Something that confuses me about Tales localizations

Lloyzerdk #2 · Joined: 05 Jan 2013 Posts: 153

Why do the translators very frequently end questions with a period instead of a question mark? I've noticed this a lot in Vesperia. Here's a sample of this kinda dialogue:

Yuri: "What was the deal with that weird monster we ran into in the Sands of Kohorh."

Why do they do this? Are they just too lazy to add a question mark? And this kind of error is very common.

Vesperia's localization is actually pretty sloppy in some parts. A lot of spelling and puncuation errors. They even leave out words that should be there to make more sense. Stuff like: "This armor helps even bravest warriors triumph in battle." There should be a "the" in between bravest and warriors.

Okay I just made that last quote up, but there are actual things like that in there. So weird.

Sunny · Joined: 23 Aug 2005 Posts: 9753

Text heavy jRPG + lax localization policy = no surprise.
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Abicion · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:28 am Post subject:

The Hero's of Space and Time
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Ruin · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:30 am Post subject:

I dunno. It makes more sense to me if Yuri says things as an annoyed statement rather than an actual question.

But other stuff is just being lax like Sunny said.
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Colour · Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 1518

Some questions in Japanese end with a period rather than a question mark, so it might be something the translators didn't bother to fix.

Though a lot of the dialogue is pretty sloppy in Vesperia, Abyss, and Graces. I've caught a few spelling errors and wacky translations.

"I plead the fifth." Yeah..
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Suikoden2 · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:39 am Post subject:

I think in Vesperia at some point Rita was going on and on about some new breakthrough and I roughly recall Yuri saying something like: "Could you speak in English so the rest of us can understand?" I cringed.
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Harbinger · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:42 am Post subject:

I remember one of the first dialogue with Frederic (I think?) from Tales of Graces F.

Asbel: "blah blah blah"
Frederic: "You don't say"

The first thing that came to my mind was the Internet meme. At that very moment, I suspected that the dialogue were going to be special.
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Suikoden2 · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:47 am Post subject:

If they had him do Nicolas Cage's face than you know it was intentional. Laughing

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Harbinger · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 2:16 am Post subject:

Abicion · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 2:52 am Post subject:

Kangaroo War
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Conn · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 3:11 am Post subject:

Kajitani-Eizan · Joined: 06 Oct 2004 Posts: 1314

sometimes, a period or exclamation mark is more appropriate to convey the right tone. compare the following:

You aren't going, are you?
You aren't going, are you.

obviously, this only works for certain borderline cases. yuri's line should definitely have a question mark.

in general, japanese video game scripts have horrible punctuation use. ellipses (...), exclamation marks (!), double exclamation marks (!!), triples (!!!), interrobangs (!?), etc. etc. are overused like crazy. ellipses especially... everyone in a japanese video game... talks like this...

you can imagine that it could potentially be somewhat difficult to keep your bearings and revise this to be more normal in the english translation of the japanese script, if you're under time pressure.
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Dr. Casey · Joined: 30 Dec 2005 Posts: 2479

Suikoden2 · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 3:27 am Post subject:

Conn · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 3:28 am Post subject:

Yes, Judith says it.
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