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Mabinogi Localization Team Introduction!

KatherzKatherz
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in Vault
Hey guys! Please take a look at the message from Mabinogi's Localization Team!

Hello, Milletians! This is the teeny tiny Mabinogi localization team! Did you know that we scour these Story Discussion Forums every day, waiting to hear what you have to say about the story and text? We pour our hearts into localizing this game’s amazing story, and we want to hear YOUR thoughts about the end results. You might censure us, you might have some cherished words of praise—whatever you may think, we want to hear it! After all, how else can we tailor this game more toward YOU, our wonderful players?

Starting this Thursday, we’ll be posting a brand new discussion topic here in the Story Forums every week during the weekly maintenance. Sometimes, we’ll ask for your insight on how to approach tricky localization situations. At other times, we’ll solicit your thoughts on different parts of the game’s story, lore, systems, and characters. Whatever our topic, rest assured that we will be reading your responses very closely! We can’t wait to hear what you have to say when we roll out our very first discussion topic this week!


-The Mabinogi Localization Team
MizukiHayamaGretaGMMewlynneFluoretteLeineiBronzebreakShoogJazmynSpkrSherriand 1 other.

Comments

  • GretaGreta
    Mabinogi Rep: 51,805
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    edited May 7, 2018
    Sounds very exciting and interesting!
  • ZuomoZuomo
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    This is a very good step to be doing lol. Hope it actually goes through.
  • FluoretteFluorette
    Mabinogi Rep: 4,840
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    Hooray for encouraging story discussion and attention to this side of the forums! I can't wait to see what they'll be putting out. =D

    I'd also like to thank the localization team for their work (even the occasional textual errors, lol).
  • ArjuneArjune
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    nice :D
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,790
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    edited May 7, 2018
    i definitely want mabi's marketing strategies to be better.- i feel (although i dont know the sales) theirs a a lot of other ways to make purchases mabinogi just doesn't even look at... That... but also NEVER leave a hypothesis untested when dealing with sales. A lot of options are definitely over written by gacha/gamble based purchases. With this always happening, you'll never be able to SEE if the other payment options will ever work, becuase you dont even give them a try/have something their to keep an eye on.
    [edit] You might lose sales, but you are gambling the idea you may end up getting more for your sacrifice.

    TRY putting a new pet permenatly in the pet store.
    TRY clothes bags with new (current year) items in them.
    even if its ONCE, its good to frequent the idea of it.

    I feel mabinogi can go 5+ months without trying....Which concerns me.... (>H>")
    For a game with a small population, you DONT wanna rely on "stressful purchases" which to me are limited time, and gacha.
  • THICCthighssavelivesTHICCthighssavelives
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    edited May 8, 2018
    On the topic of localization, do other regions put enchant suffixes after the item name, and if they do, why not do that here?

    Example item name in NA Mabi: Archer's Destruction Longbow
    Example of what I expect: Archer's Longbow of Destruction
    BronzebreakSpkr
  • ZuomoZuomo
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    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    For a game with a small population, you DONT wanna rely on "stressful purchases" which to me are limited time, and gacha.

    Usually the localization team doesn't decide the companies marketing strategies. Not sure how Nexon works. As they usually mostly deal with translation/making the game make more sense to a English speaking audience.

    TheDumbOneTHICCthighssavelivesBronzebreak
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
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    Zuomo wrote: »
    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    For a game with a small population, you DONT wanna rely on "stressful purchases" which to me are limited time, and gacha.

    Usually the localization team doesn't decide the companies marketing strategies. Not sure how Nexon works. As they usually mostly deal with translation/making the game make more sense to a English speaking audience.

    then... bring draw chat in game ?
  • IyasenuIyasenu
    Mabinogi Rep: 24,265
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    Ooh, depending on what topics are brought up, I might have something to say.

    I wonder what counts as "tricky localization situations".
    TheDumbOne
  • FluoretteFluorette
    Mabinogi Rep: 4,840
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    edited May 8, 2018
    TheDumbOne wrote: »

    then... bring draw chat in game ?

    I thought they purposefully left that out because they were afraid that people would just spend their time drawing.. uh... obscene stuff in the chat.
  • TheDumbOneTheDumbOne
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,790
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    Fluorette wrote: »
    TheDumbOne wrote: »

    then... bring draw chat in game ?

    I thought they purposefully left that out because they were afraid that people would just spend their time drawing.. uh... obscene stuff in the chat.

    correct.... it probably cause we dont ban/remove ppl in the same way as ppl in kr.... But i mean.... what Zuomo said..... what else do i ask for... I dont feel any form of translation is as problematic as everything else in the game.... i mean translation wise the game fine. Glitches, marketing strategies, and the authoritative management decisions, are REALLY important to hear ppl insert an opinion about. -IF that is the case....
  • EdethaEdetha
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    The lore of Mabinogi is complex, and often self-contradicting, yet you have risen up to the challenge and translated it well. Keeping just enough breadcrumbs that we can connect the dots and realize the often horrifying truth about the world of Erinn.

    A great example is what alchemy is compared to magic. It's subtle, and the hints are vague, but there's only one logical way for the pieces to fit together.

    Magic is mixing mana with life force to manipulate the physical world. Alchemy on the other hand, is calling upon your inevitable future death to corrupt mana into a crystal, and then detonating the crystal to cause strange effects. This realization lines up into another realization: why the gods forbade alchemy. It's not because it's inherently morally wrong, or it destroys the world, it's a far simpler reason. The gods can't die, so they can't use alchemy, and forbade it's use out of jealousy.

    These conclusions compound on one another, and produced a coherant story across all generations.. (aside from Chapter 4).

    This means it's an incredibly hard job to take the vague references, translate them, and ensure people will reach the same conclusions if they dig. I'm very impressed by your work.
  • XiokunXiokun
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    Warning; My opinion might not be well liked in the spoiler tab but hear me out.

    I don't know how my thoughts would do anything, because it would involve possibly changing an entire story of a character, but this is what I feel. I haven't payed attention to every generation quest because I ended up getting overwhelmed, confused, and distracted, but I did do G20. My biggest gripe is how it felt like...
    Pihne's secret about being the monster thing and all felt awful rushed. To me, it felt like we had just met her and then within minutes she's acting crazy with voices in her head and ready to jump off a cliff. It felt extremely rushed onto us without a chance for us to bond with the character normally. What's more, because of how rushed it was, it felt like we were forced to pity her, forced to look at her somewhat generic 'my parents are dead' past, and help her get the bad thoughts out of her heads, which I didn't like. When you have a character with a devastating past like that, you need time, maybe even an entire generation, to truly bond with the character. I wouldn't have been upset about Pihne showing her hurt and regretful side to us and being forced to sit through her past story if we had the chance to get to know her before hand. I would want to see Pihne as a happy person, a kind person who we fight along side, maybe a little funny, and THEN be hit with this news. It would have been more of an emotional impact. It would have felt more heartbreaking, and it would have felt more genuine and great had she not been introduced just to be an example of tragedy. Because I was rushed and forced to help and pity her, she ended up being one of my least favorite characters.

    In short, what I'm asking for is with our next characters, please do not rush the characters and force their backstory upon us in such a way where it feels too fast, and tedious.

    Secondly, I would want more choices of what to do when we have generation quests. Because if I had a choice, I would have told everyone about her strange behavior right away when it happened the first time instead of hiding it from everyone. When it came to the safety of everyone else, especially in the moment where the crew thought someone was spying among them, I didn't feel it was right not to tell everyone right then and there, just to protect Pihne's feelings. If we did, yeah, maybe she would have been upset, but maybe we would have had more time to help her.

    It would also be cool if, in general, our choices would make a lasting difference in the next gens. Imagine a system where the game saves the choices you made, so if you pushed a sheep off a cliff in one generation, in the next generation maybe we'd see one NPC go, "Hey, I remember what you did, you monster!" Or something like that. But those are just my two cents. :3
  • KatherzKatherz
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    edited May 9, 2018
    @Xiokun Your suggestion above seems more of a dev decision than localization. Remember that localization deals with the translation of the game, not necessarily what choices your characters make or if it makes a last difference in the next gens.
  • JazmynJazmyn
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    edited May 9, 2018
    I know this says that a new topic will be posted on a weekly basis, but a suggestion I have regardless of what the topic of discussion is at hand is fixing many of the titles. I assumed (we shouldn't make assumptions, I know... sorry) a lack of "the" in many of them is due to translation error. For example, "Jazmyn Outlaw Hunter" should be "Jazmyn the Outlaw Hunter"... or "Jazmyn Guardian of the Gate" should be "Jazmyn the Guardian of the Gate", or the Light Armor Master, the Dorcha Master, the Avid Collector, etc. I believe there are also a few that have weird capital letters, like "Of" and "The" may be capitalized when they shouldn't be, but I can't think of which offhand... I think it's a newbie title.

    Just a suggestion. Thank's for reaching out to us!
  • KatherzKatherz
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    @jazmyn, already proposed that idea, let's hope it goes through!
    Jazmyn
  • THICCthighssavelivesTHICCthighssavelives
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    A comma could work too: Jazmin, Guardian of the Gate. Jazmin, Outlaw Hunter.
    Jazmyn
  • PlatinaKokiPlatinaKoki
    Mabinogi Rep: 7,760
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    edited May 12, 2018
    I prefer direct translations. The team responsible for translating Generations 13 and 14 made me want to rip my eyes out of my skull. The original Korean wasn't Shakespearian. The translation shouldn't have been, either.
    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    Zuomo wrote: »
    TheDumbOne wrote: »
    For a game with a small population, you DONT wanna rely on "stressful purchases" which to me are limited time, and gacha.

    Usually the localization team doesn't decide the companies marketing strategies. Not sure how Nexon works. As they usually mostly deal with translation/making the game make more sense to a English speaking audience.

    then... bring draw chat in game ?

    The reason why Draw Chat never came over here was because the people in charge knew that people would just draw -removed- and swear words
    On the topic of localization, do other regions put enchant suffixes after the item name, and if they do, why not do that here?

    Example item name in NA Mabi: Archer's Destruction Longbow
    Example of what I expect: Archer's Longbow of Destruction
    I think that's situational.
    Take the Gen 1 and 3 enchants; Goddess' Obsidian Dagger sounds better than Goddess' Dagger of Obsidian.
  • SpkrSpkr
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,450
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    edited May 28, 2018
    Not sure if the localization team is in charge of this or not, but I would like to make a HUGE complaint about the fact that when you start a new character, or when someone just starts playing the game, the story goes from, "hey! welcome to Erinn, here's your new weapon!" to ,"I heard about you having to fight [enter spoiler here], I remember when you first came to us, you were so happy..." yada yada yada. I absolutely hate that a brand new person gets the G19 quests within the first 50 levels of their character. Like, I understand that the skills may be needed or whatnot, but in terms of story... it's absolutely a mess, and I hate it so much.

    On another note, now when elves and giants are created, they are shipped to Duncan to begin their quests instead of staying in Filia and Vales. I understand why this needs to be a thing now, but could a small change to the text be made to make it sound less like 'you're not really one of us' and more like, "go to this place to learn your stuffs and represent our strong (giants)/smart (elves) race"? That way instead of shunning the character as not really the race that they've chosen, it'll be like a missionary to go forth and conquer for the specific race. Would be a little nicer imo.

    Now, as much as I've complained, there is a lot of the chat that I do like, between the way the NPC's will address each other to the way your character can react. You all do a fantastic job, and please don't take all my complaints as a bad note, they're just the things that bug me so they stick out more cause there's less of them. You know what they say about the nail that sticks out :P anywho, thanks for taking the time to read this all xD
    THICCthighssavelivesBronzebreakDaktaroJazmynImaizumi
  • THICCthighssavelivesTHICCthighssavelives
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    Suggested topic for next week's localization question: What is the in game reasoning behind puppetry? Is it magic, alchemy, or just the power of imagination?