Subtitles in games

So I recently came to think of this again when I saw a mention of a game not being released outside its own country for unnamed reasons...I would imagine this has a lot to do with localization. Whether it's a German adventure game, Japanese RPG or any other type of game the rest of us who live outside those borders won't experience, I think it's a shame.

With movies you most often get the option to see a movie in the original language but with subtitles in your own. I have yet to see this in games, why is that not an option for us? I would love to play a Japanese game with Japanese VO and English subtitles. That has to cut costs a lot and make localization easier. Maybe even open up the ability to make crowd sourced subtitles, let the local fans translate your game.

I was thinking of the other type of subtitles. Now I feel dumb.

And I think while it seems practical to do that, its still probably pretty expensive.

Well, it's not as though that would remove the need for localization. For games that have tons of dialogue, even if it was presented with the original VO there is still a ton of translation work to be done. Even still, I'm pretty sure it has been done before. If I recall some of the Yakuza games that made it to the west were Japanese voice over with english subs. Also, many less populous world languages don't get a full localization and have to make due with one of the languages that did get voice work and read subtitles in their native language.

Project X Zone, Deathsmiles IIX: Makai no Merry Christmas, and I'm certain there are other examples. Plus:

• For text-heavy games, this would essentially be the same as a full translation. Non-viable.
• Games and movies are very different. You ever watch an 80 hour moive?

@vodun: Well it does happen, it's just pretty uncommon. I'm guessing that very few games are seen as justifying the costs of printing discs, localization, marketing, ect. but don't have a large enough audience to justify re-recording the VO.

Muramasa: The Demon Blade is a good example of one of the few games that offer translated subtitles only, with all of the original VO still being in Japanese. I could possibly see things like this becoming slightly more common with more digital distribution options eliminating some of the costs.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII which came out earlier this year had that option. They put the Japanese VO as DLC, which would have been a pretty shitty thing to do (instead of just putting it in the game) but they made up for it by making it a free purchase/download for the first two weeks of the game being out.

It turns all of the voice acting into the Japanese version, including background NPCs. My friend, who'se currently learning Japanese at University, found it incredibly helpful as the player is surrounded by it. (I think it even gives the option as to what things should be given English Subtitles). Seems like it would certainly be a fun thing to do on a second playthrough at least (and in a game that puts a large focus on finishing it twice, that's quite cool).

There must be others I've seen, but this one stuck out to me since it was a big and recent game.

There's quite a lot of video games that offer the option of Japanese VA with English subtitles. The BlazBlue and the Disgaea series have always offered it. The recently released Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Demon Gaze and The Witch and The Hundred Knight games all offer options for either English or Japanese VA. If you're asking why all foreign games don't offer English subtitles, well it's because that process can be difficult and costly, especially if the game is long. Not every company can commit to that, especially if their game wouldn't sell well outside of their own country.

I've noticed recently that some Japanese games with both English and Japanese VO tend to cater to the English VO in terms of lip sync. Asura's Wrath and Killer is Dead are two I can think of currently but I'm sure there's more. While I do understand that perhaps these games were made for a western audience to begin with (?) it's a bit peculiar to see broken lip sync in a Japanese game with Japanese VO.

Or then again, it may just be low production values and/or developers not caring anymore.

A lot of the more niche japanese games have Japanese VO and English subs as an option since that's what a lot of people prefer. NISA and Atlus come to mind with that stuff, as well as anything CyberConnect2 does (Naruto, Asura, Jojo). The Witcher games also have the option for the much better Polish VO with English subs.

Not only for more "exotic" languages like japanese but in genreal. I'm Venezuelan and live in Spain, and though i have no trouble understanding english i know quite some people that do, so it would be great if more games could have translated subtitles. Not only would it mean that we got games that maybe we wouldnt otherwise, but also that people who cant understand the words can still apreciate the performance of the voice actor, and that is a big part of every medium.

In Madrid, for example, there are just a few cinemas that play the movies subtitled instead of dubbed and i refuse to watch, lets say, The Hobbit and not hear Ian Mckellen's voice coming out of Gandalf's mouth, its ridiculous! (I'll stop now because i can rage about that dubbing shit for hours)

Sure, a Kojima game would be too much to translate completely, however, a game like broken age that has a lot of dialog trees and options is fully translated, they even asked for help to us backers as proof readers. Sadly the spanish speaking market for games is just not big enough to warrant that kind of effort on the developer/publisher side... I wonder if there could be a way that this could be crowd sourced, , so it could be added over time by the community with minimum commitment or responsability for the developer...

For the most part, developers want to sell games to the majority of people they can. While there are those people out there who like listening to the original language, it is far more common to find those people who just want in in their own language so they don't have to read subtitles (at least, that's my experience here in the US). It makes less financial sense to sell a game with just a foreign voice track, unless that game is already niche enough that anyone who would buy it wouldn't mind. Not to mention that translating and voicing dozens of language would be prohibitively expensive.

@eladren: This is pretty random butttt when something like Lord of the Rings is dubbed in Spanish do they usually go for a voice actor who would sound very similar to Ian Mckellen delivering those lines or do they try to cast a voice actor who sounds something like what the archetype of that character usually sounds like in Spanish films?

@heyguys: well it varies form movie to movie, they generally do kind of try to keep a tonal likeness, but much of the nuances (not to mention the freaking lip sync) are lost.

In some cases it gets rather absurd, whenever i get in an argument about this with someone that hates subtitles (there are a lot of spanish people that will tell you "i dont go to the movies to read") i give the same example: in spanish jack sparrow doesnt sound drunk, so you have him acting all weird and wobbling around but he sounds like the soberest, more elocuent physics professor you can imagine, you know like a pirate -_-

Alot of games had this feature , like Lightning returns , lost odyssey , naruto , one piece , and most of j-rpgs ..

although i know japanese and i prefer to watch japan made things like anime and movie in it's original language , i prefer playing games in english dub .