Sometimes I think about how my work has changed over time, and the things I've learned along the way. As most of you know by now, I'm a game programmer -- a developer. I'm also a Japanese-to-English translator, although I haven't been doing nearly as much of that work in the last few years. It does continue to strongly play into my skill set, though. It's been over 15 years of working in these fields.
For legal purposes, please assume that much of what I will discuss from here is embellished or altered, and please understand that it has been kept vague on purpose, and know that not all companies or projects I have worked for are publicly known, or even listed anywhere.
When I started out, it was mostly in the capacity of translator. I was a programmer already, but I didn't really see myself as one. Most of my development work of any kind had been in a purely curiosity capacity. Stuff like making maps in Furcadia when it was new, messing with scripts and items in Graal, making countless RPG Maker games, romhacking then virtually never releasing the romhacks (with single digit exceptions)... I mostly only started to do what I saw as even somewhat serious programming when I was running a private Ragnarok Online server.
But fan translation work got me noticed and into the actual game industry. When I finally got professional work, I thought it'd be kinda basic, too. I'd just be providing a translation and I wouldn't be doing much of the other end. But just like that, I had to learn to use proper dev tools and do real programming, the expected way. A trial by fire of dropping the bleeding edge of using stuff like cygwin and gcc and learning to use an actual IDE. Instead of using Notepad or a hex editor for absolutely all of my coding. Which is what I had been doing. At all times. Yipes.
With my first several employers things were a mix of translation and programming. I almost never got any jobs where I was doing just the translation. I occasionally was put on projects where there were multiple translators, however, and that tended to end with me correcting all of the other translator's work. The worst was a time when the other translator on a project, who by all means should have known better, gave a translation that was not only very literal, but had Japanese pronouns repeatedly left untranslated and capitalized as if they were proper names, seemingly just because they'd been in katakana in the original script. I was not allowed to correct it or otherwise alter that translator's work, I could only touch my own.
This was, perhaps, a wake-up call to me about how working professionally in localization could sometimes be. As the years went by, I would encounter various figures who imposed restrictions or demands on my translations that didn't make sense, by people who weren't translators, and in many cases, didn't know any Japanese. Part of what even prompted this whole post was seeing a post elsewhere from a dear friend about their own recent negative experiences in translation.
Sometimes it was things like having an item's name and description that were translated directly in a way that described its effect and how to use it, but then being forced to change that to something more vague that only generally alluded to it -- in a title where there was no other place to find the information on how to access the feature the item unlocked!
Sometimes it was things like having someone else edit the script after I was done with it, adding numerous typos, grammar mistakes, and in one case, a reference to me in a project's script by name(!?!?), which left me intensely embarrassed and feeling very much like players would think I put that there myself. I absolutely wouldn't ever dream of that!
What this also taught me is that you never know for sure where the work on your favorite game came from exactly. The person who is credited for the translation, the person who is credited for the editing... it might not even be any of them. Mandates can come down from on high (or elsewhere) and make absolutely sure that these people do something specific that wasn't in their plans. I sometimes wonder if I've ever been blamed by someone for censoring something in a project... even though I've always been vocally anti-censorship, even on topics where I strongly disagree with the subject matter presented. I believe you should let creators tell you who they are.
Over time though, things changed. I gained more respect as a translator and an editor, and my decisions also began to be respected... usually. Later companies I worked with would look at my history and be less inclined to ignore my opinions, because obviously I had a lot of experience. They would also show more interest in my work and I'd get frequent positive feedback. It got a lot better than it was earlier into my career. Buuuut, that brings me to the next shift in things.
Over time, since my work was more respected, I got to work with bigger companies on bigger projects, so I usually didn't have to do both programming and translation anymore. It was kind of bittersweet for me. It's hard to explain, but when you have control of both of those aspects, you get to control the presentation on a stronger level than you would otherwise. You can fit the translation to how it's going to appear. You can cater the way things are drawn to fit what words you've put in there.
But it is a lot of work for one person. It's rare for someone to handle multiple major duties like that except at small companies.
So I did projects where I was just the translator, but could only give suggestions about the actual programming, editing, and graphics... and I found that I felt a little empty when certain suggestions of mine (which I still think were better than the final results) were passed over.
Nowadays, most projects have me acting solely as a programmer, and while my Japanese knowledge is still heavily in use in parsing the code, and its documentation (when rarely there is any of use)... I don't get to translate anymore outside of little spot translations where nothing significant is needed.
It's weird to be sad about this, right? I started out as a translator first and foremost, but surely it's weird to be sad about not really doing translation anymore and largely just being a developer now? They're both creative jobs, highly creative jobs even. And programming pays way more than translation, generally speaking. The company I work for now treats me amazingly well and I have never had any issues with them. I should be happy, right? Especially when so often in translation I had people who frustrated me anyway.
But I've gotten so restless about translation that I've even done various fan translations in my spare time, and mostly not released them. I released a couple of them under alias, refusing to do serious programming work to make them shine better... because I just wanted to do translation. Sometimes that's the mood I'm in. Despite even all the problems I encountered along the way, and the people who thought they knew better. Despite the people who made the work less fun for me at times.
Ironically, whenever friends asked me to spot translate something for them, even close and important friends, I usually half-assed it, didn't put in any actual effort, nor even double-checked it. Sometimes I even shoved machine translator links in their face which isn't very fair. But I guess that's different from working on games, huh. I regret not trying harder for them, though.
For better or worse, I'm probably one of the best programmers in the western game industry who can handle Japanese code, second mostly just to people like Durante and his company. But I didn't start out wanting to program, and it's never exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a musician originally, and I let various things discourage me from pursuing it. Now I sometimes have to fight feelings of "you started too late" when I do music, even though it's never actually too late.
But I do miss it. I really miss translating video games, and it's a shame, because the work I do now is still incredibly important, and not many people could replace me, for better or worse. I've had friends offer to get me into things like manga translation, but it just isn't the same. Hopefully one day a new opportunity to translate a game that will really mean something to me, comes along again. Like back in the old days.
For now, I'll continue doing the stuff I do now, and keep up with translation as a hobby, as I do with music. Maybe one day I'll land a dream job, but until then I've gotta do what I'm good at it -- someone has to do it. These games I still work on, they really need me. And I do care about them. I refuse to ever do dirty to a game that deserves good things.
The work you do will always change. Hopefully it will keep being worth it to you. Hopefully you can keep enjoying it. People almost never keep the same roles throughout their lives. Keeping the same passion you used to have can be tough, too. I know that for a fact.
Just do your best, and try to do something that means something to you.
