About Castlevania: Symphony of the Night translation
I've been (re)playing Castlevania recently, to relax a bit with familiar games (I love the 2D games post-Symphony of the Night). Over the weekend, I was also watching some videos about Tokimeki Memorial (someday I'll learn Japanese just to play this game). To my surprise, the Tokimeki Memorial writer was Koji Igarashi, who afterward moved to the Castlevania series (working on SotN) and, later, became head of the Castlevania franchise before quitting Konami. This reminded me of the "bad localization" people always complain about in the original SotN release, so I decided to look around the internet and see how people are feeling about it nowadays.
Well, I'm happy to see that people's opinions have become milder and/or positive over time.
For those who don't know the story, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had a rushed localization when Konami decided, suddenly, that the game would also be released for international markets. While I don't think it was ever bad (typos and such notwithstanding), many people complained it was too "goofy" for a "serious" game, with some lines turning into memes over time. I played the re-released version, with a new localization and voice acting, many years ago and, really, still prefer the original 1997 release. It might be nostalgia speaking, I don't know, but I enjoy it more - not that the newer translation is bad, it's just different. Castlevania was always a mish-mash of Gothic and horror references packed in an action-platforming format and, while I can't say what tone Koji Igarashi was going for in the Japanese script, the resulting translation and voice acting don't seem out of place (at least for someone who only played it in English).
Anyway, one of the articles I read was this one by Polygon, and I chuckled a bit seeing that some of the issues the translator had to deal with 30 years ago still happen to this day, despite how much the game localization field has evolved. I, too, once worked on a project where I sent in some questions, but it was August and the team was on holiday. Some issues are just structural, I guess. But hey, at least I got the answers back, it just took longer than expected.
But I digress. Here's the article. It might be an interesting read for people getting into the field.