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Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - What A Horrible Halloween To Have A Column
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wolf10
 Posts: 931 |
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A someone who speaks both English and Japanese, I respect the stance that having real people involved matters (AI is not the way), but question the blind faith that every single decision on every single script came with some higher-up's seal of approval. There are too many plot-holes specific to the English versions of script-heavy games like Tales of Arise, Digimon Survive, and Unicorn Overlord (to name just a few titles that stuck with me) for me to believe that every inch of every script is checked for consistency, especially if I can find glaring issues just by playing through from start to finish. That level of quality control is absolutely true for titles like the Ace Attorney games (Janet Hsu runs a tight ship), but much as I'd like to believe otherwise, I suspect they're the exception and not the rule. The real problem isn't an agenda, but that people are just overworked and underpaid and nobody really cares once a sale has been made.
But on a lighter note, I think I even saw Cornell in that Vampire Survivors trailer. Guess that makes both it and the DLC a must-buy. It wasn't really on my radar before, but it is now. Also, I second every title on that spooky games list. |
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BrazillianCara
Posts: 29 |
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After this DLC, the funniest/most awesome thing Vampire Survivors can do eventually is to have a crossover with Bloodstained.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4631 Location: New York |
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Huh, there’s a thought. How much are the energy costs vs human costs? I mean most of these AI engines won’t be sustainable unless they get hooked up to dedicated nuclear reactors, but how much is that vs employing translators and proofreaders?
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6356 |
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Should be V Rising also be included since that also dropped CastleVania DLC just this summer? |
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 527 Location: Seattle |
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In my experience, that kind of issue isn't really a problem with the team lead so much as it is everyone skimping on testing. Being able to catch that sort of context issue is a valuable skill (I've tried to teach it to people to no success) but the money people don't seem to get that and won't ever hire those people on or pay them what they're worth. The result is that even if a project is given ample time for humans to play through the game, they may leave obvious contradictions in the main route (to say nothing of harder to access dialogue.) Since game translations are nearly always done without sufficient context, you've got to have human testers who know how to check text, but those skills are always on the chopping block even before these dipshits start talking about bringing in AI. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 500 |
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I get wanting to use AI for translation, but the usability is really not there yet. Especially not for something like Trails, which so referential to the broader series. Its a soup of weird proper nouns, even by RPG standards.
I'm gonna be a shameless SaGa apologist here, and note that the remake for Romancing SaGa 2 came out this week. I can't shake the feeling that it was sent out to die, given the rest of the RPG competition in October, but I've been quite enjoying it thus far. Its also probably the cleanest entry point into the franchise as a whole- a lot of the unexplained background mechanics are now presented cleanly and easily for players to see. which has long been something the franchise needed to do. |
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FishLion
 Posts: 266 |
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Poncle, huh? I love Okami and was not expecting to see poncles brought up here. I think that's the origin of their name because the only results are Okami and their studio. If so hell yeah~
As for people being weird about translations, I think that is a thing that can happen with niche interests and stuff. People don't get as weird about it as they do for anime, but I have heard of some niche fan circles arguing a lot about translation for other things. I think it has to do with it being a combination of a niche interest and escapism. People with niche interests love minutia and people looking for escapism, hate their "realism" that aligns with a narrow worldview being broken. Couching arguments in concerns about correctness or authenticity is one of the most classic ways to spew toxic sludge under the guise of impassioned intellectualism, hopefully one day anime and video game fans can calm down (god forbid you're an anime game fan, that gets real messy).
I believe doing translation work on computers uses some amount of energy that isn't negligible, but part of why that comparison is hard to make is then you have the AI processing energy costs as well the proofreaders' energy cost as well. Since we don't have a model for what making a polished translation based on an AI foundation looks like, it's hard to say how many additional work hours are needed for such a task and it could be a pretty good amount of energy from proofreading + AI energy costs. At the end of the day, even if we got it to a similar point in energy use and accuracy there are still many downsides like loss of employment and the fact it will hamper the field of translation. Because even if we made the perfect translation machine for the year 2024 language will continue to develop and for AI to keep it will need more translations that factor in the changes to grow, except if AI were the norm then there would be an ever decreasing data bank of translations that actually understand the changes that have occurred. Thus AI translation will become unsustainable in a data sense regardless of the energy costs. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6356 |
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Well it also doesn’t help the fact that it’s a remake of a game whose remastered version was released like 9 years ago. And that it also retains some of the more archaic elements synonymous with SaGa games that could easily turn people off, |
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juaifan
Posts: 152 |
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In an ideal world there would be no need to Americanize Asian names. I get this is from the early 2000s when whitewashing and Americanization was still common and the localization style for those games are grandfathered in for the modern games at this point but going forward there shouldn't really be a need to feel it necessary to translate Naruto Uzumaki to a name like Twister Cakefish. So I do not see that as a mark against AI at all.
Human translators miss things plenty already, and that's not even taking into account the intentional changes human localizers make willingly because they get an itch to be "creative". I remember people getting upset Final Fantasy 7 Remake going back to change Aerith's line about the sky over a year later in a patch because they felt the original English version was more "creative" or "flower-y" and thus better, until people found out she's suppose to reference something that pops up in Remake so that little episode of creative liberty caused problems. I don't doubt AI has growing pains but if it helps get games out as well as the threat of replacement makes people maybe think twice about doing things because they can take their job for granted currently then I see no problem. Translations we get now aren't the best already so experimenting seems fine with me. |
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i got the shivers!
 Posts: 117 Location: Brazil |
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I'm lucky that I can speak and read more than one language as well so I have options to switch to other localizations if one turns out bad. I wish Kondo luck in his foray into AI translations either way and hope it bears fruit. I know a lot of people are excited to see what comes of it.
I do find it kind of funny when I see American fans say things like the Japanese version of something sucks and it's s only due to the American localization that something is likable. Not only is it really entitled and ethnocentric it's also usually proven wrong by looking at any other language's localization including the original Japanese version. When this interview came out I saw some English speaking Trails fans say Estelle is only a likable and popular character due to all the liberties the English script took with her and then people pointed out if you look at any Japanese popularity poll Estelle is right there at the top as well: so apparently Japan liked her just fine without her quoting Simpsons references.  I think some people really overestimate the impact of a game's localization - both good and bad. Most people can ignore the junk and enjoy a game for the actual game unless actual gameplay is censored. Plus there's always de-censorship and retranslation patches out there in the aftermarket. I remember when games didn't even have JP audio as an option. You were forced to listen to the English voices or use Undub mods like back in the OG Persona 3 and 4 days.
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Bertram
 Posts: 45 |
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Were the Pokémon leaks "AI translated" or the result of one guy throwing it in Google translate i.e "machine translated"? Those are two entirely different things.
I feel like the anti-AI people are more annoying at spreading misinformation and fearmonger than pro-AI people could ever hope to be. Every time we see something of questionable quality we see accusations being thrown around of it being AI and then most of the time it turns out to not have been AI at all but human incompetence like (Crunchyroll's Nokotan subs. ...which I suppose speaks volumes of either how well AI is now... or how bad human workers are if people are constantly jumping at shadows and can't tell the difference most of the time. People did the same thing with voice acting to with Naruto x Boruto game being accused of using AI voices but no it was just usual bad dubbing. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 653 |
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Okay, no, you've lost the plot. This isn't about censorship and you're arguing in bad faith. There's a line between cultural contexts not making sense across countries and "let's make a character speak in Simpsons references for the lulz!", especially not when I gave solid examples of simple linguistic idioms that don't make sense across language barriers. That's a whole different sentence you read. Good on you for being bilingual, but this isn't a conversation people can have if you're going to veer into calling it "censorship" and start talking about "de-censorship patches" when we're not anywhere near talking about that.
See, this is an argument I can buy. And I do think it's a valid concern, because I can think of a whole ton of games with MASSIVE reams of background and context (like the Dragon Quest VII translation). Nintendo was diligent with that one, but who's to say every game gets that kind of treatment? Like, it's not the worst thing in the world, but I remember Super Robot Wars OG: Endless Frontier making a gaff and translating Lemon Browning's name as "Raymond Browning". But I also don't think it's that much to be worried about, because we have consultants these days. We have folks who are paid to be super-nerds who can explain everything there is about a franchise. I remember a few years back when I interviewed FJ Santos about the Netflix Transformers anime; he wasn't as big on Beast Wars (he was a Geewunner, through and through), but they were able to get someone else on production who was. Also: the Silent Hill 2 remake hired consultants so that lore and vibes were appropriate. This is usually why translations will be given to a specific person; think Alexander O. Smith, whose writing is now so central to the tone of the Ivalice Alliance titles from Yasumi Mitsuno. This phenomenon happens with a lot of other translations outside of anime, too; using the examples I mentioned in my column, Edith Grossman and Gregory Rabassa were handpicked by Gabriel García Marquez to be the people who would translate his works. Isabelle Allende works closely with Margaret Sayers Peden and Anne McLean to handle the English translations for her books. It's not a perfect system, but it's one that translation as a field--not even an industry, as a full-on field of study--has methods for curbing. You're on the dot in pointing out time and money are the real filters here; it's a long way from Peden working closely with Allende to translate her Zorro novel to something like SaGa or Shiren the Wanderer when you can't even guarantee the same contractor is working on it.
Yes, it should have; real talk, I just completely forgot about V-Rising existing. I shouldn't have, my Vtuber's community had a V-Rising phase a few years ago and it was a fun bit (folks trolling each other by running around their forts as shapeshifted rats). Fun game, the Castlevania crossover was neat, but for some reason V-Rising feels more like it's screaming for a Legacy of Kain crossover...
That's on me. To be fair to Square, they've done a good job pushing the game on Twitter (the Romancing SaGa 2 ads seemed inescapable there). I do have colleagues in the industry who've been hitting that SaGa bell harder than me (it's their Izuna), but it's nevertheless been a big oversight for me. My bad. To be fair: I mostly avoid discussing trailers because there's not much to say when it's just "Ooh, this trailer showed off a new hat, what could that mean?" Same reason why I don't cover MiHoYo character reveals often; it doesn't feel fruitful to dedicate so much space for what is essentially an exercise in breaking down the doujinshi tags a new character satisfies.
Crimeny, good catch. I haven't played Okami since '07, I missed that (possible) reference entirely!
I mean, that's not really a concern in this day and age either; I used it as an example, but no franchise really goes the length of localizing a name like that anymore, not unless they're marketed at very small children (and even then, that's for stuff with major branding pushes like Holy Horror Mansion or Beyblade). 4Kids has been dead for ages, bro, they're not coming back. Not to mention, Phoenix Wright is loaded with characters whose names are all puns; in the time it takes to explain the joke behind "Masashi Yahari", you could just call him "Larry Butz" and get the point across far faster and elegantly.
The catch is, there's more at stake from allowing AI as a tool or an industry practice. If folks are overreacting, it's because they extremely don't want it and the threat it poses. |
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TokimekiCrisis
Posts: 53 |
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SteamCharts says it's peaked at 11,531 players so far. That's higher than Sonic x Shadow Generations (7894) and way above any other previous SaGa game has done (Emerald Beyond peaked at 1,698) That's pretty amazing in all honesty. I do appreciate SaGa being left to it's own devices by Square-Enix which is why I assume so much stuff in it slipped past their "ethics department" and made it into the game. I'm was fine with SaGa not being a mainstream success myself since series usually go downhill once they attain that status but it's also nice to see it doing well. |
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Ebb1993
Posts: 127 |
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As always, you guys pick the wrong games to play on Halloween. Where's Deathsmiles? Or The House of the Dead III?
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AsuraTheDestructor
Posts: 490 |
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People saying AI is gonna stay sucking forever have absolutely no idea the actual innovations that are happening in the field right now, and not just for translations, but for every aspect of life we live right now.
Its gonna get ugly, but Going about life every day as you take is better then worrying about companies using AI for Tranlations that continue to get better every month. |
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