/vr/ - Retro Games

Got salty after seeing the Alundra thread, eh OP?

>>4569432
>not liking based WD

Back in the day we played our Vic Ireland translations and we were damn grateful to have them ya punk kids.

It's cool to be a contrarian and suck Vic's dick on /vr/ op

Lunar was never good btw

>>4569434
Maybe
>>4569440
I'd rather have nothing so fan translations would be made
>>4569447
I never said it was.

>>4569432
Worst example is Exile Wicked Phenomenon, they made the game literally impossible to get through the very first area.

>>4569454
>I'd rather have nothing so fan translations would be made
Ah yes, fan translation, the true bastion of quality work.

>>4569457
>they made the game literally impossible to get through the very first area.
The entire game is like that because they fucked with the programming, sucked at it, and then just went like "if you exploit invicibility glitches and keep at it it can technically be beaten so it's ok lol".

>>4569513
That line of dialogue is on par with Working Designs' "efforts".

>>4569513
You do realize that those subs along with the "electric brain elderly" one from GitS:SaC was done as a joke right? They took the raw text in plugged it in to Google Translate, and we all know how that works with east Asian languages. There was like 5 sub groups doing subs for that show when it was airing, that one was from a joke group.

It's worth noting Working Design's cancerous philosophy still lived on during the PS2/PS3 era with trash companies like Atlus USA (or "let's remove the audio so no one can figure out most of our lines are made up").
The metastasis went so far that some people cry when they're offered decent translation because "it's too litteral".

>>4569607
>But it's localization, not translation! Translation is so boring, why would anyone want to read a translation?
It's as if these "too literal" fags have never actually read a fucking book or watched a foreign language film.

Yes, a completely literal word-for-word translation isn't good, but it doesn't mean you need to change the setting/tone/plot just because you want to show off how creative you are. As a translator you're supposed to use adaptation and compensation techniques to make the original message understandable. If you'd try to pull that "localization" bullshit on any other form of media, you'd be a laughingstock and out of a job within minutes. If you want to show off how creative you are, write a fucking book on your own instead of hijacking other people's works.

>>4569454
It's easy to say that 25 years later huh? Besides, there's nothing stopping fan translators from retranslating already translated work.

>>4569568
>Working Designs translations are dead serious

>>4569607
Some people don't want to have to stop playing and research subtle aspects of Japanese culture just to understand references - and back then it wasn't even possible even if you could read Japanese.

It's amazing to me that there are STILL "muh penultimate nihongo culture" weebs in 2018. My social group were even self-styled "eggs" back then but the deepest culture I had was Robotech, Vampire Hunter D, some laserdiscs of Project A-Ko, Bubblegum Crisis and Appleseed, a copy of Urusei Yatsura Perfect Collection, a friend with subbed VHS of DBZ and Working Designs. That was it.

Now that it's actually possible to submerse yourself in 24 hour streams and 0-day scans straight from the land of the rising sun I can't imagine why you would want to. Like everywhere else the vast majority of Japanese media is worthless shit. Like the US, the amount of decent stuff is relatively high maybe even approaching 5%. Back in the day, the quality stuff rose to the top naturally and I think it was more justifiable to have the impression that everything was good but in today's day and age it's up to us to separate the whey from the chaff and becoming fixated on anything really is a waste of time considering how much amazing shit there is out there accessible to each and every one of us.

Whew, I'm really starting to go wildly off topic lol. I'm not saying that all translations should have their cultural references westernized. There's plenty of space for both. I just think it's shitty that translators who DO westernize references are so viciously attacked by people who are in all likelihood pretty lame (people who reject their own culture for another they at best only half-way understand).

>>4569624
>It's as if these "too literal" fags have never actually read a fucking book or watched a foreign language film.
it's actually the other way around.

when you consume other media, you become increasingly aware of exactly how much is changed in the translations. this is often unavoidable (especially with untranslatable puns and idioms).

however, weeaboos tend to have very limited experiences with non-japanese media, and how those are translated. many of them are americans used to consuming media in their own language, so for them, weebshit is often the first experience with media translated from other languages. consequently, they don't know very much about how translations are usually handled.

>>4569657
>>Working Designs translations are dead serious
Are you replying to the wrong person? The post was only about the GitS image, not Working Designs.

While the translation autism wankery is amusing in here, Working Designs fuckery went well beyond shoddy rewrites and bad jokes/instantly dated pop culture references.

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=23436.0

>>4569661
You've got no idea how actual serious translation work. It's painstakingly difficult to keep it as close to the original without losing too much meaning in the process. You've got to adapt to the author's style to not denature it, keep the cultural references as much as possible without making it baffling to the reader (that's actually why translator's notes are a thing),...
You're fine with people making shit up because you don't know the difference between a good and a bad translating job, like someone who praises McDonald's food because he doesn't know any better

>>4569439
enjoy your "working" games

>>4569657
Oh please, WD translations were trash not because of the cultural differences or because it was produced 25 years ago.
It was trash because they were plain hack jobs. Trash is trash no matter the circumstances and the "we didn't have anything better excuse anyway" is retarded.
>I just think it's shitty that translators who DO westernize references are so viciously attacked by people who are in all likelihood pretty lame (people who reject their own culture for another they at best only half-way understand).
Wanting accurate translations is rejecting your own culture? What the fuck are you on? Stick to your American "culture" then and stop bothering us with your deep thoughts on foreign media.

We always hear about the way WD butchered certain games, but how did they do on the other (good) games they translated? Namely Thunder Force V, Dragon Force, and Growlanser

Working Designs, the savior of video games
Here's a quick rundown:

>Brought over games that would have otherwise never seen the light of day in the west
>Fluent, typo-free translation
>Competent, but lesser known voice actors back before Steve Blum and Nolan North voiced every character
>Carefully tweaked each game's difficulty to appeal to hardcore western gamers
>Offered beautiful, highly sought after collector's sets before that was a common practice
>Headed by Victor Ireland, a no-nonsense gamer who actually cared about the consumer
>Hilarious and topical contemporary references in their translations

Even if you hated the dialogue, you have to admit, it was better than nothing.

>>4569736
There wasn't much for them to fuck up on the shmup side of things, as far as I can tell it was as straightforward as it gets.

Apparently with RayStorm they changed it so any difficulty setting below 4 (the default) only lets you play the first few stages before it ends.

>>4569752
Ok, but why is Mortal Kombat in there?

>>4569752
Why are some of those from western developed games. Anglos can't speak their own language?

>>4569752
>>Even if you hated the dialogue, you have to admit, it was better than nothing.
I'm glad I got to play the games. But it's fucking dumb to say that they're immune to criticism or that they didn't make dumb/bizarre divisions as a entity.

>Headed by Victor Ireland, a no-nonsense gamer who actually cared about the consumer
Same dude who made the call to change the difficulty of titles to make sure that people couldn't beat them when renting thus fucking the game up for people who actually purchased it? Fuck him.

ITT poor excuses from people too incompetent to learn Japanese.

>>4569753
>There wasn't much for them to fuck up
Yeah but WD can find a way even when no one would have expected it, be it from ruining difficulty balancing or introducing bugs. That's why they're so famous.

>>4569731
>Attacking westernized localizations is the same as wanting "accurate" translation
Poor baby, victimized by some Schwarzeneggar references. Or is it that WD's Popful Mail is too hard and gave you some kind of a complex that caused all your problems? Vic was far ahead of his time and contributed enormously to the weeb culture that now rejects him. Maybe he was a hack. I bet he even dated coworkers!

>>4569661
>you become increasingly aware of exactly how much is changed in the translations
The keyword here is translations. A translator tries to mantain as much as possible from the source language into the output language. Of course things have to be changed to make sense in the new language. But the message has to be as preserved as possible.

When you read foreign books and learn about them, you get to understand that Portuguese translations of Othello don't have him go AYOOOO HOL UP DESDEMONA BIX NOOD just because the translator thinks that way is more fun. You get to understand that an English translation of Anna Karenina doesn't change the setting from feudal Russia into Los Angeles just because the translator feels it's cool. Whatever random translated book you pick up and read, you can be sure it won't just change stuff just because the translator thinks it's fun and cool and hip, because that translator would be fired on the spot and never work again.

Video games often feature juvenile stories and this is why people's only defense against video game translations being held to any sort of professional standard is going "lel it's just vidya bro it's more fun this way". But even the most juvenile of children's books won't have a "translator" making up bullshit to show off how cool and creative he is, because literature is respected in that regard no matter the maturity of its content.

Vic added fart noises to cutscenes, slapped his shitty WD logo on top of the actual game creators, changed lines and added jokes just because, and outright broke the programming in some published titles. This would never fly in any other médium, and no person would ever defend it. It only flies because of you and others who keep going xD about how it's just vidya and how that somehoe means that can just fart our way until the end credits because it's fun. I mean, whatever, but there's no justification for that being "good" or professional at all.

I love Working Designs. Not to be a contrarian, some of the jokes are shit but I'm all for this "ruining" of localizations.

There are games that have yet to be translated and have been out for 2 decades or more. I would much rather have enjoyed them with a translation done by WD all those years ago, and easily find it, than find some autistic weeb team of people who take things too literal trying to translate a game when almost no one remembers it anymore only to drop it at the end when it gets popular because there's no paid work involved and if someone wants to leave crying and bitching like a little girl, they can.

>>4569819
>contributed enormously to the weeb culture

Good things don't have to be spread to people who can't understand them.

>>4569752
>Zelda images
Why are those there?

What about the other way around? Gundam Battle Assault 2 was developed for the American market, when it was later released in Japan they split it into two budget titles - one with UC+G characters and the other with UC+Wing characters.

>>4569947
WD is literally worse than nothing.

>>4569910
>But even the most juvenile of children's books won't have a "translator" making up bullshit to show off how cool and creative he is, because literature is respected in that regard no matter the maturity of its content.
I'd like to direct you to the entire catalogue of german fairy tails ripped off by disney

>>4569910
>Whatever random translated book you pick up and read, you can be sure it won't just change stuff just because the translator thinks it's fun and cool and hip, because that translator would be fired on the spot and never work again.
I do this all the time as a translator and I still have a job. Lots of translators do. Historically the acceptance of the impossibility of translation has opened up space for all sorts of different attempts to reconstruct inevitably lost meaning. Your ideas about translation and language are painfully baroque.

>>4570161
If you're changing things because you're trying to reconstruct lost meaning, you're a translator. If you're changing things just because you think it's cool and hip, you're not a translator. I very much doubt you're actively working as a translator and changing stuff JUST BECAUSE you think it's cool and not because you're forced to by the context.

I also very much doubt you insert fart onomatopeia at random just because.

If that makes me baroque, I don't know what to say.

>>4570246
>It's up to me to decide at what point meaning is lost
Confirmed baroque as a joke

>>4570262
Please show me where there was a lost meaning in >>4569661's picture.

Please do enlighten us as to where in Rayearth, Alundra and Lunar meaning was lost and needed to be replaced with farts, incest jokes, and sexual innuendo.

>babbage
Oh, right. 8/8.

>>4570153
Ever heard of Robotech?

>>4570153
Movie adaptation =/= translation, anon.

>>4570274
There is no meaning in that picture, other than the translator's summation that the character was "boring" which you and unappreciative fucks like you are refusing to trust despite your consumption of his significant pro bono efforts. You're just so damn sure that you're missing out on some important nihongo cultural je ne sais pa because unpaid workers decided to have a little bit of fun with their process. They don't owe you shit and your attitude contributes less than nothing to the motivations of fan translators in general.

>>4570326
>You're just so damn sure that you're missing out on some important nihongo cultural je ne sais pa because unpaid workers decided to have a little bit of fun with their process
No, I'm not, and in my first post I even said most stories are juvenile and I think it was implied I thought them to be inconsequential. But that doesn't mean it's right or professional for a translator to add random flatulences just because he finds the story "boring". A translator translates, they're not there to judge the value of the work.

Your defense is, again, "lol it's just a game xD", and it is, but at least own up to the fact that what WD did is literally shit on games and even make them mechanically unplayable. Don't try to pass it off as cool translations, what they did wasn't translating. It was, again, just shit, audible shit. You can listen to its farts on some cutscenes, if you're so fond of them.

>>4570359
What WD did was bring me games that amazingly enjoyed playing despite them being "unplayable", believe it or not. Lots of people did.

>>4570368
Back in the 90's, they did fulfill their role as publishers. But that's it. This isn't the 90's anymore (what an awful thing to say on /vr/, but it's true).

They brought games with often unprofessional translations and sometimes broken programming. That's just a fact. The games did have nice physical extras and they did bring them over, but they brought them over with broken coding and poop sfx.

It's like commending someone for bringing you over some food for you to purchase, only they farted on it before giving it to you. You may have been hungry back then and be grateful for being able to eat something even if it smelled like a fart, but now you're not hungry anymore, and I think it's perfectly normal to ask "why the fuck did they have to fart on the food I bought from them?"

If you think bringing games over justifies any of the other bullshit they pulled, that's your prerogative. Just don't pretend like they weren't unprofessional in pretty much every single level. Hell, that's exactly the reason why they're not around anymore.

I just play them. I’m not bothered by them. A lot of games that most likely would have never been released outside of Japan is more important than translation authenticity in my opinion. If it wasn’t for WD, we wouldn’t have other localization groups like NIS or XSeed.

>>4570414
>If it wasn’t for WD, we wouldn’t have other localization groups like NIS
Is this supposed to be a negative? NISA is shit.
XSeed is fine, I appreciate their work on Falcom games.

>>4570368
Sorry but they were shit back then and they're shit today. I hated them and wished they'd have a proper translation job.

>>4570414
That's not true at all; tons of stuff that never saw the light of day in the West is translated today thanks to fans.

>>4570392
>professional
>[pruh-fesh-uh-nl]
>adjective
>1.following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain:
>a professional builder.
On a tangential note related to your analogy you should probably never look into the food processing or service industries

>>4570541
I don't believe for one second that you played a Working Designs game in the 20th century

>>4570527
>NISA is shit.
Vic made his money off his work but when you say ungrateful things like this about groups who literally work for free you're cutting off your nose to spite your face

>>4570392
if it still smelled like a "fart" by the time you were eating it, i'm pretty sure you ate some poop.

>the stories were boring to begin with! the characters were boring to begin with!
>you should be GLAD they made up stupid shit to entertain you!
Why is it up to the translators to judge whether or not I'll find something entertaining. Why are you fine with translators saying "I know better than the original creators!" and making up their own shit. I don't care about losing out on cultural references or whatever else, but changing characterization is fucking retarded. And it's never even stopped this whole time, just like at Fire Emblem Fates. Does everyone say the original is boring? Sure, but does that mean it's right to just make shit up and change it however you like? God no.

>>4570558
>Vic made his money off his work but when you say ungrateful things like this about groups who literally work for free you're cutting off your nose to spite your face
They don't work for free when you've got to pay money to buy their games, you fucking retard. I remember their "work" on Ar Tonelico. Never again.

>>4570576
Don't forget
>we've changed the problematic dialogues and content and removed the minigames
Man, I wonder why we would want a translation over their wonderful localization!

>>4569752
9/10 troll, very convincing. I actually thought you were retarded for a solid 10 seconds.

>>4570282
There aren't many Macross fans that would say that Robotech was a good translation. Even sticking to just the first season, the episode that was essentially a recap episode being turned into a dream sequence where Rick flies a bicycle was unforgivable.

>>4570326
>je ne sais pa
It's je ne sais pas if you were trying to say "I don't know." This isn't an idiom used in English.
The idiom you probably were trying for is je ne sais quoi - "I don't know what."

>>4570634
mea culpa

>>4569432
This is Psikyo's Gunbird for anyone who lives under a rock.

They renamed the robot dude to "MILF 2000".

>>4570690
Oh yeah, and then the sequel which was from a completely unrelated series of shmups.

>>4570690
That cover art though.

>>4569819
this

fuck you kids, if it wasn't FOR fucking WD, we wouldn't have gotten a bunch of good shit.

god, you are all so fucking spoiled now, fucking brats.

>>4570814
>BEG FOR SCRAPS OR YOU WILL STARVE

>over two decades later and people are STILL butthurt about Working Designs
OH
MY
EFFIN
GOD
DUDE
GET
THE
HECK
OVER
IT
ALREADY
OR
BETTER
GO
BACK
TO
/V/
WITH
ALL
THE
OTHER
GAMER
GATERS
WHO
WHINE
ABOUT
MUH
CENSORSHIP
OR
MUH
LOCALIZATION
OR
MUH
TRANSLATION
ALL
THEFRIGGINTIMEGOODSIRJANITORARENOW
ALLOWED
TO
DELETE
THISTHREADTHANKYOU

NEWMANSDONOTFORGETTOSAGE
AND
REPORT
ALL/V/CROSSPOSTERTHREADSTRYINGTOPUSH
THEIRANTIFEMINIST
AGENDA
KEEP
INMIND
THIS
THREAD
HAS
NOTHING
TODO
WITH
WORKING
DESIGNS
IT'S
JUST
A
SUBTLEPLOY
T
WHINEABOUT


THE
EVILS
OF
THE
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>>4570856
Are you having a stroke, Vic?

>>4570856

>>4570856
Someone localize this post to the best of WD's abilities. It is disrespectful to my culture and is boringly drawn out.

>>4570867
Here I go:
*fart*

>>4570856

>>4569434
how badly did they really change alundra?

>>4570897
https://tcrf.net/Alundra#Regional_Differences

>>4570874
You need to fuck right the back off to /v/ if you know what's best for you. This is your one and only warning. Don't get on my bad side, kid.

>>4570872
>*fart*
I think I'll wait for a re-translation, thanks.

>>4570282
Speaking of anime, how about how Ghost Stories was dubbed?

I remember on the making of Lunar SSSC disc, Vic or one of the other WD staff made a comment about their translation of the original SegaCD Lunar being imported back to Japan by fans. Any truth to this, or was it just WD sucking their own collective dicks?

I like how there were a few instances where a European distributor (e.g. Sega of Europe) took one look at a Working Designs translation, threw it into the trash, and did their own superior translation in-house instead.

>>4571770
I'm sure that some copies of every Western game were imported into Japan.by westaboos.

>>4570017
Gundam on the left is going to slam dunk a basketball.

>>4569432
I was glad for the localizations, but yeah, their scripts weren't that great, too much pop culture references (ABBA, Bill Clinton).

The changes in the difficulty were awful too, especially in the second Exile and Silhouette Mirage.

>>4572087
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1UuEHmxG0U

>>4570148
sorry, I love my copy of Magic Knight Rayearth too much to ever agree with you

>>4569657
this. 80% of everything is shit anyway. no amount of rose-tinted japanophilia is gonna change that fact.

vic ireland was a massive piece of shit though.