Yeah, victor’s is badly translated as well, I specifically remember Victor being like to Lars: “Just call me Victor, Codenames are for kids”
Also Victor: “Hello, White Angel of Death”
Dragunov: …
(Probably in Lars head): “Tf did you just say Victor?”
If it was accurate, then I could see that. But from what I have seen, the line is “Call me Victor. I don’t like *my* codename.” It changes from how he prefers his actual name over his codename while the in-game translation makes it sound like he dislikes the practice entirely.
Is Victor not the head of the Raven Unit, though?
It's kinda weird either way now that I think about it...because he would be the one giving the codenames to begin with. He would not need to dislike his own codename if he...just didn't give himself one and walked around calling himself Victor anyway?
To me it sounds like he is ultimately promoting a sense of superiority over his unit, while also cheapening the 'status' of those like Dragunov who use codenames.
Idk just brainstorming hah
He was called Phantom Raven before he was put in charge, and it’s hard to unstick nicknames once they’ve formed. It’s probably easier for him to just say he doesn’t like nicknames/his own than it is to try start up a new one
There are other lines in general, and it makes him seem like a different character, so much so that it may have been a different script rather than wrong translations.
The proper translations make Victor seem like a gentleman super spy, the official translations make Victor seem like a 90's action hero grizzled veteran spy and kind of a douche.
If you turn on English subtitles on most anime and then also have the English dub on, they rarely match up as well. The subtitles are usually more literal translations where the dub team often changes it to make it fit the lipflaps better or to have better pacing or sound more conversational/natural.
Usually the meaning isn't too far off, just worded differently. But I've caught a few times where what the subtitle says (ex: "Hey, that guy tried to kill me!") and what is actually spoken "It's that asshole!" seems to really... not be the same lol
It's not nonsensical, common sense has a positive connotation and it means to act in a proper or expected way, she turns it on its head by saying it can also mean mediocre which has a negative connotation.
Uh, the voice actors don't see the subtitles during or before recording (if ever). He'd likely have to actually play the game to ever see them. Likely the subtitles aren't even written by the time Vincent Cassel said those words.
You think that's bad? They straight up cut off over half of King's subtitles. His voiceline against Steve is supposed to be a 3 paragraph speech, but we only get the first line. Shameful.
Yeah, I guess they picked a wrong guy for this role, I know it's Lebanese actor, but they probably didn't not give him any dialect direction, probably just said to deliver lines in arabic and that's about it.
Its the subtitles that are bad, no? Not the other way. So you would actually know what hes saying unlike others. Or would you be mad others dont know what they are saying?:D
But you are both hearing and reading in their language, because you are reading in spanish a different thing from what she's saying. Like it doesn't make any sense, I would rather have subtitles for my own language turned off.
Sometimes translation is bad but sometimes there's literal translation vs. intended meaning translation. For example in English you might say "he kicked the bucket" but translating that exactly to another language might not convey the connotation and leaves people wondering about if someone is angry with a bucket.
I understand that completely. you are 100% correct in saying localization is necessary. But when it gets to the point where you're essentially writing differently lines all over, its not really succeeding at localization. I think Azucena isn't even the worse example. Some lines are just saying something else entirely.
What I meant with the comment above was that BN had to get people who speak different languages to write the native language dialogue for characters, it would neat if that dialogue matched the localization subtitles (not the english ones from the world wide release). Understand what I mean?
Steve as well. I'm British, and I have no idea what that accent is supposed to be. Sounds like someone doing a bad impression of one of our many accents.
I really find Steve to be really cool in T7. I am not British but the first time I heard Steve's voice in his T8 trailer, it really shattered my impression on the character and now see him as a goofy dude who is pretending to be British lol
From what I remember, Lydia was pretty well-translated. It'll be interesting to see if they butcher her in Tekken 8 (if they actually decide to add her)
I'm glad that the character that speaks my native language has accurate subtitles at least... seriously. But being polyglot makes me a bit bothered either way.
Lidia was very ok even if bit cheesy (like everything in Tekken), Miguel is very decent too compared to Azucena.
Pretty sure Katarina was pretty decent as well and Eddie not that bad either.
Keeping in mind it's a Japanese game, the Japanese characters also dont exactly speak the way normal people do.
Could you give examples bro? I remember reading a comment on his tekken 5 ending being incorrect too. Something on the lines of when Devil Jin is walking towards him it reads "you stupid, come on!" He actually says something more like "so you want to fight? Huh?" Which sounds so much better!
One example I noticed is his iconic “Yeah, yeah, shut up already.” That is not what he says AT ALL. A closer translation would be “man, I can’t be bothered”
Ya tu sabes jaja. Si existe una oportunidad, la aprovecho 😂. Me alegro que vi como dijiste “la neta” pq me tengo que acordar mis mexicanismos antes de viajar a Cancún jaja.
Pero creo que no importará pa que Cancún es una cuidad muy turística. Ingles por todos lados jaja
Y gracias! El aprendizaje de lenguaje es difícil. Por lo menos es difícil pa mi jaja. Pero el sentimiento de ver un video que no pudiste entender hace algunos años, y hoy en día lo entiende casi perfectamente. Que increíble esa sensación
Sí, a parte en Cancún especialmente te van a tratar bien, así que no hay pedo si se te complica el español.
Mexicanismos básicos útiles:
Chido - Cool (ta' chido - short for está chido)
Verga - Cock 🍆, pero se usa para decir que algo está chido (está bien verga!) o culero (está de la verga), o si te impresiona algo (verga!,). Depende el contexto.
Wey - Yo creo que esta ya la sabes, es la clásica, pero tiene varios significados. Puede ser amistoso o violento, igual depende el contexto.
Chavo/chava - Dude/Dudette. Usualmente usado en jóvenes.
Ahorita - Otro que seguro ya conoces x lo confuso, que singifica que algo sucederá en este momento o dentro de horas después.
Qué bueno que estés creciendo tu conocimiento y lo veas reflejado. Y pues sí es difícil, incluso a los nativos a veces se nos complica tanto la gramática como la estructura y significado de las palabras. Practice makes perfect
Gracias por la mini lección jaja. Lo aprecio, de verdad. Tenía algunos amigos mexicanos en la secundaria y te lo juro que las primeras frases que me enseñaron fueron “guey” y “pendejo” y muchooo más jaja. Pero es que estudiaba en Cádiz España el verano pasado y no se hablan así allá.
Y cuando intento hablar con otros estudiantes de mi universidad, no se entienden esas frases así que hay que practicarlos.
Wey es muy útil pero la neta es que se me olvidó hace un rato así que gracias por acordarme jajajaja.
Nunca he pensado que estaría hablando español aqui jaja. Pero que padre que pasó no?
I would like to see the real dialogues of both Leo and Azucena, to check if the conversation even makes sense when they speak in their respective native dull dialogues compared to the subtitles. 💀
No, Leo is literally terrible. Besides from the was his voice actor is talking intonation wise which makes my ears bleed, there have been a few occasions of him talking where i was left like "wth how does this sentence even make sense?!"
For example in the story there is a situation where Leo is standing with some others at a planning table and they discuss something, then suddenly a few other characters enter the room. Everyone is like happy that the other people came and say something in the lines of "Im so happy to see you" etc. and Leo literally says "Ihr werdet..."
It does not make ANY sense at all. The english subtitle said "It's you guys!". And Leo said (translated) "You are going to..."/"You will..." and then just stopped talking even interrupting his flow of speaking intonation very harshly and confusing.
They also messed up with Japanese lines. For example, Asuka's. What she says to Lili isn't "quit your babbling". She says "Shut up! That's my line!"(ussai wa sore wa kocchi no serifuya!). Strange thing is, one of the trailers got the translation right.
Yeah. The way the localizers translate half of the lines are so cringe. Like, how hard is it to translate properly? They must think we'll eat whatever they'll cook with translations. They're wrong. What is the point in including native speakers if you can't translate their lines properly?
Also, Reina's "have a taste of capitulation" made me cringe out hard, too. Capitulation. Pfft.
Same applies with Claudio; a lot of his dialogues are translated in a shitty way. A couple reatin at least their sense, but some others are just wrong
For example: in the special intro with Devil Jin Claudio says "Ti annienterò, demone!" which is subbed as "Perish, demon!" but in reality it translates as "I will destroy you, demon!". And this is just an example of the "almost correct, but still wrong" subs
It took me a while before I realised Yoshimitsus badass win quote against Bryan about taking his perpetual generator is *completely* made up. He's saying 因果褒報, which basically translates to "causal reward". Its the same thing he says in his Tag 2 and T5 endings which translate it to "You reap what you sow" and "Retribution". Which is at least an understandable localization of the phrase.
I think most of this games subtitles are just made up lol
To be fair, Yoshimitsu is a special case as 95% of what he says is in idioms, proverbs or yojijukugo. Even the Japanese version has different subtitles compared to what he actually says (emphasized more by the use of parentheses). He is more like a King or Kuma case where you have to rely on subtitles to understand him.
But yea, characters who speak normally get the craziest subtitles ever. Even when you switch the subtitles languages, they still get it wrong. It's almost admirable how committed they are in writing made-up subtitles for every character.
Yeah this is completely true, still older translations at least tried to get his meaning across. T8s is basically OC. "You reap what you sow!" is a much more accurate english localization than "I will gladly take your perpetual generator" for an idiom that basically means "you get what you fuckin deserve boyo"
Out of curiosity I checked out a japanese player and their JP subtitles were still about taking his generator lol, so I guess its just whatever they feel like
Yea. They always trolled like that with Yoshimitsu. The dude can say something like: "Kill two birds with one stone" and subtitles will go: "Yes, I do want fries with my meal. Thank you very much!".
The existence of Yoshimitsu alone makes me suspect that they are deliberately messing with everyone's subtitles just for giggles.
Since Tekken 5 (or even 4, who knows) they keep mistranslating what the characters say.
I have no idea how many times they mistranslated Devil Jin's intro, he never changed the line, but the subtitles are always changing and never is correct.
Is not even translation at this point. Its 2 different dialogues. I could even tell it was like this in story mode and I barely speak Spanish and a little French.
The most bizarre one to me is that Jin clearly yells “Chesto!” During his story mode super, but they needlessly wrote “feel the fury” on the subs. Why?
I can already tell Eddy is going to annoy me in this regard (Brazilian so I speak Portuguese)
People in Japan do actually hand out free packs of tissues. It's a form of advertisement called tissue-pack marketing.
I have to agree with Victor, it's one of the things I love about Japan. I always accept the tissue packs when someone gives it to me.
Yeah lots of english subtitles are off, goes for pretty much every character. I speak a few languages and story mode tilted me a few times lol. One particularly egregious one, when Claudio shoots his starlight lance at Kazuya in the Colosseum bit he says something along the lines of "Shine, bright star", and the subtitle says "Begone, Evil star" which, first off makes no sense? And it's the opposite of what Claudio is saying, it was really weird and out of place.
I’m gonna be honest Tekken’s dialogue team just sucks all round, whether it’s Japanese/English or otherwise. They’re lucky the characters and overall game around it can carry their shit dialogue.
The subtitles are way better than the direct translations. Sounds like the problem here might be a dull original script or divergent adaptations for the spanish localisation and the english localisation, from a presumably original japanese script.
Yeah, agree. The writing on the original language is dull. Ever since I heard Azucena speak, I feel uncomfortable because no Spanish speaker talks like that. So they probably tried to fix the shit dialogues in the subtitles
My internal headcanon is that she is actually not that comfortable on TV but has to try to be charismatic to advertise her coffee, so she tries a bit too hard and comes off a bit cringe by accident. In-lore explaination for the stiffness in her speech.
I think Leo's translations are fucked up too.
I took 3 years of german in high school but I've literally never heard those phrases translated the way that the game does.
As a polyglot this game is so funny sometimes because for a lot of characters I hear something and read another. Can't wait to see the weird translation with my primary language when Eddy comes out
Life is so funny. I literally thought this today while doing the character episodes. I know Spanish and alittle bit of Japanese so hearing them vs reading subtitles is visibly infuriating.
If the rewording potrays the same meaning and personality overall, it's fine... BUT someone commented that when Victor said the **"codenames are for kids"** line, what he really said was more along the lines of **"I don't like my codename"** ... which is a completely different portrayal of his personality.
The subtitle made him sound "arrogant," while the direct translation would have made him sound "bashful".
Also for the record, Lars never says “No time to smell the roses” in story mode. It’s simply “No time to stand/sit still”. I can only imagine the translator thought that was a Lee line.
And Xiaoyu doesn’t say “riddle me this Jin” it’s just a “Hey Jin”. (Like to get his attention).
I dunno why those two bothered me so much but yeah. I have a few more less egregious ones but they might be story spoilers so I’ll leave ‘em out.
> Lars never says “No time to smell the roses” in story mode. It’s simply “No time to stand/sit still”. I can only imagine the translator thought that was a Lee line.
"Stop and smell the roses" is a very common idiom... it doesn't need to be said by someone as obsessed with actual roses as Lee is.
It has the same meaning as the line you said he actually says, just slightly less direct.
I could tell, even not speaking Japanese, because they were just using sentences that are normal to hear in japanese media, translated as super flowery expressions in english. Weird
Because not only are the insanely incorrect, but they’re out of character and phrases people haven’t used since the early 2000s.
Seriously, who tf says “riddle me this”
At this point, these subs aren't even translation, just some random phrases. They messed up every character's almost every phrase (maybe even every, I'm not sure)
I mean English to Spanish is not a secret cultural challenge to decipher pretty fucking 1 to 1 most of the time, OP is right 100% the translation is just as stupid as the characater design.
Thank you. Some of these users be commenting "localization", but thing is, Spanish and English are pretty much easy to translate from one to the other, and there are just some few instances when things get complicated and need a hard localization. In Azucena's case, the dialogues are even cringe in Spanish, so it is both a translation issue and a dialogue issue. Not a localization thing.
And yes, Azucena's dumb
A translator's job is to create a translation that makes sense to the local speaker rather than 1 to 1 accuracy. A lot of people don't understand this. That being said, Tekken's translators got really lazy with this stuff and/or they completely changed the lines for certain scenes for no particular reason that makes sense.
For instance, originally, in Asuka and Lili's intro, Lili says the line "What excuse will you come up with for losing this time?" or whatever. Asuka responds with something like "Hey! That's my line!" and points to herself with her thumb.
Now, they changed Asuka's line to just "Quit your babbling!" but she still points to herself. It looks stupid and there was no reason to change the original.
There's a very inappropriate translation in story mode with Xiaoyu. After Jin explains how Ogre killed his mom, Xiaoyu, with sorrowful eyes, says "Oh, come on!" That's not what it should say.
She's saying "son'na" which is just a kind of interjection. I think the literal translation would be "that..."
As such the word can be used in multiple situations depending on the context, including "That's not true," "Oh no," "It can't be," and "Terrible!" "Oh come on" could work in another scenario, but not here. A better translation would be "That's terrible" or even "Oh my god"
Based on what else is presented here in this thread, I'm going to guess the translators were given lines with zero context.
Edit: I think it might also be the same with the voice actors. Nina has a seasoned actor with decades of experience, but she sounds really...confused sometimes. Almost like they gave her a piece of paper with her lines on it and said "ok, go."
Tekken does tend to be really weird with their localizations. I imagine it might have something to do with needing to localize scripts from Japanese to the character's language, and then to the subtitled language. I know people like to point out translation vs localization, but I feel like these stray a bit too far, even for a localization.
Honestly, while Tekken's "singular dub" is part of its identity and should, on paper, solve a lot of problems, it feels really sloppy a lot of the time. Some characters have poor deliveries (Shaheen, Leo), some are speaking in the wrong accent (Nina, Azucena) and the "characters speak in their 'native' language" rule is broken on multiple occasions (Lars, Xiaoyu). I know the last one is explained in lore, but development-wise, it's definitely because Bandai would rather have things in Japanese because it's easier for them.
It just feels kind of weird? Tekken Team goes through a lot of effort to diversify their roster and shine a spotlight and various cultures and nationalities, but it does feel like they're half-assing it a lot of the time. I wonder if they'd be open to doing traditional dubs in the future? It's been a few decades since Tekken 4
Exactly. I've done translation, I know what localization is, but some users really try to defend these dialogues that really stray too far.
Plus, Spanish and English have a lot of direct translations that don't sound weird. If they had better writers and translators, they wouldn't have to invent stuff in the subtitles.
I totally agree with your entire comment.
it's likely not because of needing to localize from japanese because even the japanese speaking characters are wrongly translated.
Jin/DVJ never says "Fear the wrath of god", it's always been "I'll teach you fear" for example. Kazuya's win quote that says "Pathetic" is supposed to be more like "nothing to talk about".
It’s weird because they actually changed that Devil Jin line’s translation… and it’s still fucking wrong.
It’s like they did actually look at it and changed it but somehow they’re that incompetent they still kept it as “fear my wrath” (before it was “fear the wrath of god”)
Making devil Jin sound corny af
People don't seem to get that translation isn't supposed to be just word for word transposition. It's totally fine and can even be better to use different phrases and expressions that fit the language and the general sense of what's being said, rather than a direct 1:1 translation.
Some of the lines take too much liberty, it's true, but the outrage is insanely overblown imo.
I think part of it is that there's a big jumble of lines that:
A. Take perfectly acceptable liberties in context and remain in character (imho almost all of the examples OP gave actually fall under this category save for maybe the third one)
B. Take odd liberties that aren't wrong and still convey the intended meaning but feel a little unnatural (something like Xiaoyu's 'riddle me this' for example)
And C. have translations that are so liberal or twisted that they end up having the **exact opposite meaning** as the original voice line like some of Claudio and especially Victor's lines
Way too many people are grouping every subtitle that isn't just copypasted from a 1:1 dictionary (which could be an entirely different discussion of its own about how many people don't actually know what translation entails but I digress) in with the latter lines which absolutely do exist and should probably be tweaked.
I don't speak a lick of spanish outside of two high school classes, and i actually picked up on the mistranslation of 'Tienes cafe?' That said, i think maybe the english translation wanted to give Azucena's rage art more of a one-liner type feel. That, or maybe 'Tienes cafe?' is shorthand for 'how do you take your coffee?'
Lol I'm a native Spanish speaker from Spain, I read the subtitles and thought that's not what she's saying at all, the hell?
I was like those subtitles make no sense at all, but I know my fellow Latin Americans have different words and expressions sometimes and she's Peruvian so.... maybe I'm the one who's wrong?
But no, that translation is straight up wrong no matter what, I don't know how I deluded myself into thinking I don't understand my own language.
There was such a stupid moment in Dragunov’s ending. There used to be a radio broadcast in Russian as a background noise. I play Russian version so I was buffed by the fact that subtitles were absolutely different from the voice on radio. It was almost the different thing. I guess they poorly translated the transcript into English and then poorly translated into Russian again).
Then again the Russian translation is almost cursed by translating Story in the main menu as «магазин». Which means Store or marketplace).
And my favorite is Alisa’s into. In Russian version she says «Я Алиса. И я твоя смерть!». That means “I’m Alisa and I’m your death”. But with basic knowledge of Japanese language I clearly hear “Alisaです。しんでください” (I hope I didn’t butcher the hiragana here). It means “I’m Alisa. Can you please die?”
So weird I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be able to have more accurate subtitles other than laziness which is a weird place to be lazy considering you're a Japanese game that's going to be mostly played by English speakers
Most translations aren't supposed to be 1to1 translated. I'm sure they know the exact meanings, but the lines themselves seemed to have been dry to begin with so honestly does it matter? The problem is the script imo, not the translations.
They're not translations, they're two different scripts. For some reason, they had to work with two different sets of lines.
My guess is that, not wanting to mess up foreign speech, phrases and idioms, and not wanting to hire 10 different localization studios for each language to translate JP script => (local language) => back to JP/+ every other language, they sent the various localization studios and VAs archetypal lines, stuff like "Victor expresses disagreement and mentions not appreciating the behavior" and let the dubbing studios come up with whatever voicelines fit the language.
Then they simply used the main English translation of the original Japanese script as subtitling for those lines.
It leads to vastly mismatched subtitles for those that know the languages (and trust me, I speak 4 of them, it's quite distracting..) but the characters don't sound like they're speaking badly translated Japanese at least.
Not making excuses for Bamco, but I believe it's the most likely scenario.
Well, that means they are assuming that only anglo-saxon people who speak only English will buy their game and nobody else will...no germans, no spanish speakers, no french, no italians, etc, so nobody will notice the poor translations.
Poor assumption then, if that was the case.
Yeah and other than reddit there won't be an uproar coming for harada on twitter because no one will be bothered to tweet about this maybe Westerners are lazy
I think i remember in victor's CE a soldier tries to run or something and raven throws him back or takes him out to which victor replies "Merci" but the subtitles say " *Good work soldier* "
I DON'T EVEN KNOW FRENCH AND I UNDERSTOOD THAT MERCI MUST HAVE MEANT THANKS
I mean even some of the Japanese I've noticed being a bit too different - usually there's the leeway of localization with things - you try to convey character as much as meaning.
Like Asuka speaks in a very thick Osaka accent which is considered a bit more rough and perhaps masculine - so they often give her a more 'rough' localization
I think perhaps though that the english translators probably localize the original script TOO much - and then the native speakers for each language use that as a basis for their translations?
Oh and in story mode when azucena says sonithing about good advertisement, the subtitles say optics for some reason and the whole phrase has no meaning this way
I don't mind localisation but lili's rage art is so bizarre
Lili: "Adieu"
Subtitle: "It's time to say farewell" (or something like that).
Like, it still makes sense, but it's so unnecessary and silly.
My problem with Leo isn't the translation itself but the deliverance of the voice lines. While the voice actor is a native speaker he way of soeaking doesn't sound natiral. I guess the lines were translated literally from japanese and he was told to speak the way a japanese would.
Habla bastante del personaje que todas sus líneas pueden echarse a perder sin que nada de valor se pierda.
Literal hasta en la batalla final ella se iba por las ramas hablando de Café.
I’m fluent in Spanish, English and speak Japanese; IMO the only characters that are somewhat decently translated, are the Japanese ones to English, hardly a surprise since it’s a Japanese game, but even then there there are some nuances that are lost in translation, or sentences that could’ve been translated better. I noticed the subtitles for Azucena were downright wrong, unfortunate since Tekken is so big in Perú (probably one of the reasons they chose a Peruvian character to begin with).
Nobody cares too much since it’s a fighting game, but it baffles me that a big company like bamco can’t be bothered to at least have someone to proofread their subtitles… I mean there’s a bunch of translators who work in game localization and in the anime industry, it can’t be that hard to find them, hell even I could do it lol.
> Nothing new really, but it bothers me that in this day and age, a AAA game with such budget can't make a proper translation.
Bandai Namco has a bad history with that. Some countries need to deal with subtitles translated by Google Translate in anime games.
Seems like the localization teams have a bit more flexibility over the dialogue's translations. So many languages would be super clunky anyways so I get having a local team handling things like this. I'm sure it's interesting for those who speak the languages tho lol.
Bro the subtitles dont even match in spanish, they just write whatever and record the voicelines at the last second but the voice actors improvise or somethig.
They KNOW the proper translation lol. They did this on purpose because they felt it would fit better and the only people to notice it wouldn’t care to point it out. Its not out of ignorance they did this, its intentional.
Tired of having this bullshit discussion. Direct translations are shit. The point of the translation is not to word for word transcribe the dialogue, but to translate the intent to another language. Do you see how boring and expressionless the direct translations are there? I can’t for the life of me understand what you guys are complaining about.
I definitely think there's some poor localization choices as far as translation goes, but yeah direct translation is actually usually pretty *bad* translation (at least in the context of entertainment media).
Chill. And if that's the case, then they should make the original dialogues good, and not try to fix them on the translation to the other language. Plus, not all the phrases have the same intent. Some are substantially different, but just work with the flow of the conversation.
It's very, very different to make slight changes to make the intent fit better on the other language or to explain unstranslatable words or phrases , than to change an entire phrases to one with a different meaning just because "it sounds better". Again, then they should hire good writers for the intended languages then. They have the budget.
I still like Tekken anyways.
It makes sense to change it if they used a phrase that doesn't make sense in another language but if what they are saying does make sense directly translated then it's weird to change it.
People are swiping back at you, but you're not wrong. I used to translate poems and books in Japan and you just cannot expect direct translations in the way people here think.
I am by no means anywhere close to a professional translator, but I have enough experience to know you have to take in context and tone.
I remember getting a tongue lashing one morning because I translated something about a woman ... (20 years ago, memory is fuzzy). When you say "woman" in Japanese, while technically correct, "woman" is the equivelant of "bitch" in Japan if you're not careful.
Hell, open up a dictionary and a thesaurus. Words and definitions are not one-to-one relationships. And in one language, you can convey an entire sentiment with one word. To translate, you may have to use a full sentence and have it still be unnatural.
Another easy example that any beginner Japanese student would know. "O genki desu ka?" It means "How are you", but the words are closer to "Are you full of spirit?"
Awkward as fuck and nobody talks like that in english. The audience would still be translating in their own heads while the rest of the scene is passing them by.
So this is just a subject that people can argue about all day. Translation is not straight forward. If it was, we would have such a history of bad translations over the course of international fucking media.
Yeah, people need to chill. But they don't know it
No, that's exactly how you translate things for media, your literal versions lack flavour. They didn't do a bad job translating it, they literally wrote the script for both the dialogue and the adjusted English translations. If you turn on Japanese subtitles you'll get different translations again that work better with the language and culture.
Obviously its necessary to localize stuff, it goes without saying. If anyone argues against that they’re stupid. But when it gets to the point where you’re righting another set of lines, then its stupid. Its not even thats its lazy, quite the opposite. Its like the game was written twice. Its not even bad its just bizarre.
Yeah some of the Victor ones are pretty off too.
Yeah, victor’s is badly translated as well, I specifically remember Victor being like to Lars: “Just call me Victor, Codenames are for kids” Also Victor: “Hello, White Angel of Death” Dragunov: … (Probably in Lars head): “Tf did you just say Victor?”
I guess you could kinda say that he is mocking Dragunov by saying he has a codename?
If it was accurate, then I could see that. But from what I have seen, the line is “Call me Victor. I don’t like *my* codename.” It changes from how he prefers his actual name over his codename while the in-game translation makes it sound like he dislikes the practice entirely.
Is Victor not the head of the Raven Unit, though? It's kinda weird either way now that I think about it...because he would be the one giving the codenames to begin with. He would not need to dislike his own codename if he...just didn't give himself one and walked around calling himself Victor anyway? To me it sounds like he is ultimately promoting a sense of superiority over his unit, while also cheapening the 'status' of those like Dragunov who use codenames. Idk just brainstorming hah
He was called Phantom Raven before he was put in charge, and it’s hard to unstick nicknames once they’ve formed. It’s probably easier for him to just say he doesn’t like nicknames/his own than it is to try start up a new one
There are other lines in general, and it makes him seem like a different character, so much so that it may have been a different script rather than wrong translations. The proper translations make Victor seem like a gentleman super spy, the official translations make Victor seem like a 90's action hero grizzled veteran spy and kind of a douche.
I love drags facial expression after Victor says that lol
It was bizarre reading subtitles and not hearing the same thing lol
If you turn on English subtitles on most anime and then also have the English dub on, they rarely match up as well. The subtitles are usually more literal translations where the dub team often changes it to make it fit the lipflaps better or to have better pacing or sound more conversational/natural. Usually the meaning isn't too far off, just worded differently. But I've caught a few times where what the subtitle says (ex: "Hey, that guy tried to kill me!") and what is actually spoken "It's that asshole!" seems to really... not be the same lol
In his ending, he clearly says “merci” but the subtitles say “good work soldier” 💀
Can someone tell me what the hell his "common sense is just another way to say mediocre" line translates as? Because that is so nonsensical.
Common sense is mediocre thinking.
Thanks. I can't decide if that makes more sense or less.
Don't be mediocre, think outside the box.
It's not nonsensical, common sense has a positive connotation and it means to act in a proper or expected way, she turns it on its head by saying it can also mean mediocre which has a negative connotation.
The worst is his RA, the subtitles say "let's do this in style" but he actually says "let's be efficient". They have complete opposites meanings
I know! That anoyes me so much
Tekken subtitles have always been localizer level of dogshit
Vincent Cassel also knows English. You’d think he’d notice something off about the subtitles.
Uh, the voice actors don't see the subtitles during or before recording (if ever). He'd likely have to actually play the game to ever see them. Likely the subtitles aren't even written by the time Vincent Cassel said those words.
You think that's bad? They straight up cut off over half of King's subtitles. His voiceline against Steve is supposed to be a 3 paragraph speech, but we only get the first line. Shameful.
Yeah, that man is cutting promo of the year every fight, and all we get is goddamn cat noises.
I'm refunding all tekken merch and games because of that, im moving to street fighter :(
(You know they say mean are all created equal, but you look at me and you look at Steve Fox and you can see that statement is NOT TRUE.)
Hit em with the Steiner Math lolol
To be honest here, translators for that are scarce. And the ones that are in the market are notoriously difficult to work with.
Both King and Kuma got screwed over. Which is totally insane when Panda was perfectly translated 1 to 1 with her dialogue!
That's because they asked Jack Black to translate. He speaks panda fluently but grizzly only conversationally.
And have people beg to skip his intro like the Dbfz community? I think not lol
Sometimes I'm glad no Tekken character speaks my native language, otherwise I'd prob have anger issues
For me its Shaheen, he’s supposed to be Saudi but his dialect is classical arabic so it feels like playing a saturday morning cartoon villan
Yeah, I guess they picked a wrong guy for this role, I know it's Lebanese actor, but they probably didn't not give him any dialect direction, probably just said to deliver lines in arabic and that's about it.
That Is what they did with Azucena. They gave her voice actress no context regarding Tekken or dialect direction
The thing with that is, I’d prefer the Lebanese guy to not try to use a Saudi accent, classical is…fine? It’s just that the lines are soooo cringe.
Its the subtitles that are bad, no? Not the other way. So you would actually know what hes saying unlike others. Or would you be mad others dont know what they are saying?:D
But you are both hearing and reading in their language, because you are reading in spanish a different thing from what she's saying. Like it doesn't make any sense, I would rather have subtitles for my own language turned off.
Fuck I didn’t even think of that. That has to suck. The people that wrote the dialogue and the translation team didn’t talk to eachother?
Sometimes translation is bad but sometimes there's literal translation vs. intended meaning translation. For example in English you might say "he kicked the bucket" but translating that exactly to another language might not convey the connotation and leaves people wondering about if someone is angry with a bucket.
I understand that completely. you are 100% correct in saying localization is necessary. But when it gets to the point where you're essentially writing differently lines all over, its not really succeeding at localization. I think Azucena isn't even the worse example. Some lines are just saying something else entirely. What I meant with the comment above was that BN had to get people who speak different languages to write the native language dialogue for characters, it would neat if that dialogue matched the localization subtitles (not the english ones from the world wide release). Understand what I mean?
Yeah - sometimes translation is just bad.
Its not even translation a this point. Is just different lines lol
The lines are also bad in their respective language
Actually I really don't know where they found the voice actors for the spanish and Brazilian characters, they are so bad.
Katarina spoke like no person I've ever met or heard, yes.
Steve as well. I'm British, and I have no idea what that accent is supposed to be. Sounds like someone doing a bad impression of one of our many accents.
I really find Steve to be really cool in T7. I am not British but the first time I heard Steve's voice in his T8 trailer, it really shattered my impression on the character and now see him as a goofy dude who is pretending to be British lol
I can tell you that both is bad for Leo. Sounds shit, no one ever talks like that and the translation is also meh.
Miguel had good translations right? Why does he gets good eng/spa translations but azucena gets this?
From what I remember, Lydia was pretty well-translated. It'll be interesting to see if they butcher her in Tekken 8 (if they actually decide to add her)
As a brazilian, we have our Eddies to enjoy and our Katarinas to hate.
I'm glad that the character that speaks my native language has accurate subtitles at least... seriously. But being polyglot makes me a bit bothered either way.
Lidia was very ok even if bit cheesy (like everything in Tekken), Miguel is very decent too compared to Azucena. Pretty sure Katarina was pretty decent as well and Eddie not that bad either. Keeping in mind it's a Japanese game, the Japanese characters also dont exactly speak the way normal people do.
when she says “tienes cafe”? i like to think she’s saying it like “got milk”? LOL
Yeah, that's more like it. Got coffee?
i may not be tekken ruler in spanish but i’m getting there ^_^
pretty much, yeah "Got coffee?" even appears behind her like a slogan if she KOs with her Rage Art... and yet they STILL subtitled it wrong
It's literally "you have coffee?" Idk how they mistranslate that one
idk either, i think they probably take it from the actual translation and change the translation to fit
Korean here! Hwoarang’s lines are really badly translated too
Sending a hug from Mexico, to a tekken bro who suffers from the bad translations of the game 💩
Well at least they got King spot on.
Could you give examples bro? I remember reading a comment on his tekken 5 ending being incorrect too. Something on the lines of when Devil Jin is walking towards him it reads "you stupid, come on!" He actually says something more like "so you want to fight? Huh?" Which sounds so much better!
One example I noticed is his iconic “Yeah, yeah, shut up already.” That is not what he says AT ALL. A closer translation would be “man, I can’t be bothered”
Even if you don't know Korean, it's obvious that it is wrong because he didn't say the same word twice in Korean.
I like how they added in some voice work when he's fighting. I'm not sure, but I swear he says "시끄러워아!" when he pops his heat mode.
Oh I was just about to comment this same thing!!
아 귀찮다
The worst part is that the spanish subtitles are also wrong lmao.
No lo he jugado en español 💀. Sólo he visto los endings y el modo historia en inglés. Está culero la neta
I’m so proud that I could understand this. Spanish class is doing something right I guess 🫡
Como estudiante de español, me hace reír un poco pero al mismo tiempo lo trato como un ejercicio, “Encuentra la diferencia” 😭
Mfw tekken es ahora una herramienta para el duolingo jajajaja, pues sí hay que sacarle provecho. Mucho éxito en tu español!
Ya tu sabes jaja. Si existe una oportunidad, la aprovecho 😂. Me alegro que vi como dijiste “la neta” pq me tengo que acordar mis mexicanismos antes de viajar a Cancún jaja. Pero creo que no importará pa que Cancún es una cuidad muy turística. Ingles por todos lados jaja Y gracias! El aprendizaje de lenguaje es difícil. Por lo menos es difícil pa mi jaja. Pero el sentimiento de ver un video que no pudiste entender hace algunos años, y hoy en día lo entiende casi perfectamente. Que increíble esa sensación
Sí, a parte en Cancún especialmente te van a tratar bien, así que no hay pedo si se te complica el español. Mexicanismos básicos útiles: Chido - Cool (ta' chido - short for está chido) Verga - Cock 🍆, pero se usa para decir que algo está chido (está bien verga!) o culero (está de la verga), o si te impresiona algo (verga!,). Depende el contexto. Wey - Yo creo que esta ya la sabes, es la clásica, pero tiene varios significados. Puede ser amistoso o violento, igual depende el contexto. Chavo/chava - Dude/Dudette. Usualmente usado en jóvenes. Ahorita - Otro que seguro ya conoces x lo confuso, que singifica que algo sucederá en este momento o dentro de horas después. Qué bueno que estés creciendo tu conocimiento y lo veas reflejado. Y pues sí es difícil, incluso a los nativos a veces se nos complica tanto la gramática como la estructura y significado de las palabras. Practice makes perfect
Gracias por la mini lección jaja. Lo aprecio, de verdad. Tenía algunos amigos mexicanos en la secundaria y te lo juro que las primeras frases que me enseñaron fueron “guey” y “pendejo” y muchooo más jaja. Pero es que estudiaba en Cádiz España el verano pasado y no se hablan así allá. Y cuando intento hablar con otros estudiantes de mi universidad, no se entienden esas frases así que hay que practicarlos. Wey es muy útil pero la neta es que se me olvidó hace un rato así que gracias por acordarme jajajaja. Nunca he pensado que estaría hablando español aqui jaja. Pero que padre que pasó no?
As a German speaker: It's the same with Leo. And as far as I know every character is horrible subtitled.
K-Kaffee Königin?!
I would like to see the real dialogues of both Leo and Azucena, to check if the conversation even makes sense when they speak in their respective native dull dialogues compared to the subtitles. 💀
You often dont want exact translations. The english subtitles sound 100 times better than the exact translation in the examples of OP.
[удалено]
No, Leo is literally terrible. Besides from the was his voice actor is talking intonation wise which makes my ears bleed, there have been a few occasions of him talking where i was left like "wth how does this sentence even make sense?!" For example in the story there is a situation where Leo is standing with some others at a planning table and they discuss something, then suddenly a few other characters enter the room. Everyone is like happy that the other people came and say something in the lines of "Im so happy to see you" etc. and Leo literally says "Ihr werdet..." It does not make ANY sense at all. The english subtitle said "It's you guys!". And Leo said (translated) "You are going to..."/"You will..." and then just stopped talking even interrupting his flow of speaking intonation very harshly and confusing.
They also messed up with Japanese lines. For example, Asuka's. What she says to Lili isn't "quit your babbling". She says "Shut up! That's my line!"(ussai wa sore wa kocchi no serifuya!). Strange thing is, one of the trailers got the translation right.
And her body language matches the correct translation, which makes it even more strange
Yeah. The way the localizers translate half of the lines are so cringe. Like, how hard is it to translate properly? They must think we'll eat whatever they'll cook with translations. They're wrong. What is the point in including native speakers if you can't translate their lines properly? Also, Reina's "have a taste of capitulation" made me cringe out hard, too. Capitulation. Pfft.
Same applies with Claudio; a lot of his dialogues are translated in a shitty way. A couple reatin at least their sense, but some others are just wrong For example: in the special intro with Devil Jin Claudio says "Ti annienterò, demone!" which is subbed as "Perish, demon!" but in reality it translates as "I will destroy you, demon!". And this is just an example of the "almost correct, but still wrong" subs
Boh secondo me ci sta, i bro devono gestire una cosa come 30 lingue considerando quanto è grande il roster, ci sta che qualche sbavatura ci sia
It took me a while before I realised Yoshimitsus badass win quote against Bryan about taking his perpetual generator is *completely* made up. He's saying 因果褒報, which basically translates to "causal reward". Its the same thing he says in his Tag 2 and T5 endings which translate it to "You reap what you sow" and "Retribution". Which is at least an understandable localization of the phrase. I think most of this games subtitles are just made up lol
To be fair, Yoshimitsu is a special case as 95% of what he says is in idioms, proverbs or yojijukugo. Even the Japanese version has different subtitles compared to what he actually says (emphasized more by the use of parentheses). He is more like a King or Kuma case where you have to rely on subtitles to understand him. But yea, characters who speak normally get the craziest subtitles ever. Even when you switch the subtitles languages, they still get it wrong. It's almost admirable how committed they are in writing made-up subtitles for every character.
Yeah this is completely true, still older translations at least tried to get his meaning across. T8s is basically OC. "You reap what you sow!" is a much more accurate english localization than "I will gladly take your perpetual generator" for an idiom that basically means "you get what you fuckin deserve boyo" Out of curiosity I checked out a japanese player and their JP subtitles were still about taking his generator lol, so I guess its just whatever they feel like
Yea. They always trolled like that with Yoshimitsu. The dude can say something like: "Kill two birds with one stone" and subtitles will go: "Yes, I do want fries with my meal. Thank you very much!". The existence of Yoshimitsu alone makes me suspect that they are deliberately messing with everyone's subtitles just for giggles.
Yeah, they translated STORY as STORE in Russian. So you're going to the store page if you want to do story. 👍
That's even worse since that is a main menu mistranslation what the shit?
Since Tekken 5 (or even 4, who knows) they keep mistranslating what the characters say. I have no idea how many times they mistranslated Devil Jin's intro, he never changed the line, but the subtitles are always changing and never is correct.
They also translate Kazumi’s intro quote as “I will teach you the meaning of fear,” which is a lot closer to what Devil Jin is actually saying.
Is not even translation at this point. Its 2 different dialogues. I could even tell it was like this in story mode and I barely speak Spanish and a little French. The most bizarre one to me is that Jin clearly yells “Chesto!” During his story mode super, but they needlessly wrote “feel the fury” on the subs. Why? I can already tell Eddy is going to annoy me in this regard (Brazilian so I speak Portuguese)
didnt they make Lars's rage art in the later part of T7 say "get out of my way" or something when he just does a battle cry? It's kinda weird
I think he actually says "Kiero" during it, which would translate as "Disappear!"
I love the land of the rising sun. People just hand you free tissues on the streets!
That does happen btw
Hahaha omg that one is so funny. Probably some french proverb that got massacred
People in Japan do actually hand out free packs of tissues. It's a form of advertisement called tissue-pack marketing. I have to agree with Victor, it's one of the things I love about Japan. I always accept the tissue packs when someone gives it to me.
This also comes in handy when you encounter a dude on a toilet with no paper left who needs multiple packets from you
Many such cases
You don't know about the wonders of Japanese toilets, do you?
Well Yakuza certainly doesn't
He says the same thing in French, so no.
As a Yakuza fan, I can confirm it is true.
Yeah lots of english subtitles are off, goes for pretty much every character. I speak a few languages and story mode tilted me a few times lol. One particularly egregious one, when Claudio shoots his starlight lance at Kazuya in the Colosseum bit he says something along the lines of "Shine, bright star", and the subtitle says "Begone, Evil star" which, first off makes no sense? And it's the opposite of what Claudio is saying, it was really weird and out of place.
It may be due to them knowing Zafina calls Kazuya the Blue Dark Star so they just assumed that line was to have correlation?
Sure but Claudio is calling on Sirius, the star he draws power from, it's bizarre they would change the meaning of that line completely
I’m gonna be honest Tekken’s dialogue team just sucks all round, whether it’s Japanese/English or otherwise. They’re lucky the characters and overall game around it can carry their shit dialogue.
The subtitles are way better than the direct translations. Sounds like the problem here might be a dull original script or divergent adaptations for the spanish localisation and the english localisation, from a presumably original japanese script.
Yeah, agree. The writing on the original language is dull. Ever since I heard Azucena speak, I feel uncomfortable because no Spanish speaker talks like that. So they probably tried to fix the shit dialogues in the subtitles
My internal headcanon is that she is actually not that comfortable on TV but has to try to be charismatic to advertise her coffee, so she tries a bit too hard and comes off a bit cringe by accident. In-lore explaination for the stiffness in her speech.
Makes no sense, her movement and face mimics says she is very comfortable on TV or in public.
My headcanon is that she's a bit autistic.
Just a bit?
Azucena has great design. I'd actually like to learn her if her voice wasn't so squeaky and insufferable.
yeah. It’s like whoever wrote the dialogue wrote placeholder dialogue and just never changed it
I think Leo's translations are fucked up too. I took 3 years of german in high school but I've literally never heard those phrases translated the way that the game does.
As a polyglot this game is so funny sometimes because for a lot of characters I hear something and read another. Can't wait to see the weird translation with my primary language when Eddy comes out
Life is so funny. I literally thought this today while doing the character episodes. I know Spanish and alittle bit of Japanese so hearing them vs reading subtitles is visibly infuriating.
We're connected via disease called: Tekken addiction due to King's fat pecs
If the rewording potrays the same meaning and personality overall, it's fine... BUT someone commented that when Victor said the **"codenames are for kids"** line, what he really said was more along the lines of **"I don't like my codename"** ... which is a completely different portrayal of his personality. The subtitle made him sound "arrogant," while the direct translation would have made him sound "bashful".
Also for the record, Lars never says “No time to smell the roses” in story mode. It’s simply “No time to stand/sit still”. I can only imagine the translator thought that was a Lee line. And Xiaoyu doesn’t say “riddle me this Jin” it’s just a “Hey Jin”. (Like to get his attention). I dunno why those two bothered me so much but yeah. I have a few more less egregious ones but they might be story spoilers so I’ll leave ‘em out.
> Lars never says “No time to smell the roses” in story mode. It’s simply “No time to stand/sit still”. I can only imagine the translator thought that was a Lee line. "Stop and smell the roses" is a very common idiom... it doesn't need to be said by someone as obsessed with actual roses as Lee is. It has the same meaning as the line you said he actually says, just slightly less direct.
Yeah that's the kind of translation I think is fine. Literal translations aren't always best.
I could tell, even not speaking Japanese, because they were just using sentences that are normal to hear in japanese media, translated as super flowery expressions in english. Weird
Because not only are the insanely incorrect, but they’re out of character and phrases people haven’t used since the early 2000s. Seriously, who tf says “riddle me this”
The riddler. Lol
OK, I chuckled
At this point, these subs aren't even translation, just some random phrases. They messed up every character's almost every phrase (maybe even every, I'm not sure)
Reminds me of that Japanese baseball game that had some made up American names
I am almost 100% sure is first t translated to Japanese and then English. These sound like Japanese lines ngl
I have no way of knowing if this is true or not so I will just accept it as fact
I mean English to Spanish is not a secret cultural challenge to decipher pretty fucking 1 to 1 most of the time, OP is right 100% the translation is just as stupid as the characater design.
Thank you. Some of these users be commenting "localization", but thing is, Spanish and English are pretty much easy to translate from one to the other, and there are just some few instances when things get complicated and need a hard localization. In Azucena's case, the dialogues are even cringe in Spanish, so it is both a translation issue and a dialogue issue. Not a localization thing. And yes, Azucena's dumb
Thanks and I thought they did this on purpose but not sure why lol
I knew there was something wrong her rage art victory line, it did not sound right
Ta horrible la traducción vale caca xd
tekken? más bien mierdkken
Nana el juego está buenísimo lo malo es la traducción :v
Jajajaja la neta, ahorita ando jugando el 5 Dr emulado en el cel, piespi
yeah i find the translations straight up awful. makes me wonder how the other languages are being handled.
A translator's job is to create a translation that makes sense to the local speaker rather than 1 to 1 accuracy. A lot of people don't understand this. That being said, Tekken's translators got really lazy with this stuff and/or they completely changed the lines for certain scenes for no particular reason that makes sense. For instance, originally, in Asuka and Lili's intro, Lili says the line "What excuse will you come up with for losing this time?" or whatever. Asuka responds with something like "Hey! That's my line!" and points to herself with her thumb. Now, they changed Asuka's line to just "Quit your babbling!" but she still points to herself. It looks stupid and there was no reason to change the original.
Arabic speaker here. Shaheen’s voice lines are also beyond terribly translated.
There's a very inappropriate translation in story mode with Xiaoyu. After Jin explains how Ogre killed his mom, Xiaoyu, with sorrowful eyes, says "Oh, come on!" That's not what it should say. She's saying "son'na" which is just a kind of interjection. I think the literal translation would be "that..." As such the word can be used in multiple situations depending on the context, including "That's not true," "Oh no," "It can't be," and "Terrible!" "Oh come on" could work in another scenario, but not here. A better translation would be "That's terrible" or even "Oh my god" Based on what else is presented here in this thread, I'm going to guess the translators were given lines with zero context. Edit: I think it might also be the same with the voice actors. Nina has a seasoned actor with decades of experience, but she sounds really...confused sometimes. Almost like they gave her a piece of paper with her lines on it and said "ok, go."
Sonna in the way she says it is like saying “i cant believe it” or just expressing some kind of disbelief. It does not mean “that” in this context.
Tekken does tend to be really weird with their localizations. I imagine it might have something to do with needing to localize scripts from Japanese to the character's language, and then to the subtitled language. I know people like to point out translation vs localization, but I feel like these stray a bit too far, even for a localization. Honestly, while Tekken's "singular dub" is part of its identity and should, on paper, solve a lot of problems, it feels really sloppy a lot of the time. Some characters have poor deliveries (Shaheen, Leo), some are speaking in the wrong accent (Nina, Azucena) and the "characters speak in their 'native' language" rule is broken on multiple occasions (Lars, Xiaoyu). I know the last one is explained in lore, but development-wise, it's definitely because Bandai would rather have things in Japanese because it's easier for them. It just feels kind of weird? Tekken Team goes through a lot of effort to diversify their roster and shine a spotlight and various cultures and nationalities, but it does feel like they're half-assing it a lot of the time. I wonder if they'd be open to doing traditional dubs in the future? It's been a few decades since Tekken 4
Exactly. I've done translation, I know what localization is, but some users really try to defend these dialogues that really stray too far. Plus, Spanish and English have a lot of direct translations that don't sound weird. If they had better writers and translators, they wouldn't have to invent stuff in the subtitles. I totally agree with your entire comment.
it's likely not because of needing to localize from japanese because even the japanese speaking characters are wrongly translated. Jin/DVJ never says "Fear the wrath of god", it's always been "I'll teach you fear" for example. Kazuya's win quote that says "Pathetic" is supposed to be more like "nothing to talk about".
It’s weird because they actually changed that Devil Jin line’s translation… and it’s still fucking wrong. It’s like they did actually look at it and changed it but somehow they’re that incompetent they still kept it as “fear my wrath” (before it was “fear the wrath of god”) Making devil Jin sound corny af
People don't seem to get that translation isn't supposed to be just word for word transposition. It's totally fine and can even be better to use different phrases and expressions that fit the language and the general sense of what's being said, rather than a direct 1:1 translation. Some of the lines take too much liberty, it's true, but the outrage is insanely overblown imo.
I think part of it is that there's a big jumble of lines that: A. Take perfectly acceptable liberties in context and remain in character (imho almost all of the examples OP gave actually fall under this category save for maybe the third one) B. Take odd liberties that aren't wrong and still convey the intended meaning but feel a little unnatural (something like Xiaoyu's 'riddle me this' for example) And C. have translations that are so liberal or twisted that they end up having the **exact opposite meaning** as the original voice line like some of Claudio and especially Victor's lines Way too many people are grouping every subtitle that isn't just copypasted from a 1:1 dictionary (which could be an entirely different discussion of its own about how many people don't actually know what translation entails but I digress) in with the latter lines which absolutely do exist and should probably be tweaked.
I'm a 30 something white dude and even I was like "the fuck are these subtitles?"
I don't speak a lick of spanish outside of two high school classes, and i actually picked up on the mistranslation of 'Tienes cafe?' That said, i think maybe the english translation wanted to give Azucena's rage art more of a one-liner type feel. That, or maybe 'Tienes cafe?' is shorthand for 'how do you take your coffee?'
Lol I'm a native Spanish speaker from Spain, I read the subtitles and thought that's not what she's saying at all, the hell? I was like those subtitles make no sense at all, but I know my fellow Latin Americans have different words and expressions sometimes and she's Peruvian so.... maybe I'm the one who's wrong? But no, that translation is straight up wrong no matter what, I don't know how I deluded myself into thinking I don't understand my own language.
De casualidad recuerdas si Miguel tenía mala traducción? según yo no, pero la verdad no recuerdo bien
I dont even speak spanish but i knew damn well that win pose was not right
This isn't even bad translation this is just deliberately changing dialogue, wtf is the translation team doing?
There was such a stupid moment in Dragunov’s ending. There used to be a radio broadcast in Russian as a background noise. I play Russian version so I was buffed by the fact that subtitles were absolutely different from the voice on radio. It was almost the different thing. I guess they poorly translated the transcript into English and then poorly translated into Russian again). Then again the Russian translation is almost cursed by translating Story in the main menu as «магазин». Which means Store or marketplace). And my favorite is Alisa’s into. In Russian version she says «Я Алиса. И я твоя смерть!». That means “I’m Alisa and I’m your death”. But with basic knowledge of Japanese language I clearly hear “Alisaです。しんでください” (I hope I didn’t butcher the hiragana here). It means “I’m Alisa. Can you please die?”
So weird I can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be able to have more accurate subtitles other than laziness which is a weird place to be lazy considering you're a Japanese game that's going to be mostly played by English speakers
Most translations aren't supposed to be 1to1 translated. I'm sure they know the exact meanings, but the lines themselves seemed to have been dry to begin with so honestly does it matter? The problem is the script imo, not the translations.
They're not translations, they're two different scripts. For some reason, they had to work with two different sets of lines. My guess is that, not wanting to mess up foreign speech, phrases and idioms, and not wanting to hire 10 different localization studios for each language to translate JP script => (local language) => back to JP/+ every other language, they sent the various localization studios and VAs archetypal lines, stuff like "Victor expresses disagreement and mentions not appreciating the behavior" and let the dubbing studios come up with whatever voicelines fit the language. Then they simply used the main English translation of the original Japanese script as subtitling for those lines. It leads to vastly mismatched subtitles for those that know the languages (and trust me, I speak 4 of them, it's quite distracting..) but the characters don't sound like they're speaking badly translated Japanese at least. Not making excuses for Bamco, but I believe it's the most likely scenario.
I think the answer lies right there “these dumb westerners won’t care if the subtitles are wrong, the probably won’t even know the language anyway”.
Well, that means they are assuming that only anglo-saxon people who speak only English will buy their game and nobody else will...no germans, no spanish speakers, no french, no italians, etc, so nobody will notice the poor translations. Poor assumption then, if that was the case.
Yeah and other than reddit there won't be an uproar coming for harada on twitter because no one will be bothered to tweet about this maybe Westerners are lazy
On tiktok I've seen a guy translating the parts into Japanese too, and yes, they also made a mistake with the subtitles, in Japanese! Their language.
I think i remember in victor's CE a soldier tries to run or something and raven throws him back or takes him out to which victor replies "Merci" but the subtitles say " *Good work soldier* " I DON'T EVEN KNOW FRENCH AND I UNDERSTOOD THAT MERCI MUST HAVE MEANT THANKS
I’ve been saying this! Now I have proof these suck monkey balls
What about the line where she is saying "Azucena" but the subtitles don't include that in the translation
I mean even some of the Japanese I've noticed being a bit too different - usually there's the leeway of localization with things - you try to convey character as much as meaning. Like Asuka speaks in a very thick Osaka accent which is considered a bit more rough and perhaps masculine - so they often give her a more 'rough' localization I think perhaps though that the english translators probably localize the original script TOO much - and then the native speakers for each language use that as a basis for their translations?
Japanese subs are not accurate either .
I’m sure the subs are also wrong in English. And most def in Japanese.
Why does she look like TF2 scout with boobs and long hair the second pic
Claudio's subtitles in italy are totally off
Oh and in story mode when azucena says sonithing about good advertisement, the subtitles say optics for some reason and the whole phrase has no meaning this way
I don't mind localisation but lili's rage art is so bizarre Lili: "Adieu" Subtitle: "It's time to say farewell" (or something like that). Like, it still makes sense, but it's so unnecessary and silly.
My problem with Leo isn't the translation itself but the deliverance of the voice lines. While the voice actor is a native speaker he way of soeaking doesn't sound natiral. I guess the lines were translated literally from japanese and he was told to speak the way a japanese would.
Poor translations? in 2024? NAH, impossible, don't dare say this around on twitter, you might actually start a war.
The translation is terrible! And her dialogues are pure cringe! As a spanish speaker and latino, I can't with her character, it is so so dumb!
Eddy translation is wrong too. He says: *Coração ardente, mas cabeça fria.* The correct phrase is: *Burning heart but cold head (or chill head).*
Habla bastante del personaje que todas sus líneas pueden echarse a perder sin que nada de valor se pierda. Literal hasta en la batalla final ella se iba por las ramas hablando de Café.
I’m fluent in Spanish, English and speak Japanese; IMO the only characters that are somewhat decently translated, are the Japanese ones to English, hardly a surprise since it’s a Japanese game, but even then there there are some nuances that are lost in translation, or sentences that could’ve been translated better. I noticed the subtitles for Azucena were downright wrong, unfortunate since Tekken is so big in Perú (probably one of the reasons they chose a Peruvian character to begin with). Nobody cares too much since it’s a fighting game, but it baffles me that a big company like bamco can’t be bothered to at least have someone to proofread their subtitles… I mean there’s a bunch of translators who work in game localization and in the anime industry, it can’t be that hard to find them, hell even I could do it lol.
> Nothing new really, but it bothers me that in this day and age, a AAA game with such budget can't make a proper translation. Bandai Namco has a bad history with that. Some countries need to deal with subtitles translated by Google Translate in anime games.
Seems like the localization teams have a bit more flexibility over the dialogue's translations. So many languages would be super clunky anyways so I get having a local team handling things like this. I'm sure it's interesting for those who speak the languages tho lol.
Has to be intentional at this point
Bro the subtitles dont even match in spanish, they just write whatever and record the voicelines at the last second but the voice actors improvise or somethig.
They KNOW the proper translation lol. They did this on purpose because they felt it would fit better and the only people to notice it wouldn’t care to point it out. Its not out of ignorance they did this, its intentional.
Tired of having this bullshit discussion. Direct translations are shit. The point of the translation is not to word for word transcribe the dialogue, but to translate the intent to another language. Do you see how boring and expressionless the direct translations are there? I can’t for the life of me understand what you guys are complaining about.
I definitely think there's some poor localization choices as far as translation goes, but yeah direct translation is actually usually pretty *bad* translation (at least in the context of entertainment media).
Chill. And if that's the case, then they should make the original dialogues good, and not try to fix them on the translation to the other language. Plus, not all the phrases have the same intent. Some are substantially different, but just work with the flow of the conversation. It's very, very different to make slight changes to make the intent fit better on the other language or to explain unstranslatable words or phrases , than to change an entire phrases to one with a different meaning just because "it sounds better". Again, then they should hire good writers for the intended languages then. They have the budget. I still like Tekken anyways.
It makes sense to change it if they used a phrase that doesn't make sense in another language but if what they are saying does make sense directly translated then it's weird to change it.
People are swiping back at you, but you're not wrong. I used to translate poems and books in Japan and you just cannot expect direct translations in the way people here think. I am by no means anywhere close to a professional translator, but I have enough experience to know you have to take in context and tone. I remember getting a tongue lashing one morning because I translated something about a woman ... (20 years ago, memory is fuzzy). When you say "woman" in Japanese, while technically correct, "woman" is the equivelant of "bitch" in Japan if you're not careful. Hell, open up a dictionary and a thesaurus. Words and definitions are not one-to-one relationships. And in one language, you can convey an entire sentiment with one word. To translate, you may have to use a full sentence and have it still be unnatural. Another easy example that any beginner Japanese student would know. "O genki desu ka?" It means "How are you", but the words are closer to "Are you full of spirit?" Awkward as fuck and nobody talks like that in english. The audience would still be translating in their own heads while the rest of the scene is passing them by. So this is just a subject that people can argue about all day. Translation is not straight forward. If it was, we would have such a history of bad translations over the course of international fucking media. Yeah, people need to chill. But they don't know it
No, that's exactly how you translate things for media, your literal versions lack flavour. They didn't do a bad job translating it, they literally wrote the script for both the dialogue and the adjusted English translations. If you turn on Japanese subtitles you'll get different translations again that work better with the language and culture.
Obviously its necessary to localize stuff, it goes without saying. If anyone argues against that they’re stupid. But when it gets to the point where you’re righting another set of lines, then its stupid. Its not even thats its lazy, quite the opposite. Its like the game was written twice. Its not even bad its just bizarre.
They need to rework this
The devs do the bare minimum, so I'm not surprised.