Written by : Rizi
As someone who graduated from a language major and now works as a teacher and a dubber of two languages, it saddens me to see the treatment localisation has gotten, both from the audience and the localisers themselves.
Recently, I got my hands on the first volume of Orb: On the Movements of the Earth manga, localised to Bahasa Indonesia. There are other shenanigans on the delays and the price increase which I’m not going to talk about here. Instead, people took to Twitter and called out Elex Media—the publisher responsible for it—on the horrendous choices of words. There are mentions of Nabi—prophet, despite the original Japanese referring it as 救世主 (Kyūseishu—Messiah), in which, based on the setting and context of the manga, clearly implies Jesus. There are also mentions of zaman jahiliah—the era of ignorance, despite the fact that the era of Jesus is never referred to as so.
There are also naming inconsistencies on one of the big characters, ノヴァク (Nowak/Novac/Novak).
For this one, I’m not sure which one is correct but at the very least they should’ve made their choice and stuck with it consistently. I’m pretty sure this one is a matter of the lack of QA instead. A person listed some of the examples with pictures in this tweet (all of the pictures above are from the tweet as well).
I daren’t claim to have known their exact motives, but the general consensus from the audience is that it looks like the localisers had a sort of Islamic agenda when they worked on Orb, which is honestly not that much difference in practice from what we saw in Yunyun Syndrome earlier this April. To their credit, they have since fixed it. You can read the damage that’s been done on the links I provided but here are some examples on Yunyun’s end:
Needless to say, it’s very disruptive to people who’d like to enjoy works from creators whose language they’re not familiar with, and can drive them away from engaging with them, ultimately resulting in a loss to all parties involved. It can be very easy to dismiss it with “localisation bad just learn [language],” or god forbid rely on machine translation which has its own problems despite some claiming it to be better than localisation.
However, as someone who works and delves on language almost daily, I feel like localisation has gotten… enough shade as it is, and that it’s only garnered such a negative reputation it has now because of the noise generated by bad actors and their moustache-twirling agendas. I won’t take too much of your time; I’m just going to talk about how localisation actually works, and point you to some good examples because man people lately only remember the negative stuff while brushing off the good ones and taking it for granted.
Firstly! Translation and localisation are two sides of the same coin! Translation is turning language A into the direct equivalent of it in language B, whereas localisation is more on the choice of words, and how to make language A fit into language B contextually. You might be thinking that it’s better to not even try to make the two languages meet contextually, but that would result in a lot of loan words and overly-complicated and roundabout way unorthodox to the target language you’d often see in MTL’d works (if any of you has ever handled Traditional Chinese texts, you’d know what I mean). Note that I wrote “choice of words” and not “changing words” above, because at the heart of it, it’s what localisation is. Here’s an analogy: you have a triangle-shaped hole on the wall. In your hands are a couple of shapes and your job is to find the perfect one for the hole. Can a pyramid fit? Of course, but it wouldn’t be as perfect as an actual triangle, yes? Then the bad actors are like the kid on the playground who seems to always hit a bit too hard, and would scrape the triangle-shaped hole into a circle because they want to use the circle shape.
And MTL is the Meccha Chameleon cheater using auto-paint to paint over the hole. When trained, it may be able to look good, but ultimately it falls short of actual humans when it comes to specific contexts.
Secondly! Localisation is a spectrum! Different people love different styles of localisation and—as long as it doesn’t bastardise the context beyond recognition—no one is any more correct than another! Let’s take the simplest example: 頂きます! (itadakimasu!). Some people would translate this to “let’s enjoy the food!” or “let’s dig in!”, while others are more inclined to write something like “thank you for the food!” or even “I’ll be having this!” I think when it comes to which one fits more for you, it will depend on your exposure to the source culture and language, your personal preferences, what you’re used to seeing, and so many more factors. Depending on your likes and dislikes, you may find yourself liking localised content more than raw, literal translated ones, and vice versa. Localisers themselves tend to have their own styles and flourishes as well. In a way, it’s kind of like coffee; coffee is different, so are people’s preferences of it. Debating it… will likely not go anywhere meaningful. If you like Arabica, you probably have arguments or a list of pointers of why you think it’s good, but it’s super cringe to tout it as the one best coffee type, right? Especially if you’re more of a Robusta guy!
And this isn’t even mentioning about particular mannerisms like rich lady, punk, kansai-ben… and how do you even properly localise です (desu) anyway? Localisation can’t really do much to import the cultural nuances of the source language, but they can try to find possible matches. Of course, whether you think they did the gals justice by making them talk like a Twitch E-Girl is… also your preference.
This is where localisation can get a bit dicey. Having so many variations will eventually cause one or more extreme localisation to slip past, and this is where our awareness and knowledge of the source language… kind of get tested. Why do you think there are so many bad actors ruining the localisation scene? Well, the only answer I can come up with is that they feel a significant need to let other people know of not only their worldviews on specific topics, but also the irrefutable truth of it; that they’re the only one who’s correct and the others are wrong and they need to be corrected. Honestly, I think this was once used to be a comedic thing. You know, like, you got to make loud slurping noises when eating soba to appreciate such a fine taste, whereas in other countries you’d normally get judgmental side-eyes. I find those kinds of culture shock stuff really entertaining to learn. It’s a shame that a vocal minority is muddling our enjoyment a bit.
I really like ending my articles on possible solutions or what we can do on our part. With that in mind, what can we do about this, then? I think, as of now, the majority of people online reacts rightfully upon spying localisation done by those bad actors, and that’s a good thing! However! Equally important is to put the blame on them, and not localisation itself! You can consider this both my point in the article and a sort of plea. Ahem…
Support localisation!
You wouldn’t want to continue reading MTL’d contents, right? Avoid and call out the bad ones, and support the good ones! If you’re in Indonesia, Elex is… well, I wouldn’t say they always fumble. I’d say it’s one of those wait-for-review things. But, Phoenix Gramedia is very good, consistent, and fluid in their use of expressions when it comes to manga! Give them a try! If you’re used to reading them online, you might be comfortable reading manga in English, and that Bahasa Indonesia weirds you out. I get that! I used to think like that too! But then I went to Kinokuniya and saw that the Japanese version of one volume of Gokurakugai is priced at Rp.119.000,-. The Bahasa Indonesia one is at Rp.75.000,-. The English? Rp.300.000,-! I bet even if you don’t understand how much those are, you can still clearly see that the English version more than triples the price of the Bahasa Indonesia one. I guess this is hyper-specific towards Indonesians because the day-to-day language we’re used to is too far detached from actual formal Bahasa Indonesia, but I’d say… learn to be open to consume media in our own language. I’m lucky to have a unique insight of this in that I work as a dubber, to which dubbing itself is an even more shafted corner than localisation LMAO. But, hey! Dubs can be cool too! I bet everyone’s first exposure to the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, maybe even Doaremon and Crayon Shin-chan was the one dubbed locally!
Other recommendations I can shoot out are the English dubs for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Witch Hat Atelier, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and Twisted Wonderland. These voice actors give stellar performances.
I can’t vouch for other series’ dubbing, but feel free to give your favourite series a try!
If you play Atlus games like Persona and some gacha games like Arknights on English dub, you’ll come to recognise some of the voices behind the characters! Speaking of games, Limbus Company is also quite well-known for its great localisation. I think that’s due to the localiser being a Korean native with proficiency in English, instead of the other way around like we used to see in other titles. And I think that’s a great method to better ensure that if the localisers can’t translate culture nuances properly, they at least are well familiar with them.
For you Indonesians, Phoenix’s localisation of Medalist is good. I mentioned this one above, but Gokurakugai is severely underrated!
Seeing them side-by-side is wild lol.
I also have Ichi the Witch and Ruri Dragon that I think are great picks as well, but let’s not turn this into a book review. If you just want to dip your toes and get used to reading in Bahasa Indonesia, these two are my top picks. Do check it out wherever you are! Of course, you don’t need to outright ditch your comfort picks like Japanese dubbing and watch anime with English or other dubs from now on. Treat them as sort of a chance to experience something unique and entertaining instead!
And so, we’ve arrived at the end of my article. Localisation… is not bad. It never is. This is why I began by saying that localisation has caught a lot fire from both the audience and the localisers. We grew up with localised contents, and we used to think there’s no problem in them because good localisers were and still are alive and kicking, doing their best that we often take for granted. Don’t let one noisy group of people who suck at localising pull you away from that fact. No matter how they act, don’t ever think that you don’t have a choice but to feel like you’ve lost your space;
A king may not choose the number of men that besiege his castle, but he is free to choose how he defends it from them.
A ruined castle may not be due to a fierce attack, but perhaps a weak defence that served as an invitation for a single infantryman to topple it.
