Uncensored Censorship: Translation vs. Localization

by Daniel Orner (Cidolfas)

Although the debate about censorship in video games has mainly receded into the background, once upon a time it was one of the pinnacles of gaming arguments. The backlash against censorship has calmed somewhat now that most mainstream RPGs are out of kiddie-friendly Nintendo's hands. However, every so often something pops up that rekindles the flame. Interestingly enough, the two most visible recent examples of this were part of the same series: Xenogears in 1997, and Xenosaga: Episode I in 2002. Both contained scenes which were slightly changed or excised for a North American release; the first, a toned-down bed scene; the second, a changed scene in which a character pokes his hand into the stomach of an android made to look like a 12-year-old girl. (The American version simply didn't show that part.) The question, as of old, is: Have the producers "sold out" by changing their vision?

Taking a look back at the history of gaming, censorship has come a long way. I'm bang alongside the people who shake their heads at "Holy" being changed to "Pearl" or "Spirit", and "Jihad" to "Crusader". Some things are just ridiculous. And covering up a few pixels of flesh in a summon won't make much of a difference in a 16-bit game. (In case people are unsure what I'm referring to here, all of these changes were made to the American Final Fantasy III for SNES.) However, I'm going to be the devil's advocate (if you can consider a company that brings you all your favorite RPGs a "devil") and say there are some instances where I believe that censorship has a perfectly viable and even desirable impact on a video game.

What many people don't realize is that there are two parts to taking a Japanese game and making it an American one. The first is just the language, certainly. But the second is crossing cultures. The term used in more recent games is "localization" - in other words, transplanting a product from one place to another. Not just translating the language, but making it so that it fits into the new culture. Japanese people have different sensitivities and different hang-ups than Americans do. In particular, the Japanese are much more permissive as far as adult content and extreme language go. Many things that aren't considered controversial at all in Japan would cause (and have caused) an uproar in the US. Conversely, certain types of jokes that wouldn't bat an eye in America would make many people sit up in Japan.

Now, the main goal of those selling games is to avoid alienating anyone. Gaming is quite a lucrative industry nowadays, and the more revenue they can drag out of the game, the better. If a game does badly by limiting its audience, you don't get any further games. To that end, while there are very few people who would be outraged at a lack of swearwords in a game, there are quite a few people (including myself) who would be outraged to see them. Contrary to certain people's opinions, there is not a direct correlation between the number of swearwords in a project and its artistic merit. This isn't to say that games should gloss over all their content and shoot for an "E" rating; but producers should know their intended audience. They should know if they want the game to be played by those under 17 or 13 - and if they do, to adjust the game accordingly.

Let's take a game that never made it to the States - Tales of Phantasia for SNES. (For those who don't approve of emulation of games made over seven years ago and which have never been released in English, skip to the next paragraph.) The game was translated into English online by a fan group and made playable, and the thing most talked about regarding it wasn't the fun factor or the story - it was a single scene (well, two or three scenes) in which explicit sexual references were made, accompanied by strong language. Now, I consider the person who translated it a good friend of mine, and I respect him greatly, but I do not agree with the way he did those scenes. He defends himself by saying that, if anything, the Japanese equivalent was even more explicit. But I return to my point: Japanese sensitivities are completely different from American ones. Note that we Westerners generally have no problems with innuendo - had the language not been so stark, I probably would have laughed with the rest of them. The subject matter, if approached tastefully and, dare I say it, vaguely enough, can be acceptable. But there are limits in English-speaking society at large, and there's a reason professional companies rarely cross it.

Let's draw a parallel to the movie industry. Some people might not realize it, but it's quite common for movies to change or cut scenes in order to get a more family-oriented rating (or at least avoid the dreaded "R"). Sometimes these cuts are almost unnoticeable, sometimes they pervade the very nature of the film. But because of the vast amounts of money being shoved into the movie, if the movie can possibly get that "more general" rating by cutting a few things, they'll do it. PG-13 movies open themselves up to a much wider range of audiences than R movies, and they make correspondingly more money.

Video games are no different. In fact, the video game industry is now vying with the movie industry in money spent per year (and even per game). If including that censored scene in Xenogears or Xenosaga would have yielded an "M" rating by the ESRB, and covering it up or cutting a few seconds wouldn't, what producer worth his salt wouldn't go for the better rating? We're talking a huge demographic that would be theoretically cut out of the game. Yes, artistic integrity is a very nice thing, but not when that much money is at stake, especially considering that the amount of money a game makes is a very good indicator of whether it's worth making a sequel out of (and unlike movies, sequels to games are very frequently better than the originals). Note that even if the actual rating wasn't given, word of the scene might spread around, still driving parents of slightly younger children away from it. So it's always better to play it just a bit on the safe side. And I reiterate that this is not about money; the money itself is about American sensitivities to certain content which the "artists" or writers didn't take into account.

We can make yet another parallel to movies, in that different areas of the continent, and even the country, have very different rating systems. I'm not entirely familiar with the details, but I do know that a rating in Canada can be quite different in age restrictions from a rating in the United States on the very same movie. The reason? Different sensitivities. If the ESRB had a Japanese contingent that rated independently of their American counterparts, they would most probably be far more lenient and give far fewer games that evil "M" rating than their American counterpart would.

To change threads slightly, there's also a large amount of people who demand that games be translated as close as possible to the original Japanese as they can be, to preserve the intent of the original writers. That's an admirable thing to want. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't work. I don't have to theorize about it, because it happened - in a game called Star Ocean: Second Story (ironically made by the same people, tri-Ace aka Wolf Team, who made Tales of Phantasia). That translation made no attempt to change any of the cultural in-jokes or references in the writing. The result is a mess. Characters say things that just do not make sense to us, leaving the player grasping at straws to try to get the gist of the conversation. FF7 had plenty of problems in this vein as well, but nowhere near as bad.

A good localization into English is meant to make a game feel like it was made by people who understand American culture - not by people who only understand Japanese. And from my own online script editing efforts in the emulation/translation community, I can tell you that it's incredibly difficult. There is a large amount of creativity that goes into it - most sections must be rewritten from scratch rather than taken word by word - and of course, any creativity by the translator then erodes the original idea by the Japanese writer, and raises a hue and cry by purists. But games are meant to be enjoyed by their target audiences. Said audience generally doesn't know anything at all about Japanese culture, nor should we expect them to. The jokes should be funny in English, the conversation should make sense in English. I would go so far as to say that item or technique names that remain in Japanese are an affront to the English audience as well; if the original name wouldn't make sense to English speakers or would be too long, make up a catchy new one that is close enough to the original meaning. And if it's just nonsense syllables, make it nonsense syllables that English speakers can more easily remember; we're just not wired to remember the consonant-vowel syllables that make up the Japanese language. For example, a nonsense Japanese name might be something like "Dodobaka", whereas a better English one could be something like "Folgish". Which one sticks in your mind?

And for one final, blasphemous comment. People tend to think that everything made in Japan is godlike in its originality and coolness - and that this fact requires that their ideas be set in stone. But who says the translators don't have great ideas too? Who says they can't improve on the original?