Friday, March 16, 2012

Non-English VG dubs: are they that bad?

I probably mentioned this a few times in my LPs before, but everything in video games (not just voice acting, either) just looks and sounds so much better in English. Maybe it's because it's my second language, but seeing any game in French makes me cringe sooooo badly. I just saw a video of Diablo 3's French version, and it just makes me want to throw aside my French ancestry and fake being of Irish descent like everyone seems to do around St. Patrick's Day. Which is convenient, because nothing washes away terrible voice acting like booze does.

So, quick question for those of you who aren't native English speakers. Am I the only one who feels like upchucking when I hear a video game in my own language? To be fair, it's not much of a problem in Quebec since most games are unilingual English as far as I can tell, even if the instructions are trilingual, but what about people from other countries and ethnicities?

12 comments:

  1. I translated some Skyrim main quest dialogue to get some English to Finnish translation experience

    Holy shit it was hard to translate common words such as "potion" or names of skills to something thats doesnt sound utterly retarded

    I guess when you get so used to English in games you forget other languages have their words for the stuff, too

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    1. Tell me about it. My first introduction to Diablo was when I saw a friend play the PS1 version of the first game, and "Short Staff of Charged Bolt" translated into "Court Bâton de Petits Éclairs". Seriously? I mean, SERIOUSLY? That's lame as all hell, and it's almost a literal translation too!

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    2. I'll apologize in advance for my terrible french but doesn't "petits eclairs" translate to "small lightning"? That does sound horrible. No games really get translated into my native language but anime like dbz and pokemon does...and it's god awful.

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    3. "Éclair" can be translated into "bolt" too.

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    4. Or "delicious cream-filled cake". ;D

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  2. there are very few games in my second language (irish) but irish anime dubs are bad

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  3. I'm not in the group of people you're asking, English being my first language, but this seems to be a trend across several different languages. When there is at least one other choice of audio besides English, I hear almost nothing but complaining that the English dialogue is horrible compared to the other language. (Usually Japanese, and this usually happens when the game was originally made with Japanese dialogue.) People just seem to hate English dubs in general.

    So maybe it's just that people like the original language of something more than a dub. Each additional dub seems lesser in quality (I'm sure Japanese games are dubbed in English first, and then the French dubs are derived from the English.) The quality of voice acting is a mystery for me, though. I have a feeling that it's easier to accept the VA of a foreign language if you're not used to how people normally speak in that language, so you have nothing to compare it to.

    That's all just theorizing, though.

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    1. I am in the same boat as you. Whenever I watch an anime or have a Japanese game with the option for Japanese audio I almost never choose the English option. For the English dubs of things I think the English voice actors are not that talented a lot of the time (with the exception to Gundam Wing).

      In Japan, for example I know the voice actors there are taken very seriously and that they almost never change. I play and watch a lot of things that are Gundam related. So the voice actor who does the voice in the anime does the voices in the video game. In fact, the Japanese are so intent on not replacing voice actors that if the voice actor leaves the show they will not use the character again. (With the exception to a few where they just recycled the old sound clips I believe). Replacing a voice actor is never really considered.

      Additionally, a lot of the voice actors in Japan go into other series and do many different voices. So there are extremely specialized and viewed as celebrities in a way. For me, that is why I prefer, dialog that isn't in my language.

      I know translations are difficult and most of the time the translators have to choose from something that is either accurate and not nice to read. Or something that is beautiful but not that accurate to the original text. I think that is the problem that people run into with translations. I think that is the problem you run into Slowflake. I took several years of French and although I am not that comfortable with it. I know that sometimes English does not always translate well and there may be a different but better way to translate a game that the translator does not do. Much of the time people who really want to understand and know Greek Philosophy must learn ancient Greek if they ever want to truly know it.

      I know France or Quebec are not one of the major video game manufacturers but are there any games that originally are in French? I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't be that fun to play the game if it was translated in english

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    2. I don't think there are any games made originally in French, at least not in Quebec. If Ubisoft Montreal's games are made in English first (Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed anyone?), there's no chance for that anywhere else.

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  4. "nothing washes away terrible voice acting like booze does."

    I speak from experience when I say that not only is this true, it makes it outstandingly hilarious.

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  5. I think it's the first time I'm going to say this, but I sincerely understand how you feel...
    I'm studying to be a translator, but the only thing I want to translate are written texts. And I give my word that I'll never do something as horrible as starting to translate songs, like some people have started to do, because those who want to "protect our French heritage" wanted a law about songs playing at the radio being in French as a majority, while Quebec has very few music artists singing in French and nobody wants to listen to music coming from France.
    Seriously, I've lost hope in having any constructive content in our radio shows after hearing a few... who are the monsters who dared to do this ?

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  6. Would it be terribly racist of me to offer a reason that there isn't as much of a demand for quality on the translation and voice acting front for most video-games?

    I mean, a lot of English-speaking countries are just behind Japan for having a whole culture where everyone and their dog wants to voice act or write to improve shoddy dubbing.

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