> Don't get me started on half-assed attempts at localization, especially when made by people that can't even understand the original language.

The more common problem is the opposite. People who think they speak Japanese because they know what "-chan" means demand "unlocalized" works, by which they mean works translated into "English but we left in a few Japanese words the readers know".

This provides essentially no benefit because the act of translating into English already removed way more meaning than a few honorifics can keep. Sometimes it even means translating Japanese words into other ones, since the readers don't even know every honorific, they just think they do.

Amateur translations also like to leave in English words in the original text, not knowing they have totally different meanings in Japan.

> The more common problem is the opposite. People who think they speak Japanese because they know what "-chan" means demand "unlocalized" works, by which they mean works translated into "English but we left in a few Japanese words the readers know".

Isn't "unlocalized" the base state? Just translate it, and don't replace the references with others? At least that's how I understand it.

> This provides essentially no benefit because the act of translating into English already removed way more meaning than a few honorifics can keep. Sometimes it even means translating Japanese words into other ones, since the readers don't even know every honorific, they just think they do.

Are we talking about the same things? What I refer to as localizations is when people substitute references for other references more familiar to the target audiance. It's not about losing something or not losing it, since by translating you always lose something, but creating an entirely new experience. The split is then on people that prefer a worse but more genuine experience (by that I mean closer to the original) vs the people that want a better but less genuine experience.

> Amateur translations also like to leave in English words in the original text, not knowing they have totally different meanings in Japan.

Localized vs unlocalized is a different debate from amateur vs professional translation I think.

> Isn't "unlocalized" the base state? Just translate it, and don't replace the references with others? At least that's how I understand it.

That's not what they're complaining about, because that 4Kids style of release doesn't happen anymore. Except for Ace Attorney/Nintendo games/FFXIV, which are still quite different in English (and often better).

They've just started calling it "localization" whenever the few things they recognize look slightly different ignoring all the things they can't recognize because they don't speak Japanese.

Another reason professional translations might have changes is just for legal reasons, like copyright avoidance, or just because Japanese authors tend to be into possibly illegal sex stuff.

> Localized vs unlocalized is a different debate from amateur vs professional translation I think.

The original post said "fansubs". Which is weird because nobody does those anymore.

>This provides essentially no benefit because the act of translating into English already removed way more meaning than a few honorifics can keep.

It provides the benefit of teaching the reader about the culture they're reading about. This casual experience you gain by seeing them can help you understand bits and pieces of the language and can make it easier to learn it.

That doesn't work super well because you can't know what's fictional and what isn't unless you already showed up knowing it.

But also, an example of "localization" is that in FFXIV in Japanese the people in the pirate city don't talk like pirates and in English they do. You can't learn anything about Japan from this. (This is part because Japanese doesn't have any pirate stereotypes and part because S-E's Japanese writers aren't actually that good.)