Giant Bomb Presents: Danganronpa Was Translated Before It Was Translated

Thinking of buying this game.

This will be interesting.

I got into this game after watching someone stream the fan translated PSP version. Great game!

Cool stuff. I first heard of this game by way of my friend reading the Oren Ronen translation.

@morningstar: You should. It's pretty interesting. I'm really looking forward to the second part.

Ha! This is a cool interview Patrick. I know a few people who will be totally into hearing this. I'm gonna send it to em'. Thanks.

Neat, Oren's LP was the reason I bought the game in the first place.

That third guy from the left looks like Kuwabara.

That's because Kuwabara looks like a generic anime character trope.

The Danganronpa and Danganronpa 2 LPs have justified my SA registration.

Isn't that how fan translations work? I think it worked that way for La Pucelle: Tactics and, to a lesser extent, quite a few XSEED-published stuff.

Really good interview and discussion. His point about satire often being lost between cultures is something I've often thought about regarding fiction.

Danganronpa's great. If you like Phoenix Wright, 999, or Persona, then you'll like.

And yeah, there's a fan translation cuz the official translation wasen't announced (the game came out in Japan in like 2007) until after he completed it.

Also why's GB hosting dis podcast? who's dis guy?

It's one of Patrick's interview dumptrucks.

I love him challenging you a bit, Patrick. That was quite interesting. I wish you had a bit more back and forth like that on such subjects.

Great little interview. Thanks for this! :)

This was a very interesting listen! I had never heard of Oren Ronen's translation before this interview but I did play the fan patch by Zetsubou that was mentioned, which is how I first experienced the series. I've also been meaning to steal an iPhone to play through Banshee's Last Cry and Ronen's recommendation just makes me more excited to check it out. Really great episode, I hope to see more like it.

Kinda funny how he mentioned the "repeating lines of dialogue" being frequent in Japanese writing; that seems to be a very common complaint that I hear from a lot of localizers.

I really wonder why that is, I can think of way too many JP games that need to be severely edited down in that respect.

I really enjoyed the anime.

@draxyle:

The strange thing is I can't really remember ever coming across that, and I play quite a few games in the original Japanese. Then again, I'm mostly playing old school stuff where the translations match about 1:1; maybe things have changed for more recent stuff.

Did a full audible groan when he mentioned a "full localization" for that one game. Changing the names of characters and pretending something takes place in a location it doesn't is garbage.

I wouldn't call it garbage, but yeah, I'm not very fond of it either.

I wonder if it's just something that's not noticeable in the language, but when it comes to translation, it's just a lot more prominent.

As for Dangaronpa, I just recently beat it, and I liked it, though there were a lot of things that annoyed the shit out of me. I hated how many little things were left unexplained, and the biggest plot point at the end is just quickly glanced over for the sake of drama. It took me COMPLETELY out of it due to just how unbelievable it was. I know it's an anime game, but even I have my limits.

Are you speaking from experience, or is this second-hand?

(Although now that I think about it, some of the grammar is repetitive in a way that makes sense in Japanese, but not in translation. Just the use of なる, really.)

@video_game_king:

No experience, it was just a suggestion for why it could be the case.

welcome to the world of VN translation, and fansub.

Me too.

Metal Gear Solid does it a lot. Snake would often repeat the last thing that everyone said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9XOSzVb0O0

I believe Banshee's Last Cry was also covered by GameCenter CX if you feel like watching Arino fumble through it.

I'm glad I listened to this. A bit of talk back for Patrick.

Interesting interview, cool to hear from this guy. I learned some things I had no idea about. Want to check out the let's play to get some more info on the cultural notes/the satire.

That's a bit harsh, I thought it worked perfectly well for Phoenix Wright until the rural japanese village showed up. At this point it's just funny whenever a guy with a huge kanji on his chest or a noodle wagon appear.

No, it's because that "third guy from the left" looks like a genereic anime character trope, which looks like Kuwabara.

@budwyzer: Yea, hes a basic delinquent trope, big pompadour and brash talk. Its a jojos Ref too, his motorcycle gang was called "Crazy Diamond", which of course is Delinquent Pompadour Josukes stand name

Interesting interview, especially after playing this game. Super duper craaaazy about Oren not being an English or Japanese speaker natively. It makes what he did seem super impressive, even if according to him, his first draft wasn't so hot.

It's cool that we are getting a localized version of the sequel.

It's been explained to me as a cultural drama thing that doesn't translate, in the same vein as how in particularly emotional spots they'll just scream each other's names (ie: "ICHIGOOOOOO!" "KENJIIIIII!" ICHIGOOOOOOOO!"). Just a cultural difference that has no real equivalent here in the West, kind of like how it is very possible to misread someone's name in a lot of Eastern languages, whereas here it's basically impossible to get a different name from the same set of images. Augustus is Augustus, and always will be. Not necessarily the case with a Japanese or Korean or Chinese(?) character set, afaik.

Super fan defends "fan service." That's a surprise.