Alexander O. Smith answers my questions on localising games.
Hi Dan,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Some answers!
> 1. Do you provide localisations in basic text, or do you have to update the files as well?
Back in the day there was a lot of direct updating of files. Once things got organized to the point where loc teams and dev teams could agree on standards, it was much easier for loc to work in excel, and have dev convert that into the code they needed for their compiler. Almost everything on the loc side is handled in excel now across the industry.
Excel is preferable to plain text because you can display original text and translation side-by-side, as well as comments/editing/etc. It's also very useful for generating voice scripts from text, and the filters can be helpful for checking a particular character's lines, etc.
> 2. Do you relocalise the non-dialogue text, such as weapon names?
Sure, though that's at the discretion of the loc team.
> 3. Following on from that, are you asked to keep the "canon" names?
This is also at the discretion of the loc team.
>
> For example, certain things in the series have become "canon" , such as "megalixir" [Last Elixir]
> and certain FF7 things, though mistakes made by Michael Baskett have become "FF7 canon", such as "Mideel" [Midhir]
At different times, different loc teams have been more zealous about fixing earlier translation problems. I think the general rule followed at Square is, if there's an embarrassing error or a "bad" translation necessitated by word length restrictions on older games, those are all free game for updating. If there's a translation that's arguably an error, but works well enough, and is loved by the fan base, those tend to stay. It's not an exact science, obviously, and there's less oversight than you might imagine (though certainly more now than there was). Another instance of 'mistakes' that won't get fixed: Ochu, which is based on a pronunciation of the D&D monster "Otyugh." That won't be fixed because WOTC has a copyright on Otyugh.
> 4. Do you get full cooperation from the original writers? Part of the issue we had is that sometimes there is no way to work out what the writer desired. We still can't be 100% sure that Zack is Zax, for example. The only reason we know it is Midhir is because of the internet, and good research into other mythology.
Sometimes, though that usually comes down to who is drinking with whom, or going on cigarette breaks with whom, at the time. There was very little official communication between writers and loc back in the day, so it was all back-channel stuff. Oftentimes, the original wasn't written with anything significant in mind at all, so loc ends up having free reign anyway.
In short, it's chaos, man, chaos!
Alex
I have replied to the above. I never realised Otyugh was changed because of Copyright
I just assumed it was an error.
And a clarification from my side: Ochu was (likely) originally just an error. It hasn't been fixed because of copyright concerns.
