English. Very regularly the editor would take
issue with me writing an English translation that sounded natural but didn't
use a word with the exact same meaning and part of speech as the original.

Having worked in translation for a little while, bad and awkward translations
really do stand out a mile. "How nostalgic!" is such a common way to translate
"懐かしい” but I've never heard anyone say that in English.

The distance between the languages will always leave the translator with a
sizable challenge. It's a real shame to hear the Kojima was not on board with
this style of translation.

~~~
mikekchar
I did a fair amount of scanlation back in the day (very obscure manga). One of
the things I liked about scanlation was being able write hacked up English on
the assumption that the reader knew enough about Japanese culture/language to
make the leap from awkward English to Japanese concept. But, if I was writing
for a larger audience I think it would be incredibly difficult to write
idiomatic English and still capture the Japanese sense of the sentence. I'm in
awe when I see people who are successful. I'm convinced you have to be an
incredibly good writer of English to be able to pull it off (which I am not
;-) ).

I admit do having a wave of nostalgia now :-) Few things brought me as much
pleasure as scanlation...

~~~
JohnBooty

        One of the things I liked about scanlation was being 
        able write hacked up English on the assumption that 
        the reader knew enough about Japanese culture/language 
        to make the leap from awkward English to Japanese concept.
    

First of all, thank you to you and the other scanslators of the world. You
made a lot of things possible for your readers!

Translating manga must be so tough. At least in anime, if you're watching
English subtitles, you can _hear the characters speaking in Japanese_ which
helps to retain some of the original meaning. I don't speak Japanese, but I
can recognize at least certain things like honorifics that convey a lot of
meaning... that adds a lot of meaning to the subtitles I'm reading.

But with manga, there's no such luxury... you did a really challenging job.

------
spondyl
Highly recommend checking out this hour long interview with Jeremy Blaustein,
the author of the linked article, who worked on the Silent Hill franchise
among other things.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DB5GFiTRig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DB5GFiTRig)

He gives a lot of background on how the industry was at the time, not that
much earlier than the MGS release. It boils down to basically being a wild
west of sorts from what I remember.

Similarly, I can also recommend the rest of TheGrateDebate's YouTube channel.
It's a group of Silent Hill fans talking about Silent Hill things with high
production qualities. I don't even think you have to be much of a SH fan to
enjoy their works.

On a side note, I was reading Jeremy's twitter feed a few weeks ago and I
believe he was likely tapped to write this in response to an MGS story he
shared:
[https://twitter.com/JeremyBlaustein/status/11431327794014699...](https://twitter.com/JeremyBlaustein/status/1143132779401469952)

------
gatherhunterer
There are many parts of this game that are burned into my memory. It was such
a deeply voice-acted game with so much emotional content. The gameplay was fun
to repeat because there were different ways to approach each challenge.
Reading up on the lexicon of the US military explains the use of the word
“pineapples” to describe hand grenades when Snake is speaking over comm on the
first level. This article gives context to many of the lines that have stuck
with me.

There is a chapter of Metal Gear Solid 4 that takes place in a modern remake
of the first level and one of the later levels of the original. There is even
a playable version of the original that comes up in a dream sequence. The
dedication that the crew has had for their work from the original and on is
remarkable.

------
benrbray
Great article. I don't agree with the choices made by the translator (I think
any attempt to "satisfy the marketplace" will always corrupt a translation),
but I admire the enormous effort spent researching for his translation.

Here is another article on translation posted a few days ago to HN that I
think contrasts this one nicely:

Stephen Snyder, "The Murakami Effect" @ LitHub ([https://lithub.com/the-
murakami-effect/](https://lithub.com/the-murakami-effect/))

HN Discussion
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20389112](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20389112))

~~~
fenomas
> any attempt to "satisfy the marketplace" will always corrupt a translation

I don't know how you're getting this from the article - everything he says
about his efforts boils down to trying to change language that sounds flat and
lifeless in translation into something that lives and breathes, and I think
he's absolutely right to have made that attempt. (even if he misses the mark
sometimes, like with the castlevania "what is a man?" bit...)

Living in JP I wind up seeing a lot of movies and TV with one language in the
audio and the other in subtitles, and personally, "faithful" translations
drive me bonkers with how flat and boring and explanatory they sound.

My pet theory is that it ultimately stems from the source languages being so
linguistically different. I once read a book where the translator said in his
notes (about Voltaire) "But mostly I've just tried to stay out of his way, for
I find that he speaks very good English already", and I've often thought how
hard it is to imagine a JP>EN translator feeling the same way.

~~~
mrob
I think a less accurate translation can sometimes result in a better product,
but the translator needs to be very good to pull it off. The most notable
example I can think of is Vagrant Story, which was widely praised for its
localization.

Example from The GIA's review[0]:

"Lines as bland in the original Japanese as

"It is because you acknowledge things like freedom of belief. There can be
only one God. This sort of incident occurs because you let heretics like them
out of your control. That, and our parliament is impotent..."

become:

"All because of this religious freedom! Too much freedom, too many gods. Let
those cultist cur-dogs run loose, and they will bite you. Gods! While our
Parliament cowers...""

But if a bad writer tries this then you get Working Designs' localization
style, where they "improved" the originals with unfunny 4th-wall-breaking
jokes and references.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20010608201912/http://www.thegia...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010608201912/http://www.thegia.com/psx/vgst/vgst.html)

~~~
benrbray
Another controversial translation is the English localization of the "Ghost
Stories" anime [1], which the authors were desperate to sell to Western
audiences despite flopping in Japan. The show is full of hard-to-translate
cultural references, so the translators quite drastically changed the tone of
the show.

I would say Ghost Stories is a successful example of "satisfying the market"
via something like an "official parody" of the original work, but it
definitely doesn't remain faithful to the original. I'm glad it exists, and it
has creative value, but it definitely fails as a "translation".

[1]:
[https://dubbing.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_Stories](https://dubbing.fandom.com/wiki/Ghost_Stories)
(not sure

~~~
darkpuma
The result is genuinely hilarious. I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed a
_faithful_ translation nearly as much.

------
agent008t
Kojima seems to have two distinct sides. One is pure genius, the other is not
so great. The former made Policenauts, Snatcher, Metal Gear 2, MGS, MGS3,
Peace Walker. The latter fired Jeremy Blaustein, David Hayter, came up with
vampires and flying whales for no good reason, wrote endless unnecessary cut-
scenes for MGS4 that take themselves too seriously, came up with the script
for MGS5.

~~~
tombert
I'm convinced that no one really knows what the hell happened at the end of
MGS2. The story flew so far off the rails that I stopped playing the games in
the series after that.

~~~
agent008t
I was the same. Only nearly a decade later did I give MGS3 a go, and was not
disappointed - it was more like MGS1 than MGS2 and is one of the best in the
series.

MGS4 follows right in MGS2 footsteps and I would say better skipped. Peace
Walker is surprisingly good, although parts of it towards the end get tedious.
MGS5 goes back to weirdness, although a particular sniper's story line has
some merit to it.

~~~
tombert
I actually think that Ghost Babel (the Japanese name) on the Game Boy Color is
a really underrated game. It's worth checking out if you have avoided it
because of it being a portable game. It has a fairly elaborate story, a
delayed intro scene, and actually pretty decent graphics for the GBC.

------
raehik
I love Jeremy, I've followed him for a while on Twitter. He comes across as
self-confident and prideful of his work, which is great and perfect for a
_good_ translator (which he certainly is). Shame Kojima didn't agree at the
time, I imagine he's a very proud person as well.

~~~
avinium
I left a comment the first time this was posted, but to reiterate, the MGS
translations were excellent (and arguably better than later installments,
though MGS3 was pretty high quality too).

Jeremy played a huge part in launching an incredibly successful series. I hope
he doesn't feel too put out by Kojima's reaction.

~~~
raehik
I watched through most of the interesting MGS3 codec scenes in Japanese (after
playing it in English years ago). It had an absurdly great script in both
languages (perhaps better Japanese VAs). I'm a bit biased towards it though
because it's one of the best games ever made IMO.

MGS was certainly memorable, moreso than MGS2 or MGS4 (lmao) for me.

------
ListeningPie
Even though MGS was my favorite game I never really like MGS5. Any suspension
of disbelief was ruined with awkward lines like, "You're a legend in the eyes
of those who live on the battlefield."

~~~
agent008t
The dialogue in MGS5 was absolutely horrible:

1\. Because of the change of voice actors, I literally could not tell who was
speaking at any given time. Everyone sounded the same.

2\. None of it was believable, funny, interesting or relevant. Peace Walker
had a very similar concept in terms of storytelling (through tapes) and
gameplay (base management), but was infinitely better. I just really did not
care about any of the tapes in MGS5. In PW the tapes were funny and
interesting and you actually learned something.

