Nintendo Translator On Miyamoto, Mr. Resetti

Thanks to Game Informer for their interview with Nintendo Of America translator/localizer, Bill Trinen. He discusses being Shigeru Miyamoto's translator for American trade shows, as well as localizing many of Nintendo's top titles, and says a major challenge is that "...up until recently, there hasn't been a whole lot of continuity... I think originally on the NES [Zelda] Ganon's name was spelled with two N's. We've actually been going back and trying to solidify and define all the terminology and the names of all the franchises." He also discusses Mr.Resetti, the mole who chides you when you reset without saving in Animal Crossing, saying: "...in Japanese Resetti had this very, very gruff Osaka accent and [the translator] took that and... as he was writing it he was saying the lines out loud in the thickest Bronx accent you could think of."

Comments

Re:Narrow vocabulary for a translator...

[PainKilleR-CE]

There are a handful of other companies that do this as well, and many more or less contract out the localization (for better or worse) to companies that normally do English-language games.

I noticed once that Namco, for instance, was hiring people for translation/localization work in California.

I've never really understood why people would go through the trouble of localization for a major market without bothering to actually get people from that market that speak the language as their native language to do the translation. The only real reason to do it would be due to cost concerns, and at that point you usually get what you pay for.