XSeed is streaming Trio of Towns at 2:30 pst

Explore Lulukoko, Tsukuyusa, and Westown in this multi-cultural farming game for Nintendo 3DS. [ Game Guide ] JP release = Jun 2016. NA release = Feb 2017. EU release = Oct 2017.
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Celestrian
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I gotta agree with Ghoul on this.

Me personally, I never cared how the translations were done and just enjoyed it for what it is. I've never had a problem with the translation. If there are grammar errors or spelling mistakes, I enjoy those. Most of the time, I have no complaints about the translation. I'm just glad I'm even getting it in English.
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why do you enjoy grammar mistakes. like in a "ha-ha, oh, this is truly awful. how sad." kind of way???? because really it's just sad.
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Arcy
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While I only have a few licks of Japanese, the jarring for me had nothing to do with the original Japanese, fan translation, or thinking that XSEED did a bad job or anything like that. It was the fact that they seemed to pull a Thesaurus out to use more colorful or concise terms for two of those things and not for the other two. They don't match in English. (Animal Lover is just about perfect despite the fact it can be read several different ways. I think Tom might be a fan of extemely questionable double entendres, which amuses me. Many people are.)

I also acknowledge that it is very nitpicky to bother complaining about it, but it is nice to talk to other people who feel the same or a similar way and discussion passes the time while we anxiously await the release date. It is also nice to talk to people who disagree for the same reason.

It is fine to be critical of things you enjoy. It doesn't mean you enjoy them any less. It definitely doesn't mean that we're not going to throw ridiculous amounts of money at XSEED.

+what Kikki said.

Of course I don't think I could ever translate a game better than a professional (or at all), but taking garbled strings out of Google Translate and making them "pretty" in English is something of a hobby of mine. I think most professional and amateur writers do like making their words more beautiful whenever they can. With the speed they turned this game around in, I'm not particularly surprised or dismayed that some of it is a little more literally translated at all. More literal doesn't decrease the quality of the localization for me, nor does wishing there was an equal level of possibly unnecessary gilding on words that are used together in a group. Different doesn't automatically mean worse to me.
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I'm so glad seedling mode is a choice again. I had to skip through a lot of the parts because they showed farming so I'm glad I watched it today instead of yesterday.

Westown is gonna be a pain in the tush for me to look at and be in. I hate the old west style, the southern accent, and feeling like I'm in one of those cheesy old movies my friend's parents would watch for some reason. Everything looks extremely dull and just...gross, to me ( I grew up a place where forests are everywhere and there aren't any deserts nearby). It's a good thing I don't like anyone in town but Lisette. Though it's a pity that most of my favorite clothes are going to be found in this town. I don't like tropical clothes in general or traditional Japanese clothes on my characters. Definitely choosing "tycoon" now. And seeing the clothes in the shop made me even sadder that you can't just buy them. Then I could have my dream farm of bubble cows, alpacas and bunnies and not have to worry about the thousands of wooly animals in the game. Or dyes...

And speaking of tycoons, some of the personality trait names were a bit weird in my opinion.
A tycoon makes it sound as if your character was actually a businessperson....when in reality your dad is probably the only reason you have so much money. I doubt your character even knows what actual work is to be honest (before they become a farmer). But on the other hand it does sound kind of cool. Who knows, maybe it would make for an interesting story to have a tycoon start up a farm? I don't know much about translating, as I took Japanese years ago and don't actually use it much. The tycoon thing only bothered me because it's the trait I'm going to choose, and I was envisioning a more spoiled and naive kind of girl who took her dad's money.

In reality, all of this griping is just humans being their whiny, stupid natural selves. People want things to complain about, no matter how minuscule the issue is. The names of the traits don't matter, their advantages do, and those haven't changed. I'll learn to deal with it.
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FoolishGhoul wrote:Lol Idt fin was looking for an apology but more of to tell people who barely know the language to stop « Baaaa *glomp* » like they could do the jobs of professionals better than them. Because it's just straight up rude imo
I see. But unless you or Fin are referring to something specific that I didn't make note of, I don't think anyone's been rude at all. Personally, I come here to talk about stuff I like, as well as a few things I don't, if they come up. I consider it discussion between fans, not complaints that are being levelled at XSEED. I don't think anybody (except maybe the people here who actually speak Japanese? But probably not them, either.) thinks they would do a 'better job'. Just saying "aw, I got used to 'X' and now it's 'Y' and I was more comfortable with 'X'. Too bad, can't win 'em all."

I'm sorry you think it's rude. I can't apologize for my feelings or opinions, but I am sorry it's bothering other people. I won't mention it again, in that case. I don't wish to cause discord.
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Celestrian wrote:I gotta agree with Ghoul on this.

Me personally, I never cared how the translations were done and just enjoyed it for what it is. I've never had a problem with the translation. If there are grammar errors or spelling mistakes, I enjoy those. Most of the time, I have no complaints about the translation. I'm just glad I'm even getting it in English.
Tbf that's a bad attitude to have because the English language has some really basic rules and the only reason it's enjoyable to find grammatical errors is because you're laughing at someone else's illiteracy/incompetence (lol! Charlie from Always Sunny was the lead translator of ANB!) or sleep-deprived negligence.

There has to be a line drawn somewhere between what's acceptable and what isn't.



Also cleaning up machine translation falls into the category of putting lipstick on pigs.
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Yikes. I never meant to make it seem like that. :( My intentions weren't bad when I said that, I promise. When you put it like that it does sound bad, though. Sorry. I didn't want to offend anyone. :(
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Arcy wrote: Of course I don't think I could ever translate a game better than a professional (or at all), but taking garbled strings out of Google Translate and making them "pretty" in English is something of a hobby of mine. I think most professional and amateur writers do like making their words more beautiful whenever they can. With the speed they turned this game around in, I'm not particularly surprised or dismayed that some of it is a little more literally translated at all. More literal doesn't decrease the quality of the localization for me, nor does wishing there was an equal level of possibly unnecessary gilding on words that are used together in a group. Different doesn't automatically mean worse to me.
You know that's how people get stuff like "Blood" out of Brad's name and weird stuff like "Cum Face". I guess if you want to just keep it to yourself, but spreading stuff like that not ONLY spreads misinformation that people will take at face value, but also gives people a platform to complain when the translation is different from the fan versions. These people are paid, and do not "put it through google translate to prettify it". They are paid professionals. Even if YOU don't claim to be better, who's saying someone won't take your Google translated garbage and throw it onto tumblr as fact?
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^ Basically how I feel about the situation. No matter how hard you try, there's always going to be nuances in languages that you won't get unless you're fluent/pretty damn close to fluent. Since this is the internet, where practically no one fact checks, misinformation spreads like a forest fire. Even if you preface a translation with 20 thousand "THIS IS GOOGLE-TRANSLATE" lines or similar, there's bound to be someone who will repost a completely inaccurate translation.

Honestly you'll probably never even notice the trait names after you start playing. It's not like it's a pivotal part of the experience. And in all fairness, I could also argue that even if you're an "animal lover", that doesn't that guarantee that animals will love you, which is essentially what the trait does.
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OctavieKnite88 wrote:And speaking of tycoons, some of the personality trait names were a bit weird in my opinion.
A tycoon makes it sound as if your character was actually a businessperson....when in reality your dad is probably the only reason you have so much money. I doubt your character even knows what actual work is to be honest (before they become a farmer). But on the other hand it does sound kind of cool. Who knows, maybe it would make for an interesting story to have a tycoon start up a farm? I don't know much about translating, as I took Japanese years ago and don't actually use it much. The tycoon thing only bothered me because it's the trait I'm going to choose, and I was envisioning a more spoiled and naive kind of girl who took her dad's money.
I know! I totally agree. Tycoon brings to mind a couple of things, like those Rollercoaster Tycoon games, right? I keep wondering if there's a better word, like "Inheritor", "Bequest", "Allowance", or even going for something silly like "Lump Sum", "Tax Return", or "Moneybags". Tycoon has like a weird Robber-Baron-of-The-Old-West association in my head, so I keep picturing FeMC in an all-black outfit complete with red bandit mask, like Rusty from My Sims Kingdom. :lol:

And PS to KonekoChan: I'm usually the one trying to squash bad information before it starts and turns into crazy rumors (I hate that so much, like that "Cowardly Animals need to be inside at all times" BS from SoS, I'm still trying to stamp that out) and I always add a ton of disclaimers and provide proper original sources for my stuff if I absolutely must share anything with other people (only in case of complete information droughts in particular areas). And I definitely don't mind being corrected by someone who knows better, editing my posts, or adding new information and providing proper credit to anything at any time. I'm not sure, based on the accusatory nature of your post if you've actually ever read anything I've written. And I know none of my CLEARLY MARKED speculation shows up on Tumblr, because it would have gotten back to me.
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@arcy

perhaps it was directed too much at you and not at everyone in general-- but I did angle it at you because your statement earlier came off as VERY rude:
This is exactly why I often wonder if XSEED staff has members who for some reason are not conversant in colloquial English. You know, the language they're supposed to be localizing the game TO.

I don't want to blame anyone, but it seems like Tom really likes literal translations and puns. Dear XSEED, I volunteer to be a Tom-filter, free of charge, when the next game comes out.
I'm not exactly talking about general misinformation, but specifically dialogue-related stuff that people would otherwise assume is translated incorrectly just because someone on Tumblr translated it "a certain way". Even with sources, if you don't know the language then perhaps you should think about speaking on it at all. Language is complicated and there are many ways to go about translating just one phrase. One is not necessarily better than the other.

It's good that you are willing to edit your posts, but it would be even better if it wasn't necessary in the first place, right? And Tumblr was one specific example. Do you have all-seeing eyes on all parts of the internet?

I've seen this happen for so many games. I'm a bit jaded, you'll have to excuse me.
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KonekoChan wrote:You know that's how people get stuff like "Blood" out of Brad's name and weird stuff like "Cum Face". I guess if you want to just keep it to yourself, but spreading stuff like that not ONLY spreads misinformation that people will take at face value, but also gives people a platform to complain when the translation is different from the fan versions. These people are paid, and do not "put it through google translate to prettify it". They are paid professionals. Even if YOU don't claim to be better, who's saying someone won't take your Google translated garbage and throw it onto tumblr as fact?
Here are what some lines from a certain Bokumono put through Google Translate look like. The original Japanese lines would be challenging for a pro to translate (to make them sound natural, in any case), but it is near impossible to glean the underlying meaning of the word salad google gives you...

"You are the one in town where you are doing your best. I will do you."
"Otsome's heart is sentimental... I'm going to be cummed with mums...... my favorite sweets do not go through the throat."
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This is exactly why I often wonder if XSEED staff has members who for some reason are not conversant in colloquial English. You know, the language they're supposed to be localizing the game TO.

I don't want to blame anyone, but it unecessarily seems like Tom really likes literal translations and puns. Dear XSEED, I volunteer to be a Tom-filter, free of charge, when the next game comes out.
Arcy, that's rude as « Snuggly Bunny ». Also I had to spend 10 seconds of my lifetime googling what colloquial english means, which is ironic cause you could've just stated what it actually is: ordinary/every day english.

While their localization choices haven't always been the best ("Mistel to Michael," cents, Inari to Vixie, etc.) they've always had some form of reason and have never been completely off the walls.

I'm not 100% certain how much each person knows Japanese in XSeed, but I'm 99% sure they all have a much more thorough understanding than any of the fan translations. They translate/localize in house and within their tiny little company of people. Hell, even on the stream the guy (I think his name was John? One with glasses) said that a lot of the teacher gal's dialogue was often hard to translate to because of the nature of the japanese and disconnect between the languages (paraphrasing here) which imo says to me that he and the few that worked on the game (I'm assuming at least the three of them in the stream were involved in some way or another) and know a good portion of japanese.

They're being paid to do this and thus are going to have a good amount of degrees to be worth the $$$ Marv is giving them. Sure, some of them may have different localizing styles (more literal, taking a lot of liberties, or a combo of both), but that doesn't mean it's bad. Just a matter of preference.

Some of ya'll need to slow down on the taking the fantranslation stuff to heart. Like, thinking Ford is the recoming of « Mayor Thomas », Google « Snuggly Bunny » Translate, etc. Translation and localization is a rather fluid process, although there is a line at times. Some translations are more reliable than others, but at the end of the day they are all "biased" and every translation is going to be a bit different, especially if some lines are more complicated.

It's 100% fine to criticize. Sometimes XSeed does make odd choices for things, but it's rather arrogant to tell people how to do their job (more specifically since you don't have the same level of expertise) and say that you could do better or "fix it" for them.
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KonekoChan wrote:I'm not exactly talking about general misinformation, but specifically dialogue-related stuff that people would otherwise assume is translated incorrectly just because someone on Tumblr translated it "a certain way". Even with sources, if you don't know the language then perhaps you should think about speaking on it at all. Language is complicated and there are many ways to go about translating just one phrase. One is not necessarily better than the other.

It's good that you are willing to edit your posts, but it would be even better if it wasn't necessary in the first place, right? And Tumblr was one specific example. Do you have all-seeing eyes on all parts of the internet?

I've seen this happen for so many games. I'm a bit jaded, you'll have to excuse me.
That was a joke, and I'm not saying that to get myself "out of trouble" as so many people do, because I genuinely get laughs out of it. I do speak English. I'm only referring to that language and the fact that items grouped in a list are wildly different, again, in English. For me it is the equivalent of seeing a list of plants by their Latin names with a random, completely unscientific, "Apple" and "Orange" thrown in there.

If you find one thing that I said - and got wrong - get spread without me immediately correcting the other poster (disinformation spreader) and apologizing for my error, I'd love to see it. Of course I can't see all of the internet at all times, but I belong to and am very active on many different BokuMono groups online. Heck, the most commonly spread text FAQ and tips guide for SoS isn't even mine, and I know that for a fact because the one that is, is all over the FaceBook group and Tumblr. The only two people who have ever used my data on Tumblr asked me first, and one was just a fun thing about calculating an in-game birthday based off of real-world seasonal cycles.

Everyone makes mistakes. Not everyone goes to the lengths I do to fix them. It isn't a brag or anything, I genuinely would feel extremely guilty if I did that to the fandom. I often celebrate other people or companies who do the same. XSEED is great at it, in fact.

And I don't go near any of the dialogue related stuff. Only gross mechanical gameplay. If we're talking about character stuff that's not localized yet, conversationally I never provide direct quotes, only general and vague impressions. Which everyone else does, often at a much more detailed level than that. "I like this character because he's good with kids, from my impression of the Japanese events which I watched on a stream with an English narrator" is about the level of detail I've given in those rare instances.

And those are the things, for better or worse (usually worse), which do spread like wildfire because a lot of people care tons more about each individual word and interpretation in a given social situation than I do.

I don't give two figs for knowing the original Japanese dialogue or any fan translations. I don't attempt to make any fan translations myself, and if I did it would be kept under lock and key. It would be a good way for anyone to practice their Japanese, but I would hope anyone who did so would keep it private. It is also a dangerous swamp that I wouldn't want to get caught in because of the rabidness of certain fans.

I don't put full lines in Google Translate because that often leads to word salad problems. One kanji character/character grouping at a time, since they are often visually distinct being separated by kana. Often times what I'm trying to figure out or isolate is one or two words to gain a greater understanding of how certain things apply in the game. My last two efforts were the Japanese wiki pages for Trophies/Achievements and the uh, not sure of the word, Farm Circle/Power Circle combos. Thanks to only putting in a few characters at a time, I now have actually managed to retain a few kanji for the first time ever, which I consider something of a miracle in and of itself. That's my ninja way, 牧場物語の術. (That's also a joke.)
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A lot of stuff happened since last post :shock:

Following up on athlete/sports enthusiast etc. I didn't even think of it coming off as nitpicking the translation. I meant it in a more of a "I like one concept, but not the other". Nothing to do with how accurately I think they translated. Even if it was 100% accurate I still like the concept of being an athlete over sports fan. Aaanyways just wanted to clarify and talk about the game really. Didn't mean to point fingers or anything at XSeed or anyone else.
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