So, um... They showed off the title screen of Ghosts of Tsushima in Japanese and... Oh boy. (Possibly Machine Translated)

[Deleted member 5334]

So, Gematsu posted this on Twitter:



To kinda explain this a bit further, this may not be immediately obvious to someone who doesn't know Japanese, but the menus are translated in such a manner that are a combination of what might sound like gibberish to a Japanese player and confusing terminology that most Japanese players are not accustomed to. This can result in some confusion as to the purpose of the menus.

The other thing is it almost felt like it was a machine translation, as some translators and people who speak Japanese chimed in on this. It could also be someone who's legit inexperienced handling the menu translations, which has happened in the past (largely with indie games being localized for Japan). While this isn't indicative of the actual localization quality of the whole game, it absolutely is not a good first impression, since this'll be one of the first things you see loading up the game.

The actual dialogue and voiced stuff is fine (as it should be, though hopefully the final has proper lip-sync), but now I'm curious how the rest of the UI is handled.

For some more context, someone who's a translator wrote a bit of a mini-thread on it:






Needless to say, I'm a bit baffled, given both the setting and the fact Japan is co-producing the game. Hopefully this is the worst of it and can be patched out. We'll know very soon.

EDIT: Cleaned up the post.

EDIT #2: Included a threadmark, which has some quotes by Japanese Speaking Users on this website and their thoughts on the matter.

 

[Syntsui]

This is revenge for how Japanese games in the 90s translated their game to English.

 

[Spiderman]

You would think they check something like that right?

 

[KoolAid]

I mean I doubt the game dialogue will be machine translated since it's dubbed and all but they should have taken a look at the menu and stuff...

 

[Jam]

Surprised at this considering I thought they would have a ton of fluent staff during the creation of the game..... but they used google translate for the main menu?

 

[Knight613]

At least that seems easy to fix with a patch.

I'm curious though what does the text say for their other games? Or did they just leave it in English?

 

[finalflame]

Interesting.

Yah most game companies don't give two shits about localization, especially for small markets.

But there's also so much subjectivity in localization that I take anyone shitting on localization with a grain of salt. My very own work has been shat on wherein I once considered myself a pretty competent localizer.

I also dunno if one can take the title screen to be indicative of the entire game's localization quality. I'd urge people not to take huge leaps and draw insane conclusions from this.

 

[SirKai]

Pretty incredible given the subject matter and story for the game, and who the publisher is lol. Yikes. But it is getting an entire Japanese dub so I figure things can't be that bad entirely.

 

[JakeNoseIt]

I mean I doubt the game dialogue will be machine translated since it's dubbed and all but they should have taken a look at the menu and stuff...

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This. Likely a small oversight.

A humongous yikes if this kind of thing persists in the actual game.

 

[WereSalamander]

You would think they check something like that right?

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Probably an underpaid intern working in crunch.

 

[Lego Killer Moth]

should be easy to change before launch

 

[BoxManLocke]

Have there been similar issues with JP translations for recent Sony games ?

 

[7thFloor]

Having played machine-translated Japanese games in English, not really acceptable for a AAA release.

 

[noyram23]

They probably have someone do this rather than the Japanese localization team, still a bad look

 

[Lant_War]

Sony just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase Ghost of Tsushima for any system, nor will they purchase any of Sony's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Sony has alienated an entire market with this move.
Sony, publicly apologize and cancel Ghost of Tsushima or you can kiss your business goodbye.

 

[2Blackcats]

You would think they check something like that right?

Click to shrink...

You'd think that so much that I doubt this is a thing.

Some mix up with the screen shot maybe? Old build media slipped through?

 

[ElephantShell]

Seems incredibly lazy. Just look at a title screen for a Japanese game and.... Do that?

 

[Spiderman]

Probably an underpaid intern working in crunch.

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Yeah, it's very sloppy.

 

[Powerofthecloud]

This is revenge for how Japanese games in the 90s translated their game to English.

Click to shrink...

Hilarious, payback for TG-16 Ninja Spirit

 

[purseowner]

So they'll culturally appropriate AND do a half-arsed job on the localisation? Yikes.

 

[Uzupedro]

Oof, I hope it is only on the menu, well, it should be only in the menu, since the game has a Japanese dubbing so in theory it means that machine translation would not be used through the entire game.

 

[Chumunga64]

this reminds me of the bad text from the netflix outsider poster with Jared leto as an american soldier joining the yakuza

 

[Mifune]

Sony just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase Ghost of Tsushima for any system, nor will they purchase any of Sony's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Sony has alienated an entire market with this move.
Sony, publicly apologize and cancel Ghost of Tsushima or you can kiss your business goodbye.

Click to shrink...

Came in here hoping to see this. You didn't let me down.

 

[HardRojo]

Lol, this is funny but for the weird reasons. Game's situated in Japan, game has a Japanese dub and Sony is a Japanese company.
Seems like it'd be as easy as asking any of the other companies or even checking your previous games.

 

[MegaSackman]

Sony just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase Ghost of Tsushima for any system, nor will they purchase any of Sony's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Sony has alienated an entire market with this move.
Sony, publicly apologize and cancel Ghost of Tsushima or you can kiss your business goodbye.

Click to shrink...

Good timing lol

 

[Winnie]

I doubt it's machine translated, at least not the whole game. It can't be.

 

[Zen Hero]

Oh this makes me a bit sad.

ロード ("load") can't even used as a verb. It would be a noun, like every imported word. Yet they are using を particle which is for verbs. Sigh.

That doesn't look like a machine mistake to me, it looks more like an amateur human mistake. But that's just my speculation.

 

[HMD]

I feel for the poor intern that translated that.

 

[GangWarily]

this reminds me of the bad text from the netflix outsider poster with Jared leto as an american soldier joining the yakuza

Click to shrink...

I read the text on the side multiple times and I have no idea what that's supposed to say.

 

[Aurica]

Saw this earlier and laughed at 新しいゲーム (new game), because it felt more like how you'd advertise a new game at a shop. Click the button and get a new game!

 

[Deleted member 5334]

Interesting.

Yah most game companies don't give two shits about localization, especially for small markets.

But there's also so much subjectivity in localization that I take anyone shitting on localization with a grain of salt. My very own work has been shat on wherein I once considered myself a pretty competent localizer.

I also dunno if one can take the title screen to be indicative of the entire game's localization quality. I'd urge people not to take huge leaps and draw insane conclusions from this.

Click to shrink...

For what it's worth, I'm well aware of that. I do some occasional freelance work for a distributor (subtitle timing, QA, etc.), and it's definitely something that's a combination of subjective and under-appreciated field, especially given fans tend to jump to immediate conclusions. I just dealt with that recently, in fact, and it was also nice to be told to my face that licensors put out "crap" products, while I was explaining some things to someone.

That said, I'm hoping it's just the title screen and doesn't persist into the game. Like you said, it's not indicative for the overall localization quality. It's not a good first impression, either way.

Have there been similar issues with JP translations for recent Sony games ?

Click to shrink...

Not Sony, but there's been some issues with Western distributors messing up translations for games in the Japanese market. Happens way more than it should. There was also one indie game that relied on a translator and resulted in some text that used derogatory language by possibly mistake. Forget the name, but the devs immediately apologized and even said they'll be more cautious with who they hire in the future.

 

[HardRojo]

Saw this earlier and laughed at 新しいゲーム (new game), because it felt more like how your advertise a new game at a shop. Click the button and get a new game!

Click to shrink...

Yeah, atarashii geemu sounds weird as fuck in this scenario.

So they'll culturally appropriate AND do a half-arsed job on the localisation? Yikes.

Click to shrink...

Huh? I know hating on Sony's first party studios is all the rage these days, but huh?

 

[Deleted member 58368]

Kind of worring that this western team's game about samurais couldn't even properly translate the title screen into Japanese, but I guess we can just hope this is a fluke until we find out more. (I'm not exactly confident.)

 

[Deleted member 679]

This isn't a huge issue in any way, and one that's easily fixable, but combining with the japanese dub not having lip sync at all, and it starts to give me pause with the talks about offering a faithful experience. You can have a faithful experience if you like english dubbed Kurosawa films, I guess? The black and white filter is neat.

Also makes me second guess things like historically inaccurate weaponry that I quickly shrugged off as artistic license.

 

[HardRojo]

Kind of worring that this western team's game about samurais couldn't even properly translate the title screen into Japanese, but I guess we can just hope this is a fluke until we find out more. (I'm not exactly confident.)

Click to shrink...

Yeah, if the whole UI and menu elements are like this, it's going to be a big yikes.

 

[beelulzebub]

Considering the subject matter and SP being an American studio, it's stuff like this that's making me wait until reviews.

 

[Deleted member 3294]

I'd say I'm surprised but this is from the same developer that made a game with a native american lead voiced by Troy Baker.

Still you'd think they'd put some effort into the Japanese localization of a game about Japan.

 

[Gitaroo]

Someone at Sony Japan better be working on a day zero patch for them atm. Kind of embarrassing to tell you the truth. Even when I first saw the trailer in Japanese it says "Ghost" where they could have use Tsushima no oni or yuei or something.

 

[Bossking]

OHHhhh....!
Nice bust ! Sucker Punch !! Cool beans !

 

[Tigerfog]

This hurts my brain. More than 50% of the games I play are in Japanese and this all reads so unnaturally in my mind.
"load shite" (english noun + verb "to do") would make slightly more sense, but even then most games go for "tsutzuki kara".

this reminds me of the bad text from the netflix outsider poster with Jared leto as an american soldier joining the yakuza

Click to shrink...

I read "girashi kuchihii moisuson rami nrana"
I haven't watched that movie, but does this mean something in the story?

 

[Paterique]

why does everything needs to be a controversy.....they screwed up...big freaking deal, it happens all the time in all sectors of businees ....the game either be good or bad....and it will have nothing to do with this?

 

[JohnnyJoestar]

Not Sony, but there's been some issues with Western distributors messing up translations for games in the Japanese market. Happens way more than it should. There was also one indie game that relied on a translator and resulted in some text that used derogatory language by possibly mistake. Forget the name, but the devs immediately apologized and even said they'll be more cautious with who they hire in the future.

Click to shrink...

I believe you're thinking of Celeste.


Apparently it was fixed in a later update though.

 

[Chumunga64]

This hurts my brain. More than 50% of the games I play are in Japanese and this all reads so unnaturally in my mind.
"load shite" (english noun + verb "to do") would make slightly more sense, but even then most games go for "tsutzuki kara".


I read "girashi kuchihii moisuson rami nrana"
I haven't watched that movie, but does this mean something in the story?

Click to shrink...

it's a movie about Jared Leto becoming a badass Yakuza

so no

 

[Yamanote Line]

Ahh Sony the Japanese company

 

[purseowner]

Huh? I know hating on Sony's first party studios is all the rage these days, but huh?

Click to shrink...

Just meaning that given this is a Western studio working with Japanese subject matter/cultural backdrop, you'd think they'd have the decency to produce a solid translation for Japanese players.

 

[Skittles]

Era: sony so incompetent
Me: a programmer probably used google to translate text so they could test if japanese was displaying correctly and then forgot to change it

 

[Nocturne]

Huh? I know hating on Sony's first party studios is all the rage these days, but huh?

Click to shrink...

the katana and armour you use and wear in ghost of tsushima were literally invented as a consequence of the invasion that the game is literally about. their swords weren't sharp enough to cut mongolian armour and their armour was too cumbersome to wear on the boats the mongolians arrived on. the whole moral question of becoming 'the ghost of tsushima' is centered around the character abandoning their samurai code of honour, a concept that did not exist until the edo period of japanese history (around 3 centuries after the events of the invasion). but 'katanas' and 'bushido' are all westerners care to project onto japanese history. that's cultural appropriation.

it might still be a good game in spite of those things, i don't know, but they completely mismatched their desire to make a game about samurai with a setting where the popular concept of the samurai had never even materialized. it speaks to either a complete lack of interest or a complete failure of research and either is pretty gross.

 

[Deleted member 5334]

why does everything needs to be a controversy.....they screwed up...big freaking deal, it happens all the time in all sectors of businees ....the game either be good or bad....and it will have nothing to do with this?

Click to shrink...

Localization is an important part of the game and can affect elements of enjoyment of a game for people who can't understand the game (and while you can brute force it to some degree, some players definitely would like to be able to understand fully what they're doing). Like mentioned earlier, we're hoping it's just limited to the title screen and won't persist into the rest of the UI elements. The latter would be a legit problem.

The game's dialogue itself seems fine and handled well (though I'm hoping the final version has specific mouth flaps for the language), but it's more the Menu and UI options right now I'm concerned about.

 

[Melpomene]

That's... certainly odd. But I'm going to go with "odd" being all it is, until we see anything like this appear in the actual retail game.

the katana and armour you use and wear in ghost of tsushima were literally invented as a consequence of the invasion that the game is literally about. their swords weren't sharp enough to cut mongolian armour and their armour was too cumbersome to wear on the boats the mongolians arrived on. the whole moral question of becoming 'the ghost of tsushima' is centered around the character abandoning their samurai code of honour, a concept that did not exist until the edo period of japanese history. but 'katanas' and 'bushido' are all westerners care to project onto japanese history. that's cultural appropriation.

it might still be a good game in spite of those things, i don't know, but they completely mismatched their desire to make a game about samurai with a setting where the popular concept of the samurai had never even materialized. it speaks to either a complete lack of interest or a complete failure of research and either is pretty gross.

Click to shrink...

If I recall correctly, a decent number of old samurai films also fuck up portions of their history - not that badly, to be sure. But if so, fucking it up is ironically and unintentionally within tradition.

 

[AaronD]

Machine translation has gotten to the point where I doubt it would have done that badly. Probably an intern. Feels lazy though when you could pop a copy of Bloodborne in, set your console to Japanese, and copy down the result.