If you gameloc, you heard about the controversial recent Toby Fox statement. If not, here’s the gist.
When asked about why his games don’t get localizations into any languages aside from Japanese, Toby stated:
“I know it sucks that there are no other official translations for UNDERTALE. But I want to make it clear that this isn’t because I have a grudge against other countries. It’s because, if I release something official, I want it to match my vision. I was only able to do this for the Japanese version because I know Japanese myself, and I worked very closely with our brilliant translator to thoroughly check the text.”
As a long-time patron of the Nipponese art of the gab, he simply had to pay that wonderful culture back — but could only do so once he mastered their tongue.
Brings a tear to your eye, don’t it?
Except it turns out Toby Fox barely learned Japanese before his games were localized into the language - both by his Japanese translator and his own public admission.
Awkward. But not exactly unsurprising.
It’s always been clear that Toby Fox is super into Japanese media and greatly values rubbing shoulders with his Japanese game dev idols. Making an exception for Japanese isn’t odd. It tracks that he’d want to make it easier for his idols to check out his games.
But even if the reasoning tracks, and even if I’m not into his games enough to care, I think conflating “This is fine for Undertale” and “This is fine for games” is the issue at large here, and the reason I kept thinking about this these past few days.
When you have the spotlight, you have a noblesse oblige.
Particularly, when your words can mobilize a massive fandom of 10~14-year-olds with undeveloped frontal lobes ready to rehash your excuses verbatim till the end of time.
Even more particularly, when you couldn’t care less about languages that aren’t Japanese, and instead of being forthcoming about it, you throw wildly nonstandard stipulations at localization until it’s impossible to achieve because “you just care too much”.
Stipulations that won’t ever hurt you as a native speaker of the most catered-to language on the planet, but will hurt everyone else in the long run, players and industry professionals alike.
I had the privilege of working on some “untranslatable” games throughout my career. Games that are actually almost impossible to adapt to certain languages.
The irony? The developers tended to be very supportive of loc, trusting the process. Those projects usually end up as career highlights for a reason.
In contrast, auteurs whose chronic attachment to — or overestimation of — their writing simply can’t let pros do their work.
They hang over their shoulders, make critical choices they’re hardly qualified for, and shift the focus from players’ engagement to stroking the auteur’s ego.
And that’s how you end up with Metal Gear’s Japanglish for two decades in a row.
Sometimes, you just don’t care. And it’s fine not to care. Just be honest about it.
By Seif Chaib.
Originally posted on Linkedin.