Defending Woolsey
Or: Shut Up, Idiot!
Welcome to my second rambling. This one is, surprise surprise, about game translations, yet again. I hope I don't bore you too much. Question: Can you name the name of any translators who have professionally translated video games? Probably there are 2 different groups of people. One group of people who cannot name even one person who's translated a game to bring it to us, and another group who can name only one person. Ted Woolsey. People in the first group probably show how much the video game industry is one of consumption, not one of appreciation. They don't care who translated what, just that they can play it. But then again, I doubt most people could name many video game designers other than the really mega famous people. At any rate, for most people, Ted Woolsey is the only name that comes to mind when one thinks about game translators. Why is he so well known and nobody else? Because he was the one who translated, among other things, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, and more. All of this was during the SNES days, when RPGs were still shunned and when arguably games were at their best. The reason why Woolsey's name is still known is because of the fact that these games started the huge wave of RPGs that would come gushing in several years after these games were released in America. No, there's one more reason why Woolsey's name is so well known. And that reason is the reason for my writing this article. Woolsey's translations have steadily started to be less and less respected. Claims of all sorts, from people with no factual basis or credentials to back up their claims. Claims that his translations left out all the "good stuff", meaning apparently "sex, alcohol, and drugs". Claims that his translations are shoddy and "nightmare translations". Claims that he's a poor translator and that he's done grave injustice to the games he translated. Claims that he's a bad translator. Claims of everything imaginable. I am writing this to put the record straight. First, being a translator myself, and having translated multiple games (albeit only fan translations), I think I am qualified somewhat to back him up and to make claims of my own. At least much more qualified than most people who make wild claims. Such people are usually people who are just learning Japanese for the first time, or who have not translated much, if at all. These people, much like the anime/manga/jpop elitists who think they know everything when in truth they know nothing, are, to put it in simple terms, flaming idiots. You go try to translate an entire game in only a few weeks time, and then we'll talk. One of the first, and most common things people accuse Ted Woolsey of doing is taking out stuff like sex, drugs, alcohol, and other similar things. This is not the case. In the SNES era, Nintendo of America was trying to keep games safe and clean, because it was of the opinion that inappropriate games would help, in even a tiny bit, warp the minds of kids playing them. Remember Mortal Kombat and the controversy it caused when Nintendo did not allow it to have blood and gore? And all the Sega Genesis kiddies ran around saying how THEIR version was better because you could rip people's spines out in the Genesis version but not the SNES version? Despite the fact that the SNES version was clearly a better game? This is the same phenomenon. Immature kids, usually ones who are in their teens and think they're now suddenly mature when in fact they're even less mature than a 5 month old baby, think that blood, gore, sex, drugs, etc. is very important. For some inane reason. Take it out, and you've suddenly commited a mortal sin. The fact of the matter is, it was not Woolsey who removed this "inappropriate content" from the games he translated. All games, if they were to get the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" (which they all did, or they wouldn't sell anyway), had to listen to what NOA dictated. And they were not all that pleased with the 16x16 sprite dancer throwing off a 10 pixel sprite that represented a dress, and they weren't happy with people swearing. So they ordered it axed. IN CONCLUSION: IT WAS NOT TED WOOLSEY WHO CUT OUT THE SWEARING, SEX, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND ALL THAT OTHER STUFF. IT WAS NINTENDO OF AMERICA. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. Now, it has been my experience that if you say this only once, the immature kids in question will not pick up on it right away. You have to say it like 5 times or so. So I will now do proceed to do so. Please bear with me as I get their attention. HEY YOU! IDIOT! PAY ATTENTION!! (this was much larger in the original version ~mike) IT WAS NOT TED WOOLSEY WHO CUT OUT THE SWEARING, SEX, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND ALL THAT OTHER STUFF. IT WAS NINTENDO OF AMERICA. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. IT WAS NOT TED WOOLSEY WHO CUT OUT THE SWEARING, SEX, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND ALL THAT OTHER STUFF. IT WAS NINTENDO OF AMERICA. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. IT WAS NOT TED WOOLSEY WHO CUT OUT THE SWEARING, SEX, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND ALL THAT OTHER STUFF. IT WAS NINTENDO OF AMERICA. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. IT WAS NOT TED WOOLSEY WHO CUT OUT THE SWEARING, SEX, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND ALL THAT OTHER STUFF. IT WAS NINTENDO OF AMERICA. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. IT WAS NOT TED WOOLSEY WHO CUT OUT THE SWEARING, SEX, DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND ALL THAT OTHER STUFF. IT WAS NINTENDO OF AMERICA. GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD. Sorry about that. But maybe they figured out what I'm trying to say? Let's hope so. How do I know this you ask? Beside the fact that this is common knowledge in the first place, Woolsey even says so himself in an interview. Here's the small snippet from an interview.
Q: FFII also had some changes (we've heard rumors about dancers stripping off in the original!). Tell us about those, go on. A: Well, there's a level of playfulness and - dare I say - sexuality in Japanese games that just doesn't exist here [in the USA], basically because of Nintendo of America's rules and guidelines. And this includes little characters that take their clothes off, or show their bottoms or chests - that Nintendo won't allow over here. I guess the aesthetic in Japan is perhaps similar to that found in say France or Germany, where you might see more people nude sunbathing or - in magazines perhaps - see more 'anatomical' shots. I mean, in the original there was nothing shocking - there was no sex or anything - but what there was Nintendo didn't like so we had to remove it.
First, what makes a translation "good"? There is no real answer. Translation has no rules. A lot of beginning translators or people with no translation experience will tell you something like "a good translation is keeping the same words as the original and not leaving anything out." But when you think about it for even a minute, you might realize that the stuff we translate isn't words. It's meaning, but that's not all there is to it. There are other aspects, as tempo, imagery, and may I dare even say understandibility? In anything we write, there's not only the meaning of what we write, but the way in which we write it. Should we ignore the way an original text was written and only worry about meaning? But then, in that sense, you could say such a translation is horrible in that it does not reflect the original's style. So what do you do? That's the problem of translation. There are no rules and guidelines. It's a very difficult, and underappreciated, process. So that last paragraph was a little difficult to understand? Here, let me give you an example. This is a line from Star Ocean which gave me much difficulty. My goal in this line was to extract every last bit of meaning and not skip or gloss over anything. But as you will see, it loses any sense of understandibility and tempo, and looks almost nothing like an English sentence.
...The arrival destination of people who miraculously survived among the Moorians who were thrown into a different space by an anomaly was the planet Roak, and this desolate Farget! Pretty strange huh? But technically, I left all the meaning in. But it's obvious it's lacking something, despite that fact. In this way, it is important not to only grasp the original meaning, but also the way in which the original was conveyed. Not only meaning, but the means as well. So when I see people constantly badmouthing Woolsey, I feel like reaching through the computer and punching those people in the face. Unfortunately, such technology does not yet exist. People still won't buy web face-punchers for some time it seems to me. Now, this problem of him being a bad translator comes up when somebody (who usually knows very little Japanese or is just learning and wants to be a big shot) plays a part of a game in Japanese and notices a word that's not in the original, or a word that isn't translated the way it is in their Japanese-English dictionary. So they go start a big fuss and claim the translation is bad, horrible, and the guy should be burned at the stake (incidentally some translators were burned at the stake in Europe hundreds of years ago). If you see anybody claiming that Woolsey or anybody else's translation is bad, the first thing you need to ask yourself is if that person is an able translator, or if they're just some kid who's learned Japanese from watching anime 5 years straight with no bathroom breaks. And 99.9% of the time, it'll turn out to be the latter. A lot of the time in these SNES days, lack of memory and storage space did not allow for much text, and roughly guessing, there is probably twice as much text per line of English as there is in Japanese. So stuff had to be shortened. In these cases, he tried to keep the basic meaning, cut out the fluff, and retain more of the style to help support it. There is nothing wrong with this. It does not make him a bad translator that he had to cope with hardware problems in his own way. Then again, there are the "elitists", who may have some handle on the Japanese language, but don't know quite what to do with it. What will usually happen is that one of these people will see that graphics or something were changed during the translation, and think this is blasphemy. So they want to be able to see the original sprites/graphics, but with text in their native language. So what they'll do is justify attempting a retranslation. And all because a couple of sprites were changed around. To further justify their work, they'll go look for any peculiarity anywhere they can, be it in text, or window alignment, or sound or whatever. They'll then have this bag full of stuff that "must be fixed" from the bastardized translation. Usually these projects don't pan out. They usually don't last for even more than 2 weeks. I've seen many come and go. There are only a few that remain, one group in particular (you know who you are). It's perfectly fine if you think America deserved a version where you could see the main character swear, but don't do it at the expense of Ted Woolsey's reputation. It's absolutely disrepectful, and disgusting. Moreover, it is my opinion that these re-translations will 99% of the time be worse than the original. How can that be, you ask? If I may be so blunt, I would say that in the fan translation scene, there are maybe only 1 or 2 people who have the skills to match the abilities of Ted Woolsey, much less outdo him. Even worse, is that these people usually know everything I'm saying here, and so won't touch unnecessary retranslations with a 10 foot translating pole. I am also very disgusted when somebody goes to do a retranslation JUST TO PUT THE SWEARING BACK IN. As if it would make it better somehow. In fact, usually these people are once again the "elitists", and wind up going overboard, using swear words wherever one can fit. I'm sorry, but justifying a swear word just because the original text was in plain form with a ze at the end or whatever is a pretty crappy way to "retranslate" something. Getting back to the topic at hand, I would like to address a third claim that is often made about Ted Woolsey. Many people like to say he is a bad writer. Indeed, being a proficient writer in the target language is required of a good translator. But, truth be told, the games he translated were not all that complex. "Iku ze!" will not require something all that complex in translation. Most (but not all) games' text is pretty blah, and so complicated translations are not only unnecessary but unwarranted. But, generally speaking, the Japanese language is a lot more flexible than the English language. Trying to stuff these nuances of one language into a stiff target language is a real difficulty. Probably more so than anything else in translating. This is where Ted Woolsey is often criticized. Let's say for example there's a sentence like "Oryana, ikeneendayo" That's a pretty crappy example I cooked up, but it will suffice. A simple translation would be "I can't go." But, again getting into the difference between style and meaning, this would be a poor translation IMO. It lacks a rendering of the original STYLE. And with a sentence like this, it's EXTREMELY difficult to bring the original style across. Often what will often be needed to bring across the "rudeness" or "harshness" or "roughness" of something like this are semi-made up word. I don't remember the original quote in either English or Japanese, but I know one guy somewhere was complaining that Woolsey was a bad writer because he would use stuff like "Izzat" for "is that". Here is a rule of thumb for criticizing translating or writing in a translation: If you're going to criticize something, you better have a better idea in mind already. Otherwise, who are you to go criticizing somebody if you can't come up with something yourself? You're nobody. If you don't like a guy's translation or writing and are going to criticize it, you better have something in mind that's better, and have justification as to why yours is better. Otherwise you suck and should go back to looking up dirty pictures on the net. Another claim is that he makes lots of mistakes. Have you never made mistakes before? Have you ever translated a video game script before? Have you ever translated a video game script, polished it, and presented it to the programmers in 4 or 5 weeks time? In such a short time, anybody would have to rush, and errors are going to creep in. It's inevitable. Sometimes people just have brain farts. One example somebody brought to my attention is that Woolsey translated "kyouryuu" as "terrible dragon" or something like that, when it should have been "dinosaur". The kanji literally mean "terrible dragon", and that's what dinosaurs are. I can imagine anybody making a mistake like that in a very pressed-for-time environment. Maybe he was working on it at 3 in the morning or something? The point is, even the best translators in the world make mistakes. I've seen it. So lay off the guy. Then there's the claim that's similar to a previous one. That his sense of humor sucks. Translating jokes from Japanese to English is one of the most difficult things anybody can attempt. It's so horribly painful and stressful I don't blame him in the least. I don't know how to convey the feeling, but you almost HAVE to make bad jokes to make something fit where a joke fit just appropriately in the original Japanese. I agree though, the jokes are bad, but I don't think that's entirely his fault. It would be like blaming a bank teller for giving a bank robber money when he pointed a gun at the teller. The teller had no choice but to do it, despite how much the teller didn't want to. This is quite a lengthy article thing, huh. Don't worry, I'll wrap it up soon here. Basically, I think people take/took Ted Woolsey too much for granted. Before him, we had all these crappy translations that were hardly even in English "Let's play money making game" and "I feel asleep!". After he quit, we got Final Fantasy VII. I don't think it even needs mentioning, but that was certainly a crapariffic translation. "This guy are sick." And with NOA out of the way they felt just fine adding swearing anywhere they wanted. More than was probably warranted, I would dare to guess. It was like the plot of FF7, which was already hard enough to understand, were purposely made to make even less sense with the translation. Luckily, Square got its act together and in games since then, they've put a lot of effort into their translations. I think that this is pretty obvious that Ted Woolsey helped raise the bar for video game translations. He shouldn't be accused of poor translations when in fact most of them are commendable. Unfortunately I don't think he translates games anymore, but he led the way for better and better translations. We might still be playing games with text like "A winner is you!" in them. Granted, at some point some good translator was bound to show up if he hadn't, but he was the first excellent one worthy of notice. It is my feeling that people who are quick to judge and blame Woolsey should shut their mouths and go back to watching their Pichu's Day Out videos in Japanese. At least that way you can bash translations of crappy stuff I don't care about. Finally, for those of you to whom I've gotten through to, whenever you see somebody saying something bad about Ted Woolsey, give them a link to this page.
Further reading:
End note: Yes, despite this article or whatever you want to call it, I do feel FFII wasn't a very good translation in a game-sense, but a lot of that was due to hardware and NOA difficulties. But you have to admit, compared to all other games before it, it was a huge step forward in game translations. That was one of the reasons I instantly latched onto the game when it came out. And no, I don't think a whole lot of the fan retranslation of FFIV. The hacking was superb, the script editing, however, made the game pretty sucky. It would be a good idea to do a retranslation of the retranslation ;) |
