Innes

@aliengeo

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I'm a writer, artist, and game developer. Currently working on Unknown Station Echo, a translation-based mystery.
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Innes @aliengeo7/5/2024, 2:24 AM

People complain about the Ace Attorney localizations for changing things but they were doing what they could with what they had and I really can't blame them at all for changing any names. Name connotations rarely translate directly, especially not punny ones, and if you compare it to something like Danganronpa¹ an English speaker could be forgiven for not knowing any of the names in those games are puns or references at all

"Mukuro Ikusaba" just sounds vaguely downbeat to me; "Carrion Hellblade" conveys the intent of her batshit name a lot better. I've seen people conclude "Nagito Komaeda" must not be an anagram of "Makoto Naegi" because of the extra "da". If Naegi were [frantic googling] "Dillon Gardner" and Komaeda were "Dorian Grandmille" or something, an English speaker could solve that and not be confused by the extra "I am."

Probably the biggest one of these is Gundham Tanaka. If you don't know much about Japan, this is nothing to you. Like, you have to know Gundam is a famous media property, which a lot of westerners don't. You have to know that Gundam is not a person's name, which a lot of westerners don't. You then have to also know that Tanaka IS a person's name, and an extremely common one at that, which... you get the point. So most people playing it in North America aren't going to have the context that it's like a kid from the US being named Transformers Johnson (or Transphormers for copyright).

Idk, like, I understand why they didn't localize the names since it is meant to take place in Japan, but plenty of creative works translate their characters' names for this reason. And Ace Attorney itself has shown that you can translate names to different puns while keeping them grounded in the culture they're referencing!

At the very least they could've had Fukawa call Komaru "Commode" instead of leaving it in Japanese...

I know they use the Japanese name because it got famous in fan translation, but seriously, even the franchise title is infamously difficult for English speakers to reliably pronounce

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in reply to @aliengeo's post:

@cola7/5/2024, 3:55 AM

oh! what would you translate "dangan ronpa" to? i've wondered sometimes but i don't have anything good. bullet counterpoint

Innes @aliengeo7/6/2024, 2:15 AM

If I were personally making a game that I knew I wanted to title a combination of "bullet" and "counterpoint" it would be "Rebullettal" or "Countershot"

But honestly even though it's meant to be a summary of what you do, it doesn't feel like it fits the DR franchise, at least in translation? Like, okay, there's gun theming in the trial gameplay, but if someone had only watched the anime, I feel like they'd be mystified as to what the name is supposed to represent.

(Contrast this with Zero Escape: "no escape" / "escape Zero"! Excellent description of the vibes and plot of the game.)

"Trigger Happy Havoc" is also a bad name because... the cast really isn't trigger-happy? They're strongly pressured into murder and even the literal serial killers exercise restraint. I suppose there is destruction, at least.

So it would probably be something like "Deadly Aims". "Accurate aim" / "fatal intentions" feels much more fitting for what the gameplay and plot respectively involve, and it still makes sense in the anime and spin-offs because of that second meaning. The pluralization is to hint at the multiple threats in play and the multiple goals a threat might have.