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So 8-4 isn't localizing Three Houses


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5 hours ago, P.Scoop said:

All the way, I'm hoping that the localization didn't mess up badly this time.

^This, less dumb jokish trope dialogue(only if it's intentional like the jp version), no pointless removals, less to very few character personality altering if it happens and for the love of Naga complete the entire DLC this time (*looks at Fates...*). I'm definitely sure the heated Fates backlash is a sign things will be better (so far Heroes is a great example as others mention which I agree with) regardless of who'll be localizing it. My eyes will definitely be peeled.

Edited by Regal Edelgard Axe Master
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Eeeehhhh, Treehouse wasn't all THAT bad for me. I get there are some valid complaints but I honestly don't think Fates was as bad as people made it out to be, in my opinion~

That said, let's just wait and see first before we start complaining~ Who knows, it could be another company entirely~

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12 hours ago, Aiddon said:

And my opinion is: whatever. Seriously, people get so bent out of shape when it comes to localization the drama has lost all meaning and weight.

It is a big deal to some people becaise they want to get a complete product in exchange for their cash earned with blood and sweat. I personally do not want to pay $60 for a stripped down version of the original game. The cut content might not be important to you, but it is important to others.

I shelled out an extra ~$300 to get a Japanese 3DS and the Japanese version of Fates just so I can experience the cut content. Not everyone can afford to throw money around like that. With the Switch being region free, fans do not have to pay another $150-$200 region switching fee anymore either.

If the localization is particularly bad, fans who do not have that kind of dough are basically forced to choose between getting the full gameplay experience or having the convenience of playing in their own language. And during the 3DS era, there would not even be a choice since shellling out an additional $150-$200 for another region's console would most likely be way out of budget.

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This news is somewhat worrying.

My biggest gripe with Treehouse's localization of Fates isn't actually the removal of features, revision of characters, or anything like that; those are all issues of varying degrees, sure, but my biggest complaint was at the vernacular level.

Echoes' and Awakening's translations are full of charm; interesting word choices ("dastard"), clever and memorable lines (voiced or otherwise), and just a smooth flow in general that really makes them stand out as witty, well-translated games.

Fates' localization just has no distinct voice. I can barely recall a single line of dialogue from Fates, because they just feel... generic and flavorless. Like tools to move the plot along rather than anything worthwhile in and of themselves. It's like a bowl of plain white rice. Edible, and not bad per se, but flavorless filler.

Heroes and Warriors were also translated by Treehouse and have the same issue of bland scripts; while it's more forgivable in their cases since they're not story-heavy games, it does suggest Treehouse's poor localization of Fates wasn't just a one-off fluke, but a trend of low competence. And I'm just hoping that trend doesn't continue into Three Houses.

Edited by Anomalocaris
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On 6/19/2018 at 11:18 AM, XRay said:

I would not call the localization of Heroes good either. The naming system of some skills is a disgusting mess and some of the skill descriptions are flat out wrong.

Naming mess:

I think some of these have decent explanations for them.

Quote

 

Steady Blow versus Steady Stance/Breath
The former gives [0/4/4/0] while the latter two gives [0/0/6/0] and [0/0/4/0] respectively. Since Armored Blow is [0/0/6/0], I assume Armored Stance is going to be [0/4/4/0] at this point.

No arguments here. Steady Blow and Steady Stance both debuted at the same time (and Armored Blow predated them both) so there was no reason to give them the same naming conventions.

Death Blow versus Fierce Stance.
Is it really that hard to make them match?

Death Blow is localized from the Japanese "Fierce Deity Blow" in Fates. I could see "Fierce Blow" being a worthy name, but at the time (Fierce Stance was not introduced until Heroes), Death Blow sounded pretty cool. Would you really want a "Death Stance" now?

Swift Strike versus Swift Stance / Mirror Strike versus Mirror Stance:
Swift Sparrow is not even using Blow in its name so there is nothing wrong with Swift Blow. Even more so for Mirror Strike since the only thing using Mirror in its name is its Stance counter part.

Definitely a goof here. Swift Stance should be called Darting Stance and Strike didn't need to replace Blow for these skills. Cool facts: Clear Mirror Blow is the Japanese name for Warding Blow.  I'm going to side with the localization choices here as "Warding" better suggests avoiding magic damage, and "Mirror" has the connotation of reflecting damage back at the mage (ie the Res and Atk boost).

Swift Sparrow versus Kestrel Stance:
The crap that started it all.

Swift Sparrow is localized from the ungainly "Fierce Deity Flying Swallow Blow" in Japanese. Maybe had Swift Sparrow and Death Blow come from the same game, we could have gotten a more faithful "Fierce Swallow Blow" but now all we have to work with is "Death Sparrow Blow" which also sounds dumb. Kestrel Stance is a result of the same beast.

— — — — — — —

Wo Dao versus Harmonic Lance / Slaying Sword/Axe/Lance/Bow versus Barbed Shuriken:

Wo Dao and Harmonic Lance are kind of interesting. Wo Dao is Chinese for "Japanese Sword". My understanding of the history behind this weapon is that it's a Chinese sword inspired by Japanese blades. Harmonic Lance is "Wa Boko" which means "Japanese Chinese Spear" so I guess Wo Mou (don't hurt me, I don't speak Chinese) would be the best translation.

Barb Shuriken is directly pulled from Fates, and even the Japanese name isn't consistent with the names of killer weapons (It's "Assassination Shuriken" compared to the "Killer Sword/Lance/Axe/Bow" which all boost critical hit damage)

 

In other words, a lot of the naming inconsistencies happened because Treehouse didn't know IS was going to introduce dual stat boosting skills and their original name choices for single stat boosting skills didn't work as well for compounds. I can't speak for how natural the Japanese skill names sound to Japanese people, but they would sound weird if translated faithfully.

Edited by NekoKnight
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I play the game in French, so I won't see much quality change depending on which company localizes the game, but there was an issue I had with the French translation since awakening.

In french, there are two ways of saying "you" when talking to one person : "tu" is the casual way, and "vous" is the polite way.

Nowadays, the polite "vous" is used mostly with people above you in hierarchy or to someone you don't really know. However, in the past (including medieval time) the "vous" was used in a casual way too, and fire emblem being medieval, the translators completely mix the two :(

It sort of makes sense for characters who are nobles to speak in an ancient speech, but they get the cheerful young characters talking like that too, and sometime they change their speech completely randomly with different interlocutors ! Sometimes the lovers use the polite speech, it's so weird and cold...

It's the only time I had this issue with a game, usually they either use the modern speech, or the old one entirely for immersion, but not this confusing mix...

It would be very interesting if there still is romance/S rank to see the transition to the polite speech of the teacher a casual speech of a lover :)

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4 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Death Blow is localized from the Japanese "Fierce Deity Blow" in Fates. I could see "Fierce Blow" being a worthy name, but at the time (Fierce Stance was not introduced until Heroes), Death Blow sounded pretty cool. Would you really want a "Death Stance" now?

If Death Stance does not sound good, they can always change the skill name of Death Blow to Fierce Blow. They updated some of the skill descriptions a while back, so I do not see why they cannot update skill names.

5 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Swift Sparrow is localized from the ungainly "Fierce Deity Flying Swallow Blow" in Japanese. Maybe had Swift Sparrow and Death Blow come from the same game, we could have gotten a more faithful "Fierce Swallow Blow" but now all we have to work with is "Death Sparrow Blow" which also sounds dumb. Kestrel Stance is a result of the same beast.

They could just come up with a new word to represent the dual stat combination. Just as how Mirror represents Atk/Res, they can use Sparrow to represent Atk/Spd. There is no need to use two discriptors and take out Blow from the name, and completely change its Stance counterparts' discriptor to another bird.

5 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Barb Shuriken is directly pulled from Fates, and even the Japanese name isn't consistent with the names of killer weapons (It's "Assassination Shuriken" compared to the "Killer Sword/Lance/Axe/Bow" which all boost critical hit damage)

I will give Treehouse a pass on this one.

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2 minutes ago, XRay said:

If Death Stance does not sound good, they can always change the skill name of Death Blow to Fierce Blow. They updated some of the skill descriptions a while back, so I do not see why they cannot update skill names.

Probably to not confuse people. I agree this would be the easiest solution, but I don't think they'll go for it.

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42 minutes ago, NekoKnight said:

Probably to not confuse people. I agree this would be the easiest solution, but I don't think they'll go for it.

Short term confusion is better than long term confusion in my opinion.

If they are really worried about confusing players, they could just rename them all to Atk Blow, Atk Stance, Atk/Spd Blow, etc. so they are named like buffs and Brazens.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sucks that 8-4 isn't back.

I just hope they don't change character names because they don't like them. They did that in the GC/GBA era and it really pissed me off. Legit ENGLISH names should NOT be changed just because you don't freaking like them. Their justifications for renaming Kilroy for example were absolutely pathetic.

They stopped that practice with Echoes and FE Heroes so hopefully they will continue to not be pretentious dicks who think they know better when it comes to character names than the actual developers.

Edited by bufkus
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/20/2018 at 5:40 PM, Anomalocaris said:

This news is somewhat worrying.

My biggest gripe with Treehouse's localization of Fates isn't actually the removal of features, revision of characters, or anything like that; those are all issues of varying degrees, sure, but my biggest complaint was at the vernacular level.

Echoes' and Awakening's translations are full of charm; interesting word choices ("dastard"), clever and memorable lines (voiced or otherwise), and just a smooth flow in general that really makes them stand out as witty, well-translated games.

Fates' localization just has no distinct voice. I can barely recall a single line of dialogue from Fates, because they just feel... generic and flavorless. Like tools to move the plot along rather than anything worthwhile in and of themselves. It's like a bowl of plain white rice. Edible, and not bad per se, but flavorless filler.

Heroes and Warriors were also translated by Treehouse and have the same issue of bland scripts; while it's more forgivable in their cases since they're not story-heavy games, it does suggest Treehouse's poor localization of Fates wasn't just a one-off fluke, but a trend of low competence. And I'm just hoping that trend doesn't continue into Three Houses.

This sums up my feelings on the matter really well, particular in supports.

I consider all of Awakening's supports fairly memorable, and honestly I liked most of the character and tone changes they made.  Gregor became quite a bit more memorable, whereas Effie just became different, I don't necessarily think it added or detracted anything from her character from an objective standpoint, but I liked her less.

Fates supports felt very awkward and bland, and didn't flow as well, in my eyes, and I get that this is subjective, but I can't even remember many Fates supports and didn't bother unlocking all of them whereas I painstakingly 100%'d Awakening's just for my own enjoyment.

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On 6/20/2018 at 4:40 PM, Anomalocaris said:

This news is somewhat worrying.

My biggest gripe with Treehouse's localization of Fates isn't actually the removal of features, revision of characters, or anything like that; those are all issues of varying degrees, sure, but my biggest complaint was at the vernacular level.

Echoes' and Awakening's translations are full of charm; interesting word choices ("dastard"), clever and memorable lines (voiced or otherwise), and just a smooth flow in general that really makes them stand out as witty, well-translated games.

Fates' localization just has no distinct voice. I can barely recall a single line of dialogue from Fates, because they just feel... generic and flavorless. Like tools to move the plot along rather than anything worthwhile in and of themselves. It's like a bowl of plain white rice. Edible, and not bad per se, but flavorless filler.

Heroes and Warriors were also translated by Treehouse and have the same issue of bland scripts; while it's more forgivable in their cases since they're not story-heavy games, it does suggest Treehouse's poor localization of Fates wasn't just a one-off fluke, but a trend of low competence. And I'm just hoping that trend doesn't continue into Three Houses.

I like how the older games had characters speaking in a way that was...old-fashioned? Not like "thee"s and "thou"s but it fit the medieval fantasy setting. Fates was littered with modern slang and that almost completely broke the immersion.

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Eh, I['ll take a wait and see approach on this. I will admit Fates was very hit or miss, but nothing was to a point where I felt like I couldn't give Treehouse another chance to do better, so I'll wait until we get more information before making my judgement on the matter. 

On ‎6‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 4:40 PM, Anomalocaris said:

Heroes and Warriors were also translated by Treehouse and have the same issue of bland scripts; while it's more forgivable in their cases since they're not story-heavy games, it does suggest Treehouse's poor localization of Fates wasn't just a one-off fluke, but a trend of low competence. And I'm just hoping that trend doesn't continue into Three Houses.

It's funny that you mention Warriors as while I can't speak for the story since I haven't read up on the Japanese version (though based on Koei's other works, it's probably the typical excuse plot there like it is in English), I felt the supports in that game were better done overall then Fates' from what I've seen. They seem more consistent with their original counterparts overall, and I didn't think any of the changes if they were made affected how I felt about the support regardless of which one I read.

Heroes I will admit is pretty unmemorable outside of the specific unit dialogue we get from each character, but as you said Heroes isn't story driven so it's hard to know whether we should blame Treehouse or IS for that.  

Edited by Medeus
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  • 1 month later...

My deal is I would've done half the stuff Treehouse did to Fates verses the stuff directly translated as close to verbatim as possible from the fan-translators.

I'm still pretty freaked out by JP Saizo's skinship dialogue and Soleil, just Soleil in general. But then Awakening has Henry, who was entirely rewritten for English-language players, but ended up being a hit.

Both Treehouse and 8-4 injected their attempts at levity where it was absent from the original, but neither were objectively "bad" localization jobs.

 

I really think it comes down to how Three Houses is written. Awakening and Fates have tone issues.

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1 hour ago, Altrosa said:

I'm still pretty freaked out by JP Saizo's skinship dialogue and Soleil, just Soleil in general. But then Awakening has Henry, who was entirely rewritten for English-language players, but ended up being a hit.

I know all about the Soleil controversy but this is the first time I hear something about Saizo. What does he say during his skinship lines?

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I'm going to remain neutral on this, give the damn game a chance to get off the ground before we start complaining about something that we don't even know is happening. I could care less who translates the game, as long as the translation itself is good, and no features that actually matter get removed.

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16 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I know all about the Soleil controversy but this is the first time I hear something about Saizo. What does he say during his skinship lines?

I think she's referring to when he says something along the lines of "Idiot. If you touch me like that then I won't be able to hold back... or is it that you're hoping for something?" So you know. Implying doing the frick-frack.

Unless he says something else that I don't know, I'm assuming that's it.

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  • 2 months later...

You're all forgetting something. Even if Treehouse did do the localization, it's Cup of Tea doing the voice work - you know, the studio that handled the Awakening and Echoes dubs? So you can rest assured that the dubbing will at least be top-notch, even if the translation itself isn't.

Voice acting can go a long way in making a good game. Sometimes voice actors are so good at delivering their lines, they can even make a janky script sound better. Not to mention Cup of Tea seems to have good voice directors - see how they handled Forsyth and Python.

Edited by Beldarius
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2 hours ago, Beldarius said:

You're all forgetting something. Even if Treehouse did do the localization, it's Cup of Tea doing the voice work - you know, the studio that handled the Awakening and Echoes dubs? So you can rest assured that the dubbing will at least be top-notch, even if the translation itself isn't.

Voice acting can go a long way in making a good game. Sometimes voice actors are so good at delivering their lines, they can even make a janky script sound better. Not to mention Cup of Tea seems to have good voice directors - see how they handled Forsyth and Python.

Ooh that gives me hope on the VA at least. I wonder who the director will be? If it’s wendee lee again you can bet we’re in for a treat. Though when I met wendee lee at the last con I was at and she aigned my echoes case, she did say she “was working on FE last week” maybe I’m looking too much into it but its an interesting thought 

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People talk about localized names and stuff a lot, but beyond that, the writing in fates was choppy and off putting. Nothing flowed well. I have a hard time reading the story at all because of poor writing conventions.

Sure the events that happen in fates are silly, but so are the happenings in most other video games. If you look at radiant dawn.....

.....The game stars an old lady, who looks like a teenager who has the power of foresight. On the other side of things, we have a blue haired swordsman who wields a centuries old blade that shoots energy waves. These two combine forces to defeat god.

The reason most of that doesn’t sound really dumb in game is because the writing takes itself seriously. It is obvious that those localizers had a strong grasp of the English language.

As long as whoever is localizing three houses has a team of solid writers who really understand English, three houses will turn out fine.

 

On another note, localizing is a team effort at treehouse. The teams change per game. So the team that did fates may have done poorly, but it does not mean that every person or team in the company sucks.

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  • 1 month later...

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