Talen Lee

@TalenLee

As Yet Untitled Work

he/him
press.invincible.ink/

I'm Talen! I make videos and articles and games and graphic designs and guides and messes and encouragement. Chances are you can find anything I do on my blog. I like it when you comment on my things, so please do!

Talen Lee @TalenLee11/10/2023, 2:19 AM

Nic Junius @quakefultales

Aura @MOOMANiBE11/9/2023, 10:55 PM

thinking about how the Moss Roberts translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms has something like over 100 pages of endnotes clarifying not only difficult-to-preserve translation details but also hundreds of years of historical context, and wondering what it would take to get a video game localization to try something like this

Maybe the answer is "a 700 year old video game respected as one of the greatest works of art a culture has ever produced",

but it's interesting to me thinking about the fact that this translation was produced not really for entertainment but actual literal cultural purposes; it was a collaboration between multiple universities and partially funded by the chinese government.

what would an academic translation of a game look like?

it's hard to envision in our current industry but I think I'd want to play that

#aurambes

Talen Lee @TalenLee11/10/2023, 2:19 AM

in the same way Tunic is a game that has its whole vibe about the manual of games from the 90s, I bet you could make a game where this is the point.

But like also, Tunic is an indie project and this sure wouldn't be

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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:

@teioh11/9/2023, 11:03 PM

This is fascinating to me because of something a colleague of mine told me. When I asked why there aren't more English translations of Tokugawa era texts, she told me that it's because most scholars refuse to do so; the thing about translation is that it requires a great deal of interpretation on the translator's part, so writing an academic translation of a text only opens you up to criticism from your peers who can make a lot of professional hay over your translation. Something like Moss' translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a major collaboration between multiple organizations, scholars, governments, etc., is a rarity in academia as well. But it is an extremely interesting thought experiment!

Aura @MOOMANiBE11/9/2023, 11:10 PM

I wonder if part of the reason the door was open to Roberts' translation was that there was a pre-existing translation of the book from the 1910s or so that was abridged and also using wade-giles romanization and generally wasn't super well regarded, so there was some degree of like, immunity to criticism because it would be way better than the existing text no matter what

@teioh11/10/2023, 5:46 AM

Also having the backing of universities and, like, the Chinese government probably helped a lot! Also it's super clear Roberts did his homework and left a significant paper trail to prove it, which is more than, like, publishing a translation of an essay in an academic journal. That level of meticulousness tho is expensive and difficult to coordinate.

Matthew "Queso" Niederberger @Queso246911/9/2023, 11:06 PM

I once had to explain the cultural context of Taco Bell Cantinas to my translation team, so I'd imagine you'd need a whole Developer Commentary system like Valve often does, but significantly more densely packed.

@aune11/9/2023, 11:27 PM

i know it's not exactly the point of this but now i'm slightly amused/astonished that there isn't a long running series of beowulf video games

Lizardguy @Lizardguy6411/10/2023, 3:30 AM

Dynasty Warriors with a lot more talking I assume.

in reply to @TalenLee's post:

Arcade Idea @arcadeidea11/10/2023, 2:48 AM

Repeat The Ending is kinda a game about being an academic critical annotated edition. It's good!

Julia Floyd @space-engineer-julia11/10/2023, 7:47 PM

the Japanese visual novel “Umineko No Naku Koro Ni” is sorta in this category, the “umineko project” version of it gives you pages of information about Japanese honorifics, first person pronouns, and cultural references that english speakers just wouldn’t know about and are very very hard to translate. Umineko is also really hard to localize because of how often wordplay, puns, and linguistic puzzles appear. And thats not even getting into multi language puns