I really appreciate Liz's post because it goes into a long-held belief I've had about localization myself, namely that a truly good localization also includes well-written UI/tutorial text, not just character dialogue and the like. The problem with evaluating and celebrating localizations only on the basis of their narrative chops in the target language, as the press and players are inclined to do the vast majority of the time, is that it undercuts the reality that games are not a medium that's experienced passively. If a translation doesn't properly consider the actual player experience and how players in that new market will interface with a game (ie: "Are people abroad less likely to be fluent in this genre or flavor of gameplay than their Japanese peers?", etc.) and players are left with a game less approachable or accessible to them than is truly intended by the source material, I personally consider that part of the equation to be a failure and don't think any amount of good or even excellent work done in other parts of the game should forgive such glaring issues. Because at the end of the day, how can we reasonably expect players to be able to enjoy the "good" parts of the localization if they're not always even properly equipped to reach them?
Believe it or not, in a lot of the localizations I work on, whether that's directly as a translator or as a proofreader and editor, the bulk of my iterative work actually often lies in that drier text like UI that help players get from one beat to the next. Sometimes it's a consequence of the Japanese text itself changing over time as developers hone the controls and specific mechanical nuances of the game while it's in development, while other times, I'm going back in and making those edits myself, either because my own understanding of the game has improved while working on other aspects or simply because I later came up with ways to optimize it further. I wrote the majority of the tutorial text in Tales of Arise myself, for instance, and some of those pop-up windows got written and rewritten upwards of five times over the course of several years! As someone who's had the privilege to study a lot of different Japanese game genres over the years and advocate for them in my online work, I take really great care in my localizations to bridge those gaps and make my games as textually accessible as I can manage, even for well-established genres; there's not a single game localization that doesn't benefit from that extra due diligence no matter how familiar the territory might appear.
All of which is to say, next time you're playing a Japanese game in English or some other foreign language, even and especially if it's not dialogue or story-heavy, be holistic in how you examine its localization. Take it to task for whether the translation genuinely gets the job done as well as you'd want it to in making the game linguistically accessible. Just because the narrative content didn't necessarily require a Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions-caliber Fancy Translation doesn't mean the rest of the game can or should get away with slipshod or merely functional work. You still quite likely need that material to navigate the game to some degree and that alone makes that portion of localization worth scrutinizing as well.
