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| Peter Triezenberg |
Janet Hsu comments on the difference between localization and translation.
11.28.14 - 5:06 PM
The localization director for the Ace Attorney series, Janet Hsu, has openly discussed the localization process in a series of blog posts on Capcom Unity. They're all worth reading and contain a lot of interesting information, not just for Ace Attorney fans, but for connoisseurs of Japanese games in general. This one in particular discusses the localization process and how it differs from a straight-up translation.
Here's a sample quote from the article, in which she refers to a series that is very near and dear to many RPG fans' hearts and contains numerous elements of Japanese culture...
"'But what about games like the Persona series?!' I can hear some of you already asking. While I think they do a wonderful job of localizing the series, I personally feel that because their primary audience is people who are already more familiar with Japanese school life than the average Westerner, the localization is closer to the translation end of the scale than the full-on localization end. The degree to which they localized the setting and text is probably something the Persona localization team thought long and hard about before they decided on their current direction (because the very first Persona was a very different beast!)."
There are a lot more interesting examples in the article itself, which you can read in its entirety here.
The next Ace Attorney release, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy will be available on December 9th in North America on 3DS.
