Is it just me or was BBCP's localization job rather sloppy?

[Tokkan]

If I remember it correctly, they translated her name into Trinity Glassfille.

 

Yes, in this game. But not in Extend, which was what I was referring to.

 

 

Edit: I did some digging and found that ASW didn't handle localisation directly; they outsourced to a company called "Strangely Compelling".

[Luminos564]

 

Here's some bad localisation: Every character pronounces "Amanohokosaka" like it's two separate terms as "Amano Hokosaka", but the text reads it as one term.

 

Speaking of that, in the intro where Kagura introduces Homura, it is read as "Amano HokoZAKA" of all things. It's supposed to the character's own introduction and they can't even get THAT right.

 

Edit: I did some digging and found that ASW didn't handle localisation directly; they outsourced to a company called "Strangely Compelling".

 

Oh what a delight. It explains why there's so much inconsistency here. So much for localizing on their own. What's the matter ASW, did Aksys ask for just one penny more than these guys? Geez, this is just sad.

[Tokkan]

 

Oh what a delight. It explains why there's so much inconsistency here. So much for localizing on their own. What's the matter ASW, did Aksys ask for just one penny more than these guys? Geez, this is jut sad.

 

 

 

Oh, it gets better. Turns out they're the same people who designed the Arc System Works USA website.

 

And here's their own website. Don't be fooled by the fact it doesn't say a thing about Chronophantasma, their leader Mike McNamara is credited in BBCP's console credits under localisation.

[MighhtyKombat]

No wonder they couldn't be arsed to translate Library

 

Yet they expect us to stay engrossed in this story if they won't even let us understand it properly and in depth?

 

Forget "sloppy" this localisation job was a fucking mess. I didn't think ASW US would be too cheap to ask Aksys to come back but they definitely fucked up not bothering to

[Luminos564]

Oh, it gets better. Turns out they're the same people who designed the Arc System Works USA website.

 

And here's their own website. Don't be fooled by the fact it doesn't say a thing about Chronophantasma, their leader Mike McNamara is credited in BBCP's console credits under localisation.

 

Oh, looking at it these are the same morons who made Extend into that craptacular mess. Well with people like that no fuckin' wonder BBCP's localization is a damn mess. Way to go ASW, way to fuckin' go. Took them 6 months to bring CP over here and how do they choose to do it? By hiring the same idiots that made Extend's localization into a joke. Because clearly these guys deserved a second chance with your money, right? It's little instances like this where I wish I were born with extra arms attached to me, because I don't have enough facepalms appropriate for the situation.

[MighhtyKombat]

I kinda hope Mori's annoyed if not angry by their decision to exclude Library mode. I'm sure he said once he included it so newbies could get into the story more easily and understand it better.

[Luminos564]

I kinda hope Mori's annoyed if not angry by their decision to exclude Library mode. I'm sure he said once he included it so newbies could get into the story more easily and understand it better.

 

The decision to exclude the Library was on ASW's part, possibly even from Mori himself. If anything, looking back I should have seen this coming considering the things that Mori usually says are outright lies. How naive of me...

[MighhtyKombat]

Ah yeah. Now I remember. The same Mori that basically said there wouldn't be any more char DLC literally a day before Koko was announced.

[BlackYakuzu94]

Sure is a lot of hatred in this thread.

[Narroo]

Sure is a lot of hatred in this thread.

Yep.

 

You know, Valk's wold effects were the same in English and Japanese beforehand.  Why change it?  Strangely Compelling appears to be a horrible team.

[White Man]

Well, I guess we can now understand fully why Library mode wasn't included in the English release, I know Blade already mentioned it, but not from somewhere else. So yeah, it said that the terminonogy would have hard to translate to English. (I call BS on it anyways, but what can you do.) >_>

 

http://www.siliconera.com/2014/04/08/happened-blazblue-chrono-phantasmas-library-mode-arc-system-works-usa-responds/

 

What a diplomatic way of saying ASW thought Americans would be too stupid to comprehend anything slightly outside the confines of their own culture.

"Meat buns?  No, no, nonono...  No slack-jawed gun-toting Yankee pig farmer is going to know what the hell a meat bun is.  Have Taokaka eating a bunch of cheeseburgers instead.  Yeah, no, keep the sprite, just call it a cheeseburger.  In fact, have Taokaka say 'I can has cheeseburger?!'  Nerds love that shit.  Throw in a few puns involving the word pussy and we're golden."

[Luminos564]

What a diplomatic way of saying ASW thought Americans would be too stupid to comprehend anything slightly outside the confines of their own culture.

"Meat buns?  No, no, nonono...  No slack-jawed gun-toting Yankee pig farmer is going to know what the hell a meat bun is.  Have Taokaka eating a bunch of cheeseburgers instead.  Yeah, no, keep the sprite, just call it a cheeseburger.  In fact, have Taokaka say 'I can has cheeseburger?!'  Nerds love that shit.  Throw in a few puns involving the word pussy and we're golden."

 

First of all, that made me laugh far more than it should. Bravo sir, you've made my day a little bit better.

 

Second of all, ask any given Caucasian living in good ol'Nihon and most of them would be able to recall how a kindly Japanese person thought they were a "slack-jawed, gun-toting Yankee cowboy". It's just how Japanese society tends to view the West in general, even though given how many multicultural roots exist in North America, chances are most of us are not like that.

 

Thirdly, did they really change "meat bun" to "cheeseburger"? Because that makes shit for sense considering they had it as meat buns for the last two games. Then again, they seem to be putting random-ass changes at the drop of a hat now so what do I know?

[Midnight-Zephyr]

Just want to clarify, they are still meat buns in this game (Thank god.)

Though half the time she's referring to Litchi's rack, as usual.

[NeoStrayCat]

XD! Oh WM, that was, lol.

 

The topic at hand however, so, it was the same guys that handles some of the 5pb/Mages stuff too overseas, well yeah, kinda perplexing, and really dulled at this. >_>

[beanwich]

After reading all of this about the suck-tastic "translation", I feel so lucky to have the Japanese version. So, so lucky.

[Narroo]

First of all, that made me laugh far more than it should. Bravo sir, you've made my day a little bit better.

 

Second of all, ask any given Caucasian living in good ol'Nihon and most of them would be able to recall how a kindly Japanese person thought they were a "slack-jawed, gun-toting Yankee cowboy". It's just how Japanese society tends to view the West in general, even though given how many multicultural roots exist in North America, chances are most of us are not like that.

 

Thirdly, did they really change "meat bun" to "cheeseburger"? Because that makes shit for sense considering they had it as meat buns for the last two games. Then again, they seem to be putting random-ass changes at the drop of a hat now so what do I know?

No, they call it a meat-bun.

[Luminos564]

No, they call it a meat-bun.

 

Yeah, Midnight-Zephyr already beat you to the punch there though I appreciate the up-n-up anyway.

 

But here's what I fear for now: if ASW couldn't give much of a rat's ass about how good of a job Strangely Compelling did with BBCP, what does the future hold for BB4 or the upcoming XBlaze: Code Embryo? The latter case has me particularly cautious since that game by definition is all text and visual imagery. If BBCP's Story Mode is the kind of quality I am to expect from someone attempting some kind of compelling narrative, then you can't fault me for either waiting to hear how the localization was handled or not buying the game at all. I spent ~90$ total on BBCP's LE because I was excited for the game and expected something good (or at least better than what I got) and complete (curious how ASW never even bothered to let people know we weren't getting the Library until AFTER people bought the game innit?). Hard lesson learned: never trust any gaming company to do a good job.

[Jotamide]

Oh, it gets better. Turns out they're the same people who designed the Arc System Works USA website.

 

And here's their own website. Don't be fooled by the fact it doesn't say a thing about Chronophantasma, their leader Mike McNamara is credited in BBCP's console credits under localisation.

This is some crazy detective work. I can't comprehend how Aksys is distributing this but not localizing it? Maybe...maybe that's the reason why it took so fucking long for BBCP to arrive here: the job wasn't done in-house, they had to wait for the other company to finish localization of the dialogue before the game went gold. And after 6 months Strangely Compelling still managed to cut content and half ass some of the localization in the process. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

 

Yeah, Midnight-Zephyr already beat you to the punch there though I appreciate the up-n-up anyway.

 

But here's what I fear for now: if ASW couldn't give much of a rat's ass about how good of a job Strangely Compelling did with BBCP, what does the future hold for BB4 or the upcoming XBlaze: Code Embryo? The latter case has me particularly cautious since that game by definition is all text and visual imagery. If BBCP's Story Mode is the kind of quality I am to expect from someone attempting some kind of compelling narrative, then you can't fault me for either waiting to hear how the localization was handled or not buying the game at all. I spent ~90$ total on BBCP's LE because I was excited for the game and expected something good (or at least better than what I got) and complete (curious how ASW never even bothered to let people know we weren't getting the Library until AFTER people bought the game innit?). Hard lesson learned: never trust any gaming company to do a good job.

This wouldn't be the first time ASW USA pulls this shit. I was this close to buy a Vita when +R first hit due to it being advertised as having online play. Good thing I waited, it turned out that despite the feature being advertised in the english trailer and other places, the game didn't have it. Even though the JP version had been out for a while, I had no idea about this. Atlus will probably won't let shit like this happen to their precious P4AU; however, this sets a terrible precedent not only for BB4 but also for GGXrd.

[Sashi]

Honestly, the only thing that really bothers me is the amount of meme shit in the story.

[Midnight-Zephyr]

Honestly, the only thing that really bothers me is the amount of meme shit in the story.

Do you mind clarifying? I dont know too much about memes,so I never really noticed anything of that nature.

Only meme I recognized was in Extend when Bang calls Jin an "Ice Car Spammer."

 

And I can stomach the translation (Im not a picky person.), but the Ragna vs Azrael anime cutscene had a downright horrible translation.

Where in the rest of the game everyone's hiccups were a skipped word or two, Ragna and Rachel were saying completely different sentences.

 

@Luminos-I agree with you on my fear for XBlaze. On one hand, Im glad/suprised they're bringing it over to the states, but on the other, I fear that the translation will ruin the experience for me.

 

@Oniros-Atlus wont. Persona stuff is their lifeblood, and the only thing ASW governs is the gameplay.

[Tokkan]

@Luminos-I agree with you on my fear for XBlaze. On one hand, Im glad/suprised they're bringing it over to the states, but on the other, I fear that the translation will ruin the experience for me.

 

 

Oh, you don't have to worry. Aksys is in charge of XBlaze's localisation.

[SoWL]

Honestly, the only thing that really bothers me is the amount of meme shit in the story.

It's been around since CS, if not even earlier. The JP version of BB is already meme-heavy, so it only makes sense for the localization to have some, too.

...that is, where it actually makes sense. If Kagura really does call everyone betas on every possible occasion, that's clearly crossing the line.

[werewolfgold]

The thing I'm most angry about is that I don't even know if raging at ArcSys is gonna cause them to actually fix anything in the game or cause them to add the Library or anything back. It might be a "that ship has sailed" situation. I mean, I hope it'll cause them to reevaluate future decisions, but...

[Luminos564]

Oh, you don't have to worry. Aksys is in charge of XBlaze's localisation.

 

Oh thank Cthulhu, some good news at least. I'm not going to say that Aksys are flawless but they're certainly better than Something Compelling.

 

It's been around since CS, if not even earlier. The JP version of BB is already meme-heavy, so it only makes sense for the localization to have some, too.

...that is, where it actually makes sense. If Kagura really does call everyone betas on every possible occasion, that's clearly crossing the line.

 

Eh I didn't mind Kagura going on about how much of an alpha he is considering for every attempt at playing the part (outside of actual combat at least) Makoto was right there to Galactica Impact him in the gut or when he's chewing Ragna's ass off for being weak (a "beta") because Ragna's life cannot go 5 minutes without someone insulting him in some way.

 

Having said that though, I am not entirely sure how much I appreciated Rachel and other characters using the word "scrub". It just seemed so...out of place which is weird for a fighting game, but it really was. It wasn't used in a gag reel either, where it would have been appropriate.

 

The thing I'm most angry about is that I don't even know if raging at ArcSys is gonna cause them to actually fix anything in the game or cause them to add the Library or anything back. It might be a "that ship has sailed" situation. I mean, I hope it'll cause them to reevaluate future decisions, but...

 

In my experience, unless more people start being very vocal about it, most companies are not going to even listen. But if we start letting people (read: potential buyers) know the kind of quality they are to expect, then I think we ought to get their attention.

[Tokkan]

Having said that though, I am not entirely sure how much I appreciated Rachel and other characters using the word "scrub". It just seemed so...out of place which is weird for a fighting game, but it really was. It wasn't used in a gag reel either, where it would have been appropriate.

Eh, it's not really an incorrect use since scrub can be used as basically another word for "runt" (when used to refer to a person) and that doesn't count as a slang definition. It is certainly weird because as gamers we're all familiar with the slang definition.