At CEDEC2021 in Japan today, SIE presented a talk titled "How to Implement localization in Soul of Tsushima".
SIE localization expert Daitsuyoshi Sakai shared with localization producer Reiko Sekine the experience and knowledge gained during the localization of Soul of Tsushima.
SIE localization process
First, SIE introduces the localization workflow. First of all, the development team will provide the plot text, recording files, Cut in animation and other materials to the localization team, the localization team will translate the text, and calibrate the text and the recording to determine the Japanese lines. The team will adjust the Japanese lines according to the length and rhythm of the original voice.
After repeated adjustments, the team will give a Japanese dubbing script and perform Japanese dubbing. Since the recording work does not unfold in the order of the game's timeline, the localization team will confirm with the recording director and voice actors what the psychological state of the protagonist in the recording section is at that time, and whether the idea is closer to the samurai or the underworld, so as to ensure the desired performance effect.
After the recording is complete, the localization team translates text such as character names, skill names, background narratives, and more. Finally, the text and recordings that are implemented into the game are LQA, and the problems found in the inspection are fixed, and the entire localization is completed.
In fact, this process applies not only to localization in English→ Japanese, but also in localization assignments in other languages.
Of course, the duration of localization varies from project to project, usually from a few months to about 1 year. Souls of Tsushima spent 1 year localizing due to development delays and the COVID-19 pandemic. In the long years of 1 year, SIE's localization team has always carried out localization work with the concept of "bringing users to move".
Lesson 1: The localization team needs to share the same goals as the development team
The presenter said that ordinary localization methods cannot meet the localization needs of Soul of Tsushima. The game's story is set in the Kamakura period, and the Japanese speak in a different tone and cultural background than in modern times, but the localization team does not know enough about history, which is a big problem.
One of the keys to localization of this game is to understand what developer Sucker Punch wants to pursue. The goal of Sucker Punch is to depict a foreign culture with respect; to make the work resonate with players all over the world.
In other words, it is to let the Japanese people feel that the Japanese portrayed in the game are coordinated and natural, but not too Japanese; give priority to gameplay and entertainment, rather than the examination of the times, and pursue the correctness of history; and produce non-Hollywood-style costume dramas.
This taught the team the first lesson: to understand what the developer was trying to say and what to achieve, the localization team had to share the same goals as the development team.
Lesson 2: If the player can't understand it, they can't convey the above
Making the game "too Japanese" requires considerable determination. So far, games made by overseas manufacturers based on Japanese themes have content that makes Japanese players feel uncoordinated. How to control this scale and ensure that Japanese players will not be disappointed is a big problem.
Sucker Punch was in discussions with the SIE Japan team early in development, and wanted SIE to assist with the design, sound, and field materials for horses. SIE includes ambient sounds that only Japanese can record, and designs Japanese game icons to provide help that only the Japanese side can provide.
Live-action materials.
Scene modeling.
In addition, Sucker Punch asked SIE to translate the in-game letters, text stickers, and text from the beginning of the mission into Japanese.
The protagonist writes a letter to his wife and other graphic text.
The text at the beginning of the task.
When translating this content, the localization team kept In mind Thatcker Punch's goal of entertainment rather than historical preaching, and adhered to the team's own philosophy of moving users.
Left: How history is written. Right: Modern notation. The right side of the game is written.
Taking the letter shown in the picture as an example, the letters in the game use a lot of Japanese kanji, which is very well written and readable for Japanese players. But from the perspective of historical research, there were not so many Chinese characters used at that time, and if the history was restored, it would be difficult for modern players to read through the letters. Taking into account the developer's goals, the localization team took a modern approach that allowed players to experience better.
Lesson 3: In order to achieve the goals of the development team, it is necessary to clarify the way the localization team works and keep the work consistent.
In order to achieve the goals pursued by Sucker Punch, the localization team clarified two principles.
1. Feelings first. 2. Perceptuality and analysis coexist.
To put it bluntly, because Soul of Tsushima is a story that depicts the feelings of the protagonist, the team set up the localization principle of feelings first. In the story, the protagonist Ren has been struggling, and Masako is always full of anger. The more rational characters are only the enemy commanders. In addition, the focus of Japanese costume drama depictions is also the dignity of the samurai and the sophistication of the Edo period, and "The Soul of Tsushima" is full of the shadow of the costume drama, and the team made this judgment with reference to this.
The second is the principle of coexistence of sensibility and reason. In terms of sensibility, the team accumulates this knowledge by understanding the costume drama, mastering its unique language and wording, so that it can quickly output these words and develop a perceptual cognition.
To this end, Sakai participated in a seminar held by Kazuo Koike, the author of "The Wolf with The Belt", and was inspired by many costume dramas. One of Koike's words that touched him the most was, "Nobody knows what happened in the past, so history has no right answer, and most importantly it's funny." But there must also be a layer of limitation to this sentence – although history does not have the right answer, it cannot be arbitrary, and it is still necessary to find a center that will not waver when creating. After Sakai listened to this, he realized that there was no need to imitate or restore any history, as long as he created his own costume drama.
Later, Sakai watched Akira Kurosawa's films as well as many Ōkawa dramas, which were the object of Sucker Punch's reference when developing the game. Sakai studied the words and deeds and acting skills of the characters in the costume drama. In this way, he cultivated his perceptual understanding of costume dramas, and at the same time, he also looked for objective perspectives so that players who did not understand costume dramas could also understand the content of the game.
In terms of analysis, the team mainly learned by reading relevant books, understanding the folk customs and social structure of the time, and establishing a framework that can be applied to localization operations.
For example, the team learned about the respective living conditions of samurai and commoners in the Kamakura period, and the average personality portrait would not treat them similarly in localization. This analysis also helps to deepen the team's perceptual understanding.
In summary, the so-called principle of coexistence of sensibility and analysis is the goal of pursuit: "Even if the game is a little different from the facts, as long as it does not affect the majority of players, it can convey emotions." ”
On this basis, if you want to resonate with more players, you need to let players who are not familiar with costume dramas also understand the language in the game. As a result, the team simplified the complex language and performances in the costume drama, making it easier for players to understand by emotion.
That is to say, the localization pursued by this work is not a hard-core work that makes costume drama enthusiasts applaud, but a compromise translation that makes most players feel the flavor of costume drama and has the fun of entertainment works.
For example, the translation in the above figure is "Jin's Journey" and "Tales of Tsushima", and the literal translation should be "Ren Journey" and "Tsushima Story", but it lacks the implicit romantic charm of Japanese stories. Therefore, the localization team adopted translations such as "The Way of Ren" and "Ukiyo-kusa", reminiscent of the protagonist Ren's life path and conveying the earthly mood.
The story of "Soul of Tsushima" is roughly divided into three parts, the English uses "Act 1~3", while the Japanese choose to use the three words "keep, break, and leave" to describe the three stages. "Shouzhi Stage" tells the story of Ren's teacher and Shimura's teachings to him; "Breaking Stage" tells the story of Ren's growth as a meditator based on the teacher's teachings; "The Stage of Departure" tells the story of Ren's departure from the teacher's teachings and embarking on his own path. This translation both expresses the sequence and follows the flow of the story. Incidentally, the term "keeping the break" was not yet born in the Kamakura period.
On the other hand, the localization team obtained the consent of Sucker Punch and modified the setting that clearly deviated from the common sense of the times. For example, the protagonist's nursing mother is called "Yuriko" in English, but historically, the Japanese did not give the nursing mother the name of "son". The team changed its name to "Lily".
Lesson 4: Pay attention to player empathy and set localized work rules
After specifying the principles and directions of localization operations, it enters the actual operation stage, and how to deal with the language, how to deal with the performance, how to deal with the text, etc., is still an outstanding practical issue.
The first is the language problem, too close to the costume drama style of the character line is not suitable for open world games. Players need to manipulate the character while listening to the dialogue, the ancient style lines hinder understanding, if the player can not keep up with the content of the dialogue, the end is reversed.
Still, the game was an archaic genre after all, so the team set the rules — using modern spoken language, but adding archaic lines with Kamakura's characteristics.
Specifically, the team mainly used the language of the Japanese Middle Ages (late Heian period, Kamakura, Muromachi), using some of the vocabulary that has been handed down from the Middle Ages (Heian) to the present day, excluding languages born in the Edo period. In addition, the team will try not to use the language since the Meiji era (modern times), but if there is anything that hinders the player's understanding, it will still use modern language in order to understand.
On the other hand, although Japanese characters such as "below" and "contract" belong to ancient languages, few Japanese people can understand their correct meanings, but these words can express the flavor of costume dramas, and convey their meaning through the context and game screen, so the team also used these relatively jerky words.
However, not all of the characters' lines apply to the above rules. The characters are divided into samurai and commoners, and the former follows this principle more strictly in order to show the difference in status between the two, while the latter is more relaxed about the use of modern vocabulary.
That is to say, the samurai valued dignity and reputation more, and would present a different temperament from modern people, so it was necessary to use ancient lines to emphasize this feature.
Civilians' mental state will be closer to modern people, so the team uses more modern vocabulary to make it easier for players to resonate with them. Taking the two lines in the picture as an example, in the first line, the end of the sentence "○○ さ" is a modern expression; in the second line, "楽" expresses the meaning of "simple", a usage that only appeared around 1700.
In the game, the localization team deliberately used ancient language that was difficult for players to understand in the "Waka" and "Legacy" sections. Waka and heritage existed before the Kamakura period, but if this part of the content is too modern, it will lose the flavor of costume drama and produce an unnatural feeling, and the use of ancient language and ancient language can create a good atmosphere in the Japanese Middle Ages.
In addition, the vocabulary used by the protagonist Ren in the waka did not necessarily conform to the rules of the Heian period, because the samurai were not nobles and were not good at chanting waka, and in order to show that Ren was not good at this, the team deliberately adjusted some of the vocabulary.
In the inheritance story, the player can know the origin of the story through the game screen, so even if you can't understand the ancient text, it doesn't matter if you just use it as a background music. The Japanese version also includes seven-five tones, elements of the Edo period, and ancient pronunciations that are not found in English.
Lesson 5: If you can achieve your development team's goals, you should try to change your plans boldly
After talking about the language issue, SIE introduced the performance problem. In the localization of Souls of Tsushima, the biggest problem was the dubbing performance. The team slowly decided the direction by selecting voice actors and recordings. At the voice actor selection meeting, Mizuno Hiroko, who plays Yuna, and Hidehira Tada, who plays Ryuzo, show their acting skills of sipping muddy water and desperately trying to survive. Since then, the direction of dubbing performances has been set to be "rude", rather than kingly performance. This is also consistent with the theme of the game, "Mud, Blood, Steel".
In the English version, the voice actor portrays Masako as a sad character, while in the Japanese version, Masako is always full of anger.
In the English version, the voice actors employ rather depressing acting skills, but this does not conform to the Japanese costume drama image and loses its entertainment. Therefore, the localization team chose a performance policy that was in line with the Japanese market. At this moment, the team realized that they were not making a Japanese version of Soul of Tsushima, but a Japanese version of Soul of Tsushima.
As mentioned earlier, before recording, the localization team will talk to the recording director and voice actors about the character's state of mind, future plans, and carefully run into each other to achieve the best results. In the process, the team also learned about the characters created by the voice actors, and through this information sharing, the quality of localization was further improved.
To ensure that the final result meets the requirements of the development team, the localization team should boldly try to conform to the local market plan.
Lesson Six: The Devil Hides in the Details
Finally, SIE describes the techniques of text processing. Text translation requires the use of perceptual cognition and analysis. The following points need to be noted: do not destroy the overall atmosphere of the game, the background narrative text should take into account the author (the character who wrote it), the task name, the skill name, and the prop name should be in line with the world view.
For example, the article on the left in the image above was written by a farmer, so there are very few Chinese characters and consist of a single sentence. The article on the right is written by the monk, there are many Chinese characters, and the article is smooth.
In the localization process of historical games, no matter what kind of translation is adopted, there will always be some contradictions with the evidence, and readability should be given priority to ensure that players understand.
Finally, Sakai said that he hopes that these six lessons can be used as a reference for localization teams to challenge other unknown genres.