And Microsoft is not likely to get the exclusivity deals they need (even shady ones) unless they're willing to absolutely hemorrhage money at Japanese developers. Why should Japanese manufacturers want to make games that will be exclusive to a highly unpopular console unless they're guaranteed to turn a profit before development even begins? Especially when other Japanese companies will probably bribe them more simply not to take MS's bribes?
MS doesn't seem to have done anything to persuade the shrinking Japanese gaming industry that they should be allowed to have a share of the profits, anyway. Until MS is willing to play ball with the companies already there, the doors they need open to make the X-Box big in Japan will not be opened. The "lone cowboy with the biggest technical specs and his own proprietary apps" schtick isn't going to fly in the incestuous Japanese economy.
This conversation makes me really, seriously wonder if there aren't just two basic sorts of games, and two basic sorts of gamers who will tend to prefer one type of game over another. I can acknowledge when a "sandbox" style game is good, but it's not my preference; similarly, you acknowledge that Ikaruga is good for the sort of game it is, but it's obvious not your preference.
The two big trends in American gaming now, as far as I can see, are retrogaming and MMORPGs/"sandbox"-type games. I wonder if most of your big retrogamers aren't pretty much like me, gamers who prefer definition and simplicity, while the crowd following your MMORPGs and big "sandbox"-style titles are essentially like you, preferring something complex and evolving with lots of possibility. I imagine a lot of has been written about these basic game-style preferences, but I wonder how seriously the gaming industry has taken it. While I think people who prefer "sandbox" games are well taken care of by current trends in game design, I wonder if what's fueling the retrogaming demand is the simple fact that gamers who prefer simplicity don't have a whole lot of new, highly publicized material to pick from these days. I certainly don't buy very many new games anymore, despite really loving gaming....
However, I think the poster's original point is that a game like Morrowind is basically unplayable until you've decided upon which of the range of offered goals you want to pursue. If you aren't the sort of player who goes into a game like that knowing what general sort of thing you'd like to do, the range of choices is more confusing than empowering. This phenomenon is why I inevitably put "sandbox"-style games like Morrowind down after tinkering with them for a few hours... I have fun, but just don't care enough to invest a lot of time or energy in picking what I want to do out of all the options the game gives me. As a gamer, I respond more to Ikaruga-style games where the task to be achieved and how to achieve it are very strongly defined, and the challenge is actually getting the job done.
I found the rebuttal to the rebuttal a lot more interesting than the rebuttal itself. It's definitely a lot easier to read and written more smoothly, if "tetchy" as hell.
Actually, National Public Radio reported this morning that the "high ranking colonel in the Rep guard was also an aQ operative" was in fact merely a high-ranking colonel in the Republican Guard who shared the same common name as an al-Qaeda operative. The CIA had long since dismissed the connection, but one of the (Republican) members of the 9-11 council inexplicably started quoting it as revolutionary new intelligence this week.
I own a region-2 PS2 solely for the purpose of playing import games. I run my imported PSX games in it simply because it's much more convenient than having to swap-trick on my old PSX to play them. I will buy a region-2 PS3 when it comes out only if it's backwards compatible.
Not exactly typical consumer behavior, but I'm sure people who are wedded to a collection of PSX favorites and getting old enough that they don't want a half-dozen consoles sitting in their living room will be thinking the same way.
Generally, when girls get into high school, they just aren't encouraged to push themselves in math and science, as those are "male" disciplines they aren't expected to like or even be very good at. So then, even if they get a shine to start programming in college, they usually lack the foundation necessary to take an engineering curriculum and succeed.
This is something that a lot of studies in the field of education have noted, and that current educators are supposed to try and change. Unfortunately, education is a field where change happens far too slowly to make a difference quickly.
I've actually been to hotels that had the Book of Mormon sitting next to their Gideon Bible in the nightstand.
If people really wanted to put in Korans, Torahs, Tao Te Chings, or whatever else, I'm pretty sure at least some hotels would happily let them. More free reading material for the customer.
I wonder if the servers aren't having trouble dealing with higher-than-usual traffic the upgrade must be causing; I've had huge stability problems with trying to check my old account, which I did largely to see if the upgrade had affected it. I imagine a lot of other people are logging into long-neglected accounts for much the same reason...
At least, that's what I hope it is. If upgrading to 100 MB is the cause behind the stability problems, then Y!'s not really doing much to keep me from being interested in Gmail when it goes public.
I'm quite aware of the karaoke tracks that are usually part of the original opening title sequence for anime. I have no use for them myself, but it makes perfect sense to me for Japanese sing-along lyrics to be included for use by a Japanese audience that will probably be able to fluently read Japanese.
Unfortunately, the original karaoke scroll placed such that they usually get obscured by English-language subtitles in both fansubs and domestic releases. I imagine this originally gave rise to the digisub practice of reinstating the kanji scroll at the top of the screen, usually with a layer of romanji lyrics for good measure. While a small font can make this practice tolerable, I've seen groups that favor larger fonts cover up in excess of 1/3 of the original screen in order to provide something that not many English-speakers can use. I think it's pretty reasonable to find that practice frivolous. When the kanji scroll the subbers apply is not correct... well, I stop watching whatever that group is subbing.
My point re: scripts was not that spoken Japanese is incomprehensible without having a transcript to look at. Of course a Japanese audience will understand their own language without trouble, and a lack of a culture barrier will make picking up new concepts from context easier.
The point about absolutley needing a script to do a good translation was originally mentioned to me by a professional translator. She only did J->E work, however, and definitely did not have as much experience with the work as you mention having. She made her assertion as a statement of fact, but I am not inclined to believe it as such now.
You do realize that the words you learn from a song are the same as words you speak with right?
Well... no, they aren't. Song lyrics are usually written using a "poetic" Japanese vocabulary, since anime songs talk about poetic subjects like love and loneliness and fighting. However, these aren't things a Westerner who happens to be in Japan will ever need to talk about. Learning from songs basically won't teach you any of the practical Japanese you'll need to ask directions, read a newspaper, converse on the street, or to place an order in a restaurant.
Picking stuff up from anime can be a good foundation for formal Japanese training later on, but you'll have to be willing to unlearn any misconceptions about the language you might have picked up.
I've been told that how you deal with colloquialisms is pretty much a Translator's Decision and will reflect the translator's individual style and the intended audience more than anything else. The tiny bit of translation work I've been involved with supports that assertion.
Translating accurately doesn't mean translating literally; Japanese is really too different from English for that to work. If you translate accurately, you will invoke the spirit of the scene in question, because doing so will be the desired goal.
No, having the scripts won't stop bad translations from happening when someone just doesn't care or is just incompetent. But, without them, you're seriously limited in what you can do.
I'm not sure Tenchi is fair to cite; it was an early professional translation, and back then most fansubbers really were doing better work. Had the show been translated in the past five years, I think it'd look pretty different. There were pro subs even made earlier than Tenchi OAV that were frankly quite worse.
I can believe you don't know much about Japanese if you think not having a script won't affect the quality of a translation. And if you think accuracy isn't important to translation, then I guess you care more about the subs looking like they match the show than whether or not they actually do. Well, that's your business, but a lack of accuracy is sort of a defining point of a bad translation....
I've actually read and personally listened to a lot of complaining about these, I think top subbers just keep doing them because it's really easy and impressive. I have appreciated groups that have started going to super-small fonts for them, though, like a.f.k.
But, really, justifying them as an aide to learning Japanese? Maybe if all you ever want to do is listen to music, you'll be okay.:P
What's to stop a fansubbing group from becoming a company? Money, contacts, and business sense. Getting licenses isn't quite the same thing as slapping subtitles on encodes you're pulling off of your friend in Japan's TV or sucking down off of Winny. Possible, of course, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
The major thing that will separate a fansub from what a pro translation can do is that fansubbers do not have access to the original scripts, and there are some Japanese translations that are just impossible to do correctly unless you can see what kanji are being used to write a particular phrase. The professional group will be under contract to follow the wishes of the original creators, who may specify things such as spellings of character names and how they would like certain important phrases to be translated. Advertising, merchandising support, and especially the promise of a prestigious airing on US broadcast television will also make Japanese creators feel a large company like Bandai, with its direct ties to Toei, Sunrise, and Cartoon Network, is much more desirable as a translator than a bunch of fans with a computer.
Now, I agree that the best fansubbing groups can often put mediocre professional translations to shame, but I've yet to see a fansubber in the digital age who can top what the best pro groups are doing now. Take RightStuf, who I consider best of the best, for example. Not only are RightStuf's translations amazingly well-done, but they will produce an English language vocal track, high-quality packaging, and nationwide distribution support for you, too. Then on top of that they will package in extras like omake animations, seiyuu interviews, translator's notes (in both DVD extra and liner note format), and sometimes even music tabs for the OP and ED. And then on top of that, for their Comic Party release RightStuf went and got new artwork made by the original creators that parodied American anime release packaging. If any fansub groups have been causing new content to be generated for fans, I'm sadly unaware of it.
And I'm glad you brought up the digisub practice of giving sing-along kanji. Do you know why professionals don't put any sing-along kanji/kana into anime opening and ending themes? Because it is annoying and stupid. If you can read Japanese well enough to make sense of non-romanji song lyrics, then chances are you wouldn't need to be watching English subtitles at all, you could just watch the original with no text obscuring parts of the animation. If you can't, then there's suddenly extra layers of text covering up the OP/ED animations that serve no useful purpose. Nevermind that B-grade subbing groups will often insert blatantly incorrect kanji into their karaoke scrolls, usually because the group's translator couldn't cut & paste correct lyrics from a Japanese fansite and had to just take guesses instead. After all, most people who see the fansub will just be impressed that the kanji are there at all and won't be capable of reading them for meaning anyway. I've also seen B-grade groups insert incorrect translator's notes into fansubs, translate on-screen text incorrectly, time very long notes such that they are impossible to read without pausing, and insert notes over animation footage such that the original footage is almost completely obscured.
What is and is not a B-grade group is going to be up to personal opinion, and I'm not going to single any particular group's work out. But, especially if you are downloading a super-popular series, chances are there's a lot of super-crappy translation jobs residing on your hard drive.
Actually, I think Adult Swim is still running Bebop because just about everything else they've tried to put in Bebop's place doesn't rate nearly as well.
And Bebop isn't really representative of what most anime (or even a particular subgenre) is like, so it's probably proving very difficult for CN to find a new series that Bebop fans will like nearly as much.
And just to rub salt in the wound: FLCL wasn't particularly successful in Japan.:) It came and went, and only GAINAX fans really took much notice of it at all. I can't say I'm surprised they've shipped the director off to do a servicey Gunbuster sequel already.
I believe the release date for Bebop is 1998. It's just blossomed into a bit of a perennial in the US, since it has all the Jazz references and the American-movie flavor to it.
It also doens't hurt that non-film animation budgets have gotten progressively worse since 2000 or so, and as such Bebop's animation is still much better than what a lot of 2003-2004 titles could manage. It is not actually particularly impressive for the time in terms of pure framerate(it's especially easy to pick out corner-cutting on the Bebop mechanical animation), but that isn't going to hurt a series that mostly sells itself on style anyway.
My god, it's almost like anime is primarily viewed as a youth medium in Japan, and as such most anime are produced about kids because they're going to be mostly watched by kids.
It's almost like the stuff that runs in Adult Swim are small niche titles aimed at the lucrative but small college-student market in Japan, most of which get absolutely trashed by kid's and family shows in TV ratings on a regular basis. It'd almost make you think that most Japanese people just watch live-action programming and stop watching much anime that isn't Lupin or Sazae-san once they get their first job.
But we know that can't be true, right? Then that'd mean that Americans who watch anime at all are... well... not especially cool for doing so.
I don't ever see this happening, unless the producer in question was a very small, upstart company with nothing to lose.
Selling the translation rights for your series to a group that cannot support the title with advertising, merchandise, or brand-name recognition would, from the Japanese point of view, just be another way of saying "our work is so valueless we don't want professionals to distribute it." Who's going to subject their work to that if it's a series that was any kind of hit in Japan?
No matter how good fansubbers get, they will never be taken as seriously as professional groups by the Japanese license-holders until they become professionals themselves. They will definitely never compete with large groups like Bandai and Geneon that are ultimately just American branches of the original parent company.
I imagine it would have still been called "True Fantasy Online". A remarkably high number of Japanese games have names that are English phrases, and are sometimes even written with roman letters rather than the Japanese phonetic alphabet. Giving your game a title that uses words in a popular foreign language (like English, French, or German) is something that Japanese consumers seem to find stylish.
Slashdot Mirror
And Microsoft is not likely to get the exclusivity deals they need (even shady ones) unless they're willing to absolutely hemorrhage money at Japanese developers. Why should Japanese manufacturers want to make games that will be exclusive to a highly unpopular console unless they're guaranteed to turn a profit before development even begins? Especially when other Japanese companies will probably bribe them more simply not to take MS's bribes?
MS doesn't seem to have done anything to persuade the shrinking Japanese gaming industry that they should be allowed to have a share of the profits, anyway. Until MS is willing to play ball with the companies already there, the doors they need open to make the X-Box big in Japan will not be opened. The "lone cowboy with the biggest technical specs and his own proprietary apps" schtick isn't going to fly in the incestuous Japanese economy.
This conversation makes me really, seriously wonder if there aren't just two basic sorts of games, and two basic sorts of gamers who will tend to prefer one type of game over another. I can acknowledge when a "sandbox" style game is good, but it's not my preference; similarly, you acknowledge that Ikaruga is good for the sort of game it is, but it's obvious not your preference.
The two big trends in American gaming now, as far as I can see, are retrogaming and MMORPGs/"sandbox"-type games. I wonder if most of your big retrogamers aren't pretty much like me, gamers who prefer definition and simplicity, while the crowd following your MMORPGs and big "sandbox"-style titles are essentially like you, preferring something complex and evolving with lots of possibility. I imagine a lot of has been written about these basic game-style preferences, but I wonder how seriously the gaming industry has taken it. While I think people who prefer "sandbox" games are well taken care of by current trends in game design, I wonder if what's fueling the retrogaming demand is the simple fact that gamers who prefer simplicity don't have a whole lot of new, highly publicized material to pick from these days. I certainly don't buy very many new games anymore, despite really loving gaming....
However, I think the poster's original point is that a game like Morrowind is basically unplayable until you've decided upon which of the range of offered goals you want to pursue. If you aren't the sort of player who goes into a game like that knowing what general sort of thing you'd like to do, the range of choices is more confusing than empowering. This phenomenon is why I inevitably put "sandbox"-style games like Morrowind down after tinkering with them for a few hours... I have fun, but just don't care enough to invest a lot of time or energy in picking what I want to do out of all the options the game gives me. As a gamer, I respond more to Ikaruga-style games where the task to be achieved and how to achieve it are very strongly defined, and the challenge is actually getting the job done.
Not only are we being asked to believe that the Xenon will house it, but that it will house it while also being a smaller unit than the X-Box....
Dictionary.com offers up "peevish; testy", which sounds about right for the author's tone in the rebuttal of the rebuttal.
I found the rebuttal to the rebuttal a lot more interesting than the rebuttal itself. It's definitely a lot easier to read and written more smoothly, if "tetchy" as hell.
Ah, found a link to the story here.
Actually, National Public Radio reported this morning that the "high ranking colonel in the Rep guard was also an aQ operative" was in fact merely a high-ranking colonel in the Republican Guard who shared the same common name as an al-Qaeda operative. The CIA had long since dismissed the connection, but one of the (Republican) members of the 9-11 council inexplicably started quoting it as revolutionary new intelligence this week.
I own a region-2 PS2 solely for the purpose of playing import games. I run my imported PSX games in it simply because it's much more convenient than having to swap-trick on my old PSX to play them. I will buy a region-2 PS3 when it comes out only if it's backwards compatible. Not exactly typical consumer behavior, but I'm sure people who are wedded to a collection of PSX favorites and getting old enough that they don't want a half-dozen consoles sitting in their living room will be thinking the same way.
Generally, when girls get into high school, they just aren't encouraged to push themselves in math and science, as those are "male" disciplines they aren't expected to like or even be very good at. So then, even if they get a shine to start programming in college, they usually lack the foundation necessary to take an engineering curriculum and succeed. This is something that a lot of studies in the field of education have noted, and that current educators are supposed to try and change. Unfortunately, education is a field where change happens far too slowly to make a difference quickly.
I've actually been to hotels that had the Book of Mormon sitting next to their Gideon Bible in the nightstand.
If people really wanted to put in Korans, Torahs, Tao Te Chings, or whatever else, I'm pretty sure at least some hotels would happily let them. More free reading material for the customer.
*nods*
Tastycrats and Fingerlicans.
I wonder if the servers aren't having trouble dealing with higher-than-usual traffic the upgrade must be causing; I've had huge stability problems with trying to check my old account, which I did largely to see if the upgrade had affected it. I imagine a lot of other people are logging into long-neglected accounts for much the same reason...
At least, that's what I hope it is. If upgrading to 100 MB is the cause behind the stability problems, then Y!'s not really doing much to keep me from being interested in Gmail when it goes public.
I'm quite aware of the karaoke tracks that are usually part of the original opening title sequence for anime. I have no use for them myself, but it makes perfect sense to me for Japanese sing-along lyrics to be included for use by a Japanese audience that will probably be able to fluently read Japanese.
Unfortunately, the original karaoke scroll placed such that they usually get obscured by English-language subtitles in both fansubs and domestic releases. I imagine this originally gave rise to the digisub practice of reinstating the kanji scroll at the top of the screen, usually with a layer of romanji lyrics for good measure. While a small font can make this practice tolerable, I've seen groups that favor larger fonts cover up in excess of 1/3 of the original screen in order to provide something that not many English-speakers can use. I think it's pretty reasonable to find that practice frivolous. When the kanji scroll the subbers apply is not correct... well, I stop watching whatever that group is subbing.
My point re: scripts was not that spoken Japanese is incomprehensible without having a transcript to look at. Of course a Japanese audience will understand their own language without trouble, and a lack of a culture barrier will make picking up new concepts from context easier.
The point about absolutley needing a script to do a good translation was originally mentioned to me by a professional translator. She only did J->E work, however, and definitely did not have as much experience with the work as you mention having. She made her assertion as a statement of fact, but I am not inclined to believe it as such now.
Well... no, they aren't. Song lyrics are usually written using a "poetic" Japanese vocabulary, since anime songs talk about poetic subjects like love and loneliness and fighting. However, these aren't things a Westerner who happens to be in Japan will ever need to talk about. Learning from songs basically won't teach you any of the practical Japanese you'll need to ask directions, read a newspaper, converse on the street, or to place an order in a restaurant.
Picking stuff up from anime can be a good foundation for formal Japanese training later on, but you'll have to be willing to unlearn any misconceptions about the language you might have picked up.
I've been told that how you deal with colloquialisms is pretty much a Translator's Decision and will reflect the translator's individual style and the intended audience more than anything else. The tiny bit of translation work I've been involved with supports that assertion.
Translating accurately doesn't mean translating literally; Japanese is really too different from English for that to work. If you translate accurately, you will invoke the spirit of the scene in question, because doing so will be the desired goal.
No, having the scripts won't stop bad translations from happening when someone just doesn't care or is just incompetent. But, without them, you're seriously limited in what you can do.
I'm not sure Tenchi is fair to cite; it was an early professional translation, and back then most fansubbers really were doing better work. Had the show been translated in the past five years, I think it'd look pretty different. There were pro subs even made earlier than Tenchi OAV that were frankly quite worse.
I can believe you don't know much about Japanese if you think not having a script won't affect the quality of a translation. And if you think accuracy isn't important to translation, then I guess you care more about the subs looking like they match the show than whether or not they actually do. Well, that's your business, but a lack of accuracy is sort of a defining point of a bad translation....
I've actually read and personally listened to a lot of complaining about these, I think top subbers just keep doing them because it's really easy and impressive. I have appreciated groups that have started going to super-small fonts for them, though, like a.f.k. But, really, justifying them as an aide to learning Japanese? Maybe if all you ever want to do is listen to music, you'll be okay. :P
What's to stop a fansubbing group from becoming a company? Money, contacts, and business sense. Getting licenses isn't quite the same thing as slapping subtitles on encodes you're pulling off of your friend in Japan's TV or sucking down off of Winny. Possible, of course, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
The major thing that will separate a fansub from what a pro translation can do is that fansubbers do not have access to the original scripts, and there are some Japanese translations that are just impossible to do correctly unless you can see what kanji are being used to write a particular phrase. The professional group will be under contract to follow the wishes of the original creators, who may specify things such as spellings of character names and how they would like certain important phrases to be translated. Advertising, merchandising support, and especially the promise of a prestigious airing on US broadcast television will also make Japanese creators feel a large company like Bandai, with its direct ties to Toei, Sunrise, and Cartoon Network, is much more desirable as a translator than a bunch of fans with a computer. Now, I agree that the best fansubbing groups can often put mediocre professional translations to shame, but I've yet to see a fansubber in the digital age who can top what the best pro groups are doing now. Take RightStuf, who I consider best of the best, for example. Not only are RightStuf's translations amazingly well-done, but they will produce an English language vocal track, high-quality packaging, and nationwide distribution support for you, too. Then on top of that they will package in extras like omake animations, seiyuu interviews, translator's notes (in both DVD extra and liner note format), and sometimes even music tabs for the OP and ED. And then on top of that, for their Comic Party release RightStuf went and got new artwork made by the original creators that parodied American anime release packaging. If any fansub groups have been causing new content to be generated for fans, I'm sadly unaware of it. And I'm glad you brought up the digisub practice of giving sing-along kanji. Do you know why professionals don't put any sing-along kanji/kana into anime opening and ending themes? Because it is annoying and stupid. If you can read Japanese well enough to make sense of non-romanji song lyrics, then chances are you wouldn't need to be watching English subtitles at all, you could just watch the original with no text obscuring parts of the animation. If you can't, then there's suddenly extra layers of text covering up the OP/ED animations that serve no useful purpose. Nevermind that B-grade subbing groups will often insert blatantly incorrect kanji into their karaoke scrolls, usually because the group's translator couldn't cut & paste correct lyrics from a Japanese fansite and had to just take guesses instead. After all, most people who see the fansub will just be impressed that the kanji are there at all and won't be capable of reading them for meaning anyway. I've also seen B-grade groups insert incorrect translator's notes into fansubs, translate on-screen text incorrectly, time very long notes such that they are impossible to read without pausing, and insert notes over animation footage such that the original footage is almost completely obscured. What is and is not a B-grade group is going to be up to personal opinion, and I'm not going to single any particular group's work out. But, especially if you are downloading a super-popular series, chances are there's a lot of super-crappy translation jobs residing on your hard drive.
Actually, I think Adult Swim is still running Bebop because just about everything else they've tried to put in Bebop's place doesn't rate nearly as well. And Bebop isn't really representative of what most anime (or even a particular subgenre) is like, so it's probably proving very difficult for CN to find a new series that Bebop fans will like nearly as much.
And just to rub salt in the wound: FLCL wasn't particularly successful in Japan. :) It came and went, and only GAINAX fans really took much notice of it at all. I can't say I'm surprised they've shipped the director off to do a servicey Gunbuster sequel already.
I believe the release date for Bebop is 1998. It's just blossomed into a bit of a perennial in the US, since it has all the Jazz references and the American-movie flavor to it. It also doens't hurt that non-film animation budgets have gotten progressively worse since 2000 or so, and as such Bebop's animation is still much better than what a lot of 2003-2004 titles could manage. It is not actually particularly impressive for the time in terms of pure framerate(it's especially easy to pick out corner-cutting on the Bebop mechanical animation), but that isn't going to hurt a series that mostly sells itself on style anyway.
My god, it's almost like anime is primarily viewed as a youth medium in Japan, and as such most anime are produced about kids because they're going to be mostly watched by kids. It's almost like the stuff that runs in Adult Swim are small niche titles aimed at the lucrative but small college-student market in Japan, most of which get absolutely trashed by kid's and family shows in TV ratings on a regular basis. It'd almost make you think that most Japanese people just watch live-action programming and stop watching much anime that isn't Lupin or Sazae-san once they get their first job. But we know that can't be true, right? Then that'd mean that Americans who watch anime at all are... well... not especially cool for doing so.
I don't ever see this happening, unless the producer in question was a very small, upstart company with nothing to lose. Selling the translation rights for your series to a group that cannot support the title with advertising, merchandise, or brand-name recognition would, from the Japanese point of view, just be another way of saying "our work is so valueless we don't want professionals to distribute it." Who's going to subject their work to that if it's a series that was any kind of hit in Japan? No matter how good fansubbers get, they will never be taken as seriously as professional groups by the Japanese license-holders until they become professionals themselves. They will definitely never compete with large groups like Bandai and Geneon that are ultimately just American branches of the original parent company.
I imagine it would have still been called "True Fantasy Online". A remarkably high number of Japanese games have names that are English phrases, and are sometimes even written with roman letters rather than the Japanese phonetic alphabet. Giving your game a title that uses words in a popular foreign language (like English, French, or German) is something that Japanese consumers seem to find stylish.