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NISA Apologizes for Poor Translation

ImplyingYouCare
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ImplyingYouCare Contributor

ImplyingYouCare

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To All Customers of Ys VIII,

 

Thank you for all the feedback and support we have received since the launch of Ys VIII. It has come to my attention that the quality of the Ys VIII localization has not reached an acceptable level by our own standards, but most importantly by yours. As president of NIS America, Inc. I want to apologize to you personally for this grave error. This situation should not have happened – especially to a game as wonderful as Ys VIII and by a company that strives to deliver the very best customer experience in each title. We have begun internally to investigate the causes of this situation as well as to implement steps to ensure that a similar situation does not occur again. As for Ys VIII itself, we will have a new translator and editor go over the entire localization to fix grammatical errors, typos, inconsistencies, and also to take a fresh look at the dialog and characterizations. For the script, where necessary, we will re-translate and re-edit the game including updating voicework to reflect these changes.

 

We plan to have this work done by the end of November and will offer the updated localization free of charge for both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita versions of the game via patch. The Steam version of the game will include this localization in its initial release.

 

We humbly request your patience in this process. Again, as the president and CEO of NIS America, Inc, I deeply apologize and vow to you that we will bring the quality of the localization of Ys VIII up to the high standards that it and you deserve.

 

Please allow us this opportunity to restore your faith in NIS America, Inc.

 

Sincerely,

Takuro Yamashita

 

 

Well that's interesting. People have been complaining about NISA's shoddy work for years, but I've never seen them release an apology statement. Even after they somehow created horrible bugs and crashing issues in the games they've localized, they still stayed quiet and never patched anything. I'm not sure how likely it is that they'll actually fix a lot of the problems here because they really don't have a good history. Hopefully things like item descriptions that effect gameplay are fixed. That's the least they could do here. 

 

I doubt that they're going to make big changes to the dialogue or location names though. There's too much voice acting and it would be even more confusing to have the text read differently from the voicework. Sorry guys, but I think we're stuck with crap like this. 

 

8O8t5lW.jpg

 

 

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starcrunch061 Grand Master

starcrunch061

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3 minutes ago, POEman553 said:

Can't be any worse than Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment and its penetrations. Or Chaos Wars on PS2....

 

True, but even given my limited exposure to it,it's really bad. The spoken words in the trailer sounded like they were translated by a freshman in Japanese language for a homework project.

 

This whole "apology" shit is annoying to me. This wasn't a "grave error". This was cutting corners, plain and simple, to save a few bucks. And I have "grave" doubts that there will be a completely new voiceover released as a free patch. Maybe (MAYBE) they will release some new subtitles, but honestly, this is just some crappy attempt at a mea culpa to keep the barbarians at bay, so to speak.

Edited by starcrunch061
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AndresLionheart Collaborator

AndresLionheart

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The game barely released a few weeks ago, they very well knew thw translation was crap, probably due to giving the job to the cheapest translator they could find.

Releasing the game in whatever state and apologize for it is the way to go for most companies nowadays.

 

My guess is that since its a game without much broad appeal they tried to made it as cheap as possible like it tends to happen with Vita games (even though it was also a PS4 game), kinda like what happened with Tales of Hearts R localization which is pretty bad.

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starcrunch061 Grand Master

starcrunch061

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1 hour ago, AndresLionheart said:

The game barely released a few weeks ago, they very well knew thw translation was crap, probably due to giving the job to the cheapest translator they could find.

Releasing the game in whatever state and apologize for it is the way to go for most companies nowadays.

 

My guess is that since its a game without much broad appeal they tried to made it as cheap as possible like it tends to happen with Vita games (even though it was also a PS4 game), kinda like what happened with Tales of Hearts R localization which is pretty bad.

 

Don't even remind me. That game is already a slog, and the translation is brutal to boot (although it's not nearly this bad).

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NetEntity Enthusiast

NetEntity

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3 hours ago, ImplyingYouCare said:

Even after they somehow created horrible bugs and crashing issues in the games they've localized, they still stayed quiet and never patched anything. 

 

Ah, yes. Disgaea D2, The Witch and the Hundred Knight... Melody of Metafalica... oh, Metafalica...

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NetEntity Enthusiast

NetEntity

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3 minutes ago, TooruPT said:

 

Oh god no. Why did you have to remind me. That one part they actually just left in japanese.

 

Also, don't forget the trademark NISA practice of breaking the code to the point that to avoid one glitch, you need to use another glitch. And the end game horrors.

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TooruPT Contributor

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43 minutes ago, NetEntity said:

 

Also, don't forget the trademark NISA practice of breaking the code to the point that to avoid one glitch, you need to use another glitch. And the end game horrors.

 

Can't think of any other game to top AT2. That thing was... well, it sure was something.

 

I remember people mentioning this other game when discussing bad localizations but I'm pretty sure it wasn't released over here in europeland. Can't seem to recall the name though, it had some characters from Shadow Hearts I think. Watched this video a couple of years back and the english voice acting was hilarious, completely monotone.

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SnowxSakura Veteran

SnowxSakura

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36 minutes ago, TooruPT said:

 

Can't think of any other game to top AT2. That thing was... well, it sure was something.

 

I remember people mentioning this other game when discussing bad localizations but I'm pretty sure it wasn't released over here in europeland. Can't seem to recall the name though, it had some characters from Shadow Hearts I think. Watched this video a couple of years back and the english voice acting was hilarious, completely monotone.

Zero Wing for the genesis easily takes the cake for worst translation. All your base are belong to us

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NetEntity Enthusiast

NetEntity

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7 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

Zero Wing for the genesis easily takes the cake for worst translation. All your base are belong to us

 

Oh, it's just well known. I definitely don't think that it's the worst.

 

After all, Zero Wing is a shmup with just a few cutscenes and synthed lines. Chaos Wars is a bloody JRPG that manages to mistreat all the franchises it crosses over (Yuri is now "Uru"? What.) and it has SOUND with VOICES of "actors" who aren't even worthy of the title. I think they were  team's relatives too, because they wanted to cut down the localization cost.

 

Just behold-
 

 

 

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Remilia Scarlet Veteran

Remilia Scarlet

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11 hours ago, ImplyingYouCare said:

 

Well that's interesting. People have been complaining about NISA's shoddy work for years, but I've never seen them release an apology statement. Even after they somehow created horrible bugs and crashing issues in the games they've localized, they still stayed quiet and never patched anything. I'm not sure how likely it is that they'll actually fix a lot of the problems here because they really don't have a good history. Hopefully things like item descriptions that effect gameplay are fixed. That's the least they could do here. 

 

I doubt that they're going to make big changes to the dialogue or location names though. There's too much voice acting and it would be even more confusing to have the text read differently from the voicework. Sorry guys, but I think we're stuck with crap like this. 

 

8O8t5lW.jpg

 

 

 

You obviously did not read the entire letter. The text is being updated too, so it will not read differently from the spoken words.

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ImplyingYouCare Contributor

ImplyingYouCare

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7 minutes ago, Freelancer Tex said:

 

You obviously did not read the entire letter. The text is being updated too, so it will not read differently from the spoken words.

 

No, I think you're misunderstanding what I wrote. What I'm saying is that I know how bad NISA is and I highly doubt they'll go that far to fix these problems since they've never once gone back to fix any of the major issues that they've created in the past. Their work is not high quality and even though they've been slammed by news sites in the past, they haven't fixed even the most simple complaints. If they never bothered to do any of that, then it's reasonable to doubt that they'll actually re-translate the game and re-record all of that voice acting for a free patch. That's a pretty time consuming and expensive fix, so it's more than likely not going to be fully realized. 

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cris3f Experienced

cris3f

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They know Vita players don't get much new good games and use the cheapest and fastest way to get the results they want. The game will sell anyway, not much else to buy, large majority of customers won't complain either. Business as usual.

 

Nisa is a master at this. But let's face it, as a whole, games industry has dysmal customer support and satisfaction. We could even start with Sony... 

 

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TooruPT Contributor

TooruPT

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10 hours ago, NetEntity said:

 

Oh, it's just well known. I definitely don't think that it's the worst.

 

After all, Zero Wing is a shmup with just a few cutscenes and synthed lines. Chaos Wars is a bloody JRPG that manages to mistreat all the franchises it crosses over (Yuri is now "Uru"? What.) and it has SOUND with VOICES of "actors" who aren't even worthy of the title. I think they were  team's relatives too, because they wanted to cut down the localization cost.

 

 

Yeah, that's the one. Just bad enough to be atrocious but not bad enough to be so bad it's good, like Sega and Capcom's dubs from the 90s.

 

They just don't make localizations like Totally Rad anymore.

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starcrunch061 Grand Master

starcrunch061

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16 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

... and people actually cried of joy because XSEED wasn't goint to localize this game. LEL.

 

XSeed was my pet hate back in the PS2 days, but it seems they've improved immensely. I never had issues with NISA back on the PS2, but it seems like they're awful now. Up is down. Black is white.

7 hours ago, TooruPT said:

They just don't make localizations like Totally Rad anymore.

 

I don't know. "A Winner is You!" is still pretty awesome.

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Lance_87 Veteran

Lance_87

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6 minutes ago, starcrunch061 said:

 

XSeed was my pet hate back in the PS2 days, but it seems they've improved immensely.

 

Ahah i didn't even know about their existence back in the PS2 days, i heard about them for the very first time when they localized Half-Minute Hero for the PSP.

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Killbomb Experienced

Killbomb

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9 hours ago, Yadilie said:

The only issue in the game that was unforgivable is the food text being swapped around and that's just a simple patch to fix it. A lot of people are still throwing a hissy fit because XSeed isn't doing it. 

 

I wouldn't call it "unforgivable" but that was the only part of the translation I took issue with. Sure, it's not perfect but outside of the food description mixup, the translation had no impact on my enjoyment of the game. If anything it added a bit of unintentional humor to the game. How can you not chuckle at "That big hole might be an important location for Dana."?

Edited by Killbomb
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