Translation is an art, not a science. If you’re multilingual, you already know this. Where I’m from, everybody has to take a second language in school, so I’ve been studying Mandarin Chinese since I was about five. Every language has its own proverbs and sayings that make no sense directly translated into English – you end up going back to the roots of the saying to find its meaning. I learned this very early on while studying Chinese. ‘Careful’ in Chinese translates directly to ‘small heart’. ‘Hello’ is ‘you good’. ‘How much’ is ‘more less’. With proverbs, it’s even more roundabout. To ‘love a house with its crows’ means to love someone regardless of their flaws. Stuff like that.Don’t worry, you’re not getting forced into a Chinese lesson (the way I was several times a week until the age of 18). I’m just trying to explain why I’m always so impressed when I play the Like a Dragon series, formerly known asYakuza. Translation is already hard, especially from Asian languages to English – the grammar is completely different, and so is the slang. Despite these difficulties, I find what makes the Like a Dragon games so hilarious and compelling is the writing. But that’s not because it’s perfectly translated – it’s more because of the localisation required to make it work in the first place.Related:No Open World, No Matter How Big, Can Compare To Yakuza’sLocalisation is very different from translation because it aims not just to make another language comprehensible, but to give players the same experience regardless of what language they’re playing in. It’s not just about meaning, but tone and intent. Yakuza pulls this off with flair – its writing is snappy, and also, somehow even funnier because of the mismatch between its characters and the slang they use. The games are authentic to the Japanese experience, but seeing Majima say he’s going to “get in your shit”, Kazuma Kiryu say “I peacocked your mom” and anybody say “holy shit” makes me lose my mind. The distance between the characters and what they say is an integral part of the humour of the English-subtitled versions.
I’ve written a lot about how much and why I love the Yakuza games. For one, they’recampy, and that’s contributed to by their dialogue – Americanisms in the mouth of a Japanese gangster sound so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh in delight. Another reason isthe size of its open worlds, specifically that they’re small, and dense. But my favourite thing is its characters, and how despite having their voices in a foreign language, their personalities still come through so clearly. I particularly loved Scott Strichart’s Twitter thread about accents in dubs – Strichart is the Localization Producer at Sega, and you can tell from this thread alone that the localisation was a labour of love.
The Game Awards doesn’t have a category for Best Localisation, but if it did, I know who I’d want to win. It’s a powerful skill, translating while preserving meaning – they have whole master’s programs teaching it. It should be more recognised as the art it is, and its importance in bringing incredible games to wider international audiences. Without it, we don’t get to play as gangsters singing karaoke, and that would be a huge loss.
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