/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

>translating sakura as "cherry tree"

FUCKING CAPCOM

[Anonymous No.]

translate it, weebs

[Anonymous No.]

B-But sakura are cherry trees...

There's a lot wrong with this translation, and you pick THIS to complain about?

[Anonymous No.]

>Cry, and you shall cry alone

Why is such a seemingly light-hearted game quoting something so bad?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074662
Because it's true.
~ Don't laugh, and the world laughs at you ~
It's a warning for young wannabe weeaboos.

[Anonymous No.]

Is there a patch I can download to get rid of the localization? I would buy it if that were the case.

[Anonymous No.]

Well, "Cherry Tree High" does sound mighty retarded.

I gather it's the name of a school, right? "Cherry High" sounds even worse but it makes more sense. In this case, seeing as it's a name, "Sakura High" really would fit the best.

[Anonymous No.]

Sounds about as silly as it does in japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074734
Cherry Tree High sounds fine. If you saw it in a newspaper or something, it's not like you'd be taken aback by the name. Googling "tree high", there seems to be a few high schools named after types of tree (Oak Tree High, Yew Tree High, etc.).

The problem is the full name of the game. "Cherry Tree High Comedy Club" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

[Anonymous No.]

At least they didn't translate it as "Cherry Blossom".

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074648
No, cherry trees grow cherries. There are no cherry trees in the game, there are cherry blossoms.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074648
Sakura are cherry blossoms. Cherry trees don't have the pink petals

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074754
Would have been too distinctly Japanese. They're clearly trying to dejapanify the game as much as possible, because it's not like the people who are interested in this game would be weeaboos with an interest in Japan or Japanese pop culture.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074745
Just think about how silly this bitch must feel that she was named after a tree.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074767
>>10074757
A cherry blossom is the flower of any of several trees of genus Prunus, particularly the Japanese Cherry, Prunus serrulata, which is sometimes called sakura after the Japanese (桜 or 櫻; さくら). Many of the varieties that have been cultivated for ornamental use do not produce fruit. Edible cherries generally come from cultivars of the related species Prunus avium and Prunus cerasus.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074783
Fascinating.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074757
>No, cherry trees grow cherries
No, cherry trees grow cherry fruits. Or "cherries grow cherries", which might be tautological but at least remains technically correct.
Saying that cherry trees grow cherries is nonsensical.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074786
Thanks Will Smith.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074698

Just buy the original version.
http://atelier773.dojin.com/manken/dowanload.html

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074789
How? Everyone here made sense of the intended meaning, including you

[Anonymous No.]

Capcom tries to bring a bit of the orient to the western audiences, everyone hates on the title translation.

I'm sure they appreciate this.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074818
>Everyone here made sense of the intended meaning
If I say "I fucked you're mom" you can grasp the intended meaning even though the sentence is nonsensical.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074831
>Capcom tries to bring a bit of the orient to the western audiences,
They localized the whole game to take place in California, just like they did with Phoenix Wright.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074831
They'll appreciate it and thank us for it as long as we pay them.

[Anonymous No.]

http://cherrytreehigh.com/translation

>We made a deliberate decision to follow the approach of what is widely perceived as the ‘best in class’ game localizations: the Phoenix Wright / Ace Attorney series.

blep blep blep

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074641
桜高
コメディー倶楽部

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074851
Speaking of which

http://www.capcom-unity.com/ask_capcom/go/thread/view/7371/27423285/Why_Arent_You_Localizing_Ace_Att
orney_Investigations_2?pg=3

>The costs of localization are higher than the forecasted return.
Christian "Sven" Svensson, Corporate Officer/Senior Vice-President

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074877
One teenager in his bedroom can do a decent job, but if you want PROFESSIONAL GRADE LOCALIZATION, that takes hiring a team like REchan International for millions of dollars.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074880
I'm not really denouncing Capcom for acting like the multinational corporation they are, I was just bringing that fact to the attention of the poster blaming people for being ungrateful towards Capcom for the localization.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074847
"Nonsensical" means no sense can be made. The line makes perfect sense to everyone reading it

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074851
It worked in Phoenix Wright, since most of the game took place inside a courtroom

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074905
A Japanese courtroom in Japan, with Japanese shamans wearing kimonos in a remote Japanese village in Japanese mountains etc etc

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074905
I actually never once noticed LA being mentioned in that series, and I'd always assumed it took place in Japan.
I have a hard time imagining Maya and the rest of her clan living in Beverly Hills.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if they changed the words, they didn't really change the feeling or a single piece of artwork.
I don;t know if that's good or bad.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074921
It means that part of the localization effort was pointless, which would make it bad.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074935
I will trust your wise judgement.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074935
I still don't understand that sort of localization at all, I never encountered it before I started consuming media in English.

Is it an American thing?

Do the companies thing that the consumers are too dumb to deal with the existence of foreign cultures and their specific customs?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074976
Jelly Donuts!

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074976
I'm talking out of my ass here, but I don't think they think people are dumb, just that they won't like it.

I imagine the companies think they can get a bigger audience this way. The weebs will buy it regardless, and maybe they'll grab a few shekels from others on steam. I know people who buy games on steam based entirely off the title, but wouldn't touch something with Sakura in the name because of Pearl Harbour. GBA :D

But again that's one person's opinion and please don't yell I'm just doing my best.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074994
The worst thing is that it makes it even more fucking confusing when you're told that this weird stuff is a donut. Why didn't they just call them "snacks" or whatever?
"Hey, I made you some snacks"
"Let's have some snacks."
"Those snacks look tasty".
Isn't this okay? Why didn't they do this?

Someone should sue 4kids for making children mentally unstable, no wonder they're mixing reality and fiction when they're told that an hamburger is actually a riceball.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074976
If it's for kids, yes. Foreign concepts will just confuse them and break up the story.

For adults, it's dumb. The other day someone used the example that Family Guy isn't dubbed or given translation notes when it airs in the UK, Australia or Canada. Yet it's still popular in those countries, despite relying on American pop culture references and being shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075053
I actually thought those were doughnuts for the longest time, and I always looked for them whenever I went shopping with my mum. Eventually I learned what rice balls were, but in my head "those things from Pokémon" were always doughnuts. It wasn't until I saw that YouTube video that I put two and two together.
Localisation effects some sort of cultural doublethink in children, which I consider harmful.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075059
You're 99.6% correct, but I just want to clarify for the future: Canadian pop culture _is_ USA pop culture, so you can leave us out.

[Anonymous No.]

Yayifications! :-D

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075053
Or call them "rice balls". I think we should respect other cultures and languages by using their terms for food (and a lot of words have entered English this way), but "rice ball" is a happy middle ground and pretty self-explanatory. They even used "rice balls" in a later episode of Pokemon because they had no choice, and I don't get why they deemed that a failure and started drawing over food instead.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074976
theres worse examples , like books changing the setting from western Australia to California , changing the name of foods in such same books and even changing character names to be more american , because it'll sell better if the reader identifies it as america

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075059
...but isn't it better to try and teach the kids about other cultures by doing something like >>10075091
suggested?

I don't know, I never saw anything like that here when I was a kid, not to mention something like >>10075104

It really seems like the worst kind of ethnocentrism.

I loved learning about other cultures from books, movies, and stuff when I was a kid, this all just seems backwards to me.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075104
It's strange hearing American voice actors call each other Japanese names. It's also confusing for children.

Though it is dumb to pretend a series isn't set in Japan or to screw with the names/characters completely. "Cardcaptors" is a good example of everything wrong with localization:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/20/movies/television-radio-making-anime-a-little-safer-for-americans..
html

I love CCS, but I'm glad this happened. It's paved the way for better dubs and US distributors are realizing now that weeaboos and even the general public like all that Japanese doodaddery. Long gone are the days of Harmony Gold making cartoons out of three different anime series.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075059
>If it's for kids, yes. Foreign concepts will just confuse them and break up the story.
I might agree with you if children could only enjoy and grasp slice of life shows (furthemore, only those for which they are familiar with the setting.)
Instead they enjoy fantasy worlds with obscure terminology where not even our laws of physic apply, seemingly effortlessly. Seriously, think for a few minutes about the settings of the shows you watched as a kid (or what shows kids are watching today) and try to count the RESEMBLANCES with your world or country.
It really seems more like it's the fucking adults who have trouble grasping (or rather, motivating themselves to grasp) works that are "foreign" or "unrealistic". Younger children might not even have a concept of "foreign" actually, they just try to accept and understand anything that's presented to them, especially if it's from the TV.

I really don't know where all the localization myths came from. That's not saying all localization is useless, but most of the decisions made during localization processes seem utterly baffling.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10075135
I agree, but you have to strike a balance. There are things in Japan that American children wouldn't understand, e.g. shinto scenes in anime. I guess you can just roll with it and pretend it's normal, but it might alienate children who are watching a show about giant robots with wicked cool laser guns.

If it can be summed up in a line or two of explanatory dialogue, that's good enough. The Studio Ghibli films have a lot of Japanese stuff but they have their no cut policy too, and it has mostly worked well. The only change I can think of is in Spirited Away: when Chihiro first sees the bathhouse, Disney dubbed in "It's a bathhouse!" because they aren't too common in the West. I think something like that is fair.

[Anonymous No.]

The problem with localization in children's media is that it's likely going to be thousands or even millions of kids' first introduction to a foreign concept, so you have to handle it appropriately. Ask any kid about onigiri and he'll say "OH THOSE THINGS FROM POKEMON" or onsen and she'll say "LIKE IN SPIRITED AWAY".
You can set up some pretty bad stereotypes for children which would have been appropriate in Japan where everyone knows what a shinto shrine is, but could lead to RACISM and HATE CRIME in the United States.

As a side note, Brock was always a "chink" to me and my playground chums. I'm not sure what nationality he was supposed to be or why his eyes were drawn more closed, but it's pretty funny seeing as all the characters were originally Japanese (or at least fantasy-land-Japanese).

[Anonymous No.]

>>10074976
It stems from an utter lack of respect for the source material that goes back at least to the 80's or so when American companies were buying up anime series like hotcakes for syndication. Out of a lack of budget, or maybe just laziness, they wrote new scripts and cut/paste a bunch of shit together instead of translating and localizing properly. Robotech is a good example. I think with a trend like this, it established a norm in disregarding the artistic integrity of the original piece for convenience which carried into the 4kids style localizations. In their heads they think, "why explain what onigiri is, just call them donuts!" Hell, they probably don't even know what it is.

>>10075156
>It really seems more like it's the fucking adults who have trouble grasping (or rather, motivating themselves to grasp) works that are "foreign" or "unrealistic".
It's true. The adults around me never even tried to understand the fantasy elements in things like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh.

>>10075169
What kid even cares about Shinto shrines or rice balls? Even if it makes an appearance, it will soon be forgotten for the shit they actually watch anime for: magic, fantasy, giant robots, etc.

If these localizers were just honest, at least the kid would remember the symbol correctly the next time it came up ("oh, that's a Shinto shrine, what it actually is, I don't know"). At least they have been exposed to it. Instead, they scramble these elements at the conceptual level which poses semiotic concerns.

[Anonymous No.]

I'd rather things from other countries and cultures not be localized than over-localized.