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Were you able to start your career as a freelance translator in the US? Or did you have prior experience in-house at a company in Japan?
I assume that you have received these questions before, but what was your first translation project and what inspired you to become a translator in the first place?
I was a big collector of Dragon Quest yonkoma manga in the 90s. We had such a drought of EN DQ games back then that I started grasping at straws and buying JP manga just to have something, anything to feed my interest. That led to a serious interest in the language and how best to convey things to those who can't read it.
Whats your take or procedure on how to romanji-ze a name when there's no official spelling? These days is harder cus' there's almost always a source but I'm thinking back in the early 2000s when it was certainly a thing.
Do you have any series (that hasn't appeared yet) that you want to see on Super Robot Wars?
There was recently a thing about Yakuza's Baka Mitai lyric pun replacing Dame with Same(shark) in the latest Yakuza game. Do you think it would've been better to replace it with a more western song pun? I know Baka Mitai is one of the more popular karaoke songs for Yakuza in the west but it definitely seemed out there in terms of recent Yakuza Locs.
In regarding the localisation/translation debate that never ends, do you feel it would help the discussion if the team give some of their thought processes. Maybe to understand why some choices was made.
I remember I was really interested your comment when you talked about your need to research mecha anime when doing SRW translation.
Cause with how complex JP is as a language, I can see how there can be multiple way to translate the same text/phrase. So knowing why some choice was made could help
It wouldn't help, because the question is never inviting of a proper answer, ie, "What's the reasoning behind this TL choice?". It's always an accusatory and rhetorical "Why do TLs perpetuate these atrocities?" that leaves zero room for good-faith responses. For my part, I always welcome good-faith questions about reasoning and answer them as best I can when my NDA allows for it. Sometimes it doesn't.
if you're playing FGO, who's your favorite so far?
What's your take on the recent Front Mission 2 rerelease evidently using machine translation? https://twitter.com/EggmaniMN/status/1711210205843992937
In playing a number of SRW games, I've heard a number of characters say something that sounds like "hasha" or "utei" when shooting their weapons. Is there an appreciable difference in these two terms, or is it just two different ways to say the same thing (like "launch" and "fire" in English)? I originally thought one was more for missiles and the other for bullets or beams, but that doesn't seem to be the case the more I play.
With a few exceptions, 発射 (hassha) is generally used for rockets and missiles, while 撃て (ute) is typically used for guns and cannons. We use "fire" for both guns and missiles in EN so no reason to distinguish between the two JP terms. "Launch" can be used for missiles in EN, but usually way larger ones than you see used in SRW weapon attacks.
I just realized, almost 2 years after release, that you can turn the intermission BGM in 30 to 苦難の先に待つものは. As a guy who started SRW (and learning Japanese) with Alpha Gaiden, I got irrationally emotional hearing that while upgrading robots again.
you probably heard this one before but which game would you want to translate, given the opportunity to do so?
In that case I can't thank you enough for the Shinn one; it hits my stupid shipper heart in all the right ways.
Cross Rays guy again - would you be willing to tell us which series you did for that game?
I remember doing G-Unit, SEED Destiny, Ironblooded Orphans S2, and IBO Gekko. I also did a lot of the system text and battle lines.
I made the mistake of referencing the Tokyopop translation of G-Unit when working on that story, something I still regret. (The guy definitely should have been called Silver Clown, not Silver Crown...)
Were there any noteworthy differences between translating for SRW and for G-Gen Cross Rays?
The main difference is the level of translator siloing that happens. In Cross Rays there was no need for translators to talk together or compare plot notes, because we all just had our assigned series and there was no story intermingling. In SRW, our team shares things regularly because any and all extra context helps, especially when working on a game like 30 with no predefined sequential stage order.
The Masaki fangirl asks again- but this time about the SRWDD event with Gridman. IIRC, Masaki's usually an 'omae' user, right? So am I correct to assume he's using 'anta' towards Gridman as a sign of respect, the same way his OG self did with Captain Daitetsu?
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