When it comes to Japanese games, Americans have been getting short shrift for decades – even today, countless foreign releases never make it to U.S. shores, thanks to draconian corporate policies and conservative publishers.
Many fans were upset at recent news that Nintendo of America will not localize Xenoblade and The Last Story, despite critical and commercial acclaim in Japan.
Still, the tide seems to be shifting, thanks to small localization houses like Atlus, Aksys and Xseed Games, companies that have brought over niche, high-quality titles like Radiant Historia and Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. Xseed in particular has carved out its own fan base among hard-core American gamers, localizing games like Half Minute Hero and the Ys series.
How does Xseed choose which games to bring here? What's the localization process like? Wired.com spoke with Jessica Chavez, a senior editor at Xseed and one of the driving forces behind the U.S. localization of remarkable PSP role-playing game The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, to find out how the company tackles the day-to-day challenge of bringing games overseas.
Wired.com: For starters, could you tell me a little bit about the process that goes into localization at Xseed?
Jessica Chavez: Localization at Xseed is something like a game of hot potato. A game is found, evaluated by all in the company and, if good enough and deemed sellable, we go after the rights and then toss it to the localization department in a manner that burns the skin off one's fingertips. Sizzling and new, it's lobbed at Kenji (localization manager) who maps out a hopeful schedule ... which is inevitably never followed because something always goes wrong (text is late, QA manages to catastrophically crash the game, master submission fails, people don't take turns having nervous breakdowns and instead decide to both go for it at the same time, etc.).
Hypothetically speaking, however, if nothing went wrong the game would then be passed to Tom (translator), who would wrap it lovingly in tinfoil and chuck it at the editor (me), who would then proceed to add cheese, chives and/or bacon before it's passed back to Kenji to be grilled over hot coals for QA (quality assurance, aka bug hunt). Following a successful QA run, the spud would then be submitted for final approval (the aforementioned master submission) and soon after we'd all get to eat it. Needless to say, this process is chaotic, can last for up to a year (Trails in the Sky!) and tends to leave bits of potato all over the walls.
For a simplified, food-free explanation, here's a quick and dirty breakdown:
Cool game! -> Staff evaluation -> License -> Game text to localization -> Translation -> Editing -> QA -> Master submission -> Finale!*
*ESRB (game-rating organization), PEGI (European game-rating organization), programming disasters and human failings may be inserted anywhere in this equation.
Wired.com: Do you guys just get a massive chunk of Japanese text and divvy it up among the staff for translation?
Chavez: Well, the first thing you should know about Xseed is that we're small. I mean, really small. If there is a massive chunk of text to be levered into English, there is no "divvying" among staff because "staff" is: 1) Tom (our one and only translator), 2) Me (our one and only editor, though Tom does do this too when needed) and 3) Kenji (the localization manager, who somehow makes everything work). Localization is about one-half of Xseed, so you get the idea, i.e. we can't even field a proper football team.
What this means is that we all approach the day like a nervous crab, scuttling in sideways, eyeball stalks constantly on the looming rock above ... the rock of massive text that will crush us into jelly if we pick at it too fast. So when fans cry for more speed or more projects ASAP, just remember the agitated clicking of decapod crustaceans, their little eye stalks waving in what can only be interpreted as an SOS dance.
Wired.com: Do you play the game as you translate?
Chavez: If time permits, definitely. If time doesn't permit, but you have no idea what the translation is trying to say ... add two hours to the job every day. Currently time does permit, and while Tom is working on his PSP horror title, we are regaled with tiny little screams from his headphones as he tandem translates/plays.
Wired.com: Tell me a little about a day in the life of Jessica Chavez.
Chavez: It starts early, begins on a bus, ends on a bus and smells like public transportation.
I wish I was kidding, but I seriously spend three hours a day roundtrip to and from work on several buses of varying pedigree. (This still turns out to be a plus for the company, however, because I can play some of the titles we're working on even while in transit.)
A typical day might run as follows:
5:45 a.m.: Wake up from nightmares of endless Excel spreadsheets.
6:30 a.m.: Run for bus with laptop banging merrily against my hipbone.
7:40 a.m.: Deter hobo on bus by brandishing the DS stylus in a pointed manner.
8:35 a.m.: Spend breakfast browsing gaming news and updating Twitter.
11:11 a.m.: Lose self in text, completely miss four-car accident outside on Hawthorne Boulevard.
12:58 p.m.: Flee office to seek consolation in ramen lunch set at Yamadaya.
2 p.m.: Edit system text. Discover missing comma. Celebratory coffee is had.
3 p.m.: Edit system text.
3:45 p.m.: Do five chin-ups on company pull-up bar. Celebratory Diet Coke is had.
4 p.m.: Edit system text.
4:05 p.m.: Post Twitter haikus using the words shiny, burble and rubber duck.
5 p.m.: Edit main text.
6 p.m.: Edit main text. Ponder implications of character line, "I ate my friend today."
6:50 p.m.: Run for bus.
7:57 p.m.: Play DS while waiting for nonexistent connection.
8:40 p.m.: Home.
Wired.com: Trails in the Sky definitely strikes me as a labor of love. What kind of creative freedoms did Xseed have during the localization process? Just how much of the game's over-the-top (and amazing) charm/humor came from you guys, as opposed to the original Japanese writers?
Chavez: You should cap and bold "labor." And what the heck, you can cap and bold "love," too. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, affectionately known to the gentle caress of the internet as "TitS," is a big game with a lot of love poured into it from both Falcom's development team and the localization department here.
It was our extreme good fortune to be able to work with Falcom, and they in turn gave us the flexibility to make sure their game shone on every level it could. This flexibility stretched to even somewhat-indulgent matters like the "treasure chest messages" where I was allowed to replace generic chest text ("The chest is empty") with things like, "The clowns told me you'd be back." This was partly for marketing (there is a secret password in one of the chests), but mostly because I thought it was funny and was losing my mind.
A good game with a good localization will be remembered long after release.Getting a game to translate well in a foreign market in part depends on what you have to work with. In Trails' case, we got to localize a game that already had insane character development and world-building that really lent itself to a bit of translation/editing magic.
Our translators all had their favorite bits to render into English: John Sears really poured everything he had into the books and item descriptions in the game, Jeff Nussbaum had a way with character interaction that translated emotion and comedic timing really well, and Chris Cruz gave the world Olivier Lenheim as he was meant to be. Editing-wise I got to "amplify" certain relationships, tweak some of the finer moments and do a little improvising, but the game was good to begin with and we just built on that.
Wired.com: What kind of overall impact do you think localization has on the quality of a Japanese role-playing game ? Do you think a good translation can directly impact its reception on U.S. shores?
Chavez: I believe that localization has a big impact on both the quality and reception of JRPGs these days. Most of our audience is probably in the 20- to 35-year-old range and they are, with good reason, more particular about the text than we used to be back when we were kids. In the '80s and '90s, it was amazing just to have any game from Japan, but there are several companies now that localize games and, professionally speaking, I think we've all gotten better at it now that we've had 20-plus years to practice. A good game always has a decent chance at being well-received, but a good game with a good localization will be remembered long after release. And for some games, if the localization is bad, it can ruin a good game.
Wired.com: Were there any particular games that inspired you throughout this process? In your opinion, what are some examples of great JRPG localizations?
Chavez: Most of my work on games hasn't really been influenced by other games (as I no longer have any time to play games!). I tend to pull my inspiration from things like the quirky wording of Douglas Adams, the absurd timing of the Monty Python crew, and fatigue-born madness. We do look to meet certain standards of localizing, and there are plenty of great JRPG localizations out there. Lost Odyssey comes to mind as a recent one with an excellent translation that was given a lot of care.
In the end, though, to produce a good localization of a JRPG you need 1) to stay as true to the intent of the original script as possible, 2) to remember the audience and 3) to have fun where fun can be had (textually speaking). Well, that's my checklist, anyway.
Wired.com: Because I have to ask, is there any word on whether you guys are going to tackle the rest of the [Trails in the Sky] trilogy? Please say yes.
Chavez: That's a bit of a tough one. SC (Second Chapter) is even more horrifyingly large than FC (First Chapter aka Trails in the Sky), and we are having some issues regarding the platform that it would release on, especially since Universal Media Discs may no longer be around by the time it's ready and the game can't go onto [the PlayStation Network] as a download-only title. We're continuing to work with Falcom to see if there are any other options, though.
See Also:- Nintendo: 'No Plans' to Publish Xenoblade, Last Story in U.S.
