Undertale translator explains EN to JP localization

0:00On the tail, before I actually started working on it, I didn't even think about how challenging that would be. I was just excited because the game was just fantastic. He wanted to bring out the lost field with model series. Over 20 years I've been working as a game translator. I now know, TensorFlow Humor is definitely one of the qualities required. Bobby, thank you Toby. He always trust me for that. Thanks for joining us on Unpacking Japan. Probably produced by our team at Zen Studio with a long standing support of Zen Group. To keep these weekly stories coming, please consider subscribing. It's the best way to support the show and really makes a difference. And now, let's get into it. Welcome to Unpacking Japan. I'm Toby and today we have the pleasure to welcome Keko Fukui-ji. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. You are freelance video game translator and you have amongst others translated the one and only

1:03Undertale as well as worked on Hades 1 and 2. Some really unique and famous indie games that have gathered fan bases all around the world. So we're very excited to talk a little bit about the translation processes, the challenges, how you had how you have experienced those games as well. But before we talk about all of this, I'm curious about how you got into kind of game translation to begin with because I think I read so much that you originally wanted to translate books. You do not know you translate games. So your story, I was asking you, where does it start? And I was asking you from Tokyo and you said, that's a long story. So maybe we start there and I'm curious to hear this long story. Okay, the reason why I became a game translator is almost like an accident. It's not like I tried to be a game translator. First of all, the reason why I got interested in English, it has a funny story behind it.

2:09And there's a band called X. They are calling themselves X Japan right now. But when I was 13 years old, I was the huge fan of them. And I was literally worshipping them. Like I do. Yes. And as a worshiper, their songs lyrics are almost like a Bible. So I had to understand what they're singing about. But the songs had a lot of English words. And sometimes an entire song was written in English. I needed to understand it. But it was way over the range of what they teach you in the middle school. So I decided to teach myself. Wow. And I started teaching myself reading the English textbooks my mother had. I studied English during math class because I didn't care much about math.

3:13And I became very good at English, but I was feeling math. But that's how I got it. English. And when I got good at English, I started seeing a lot of Hollywood movies. And while I was watching those movies, I started wanting to go visit the US. And by then I was already in high school. And they had an exchange student program in high school. And I had to go through and interview psychological tests and all that. Psychological tests. What do they want to know in the psychological? They had me draw a picture of three. For some reason, like, yeah, like a head draw a tree with fruits. And I drew some big old tree with roots all deep in their underground and stuff.

4:16And probably they liked it. And I was selected as one of the exchange students. So depending on the kind of tree, if you draw maybe like the wrong kind, a pine tree maybe, suddenly you get rejected. That's an interesting psychological. I don't know, but yeah, but that's the test I took. And they selected me as one of the exchange students. And I went to Florida for a year as an exchange student. And while I was in Florida, I got into hip hop and R&B. And I started listening to a lot of rap music. And I started trying to decipher all that rap lyrics. And I studied a lot of, I studied English a lot. So I believe those days, builds the foundation of the English skill I have today. How was that experience for you? I mean, as a high school student going for one year abroad and then going to Florida,

5:17how did you kind of experience that? Well, I was culturally shocked because when I went before I went to the US, I thought that the society of America was something like Sesame Street. And like black people, white people, Asian people, Hispanic people. I thought they were all living together in one society. But when I went there, it wasn't like that at all. And even in high school during lunch break, black kids were hanging out around this corner. And Hispanic kids were just hanging around this corner. And it looked like there are different societies in one country. And that was a little bit shocked, but I was shocked. But I was also curious because I realized that there are America I knew before I went to the US was,

6:24I think I'll call it like white America. And I didn't know that about any black culture or anything. That's why I got interested in hip-hop and R&B. And started listening to those music, that music. And like musicians or actors, the actors who are popular among the black kids are not known among the white kids at all. Stuff like that. I couldn't even imagine what I was in Japan. When you arrive there and you're sitting, you walk into the break room of your school and you see all the different groups are separated. Where did you gravitate to? Where did you connect? Well, there were a couple of Japanese kids there. And they naturally accepted me. But since I was an exchange student, I was kind of able to go anywhere.

7:26And I was hanging out with, I think, anybody. And I think being an exchange student and pretty like, oh, I don't know anything, kind of, altitude kind of helped me a lot, I think. Because you don't have the cultural and sociological background and the potential issues that come with them, you just kind of like a bit of light just go from the long-term flowers. Before going there, you were studying English a lot. Because you wanted to understand the song lyrics. How did you feel was your English level when you actually went to the States and you suddenly are in the school system and talking with everyone? Do you feel like you're studying got you to a level that was good enough to follow along? Or did you notice a gap between just the self-studying and the reality of how English was used? I don't really remember having any issues while I was in there. So I think I prepared well enough. And like, you're in the US and nobody speaks Japanese.

8:29So you kind of have to speak in English and have to try to understand what they were saying. So yeah, but I don't remember having any problems. One year as a high school student is a long time for an exchange. I've heard people going maybe for a few weeks, sometimes a couple of months. Did you have a place to stay at or was it like a homestay or something? Oh yes, I was a homestay and there were host families actually. I had to switch host families like every three months also. Really? How come? Is it like just a part of the system? Yeah, it was just a part of the system and that was their policy or whatever. And I had to switch to families every three months. It's not difficult when you're a bit young and you go abroad and you just get used to living with one family suddenly you have to change and get used to another family and maybe their home and maybe

9:30that children as well and different pace and different culture. Yes, I think that was a little bit hard for me, I think. But it was just dream come true to me that I'm actually living in the US. So I was like, I don't mind. What did you feel like when the year was coming to an end? You had to leave. Did you feel like, oh maybe I can go to university in the US, I can stay here, I can make a life or did that kind of develop some other ideas and plans for when you come back home? I was crying like crazy on the plane back home because I didn't want to leave and I really wanted to come back and I really wanted to go to college in the US but unfortunately I'm no friend or a millionaires family.

10:33I asked my parents but they were like, what are you talking about? The US cost is quite different than Japan. It was the money and I thought about saving up myself but like I'm in high school and working in the McDonald's and I would never be able to make that much money. So I went to the regular Japanese college. Up until that point, your passion and your interest was really kind of learning English. When you reached a certain level, did you start thinking about what you wanted to do with that language in which direction you wanted to take your studies and maybe your career? Well the time when I started thinking about my career was I think it was the third year of college. That's about the time when everybody starts thinking about what to do after the graduation

11:36but this is like long time ago. Like over 20 years ago, I think it might be hard for the young people to imagine today but it was something called Shushoku Hyou Gaki. It's an ice age of getting a job. Ice age. And all the college graduates were never able to land on any kind of job. You go through interviews after interviews and you just get rejected repeatedly. And that was the time when I was in a third year of college. So I was just feeling hopeless and it felt like almost like going to a war or something and I felt like I would never win this war because I had, I didn't have any particular companies I wanted

12:39to work for and I didn't have anything I really wanted to do working for a company or anything. So I was like okay I need to think about what I'm good at. I need to think about what my strongest suit is and okay I'm good at English and I liked reading and writing in Japanese. So I thought about translation. Like how about I do translation. But I never done any translations in my life. So I wasn't sure if that's actually for me. So I decided to go to translators school while I was in college. Then I went to the translators school then I was able to win the best student award in the class. So that gave me a little bit of confidence. Like maybe if I keep on doing this I might be able to be somebody.

13:41So that's how I opened up the door to the translation world. What are, you know, when you think of translation in simple terms that you take text or speech from one language and you make it understandable into another language. When you go to school for that and you get these extra classes, what are some of the things that really surprised you about what translation really means? Well, I was taking a lot of classes like technical translation class that teach you how to translate like software, UI and stuff. And I really wanted to be a book translator. So I was also taking literature translation class that would teach you how to translate literature. Then I also took the class of movie translation like subtitles or voiceovers and stuff.

14:46So there are a whole different kinds of translations all of in this translation itself. It had a lot of categories. And I was able to learn a lot of different kinds of translations. And that actually helped me when I started translating games because games have all of those combined into a lot. Yeah, like you have to translate UI over the games. And if the game had like books or newspaper within the game, you have to translate that document as books or newspaper. And of course, there are dialogues. And sometimes you have to translate them in subtitles style or sometimes voiceovers. So it was really fortunate that I learned all of that

15:50and that really helped me as a game translator. You mentioned you also took like translation classes for movies and like how to do the subtitles and stuff. I'm actually curious while we are on that topic, what are some of the key rules when it comes to translating like foreign movies with this specific English language movies into Japanese? Because sometimes I noticed when you watch a movie on an streaming platform in Japan and the movie is dubbed into Japanese and also has subtitles. The subtitles don't match the dubbing. The meaning is kind of the same, but the words chosen are not the same. And as a Japanese language learner, that was very confusing because you hear one thing, but you read another and that doesn't, but I'm curious. But is it the rule or the convention behind that? Well, they say that for subtitles, you can only put 40% of what the original take is said. And for voiceover, it'll be 60%. So you kind of have to cut down the information

16:56to make it fit within the time frame that the viewers can read. If it's too long, the viewers won't be able to read it and it just goes right through and you understand what the character is the same. So depending on the information that were cut out and the translators also have to make sure that the viewers can understand what their story is all about. So depending on what kind of information to cut out, the translations are going to be different. Interesting. So Japanese speech or dubbing is 60% of what the original English say is in the subtitles only 40%. Another thing I noticed with movies is sometimes characters will say a lot of, let's say, slang or sometimes insults and things like that. But the Japanese translation has a completely different

18:01meaning than what was said. Is there like a convention for when these words come up or these phrases come up in English that you can't translate them literally or there's like a, was this kind of up to the translator every time to decide? I don't think, I don't know, I'm not a professional movie translator so I'm not really familiar with specific rules about those but I think I was just curious because I always had a question, you know, we were the translator. But you wanted to be a book translator then. Yes. At the time. What kind of books did you have a specific interest that you wanted to translate? Those novels or this kind of literature? Actually, there was a one book that sparked my interest and it's, their eyes were watching God written by Zoranil Hurston. Because like I said, I was into hip-hop and Lombi and I studied reading Black

19:04literature too. And when I read their, their eyes were watching God, it was written in the 1930s, I think. But all the conversations in that book were like how real Black people talk. And when I read those dialogues, I was like, wow, this is like rap lyrics. And I felt like I really want to translate this. I want to translate this properly. Back then I was ignorant, I didn't know how hard that is. But yeah, but sometimes ignorance gives you the power to open up the door to something new. So my dad ignorance gave me the power to open up the door to the translation world. So you get interested in book translation and you take all these courses outside of your regular

20:07kind of college classes and you kind of graduate eventually. Do you then find a job in translation in book translation? That's another story. Because I thought back then, I thought in order to be a book translator, I thought I needed to win the contest. So I entered in a lot of contest. And as you might be able to guess, it's not that easy to win the contest. And I was selected as one of the finalists, but I was in chosen and I was never able to make it. And I started feeling like maybe this is enough for me. Then one day I realized that there might be some companies out there who are looking for translators. And why don't I apply for that job? So I started looking for any companies and they're looking for translators. Then I found one company that was looking for

21:14three dance translators who can translate games. Then I thought I've been a gamer ever since I was young. And I studied how to translate. So I thought maybe this is for me. And I applied for the job. And they sent me a trial. And I did the trial and they accepted me and they assigned me to my very first game translation project. And after that, they assigned me to the next one. And after that, they assigned me to the next one. And suddenly you were working on the game translator. What was the very first project you got into? I can't really say which one, but it was one MMO RPG. But back then it was very challenging because well, we received the text to translate in a Excel spreadsheet. And back then, I think a lot of

22:23developed studios didn't understand what the translators need in order to properly translate the text. And sometimes I received a file and I see one character speaking. But clearly there must be another character having a conversation with this character. But that other character doesn't exist on the file. And I have no idea what the other character is saying. It's saying. And I still had to translate somehow. Making invisible dialogue based on assumption. Yes. So like it's completely on the assumption. So you know that this is not there's no way I can properly translate. But I still have to do it stuff like that happened back then like 20 years ago.

23:23But fortunately today things have improved a lot and a lot of developers do understand what we need. So we really, I don't know, it might be because I'm just lucky. But for my case, I really encounter with any cases like that. So you said that you enjoyed playing games while growing up. And so that you thought about the good fit. What kind of games did you like playing? Fandale that point. Well, like everybody's favorite like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy series, Crown of Shreegor, Crown of Cross, Habits Moon series. I just love live simulations, slow live simulation games. And I can't put down once I start playing that kind of games. And one game I got really I think the

24:23I think that was oxygen not included. This is a survival simulation game. And you're controlling a lot of I think there was a not actually human. I think they're like clones. They're called duplicates in the game terms as a game terms. And you control those duplicates. And tell them to okay, dig up this resource and build this building here and try to survive in I think it's an asteroid or something. And the goal is to develop a rocket and get out of there get out of their asteroid. But when I started playing that game, I confess I just couldn't stop playing. And I have no idea how many nights I spent without sleeping this playing that game. And when you realize it's already

25:29in the morning, birds are chirping outside. But yes, I've been a gamer ever since I was young. So getting into translating games is kind of like a perfect match translating plus something that you've always liked. You mentioned that when you worked on this first MMORPG game, one of the challenges was you would get an excel sheet with the text translate, but not necessarily the context and such. How did it work back then? Did you get to play through the game? Did you get to see where your text would be in the game? Or where you're just getting an excel sheet and like, please translate this into this many characters? Well, back then, there was we were not able to play the build beforehand. And that process is called familiarization. It's a really important process actually for back then, we were not able to do that. And there's

26:29another phase called LQA linguistic quality assurance. And for LQA, we played a game with the Japanese tech is implemented. And we have set it out to make sure that everything's looking okay, like no tech is bleeding out of the box, stuff like that. But we were never able to do that back then. So we were just translating all the sheet and just hoping things look okay, stuff like that. But today, most of the, I think 99% of the project I get to do familiarization and LQA also too. So I'm so grateful. Imagine that helps a lot. You briefly explain how for movie subtitles, or movie dubbing as well, it's like 60% of the English language and 40% for the text.

27:31And what were some of the kind of key rules for translating games from English to Japanese? Well, sometimes we do have to work around the moji limit too because there are, yes, like dialogue box, there's a dialogue box and you have to make sure that all the tech is within that box. So yeah, I have to work around the character limit. And it depends on that game. So the rules change every time the game changes. So, but Undertale was really challenging because all the characters used different fonts, like some characters speaking different ones. And character limit changed. And I had to make sure that okay, this character is 14 moji, 14 moji power line and three lines.

28:37And that changes when the character changes. So that was a little challenge. So you brought up Undertale, a very famous game in the community that kind of really gathered its fanbase a few years ago. For you, was it a game you knew about before you were kind of asked to translate this? How did this project come about? Well, first, eight four, the localization agency of Undertale, they contacted me asking, you know, the game called Undertale. And I was like, of course, that was on. I think it was in January 2016, which is not long after the English version dropped. In 2015, I think it came out. Yes, September 2015, the English version dropped. And they asked me if I know about the game. And I said, of course, everybody's talking about it. And then asking me,

29:40if I know about the game pretty much means that I get to translate it. So I was very excited. And soon after that, I played the English version myself. Then I thought, wow, this is definitely my kind of game. I can't wait to translate. They're all lovely, weird characters and all the weird strange scenes that make you love. And I was just excited. You said earlier that you had this book and that you read about this kind of a black culture, where they were using a lot of local slang and kind of their speech. And you were excited about translating that because it's a very unique kind of speech that may have a lot of intricacies being translated into Japanese. Now Undertale has its own kind of language, its own characters, quirks and ways of speaking, a lot of internet slang as well. When you first kind of play the game

30:43and you start thinking about the possibilities of translating it, how did you feel about this? How did you think about, oh, is this something that can be translated into Japanese? How would I do this? Or was it just overall like, I want to do this, I want to get to work on it? Well, before I actually started working on it, I didn't even think about how challenging that would be. I was just excited because the game was just fantastic and I was just honored that I'll be able to translate it. So I didn't really think about how challenging that would be. But I think one of the most memorable characters in Undertale is Papyrus. He talks in Papyrus font in all caps. Before I started translating it, we were having a kickoff meeting at Eight Force office. We talked about what to do with Papyrus talk because we have to do

31:50something about it. We can't do all caps for Japanese. We talked about what to do with it. And somebody suggested how about he talks in a vertical font sentences, like Tategaki sentences. And with that, he can only say like five characters for one. Which will be very challenging for a translator. So I was doing that meeting that would just be incisodant. Because that would be challenging. But I didn't want to say things like I don't want to do it because that would be too hard because I'm a professional translator. So I didn't want to say that, but it would be challenging. I knew. So I was just being incisodant. But it was decided so. And I did it.

32:51I translated that five characters for one line for Papyrus. Then when I read it back, it had some special cute nuance to his speech. Because he can only say five characters for one line. And he sometimes tries to make him look greater than he actually is. He tries to use some big words but gets it wrong. But he can only say like five characters for one line. So that came across as like he's kind of cute. And that's the Papyrus. So yeah, it was challenging but it was well worth it. It totally brought out what Papyrus is. You just brought up this kickoff meeting that you had with the team at 8-4. What are some of the things that you needed to decide from the beginning when you kind of approach this game? Because it's quite long. There's a lot of dialogues, a lot of things to go on about.

33:55What are some of these key decisions that you have made early on, including for example the font foot Papyrus? Okay. Another big thing we decided for Japanese version was Hira Gana and Katakana only rule, which was specifically requested by Mr. Toby Fox himself. He wanted to bring out close-field with model series, which is the big influence for him to make their make-understand. And with that rule, there were a lot of challenges because like I said, you have to make sure that all the tech is within the dialogue box. And with Hira Gana and Katakana only rule, like if you could use kanji, like this one kanji called let's say body, like Karada,

34:59you can say it with just one kanji, but if you can only use Hira Gana, Hikara, you have to use up the three spaces. So it was challenging for that character-remit side. And also, with only Hira Gana, the players can only see the sound of that word. And if one word, like let's say, there's a word, the capital is mentioned in our undertale. And there are some different ways how to translate the capital. But I thought I was thinking first to translate the capital as auto. Auto is a very fancy way to translate the capital. But auto can mean capital,

36:05but it can also mean throwing up. So it'll be confusing to the player because if you write it in kanji, there will be a difference. So you can totally say auto in kanji and the player will know that that means the capital. But using only Hira Gana, it can be confused. They can get confused. So I had to come up with some other way to say the capital. And I decided to say Miyako. Miyako can only mean the capital. So there were a lot of limitations on the expressions I was able to use because of Hira Gana and Katakana rule. Yeah, I can't imagine that being very complicated. Also, then as you mentioned, so there's the space challenge. There's the meaning communication challenge, but also the general kind of flow of the conversations. I remember when I was

37:08starting out learning Japanese, I was asking my language teacher, if there's a recommendation for a book that I could read. And I'd just been starting for like a few weeks. And so she recommended children's book like Gudi to Gudak. And everything is written in Hira Gana in those books. But actually, that was very difficult for me because at the time my Japanese was at the beginning state that I couldn't make the difference between when does the word start and when does the word finish. So when it comes to the game like Undertale where there's maybe a lot of specific vocabulary that you have to use or sometimes create. I imagine for players that are not familiar, it might be challenging as well to guess the meaning of what is being said when you don't have the kanji to support this. Yeah, but like I said, it was just there were just so many limitations. And I had to make sure that all the text flows naturally. And I had to read it back a lot of times

38:09to make sure that it's making sense. And it's a little hard to read. Like you said, it's it is hard to read if there's no kanji. So I had to do a lot of reading back and a lot of revisions. Make sure that it turned out as good as it did. Yes. What is the general process for a game like this? Where do you really start to translate? I imagine you don't necessarily start with just okay, let's start playing the game and translate translate translate Do you kind of have to create character personalities in Japanese? Do you have to first go through like all the keywords and translate those individually so you know how to use? What is the general process for a game like this? Okay, so my philosophy as the game translator is to create the same experience, their original version gives the player

39:12in the Japanese version too. So like whatever the feelings or emotions, their players feel from the original version, I would like to recreate the same thing in Japanese version. And in order to do that, you have to receive that experience from the original version first. So during the familiarization process, I usually just play as one player, not taking notes or thinking about okay, what how to translate these words or anything. I just try to enjoy the game as just one player. So I get to fully experience the game. Then try to recreate that experience in Japanese version. So that's what I always try to... That's my philosophy as a game translator.

40:13Oh, try to convey a feeling. It's not necessarily about literal translation, but that the player that plays the game in Japanese gets the same player experience as in English. I'm telling you the game that has a lot of puns as well, a lot of play on words. How do you approach the translation of those? So based on that philosophy, puns and jokes are supposed to be funny. And when the players encounter those moments, they're supposed to be laughing. But sometimes, a lot of times, it doesn't work if you just directly translate those jokes in Japanese. It's not funny to Japanese players. So in order to recreate the same experience, I'll need to come up with something in Japanese. Like, if the jokes are goofy jokes, I try to come up with something goofy. If the jokes are clever, I'll have to come up with something clever. It gets challenging sometimes

41:19because I'm not a comedian, but for these over 20 years I've been working as a game translator. I now know that sense of humor is definitely one of the qualities required for game translator. It's good to know for people that I'm trying to be a sense of humor. A lot of that humor, I think, especially in Undertale, is tied to like internet culture as well. So for you, when you are through the familiarization phase, are you familiar with a lot of these puns, the jokes, the references from the game because you've been a gamer yourself for a long time? Or do you also need to do research? Like, what is this referring to? And really kind of studies, so to say, the background and ideas of what the characters are talking about? Well, sometimes when I encounter with something I don't know, I do have to do some researches. And if that still doesn't give me any answers, I asked the

42:21developers, like, okay, what's the intention behind it? I did my research for sorry, I wasn't able to find anything because you please tell me. And there's one funny moment on that, like when I was translating into the Gangesron. And there was some, I think it looked like a reference of something. And I tried, I researched and I wasn't able to find anything. So I asked the developer, okay, I did research, but I wasn't able to find anything. What could you tell me what's this? And they answered, oh, this is something one of the team members said why we were developing. Okay, good to know. But yeah, I do get to ask questions to the developers. And these days,

43:28they have been working with wonderful developers and they are always quick to answer to my questions. So yeah, like again, I'm it's I'm I'm great. Well, so in the context of Undertale, does it mean then you worked a lot directly with the Toby Fox to kind of confirm translation or make your suggestion? For example, how to translate capital, auto or Miyako? Are these like things that, let's say you have a regular meeting and like, I'm planning to translate it this way, translate this, put this way to confirm or how was that kind of a process to implement? Usually, we don't really, whenever I make decisions like that, we don't really do meetings every time or anything now. They Toby, thank you Toby. He always trust me for that. And he generally basically trust my decisions.

44:29But he can also he studies English Japanese a lot and he can actually read the translations I did. And whenever he thinks that he believes that I need I should make some changes, he can tell me so. Yeah, I can trust him. And thankfully, he trusts my decisions. So yeah, that's how we work. One of the things he mentioned early on was about the fonts of the game. And it's my understanding that originally everything was planned for English fonts. And they kind of had to code extra things or develop extra things to have like the Japanese fonts as well in the in the game. Maybe I missed red, but I think I read that on on Wikipedia. But I was wondering then when it came to you as a translator, did you have to consider as well how the font kind of looks? Whether it's easy to read or not for the players? Well, as for the fonts, which font to use, we decided on the kickoff meetings.

45:36So I just trusted the team's decision. And all I had to do was just concentrate on the translation and depending on the font, they were different character limits. So I had to consider that. But that was all about it. So I didn't have to consider anything on the program inside. It was the programmer's job. So, like, how long was the process for you from that kickoff meeting until you kind of delivered the final translated version? It's like seven years ago. So I don't clearly remember, but it was like a lot of it was a lot of take. So it took a while. And I had to do the LQA to it took a lot of time. Do you have a lot of people during the process

46:38that you can kind of go to for feedback for input on the game? I know that in some situations, maybe with larger IPs, they can be very restrictive as to who you can share what information with and get input. But if you the soul translator, sometimes it's difficult, right? You maybe want a different opinion. You want some other perspectives on the flow of things. Because if you look at it all day, every day, you might kind of lose track of things. Yes. For eight four case, they always have an English native checker on my translations to make sure that I didn't make an English translation. And sometimes they give me feedback. On the spot that they think that the English and Japanese thing, different things, they always leave the decision after me. They always make suggestions. It looks like English and Japanese things, different things. It's

47:44intentional. Sometimes it is intentional. I can say that this is intentional and this is okay to leave it as this. Sometimes I do make mistakes and they catch those mistakes. I can fix that. There is always the third person's eye on my translation. It's for a case. But I can trust the checker's opinion. That makes me feel a little bit relieved. It's not just me. It's really good to have somebody check in my translation. You just said that it's been seven years ago since that kind of came out or that project came to an end. When you look back at your work and maybe you play through the game again from time to time, what is something that you can take from translating Undertale that you particularly enjoyed as a translated? Enjoy! Well actually, once the game is already out, I really don't like playing it

48:54myself because it's so hard to play as one character, one player. I always start feeling like I want to make changes or I want to fix this part. I always start playing as a translator and I start feeling like I'm still doing LGA. Once the game is out, I usually keep this dance from those things because there's nothing I can do about it now. I honestly don't enjoy it. So you move on to an next new project, a new game where you can start from being a player again and familiarize yourself with some of these games that you've also translated. I hate this and hate this too. Also very well known in their indie game communities. What's the story behind those? Are they projects that you thought after you were interested in translating? So you

49:55kind of applied, I'm interested in translating this or is it also a case of someone reaching out to you and be like, hey we want to translate this game into Japanese. Are you interested? Oh this is also an 8-4 project and they asked me, it's not like no, they said that maybe we're going to do this, so you're the translator. And I'm like, okay, sounds cool. I'm a big Greek mythology buff, so I was super happy too because I knew about the game and oh, we're going to do this. Great. So suddenly you've got the game with all this kind of methodological background. The one was more like internet culture pun and quirky characters with storylines. Here you've got kind of something based on or referring to a lot of these historical elements. As I translate, I imagine it's a completely different challenge. How do you approach that? Is the process generally the same

50:59like kickoff meeting and you have to first decide on this and this key elements? What was unique about translating Hades? Well, as for Hades, we didn't have anything like kickoff meeting, but I received a lot of documents about the backgrounds and all the backgrounds, information of the characters from Super Giant Games. I was able to read all that, so I had a clear vision of what kind of characters they are. So and also, I asked them if they can provide me with the audio data of all the lines. And they did. And the actors of Hades series are doing an incredible job. And just listening to the audio,

52:03I was able to imagine how they would be speaking if they spoke in Japanese. It almost came naturally to me like as soon as I listened to the voice. So yeah, the voice, the audio that will help me a lot when deciding how to make the characters speak. When you have, so in Undertale, you had these specific challenges of like limitations with the space and the absence of kanji and such. In Hades, you can use kanji and I think you have maybe a little bit more space. How do you communicate the different personalities of these characters? Do you use them, one of them will speak in Osaka band and one of them will speak in Fukuoka band or what is the approach as a translator to give them some kind of unique speech patterns? Well, basically, we translators are not the ones who decide what kind of tone or nuance to use.

53:06We're just following what the source that gets as though like for Hades, some characters are speaking in an old-fashioned English. For that, I used old-fashioned Japanese and some characters are speaking very contemporary tone like Eris, Strife Inc. and she speaks in a very casual way and for her, I could be almost just me myself. I didn't even have to do anything. I was just able to translate as myself. So that's how I handle it. But one thing that was a little challenging was like Hades' take-ins is written by Mr. Greg Kasevin and he's writing style is just fantastic and sometimes very fancy.

54:08It's God speaking to each other so he does all the fancy stuff. Another philosophy of me as a game translator is I think the game tech is shouldn't get in a way of gameplay. So I always want to make sure that the tech is easy to read and if the player reads it once, they can understand. That's something I'm always trying to pursue. And I want the tech to be easy to read but if I make it too simple, that's not going to be Hades. Like there's one character called Hickity in Hades 2. She speaks in an old-fashioned English version and I tried to recreate that in a Japanese version and made her speak in an old-fashioned Japanese.

55:12But if I do it too much, people won't be able to read it without dictionary. But if I make it too simple, it's not going to be Hickity anymore. So it was a little challenging to make the keep the balance. On the topic, I'm quite curious. When you take some of these more complex words, especially maybe referring to historical things from Greek mythology and such and you translate them into Japanese, they're very uncommon. The kanji use or the combination of kanji. So typically, if you read about that in a textbook, you might have like a furigana as well. How to read this word for people that are not familiar with the term. But when you have this in the game as part of a dialogue, it goes very fast. Do you really have to consider if people will have the time and the ability to read certain kanji or certain words in the context of a dialogue in

56:13a video game that will just maybe scroll by very fast because if they can't read this and suddenly there's like a whole word taken out of the center, right? Well, for heyd is the play is can actually hit the button and go to the next one. So I didn't have to consider about the time frame or anything. And I've used a lot of difficult kanjis and there's no furigana. And I concerned about it, but it's heyd is. So I decided this is okay to use it's okay to use a little bit difficult kanji. But I made sure not to use not too much, not too many difficult kanjis during the dialogue, but I use a lot of fancy kanjis for UI or flavor techist or item names, stuff like that.

57:19Those were on purpose and I just made decision that it's okay because this is heyd is. So do you then provide or is it common to provide a sort of extra menu space with like explanation of these for when they are translated into a language and for a country that maybe doesn't have the whole cultural background or is it assumed that each player will do their own research if they're interested in understanding kind of why was this weapon named like this or what is the historic the meaning of whichever word the god is using in the dialogue. Well we don't have that kind of freedom, unfortunately, but like Greek myth is like what everybody studies for Western world, but in Japan we don't study Greek myth in school. So I think I added a little bit of extra explanation in the translation when something that

58:30a little bit harder to understand came up, but that's about it and as long as the space permits I was able to do it, but a lot of times we don't have like we we can't add extra information. I don't know if it comes up and heyd is specifically, but I'm curious if sometimes there are situations when understanding specific word is actually important for the gameplay. Like you need to know what this means to understand what you have to do in the game and therefore the translator how do you then communicate that if you have a situation like that where let's say you have a dialogue between two characters and one character tells you something hypothetically about finding Poseidon stride on blah blah blah and you need to understand oh because it's Poseidon stride on it means this and this and you have to go look for it in that location on the map, but if you don't have the cultural context of understanding all the connection

59:32you don't know that you have to look for that in the map. Oh well for heyd is, fortunately we don't need to do all that. How did happen have you seen situations like that in other games? I don't think I ever, but in any cases like that I will make sure to add the extra information somewhere in the translation within that take its limitation and to make sure that the gameplay won't be the game experience won't be different from the Japanese players. I watched a video about the Japanese version of Hayes and I'm not sure if it was just for that video specifically or not, but the dialogue spoken was still in English and then all the text in the menus was in Japanese. So I don't know if it was the player's specific settings, but was a version then also dubbed and to have like all the Japanese items that go with it? Yes, it's dubbed in English, but we don't have Japanese voice unfortunately because it's just huge amount of

1:00:36voice recording and it's an indie game. So yeah, probably for budget and also for the time frame. In the Super Gen games are really they take their quality of the game as something they really have to keep all the time. So they keep making a lot of changes until the very last minute and they even keep changing the lines, like recorded lines until the very last minute and we won't be able to do that for Japanese versions. So we decided it was a little hard. We talked about it actually the possibility of dubbing for Japanese, but yeah, unfortunately we decided that when you decide to keep the original like English voices and you translate the dialogue in text

1:01:39and the menu, so on. Does it affect as well how you think about the translation and what and how you translate or do you kind of really make a distinction between? Okay, this is the voice. We leave it as a sort of background for the players to enjoy the atmosphere, but we really focus on just the text and that's kind of our responsibility. I don't think it's the voice. Like I said, the voice helped me a lot to set the nuance of the Japanese techist and like how to make this character speak, you know that, but I don't think I ever needed to think about like okay, the voice is saying this so I have to make changes or anything like that I think. You've translated many other games over the UK, here another one was the return of the Oberadin which is like an maritime setting and such and many more games, some of which you can talk about some of which you can't talk about when you look back at your career, when you started

1:02:43out at the beginning, he said early on it was difficult because you didn't have the familiarization phase, it was all next-to-all sheets and it's changed quite a bit. One of some of those key changes that you've experienced and seen in the industry that you kind of think are making for better translation, better localization of games. Well, definitely I can do familiarization and LQA because those phases are very important. Like I said, I want to recreate the same experience the original version gives me in the Japanese version in order to do that. I need to experience the game first and familiarization is a very important phase in order to do that and after that LQA is also a very important phase because that's the very first time I get to experience the Japanese version to make sure that their experience is the same and I make a lot of changes during LQA too.

1:03:48It's not just the phase to check any technical issues. We do that too but I make a lot of changes to the tech as to to make sure that all the feel is okay. Like sometimes no matter how many times you revise the tech as on the spreadsheet, if you see in game, that's the very first time you experience the game in the Japanese and you still have to make a lot of changes. I don't know, it might be just me but I make a lot of changes during LQA. When you work on so many games and you face so many different challenges, are you able to take, for example, some tricks or some solutions from one game and implement them into another? For example, you were explaining that in order to make a papyrus from Undertale, talking a specific way, you decided to have his speech vertical and up to five characters and that kind of allowed you to imitate the all caps writing that he has in English. Things like that

1:04:54are you able to then, oh, we did that for this game, maybe we can try it in this game as well, to convey something similar. Does everything stay unique to each game, so to say? Well, I think I've never looking back, each game is so different and every time the new project starts, it starts from scratch and it's going to be a totally new environment. I'll have to know every single detail about that game world. It's a little bit intimidating first, and every time a new project starts, but you get to learn the game during the family realization and that feel goes away a little by little. That's how I've been doing every single project that's how I've been doing. So, yeah, every single game is different.

1:05:58Language as well as evolving. The slang of today is different than the slang of 10 years ago, than the slang of 20 years ago. Is it something you have to keep up with and study so that when you have a new game project, then let's say there's slang, contemporary slang, you translate it into what specific group in Japan is using today as opposed to 10 years ago. You need to actively study how the language evolves and how it changes to make up-to-date translation if I may say it this way. I think that's what all translators are naturally doing. We just have to keep on updating our vocabularies both in English and Japanese. That's just what we have to do, I think. I've met a few localizers that take a lot of Japanese games into foreign languages. I work myself a little bit as a part-time job in that field too. Have you had opportunities to exchange

1:06:59as well with this industry in Japan of like Japanese two foreign language localizers and kind of how they approach the opposite of what you do basically translating from Japanese to foreign languages and seeing similarities or difference into the translation approach? Like, would you repeat? So, have you had opportunities to exchange, for example, someone that does opposite of you translating Japanese games into English or Japanese games into French and kind of discussed translation and kind of how they do it and like the opposite kind of challenges that you're facing? I actually do have a couple of friends who do their opposite of their like they translate Japanese games into English. But we are working in the same field, but we are not doing anything different. So, we can relate to some stuff, but sometimes

1:08:04it just feels like we don't have to talk about work. We have enough challenges with the translation. Looking back, you initially wanted to be a book translator. Is it something you still think about sometimes? I still want to go back to that book from the 1930s and translate that or is it? Well, it's a harsh reality, but it is a common knowledge upon any translators that book translation won't let you pay the rent. And I have some friends who are doing a book translation and they're all saying that there's no future in this field, which is very sad, but it's a common knowledge among the translators. I just love doing game translation, so I don't think I will pursue that career as a career.

1:09:11I might do it as a hobby one day, but I'm just happy being a game translator. I'm quite curious now with the recent developments of AI as well. How is that affecting game translation? Specifically, do you see the tool coming in as something that is being used? Is it something that is kind of, let's keep it distance and let's focus on our translations or how does it kind of come into that? Well, as long as my environment speaking, all the agencies I've been working with, they're not really into AI translations at all. They just want to keep it human and that's their opinion, that's their position. And so I don't just looking around myself, I don't see it creeping in me, but I do hear a lot of things like that, like, a lot of stories about companies using

1:10:16AI translation for game translations, which is really scary for somebody who's paying rent by translating games. But well, I think I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, like a couple of years from now, I don't know what the word with what is going to be with the AI translation becoming more popular, but I think I'll just have to try to be an artisan of the gaming industry. Like, there are distance out there and we have machines that can create things with low cost, with fast pace, but there are still auditions out there who are doing hand crafting and people still buy those products for quality. Even though even if it's a little bit

1:11:19more expensive or it takes more time, people still buy them. So I think we'll just have to strive to be auditions of the translation. And a friend of mine said something very interesting one day before and he's also a translator, a game translator. And he said that his translation rate is a little higher than other translators out there. And he thinks that his agencies might be hating him for that. But he said he wants to be the products on the top shelf of the store. And those are more expensive, but people still buy them for special occasions. Like today is somebody's birthday, so that's why it is. He said that he wants to be one of those products. And I really like that.

1:12:22So I think I will have to keep on striving to those special occasions on the product. And I think it works very well with the indie game community as well, right? Where the games are produced by small teams for communities and the human touch in the translation is even more so important because it kind of keeps the link between all of them. You've translated many, many games over the years. Where a game or before you got into that, has it given you even more appreciation for the new games? Having worked on them, having kind of translated them, having worked and added your own little touch to them? Well, I do actually, I know that it takes a lot to create one game. I understand how hard it is to produce one game. And I do have more appreciation than before. But unfortunately, since this is my job now, I hardly have time to play the games that

1:13:28simply for hobby. I play games for, I play games that I have to translate. And after that, I do LQA, which is also like playing a game. And I'm playing game all the time. It's really hard for me. It's really sad, but it's really hard for me to find a time to play the games that simply for hobby, which is very sad. Are there any games that you'd like to work on as a translator that you're like, well, if I don't have time to play as a hobby, but I would love to work on this one. I don't have any offers I do receive. I've never say no to any offers, unless there's no space in my schedule or let's say they want me to translate this within a week,

1:14:32but it will take like a month. I'll have to say no in that case. But except for those cases, I never turned down any offers. So whatever the games, like Return of the Overdeam, that was very challenging because I didn't know any maritime terms. And I had to do a lot of research. I read books about ships. I read books about East India company. And oh, they're because I didn't know anything about that game. But I think it turned out pretty good. So even though if their project looked a little intimidating for us, I do some research and I get to do familiarization, I get to do LQA, and I should be able to do it. That's what I've learned over the 20 years.

1:15:37You just brought up a topic actually that we didn't really talk about too much, but that research part. Maybe a little bit for Hades as well with the Greek mythology, but you said you were a mythology buff, ready to begin with. So maybe had some of that knowledge, but for the return of the old writing, you have to do research. Do you need to plan for that? Do you suddenly go to the library for two weeks and you read everything you can? How much do you need to know as a translator to be able to kind of translate accurately and convey all those? Well, the return of the Overdeam was the word count is only like 5,000 words, which is not very big. And usually it will only take about a couple of days to finish translating. But for that, it took about a couple of weeks instead because I had to read a lot of books. And I just knew that I had to get the details right, like all the maritime terms and all that. If those were translated improperly,

1:16:44all the feel of their, like I said, the experience their players receive, it's going to be ruined. And all the details, those are the most important things. So I just knew that I had to get it right. And I just ordered some books on the Amazon and read it in super speed. You've done a lot of these indie games over the years. You feel like the interest for foreign indie games in Japan is generally growing. There's more and more people that want to try, not the main kind of IPs and licenses, but want to try some of these European or American indie games that may not have translations in Japanese yet. Is there a growing demand? I think so because there's a bar in my neighborhood that I go to often. And they're not really

1:17:46in front of their game translator, friends or anything. They're just regulars who live in the neighborhood. And they know what I do. They know that I'm a game translator. But some of them actually played the games I translated and gave me feedback on everything. And so those people are playing indie games, like those random people in the town, they are playing indie games. So I think it's getting very popular among the regular Japanese people. Hopefully many more interesting projects for you. So to bring some of these foreign games to Japan and get people at your local bar an opportunity to play and discover new things. Here we covered a lot of topics of your work and translation and those games you've worked on. Is there anything in particular that you would have liked to talk about or mentioned that you'd like people to know that I didn't ask

1:18:47you about yet? Or this name? Sometimes nothing, but usually something after we turn off the cameras. So I usually ask this question just to make sure if there was something that maybe you were not to bring up. But if there is nothing, I think we covered a lot of ground, a lot of interesting information for the English two Japanese translation. And it was very interesting to hear from you to learn a little bit about the process specifically for those games that have become iconic indie games. And hopefully people will get even more appreciation for them and playing through them and maybe some foreign players as well interested to test out the Japanese versions out of curious. Hey Kou, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Sharing all your insights and knowledge and experiences. It was a really great conversation. Thank you everyone for listening and watching this was unpacking Japan and we'll see you in the next episode. Take care. And of course all your links will be in the description if people are interested to reach out for some

1:19:50translation of the games. Thank you. Thank you for sticking with us all the way till the end. We really appreciate it. If you haven't already consider subscribing to the podcast. It helps us improve the show and bring you more in-depth conversations from Japan. Take care and see you next time.