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American Lawyers and Japanese School Students: a Comparative Analysis of the Localizations of Ace Attorney and Persona

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American Lawyers and Japanese School Students: a Comparative Analysis of the Localizations of Ace Attorney and Persona American Lawyers and Japanese School Students: A comparative analysis of the localizations of Ace Attorney and Persona Maloe de Goeij A master thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Arts in Translation Studies University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Dhr. Dr. E.R.G. Metz June 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 3 2 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Translation Theories ............................................................................................................... 6 2.1.1 Frame Semantics ............................................................................................................. 9 2.1.2 Japanese-English translation ......................................................................................... 12 2.2 Video games .......................................................................................................................... 14 2.2.1 Video Game Localization and transcreation ................................................................. 15 2.2.2 The influence of the internet ........................................................................................ 16 3 Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 19 3.1 Data scope and acquisition method ..................................................................................... 19 3.2 Data analysis method ............................................................................................................ 20 4 Case study ..................................................................................................................................... 21 4.1 The games and game series: Ace Attorney and Persona ...................................................... 21 4.1.1 The story ....................................................................................................................... 21 4.1.2 The gameplay ................................................................................................................ 22 4.1.3 The localizations ............................................................................................................ 23 4.2 Presentation of the data ....................................................................................................... 23 4.3 Analysis of the data ............................................................................................................... 26 4.3.1 “False” frame match ..................................................................................................... 27 4.3.2 “False” frame mismatch ................................................................................................ 30 4.3.3 Frame mismatch: option or servitude?......................................................................... 33 4.3.4 Frames differ, slightly to greatly ................................................................................... 37 4.3.5 Ambiguous cases ........................................................................................................... 42 4.3.6 Puns and jokes .............................................................................................................. 43 4.3.7 Names ........................................................................................................................... 49 4.3.8 Japanese language specific expressions and words ..................................................... 52 4.3.9 Translation mistakes ..................................................................................................... 59 5 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 61 References ............................................................................................................................................ 65 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 67 Glossing abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... 67 Frame created for this research........................................................................................................ 67 Research data from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney .......................................................................... 68 Research data from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth .............................................................. 105 2 1 INTRODUCTION To the uninitiated, video games may seem like a trivial form of pastime or a waste of time. Since their emergence and rise to popularity, people have even wondered whether (some types of) video games could be detrimental to our health. However, no matter what your opinion on video games is, it is undeniable that – especially in the wealthier countries of the world – video games are more relevant and present in our lives than ever before. Whether it is in the form of the millions of apps on smartphones, the newest developments in virtual reality gaming, or the rising popularity of edutainment (education in the form of entertainment), fact is that the video game industry is thriving. However, it is not just these new areas of the video game industry that have enjoyed success in recent years. Now markets have started to recover from the 2008 global economic crisis, both home entertainment and handheld video game consoles are back on the rise and captivating audiences all over the world. As a result of this, when video game giant Nintendo released their latest console, the Nintendo Switch (which is actually a hybrid between a home and a handheld console) in March 2017, the company could not keep up with the demand for the system. For months stores around the world dealt with stock shortages because of the unexpected popularity of the Nintendo Switch (Martin 2017). Despite this, the company managed to sell an impressive 7.63 million units of the console worldwide by September 2017 (“CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS” 2017, 8). Considering this, it is not surprising that the academic world has finally started to notice that there is a significant lack of research on most aspects of video games (Newman 2008, 8). Video games are no longer a simple, one-dimensional phenomenon. Unlike the first video games which usually consisted of a limited menu interface and a 2D image relaying the often simple and repetitive gameplay to the player, modern video games exist of an array of different assets, varying from life-like 3D models to lengthy clips of spoken dialogue and vast world maps the player can explore. These physical assets can oftentimes be experienced with multiple players, both live as well as online, in co-op or versus format. This multitude of facets and aspects make modern video games a relevant subject for a variety of different types of research. The majority of pre-2000 research on video games focuses on the (mental) health risks they could potentially pose to players (Ricci et al. 1998; Funk 1992; Scott 1995). However, since the start of the new millennium, scholars have started to recognize video games as a multi-faceted medium that can be studied from various points of view and is relevant to multiple fields of study. Some of these include sociology (Bryant and Vorderer 2006; Gabbiadini and Greitemeyer 2017), educational 3 studies (Khine 2011; Ru-Lan Hsieh, Wen-Chung Lee, and Jui-Hsiang Lin 2016; Gee 2003) and – as I will be doing in this thesis – translation studies. Translation studies itself is a relatively young field of study which has mainly concerned itself with literary translation between Indo-European languages, and only recently started to adopt multi- disciplinary studies and methods (Costales 2012, 391). One of these new fields of study focuses on the translation of video games, or as it is called within the video game industry, video game localization. Video game localization is a complex process (which I will elaborate on in chapter 2) and it poses a wide variety of translation problems to the translator. As Bernal-Merino (as cited in Czech 2013, 5) states in his 2007 article, while video games do not include any text types that are not also found in other media (e.g. computer software, films and series), the challenges involved with translating a video game are indeed very different from other media. Translators have to deal with complex storylines that may be extremely fragmented and presented in a non-linear format, context in the form of pictures and video they may not have access to at the time of translation and making sure not to change too much or too little during translation to avoid backlash from video game fanatics. This last matter of deciding to significantly change an aspect of a source text during translation is something that is quite uniquely prevalent to video game localization, and within the industry it is commonly referred to as transcreation. While loyalty to the source text – whether this is loyalty to the information presented or loyalty to the style – is usually considered the most important factor for assessing the quality of a translation,
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