I never played the Japanese version, but I live in Japan and I have worked with various game localization companies. It’s a pretty fine line on how they handle these kinds of translations, and it is often the developers who give the direction.

A good localization firm will take the original intent, and then culturalize it for the target market to make sure it has the same intended “vibe” rather than an actual 1:1 translation. The first company I worked at here did the localization for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. They were using a lot of old Japanese in that, and they specifically DID want us to get as close to 1:1 as possible, while ensuring that the intent was still very clear. Another game that I cannot say was more free saying “please make sure that the jokes land with the US”, and quite a bit of the actual dialog was re-written, but once again, to match the vibe and intent that the developer was searching.

Each project is different. Each player is different. You aren’t wrong for your wants here, but developers aren’t wrong for trying to make something be more culturally appropriate for their target market, often which will sell more copies than their local market.

This is really rough, but it sounds like Jay is going through some stuff after what I am sure has been quite a whirlwind few years. The industry is rough, and finding a space for a niche that he fills, I do wonder how the sales would go when contractors and publishers are taking cuts.

I hope he gets some time and makes something new that soothes his soul.

Thanks for mentioning Orwell. I worked on this game and it’s probably the favorite title I’ve shipped!

I am going to make a more concerted effort to use Lemmy more than Reddit moving forward. I just wish it had more info over here. I think from now on if I cannot find the info that I seek on Lemmy, I will find some sources on Reddit and then maybe pay it forward via sharing my findings on Lemmy. That’s at least what I’m going to try and do for a while and see if I can help make a difference.

Oh dang, I never noticed that before. Will play around with it after work and see how it feels!

I’m so glad I switched to Kagi. The writing was on the wall once they started rolling out the AI suggestions wide.

I have always wanted to try Clairefontaine. They are not super popular in Aus (where I am from) and I have never seen them here in Japan, but I hear that they are really nice to write in.

No problem! When I get home I will cross-link to Journaling too! Let’s build some great places here.

Gotta start somewhere. Hopefully we can turn it into a nice and vibrant community!

Nice! I really like Field Notes books, they were the first ones I started using when I got into carrying notebooks with me. I found that the ghosting was too much for me with fountain pens, so I ditched them a while ago. What pens are you using?

I really need to practice my hiragana and katakana. I rarely have to write Japanese but lately I have been filling out so many forms that I really need to re-learn to make my life easier haha.

This is something that I wrestle with. There are certain companies I don’t want to spend money with, but I want to support the work and the crews who work on those things.

The argument is my money doesn’t go to the crews. But my time spent watching adds to the metrics that gets these shows and albums greenlit, but ultimately it comes down to how you feel about those quandaries.

I make games for a living so I feel that supporting is best for me. If no one bought the games I worked on I couldn’t feed my son. Instead I’m making more conscious decisions about where and how I spend my money. I just switched to Proton for my email, I use Kagi for search. I support teams I care about and support services I believe in. I buy games I want to play. I don’t think too much about the other things.

If a show is not available in my country easily, I do pirate. That’s kinda the only thing I pirate these days.