Well, at least i had you amused. For the future i'll try to avoid engaging in further futilities with you as a person. Rest assured, there is absolutely no expectation in how you should behave

Oh well, fair enough... you surely take it not only to your mind, even your heart. I am not even sure if is only some story issues as i barely was watching it (difficult in just 15 min) but the entire art which was even more disturbing in some way... and yes, to me the correct art is even more important than the story itself. I can still read a good book if i only care the story... but a game is more than that... it is a "work of art".

A tool i actually usually find messy: Depth of Field. Because the natural way works different from the "fake one" and unfortunately, it is slowly becoming a trend blurring down any game using this tech. On most games you can disable it, but on many newer games... it is forced.
I really dont care...
Stay hearty, stay creative, become critical too... but rather not disrespectful.

If only because it is important to me, and certainly because it does not do what some people say it does: Making Japanese culture accessible to foreigners. Look at the censorship in Germany, green blood in Tomb Raider, a crime. On the other hand, when games are censored in certain ways, contents removed (not only subtitles), and spoken lines cut and altered to appeal to an audience, should this be tolerated and met with silence?

I wish to see what happened if a Japanese company did the same to a game made in the US, and the outcry when all of a sudden lines are added, and contents changed, to appeal more to the Japanese audience, particularly things they are otherwise censoring and removing because they are finding this unacceptable for their 'Western' audience. Any form of censorship is an illness and must be combatted because there is no good coming from it. It's only always done in the name of the greater good, or to 'protect' society from harm.

That being said, my post was not meant to disagree with, attack your opinion or lecture you, because it's your experience and impressions, and I completely accept them.

Bloom and post-processing effects also, luckily, there are options and ways to deactivate them, and games aren't looking any worse for it.

You mean the english version is censored? Oh my... no go to me. Maybe another thing i kinda was smelling without even checking it out.

I can't say whether something has been censored or left out. I don't want to spoil myself by finding out. What I can say is that the English dialogue has been heavily altered...

Lian Original

Official Translation:

Not at all what the original says, not even close... If that's an example of the quality of the translation, I would not want to play it in English.

OT: It was purple - but still a crime. Luckily they fixed this in the upcoming remaster.

You are right in that regard. I was way to personal when my reactions became based on a observation of your behavior. To keep it simple. I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive my behavior. If there is anything left for me to say on your behalve i sincerly hope you could voice any complaints you'd still had lying around on my behalf

Sometimes, a direct translation isn't what's called for.

I'll cite a couple examples from Final Fantasy Legend 2, both in the Edo world (which is distinctly Japanese themed, unlike the rest of the game).
* In SaGa 2 (the Japanese version), there's an opium trade going on, and the plot in that world revolves around stopping it. This, of course, was not accepted by Nintendo of America (and, in modern times, would have affected its ESRB rating (probably would be E10+ or T from what I can tell rather than E). This, of course, would be no good at the time of release, so it had to be changed; in this case, the translators decided make the illegally trade goods bananas, resulting in some extra hilarity that wasn't in the original. (In modern times, it may have made sense for the translators to just accept the E10+ or T rating.)
* There's also a bilingual joke. At one point, in a classroom, there's one student who says something like, written in katakana, the English words "Please do not play this game". This is a joke that doesn't work for an English speaker who doesn't know Japanese, so that got changed, to something like "HELLO! HOW ARE YOU? I am learning to speak English. ...How come you can understand me?".

The SaGa 2 remake got released only in Japan, and while a fan translation exists, I don't think it handles these two things that well.
* The dialog doesn't actually mention the type of drug used in this translation, just saying that it's something illegal.
* In the Japanese version, the student's katakana now reads "Please do not this game...", followed by a Japanese statement of what he was trying to say. The fan translation tried to transliterate it, with the Japanese part in romaji, but it actually "corrected" the grammer in the first sentence, inserting the word "play" where it would belong, but part of the joke is the grammar. (To understand this joke, you need to know that, in Japanese, verbs go at the end of the sentence; I suspect that this mistake is one that a lot of Japanese learners of English make.)

There are however ways to convey the essence of a sentence, in a natural way, instead of disregarding the contents of an original sentence and adding things which haven't been said. Take another look at the dialogue I've quoted. You will notice that 故郷 home town was used. That's where I believe Lian first meets this stranger, appearing out of nowhere, walking around like he owns it. It isn't possible to understand Lian's reaction, leading her to remark that this [behaviour] can't be permitted, from reading the translation. In this case, even a direct translation would have been better.

This is exactly what it is I'm opposed to being done to by adapting and translating games originating from Japan! With your examples, you could not have made a better case, against the ills of foreign subsidiaries, butchering content for US/UK audiences. I don't think your conclusion that replacing opium with bananas has anything to do with ratings. It would be bonkers to do this, because its not about promoting drug consumption and supporting trade, but fighting it and preventing smugglers from importing harmful narcotics.

If they kept both information about the period, late Edo- and Meiji-, and the theme intact, could have lead players interested to learn more to find out dark parts of US, UK, Dutch history, profiting from Chinese citizens, and the weakening of Qing China, due to their addiction and devastating effects of the consumption of opium. Japan tried to prevent importation and smuggling of opium, while at later times, also starting to profit from growing plants on home soil, and Chinas addiction, where consumption wasn't prohibited. All of this gets lost on Western audiences, unless they are capable of understanding Japanese, and to learn about that part of history, which the original is referring to.

I'm conceding that some things are impossible to retain or convey in a translation. For instance a local dialect, or references to alcohol, which was the second item removed from the games you've mentioned. I confess that I don't remember much even though I played and loved them, and I had some difficulty finding what the reference was. In my attempt to search for possible references, the only one I was able to identify was a boss, dwelling inside 黒の迷宮, called 酒天. Its name contains the symbol for alcohol (sake).

I don't know what his name was changed to in the localized version, which isn't really the point, since the translation would get rid of the Kanji and these particular references to alcohol, anyway. There would be no way to get them for a western audience, and there would have been only a very small chance, if they decided to translate it to Shuten. A player could then find out the myth of 酒天童子 (Shuten-dōji). He was a demon or leader of bandits/thieves, dwelling on Ōeyama, Kyoto. He was so called by his followers, because he liked to drink alcohol. His image has been used on scrolls, where his picture was overlaid with government officials, to candidly refer to them to say officials are thieves.

If the goal of faithful localization is to make [Japanese] culture and history accessible to western audiences, while at the same time deleting any references to actual history and culture, both in an attempt to escape unfavourable ratings and not to offend an audience, which is highly subjective and only based on the individual working on a project, proofs this to be an utter lie.

You are mentioning jokes, which I agree can't be translated, because they may not make sense. On the other hand, jokes, likely funny to an US audience, might not be in England, NZ or Australia. Then there are local dialects which Lian uses, ウチら, さぁ and な, for instance, and there could be mild interest to learn in which region they are used, provided that such information could be conveyed in some way.

Back when SaGa and other games were released in the West, there were technical constraints, and even if localizers had wanted to, they could not include such information. Today, they could implement an encyclopedia or codex, to allow interested players to gain knowledge and deepen their understanding of culture, references, tropes, world and setting, as it was indented for a native Japanese audience.

In the case of Eyuden and many others, even a direct translation would be better, than the abominations and falsehoods, translators decide to serve to their Western audience™. If they were serious in their task to largely keep original content intact, yet also making it fun for a western audience to play, they would go out of their way to avoid censorship and trying to teach them their values or politics they believe must be transported. People doing this and accepting money for it, should hang their heads in shame!

Lastly, young players (maybe many or a majority of players) might be less discriminating, and willing to accept the localised version as it is. Others will find it cringe worthy, knowing that this is the way a translator thinks a 16-year old would talk. (keyword: representation of demographics in games). I, as should have become very clear by now, am opposed to any form of censorship, and changes made, to games from any country, whose native language is not English, to get altered, censored and butchered, by a handful of individuals, and based on their own ideologies, political affiliation or religious believes, which are their own. This type of activity must not be permitted or tolerated and allowed to continue.

I guess those rating watchers got no clue about the harsh reality. At the age of 10 a group of children's was writting at the classroom "free Palestine". Mainwhile some "watchers" are talking about at which age they should be able to hear about "drugs" and other mature stuff. They got already a phone at a age way sooner than 10, and some of them are using it better than some senile old geezers.

Censorship is just tasteless but it may fail do create the good benefits in mind.

The only complain I have is that you should stop creating issues out of nowhere. Everything is fine, there is no need for drama or apologize. If you bite it may bite back, some sort of causality, nothing else.

Ah, one thing: Learn to respect peoples, the only thing that may help your matter, a true kind of, not a false one. Did you notice that you was "turning" the guilt-thing around by putting me at a helpless and needy spot? I could care less but in term it was not meant to be any bad, this style is rather weird instead of useful.

That quotation seems to be implying that because Western players have no way to acquire "Kanji" and/or "Shuten" in real-life, that somehow "justifies" the translators censoring the names of these items.

But actually no, it doesn't, at all.

What Western players can or cannot get in real-life, and also what item names they happen to understand or not understand when reading the text of that game (or listening to VAs), all of that should have no bearing whatsoever on how the "translators" translate the game.

Rather, they should & must translate those item names accurately, and then Western players who don't know what items are or what those words mean, then they can ALT TAB out of the game, open a web browser, and look those words up in order to learn the meanings.

"Translators" should never be censoring words in their "translations," period.

Some phrases cannot be translated literally, word for word, from Japanese into English, and that point I accept and understand; but that is a different matter than the point about censoring the words Kanji and Shuten.

On another note: thanks for pointing out the apparent censorship in the other example you cited earlier. The screenshot you attached didn't load for me, but I will assume that the point of censorship you are pointing out is accurate, given that many/most other Japanese games suffer that same fate with their English releases.

Well, that is not true. Every adult German is absolutely allowed to purchase online basically whatever they want. The problem is that stores outside of Germany simply don't have age protection implemented that is accepted by German standards (which honestly is not that surprising given that clicking on a "I am 21 or older" sign basically proves absolutely nothing so they could get rid of those as well). I personally don't think that we need protection from games and movies anyway no matter how old we are but that's a different story. Fact remains that there is almost no ban on German games but Germany demands age verification that can really be called verification.

Okay, i'm quite surprised by your reaction. I actually felt that i needed to say sorry because i went out of line measured by my own value system.

I'm also quite surprised by your assessement , needs to learn to respect peoples. This advice most certainly feels completely out of line for me as a person. I'm curious about on what grounds you reached that conclusion?