It's no secret that things often get lost in translation, and this has been true for movies for decades, where both subtitles and, above all, dubbing mean that much of the original is lost. Games are no exception and in a Famitsu interview (via Automaton) with Yuji Horii about the upcoming Square Enix title Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse, this was one of the topics that came up.
The interview featured the game's creator, Takanari Ishiyama, as well as the legendary father of the Dragon Quest series, Yuji Horii. Horii admitted that nuances are always lost in translation, and he certainly doesn't hold back in his criticism of the English language:
"When it comes to English, it tends to lose a lot of its flavor and inevitably end up sounding simplistic."
Ishiyama gives a concrete example of when things are completely lost in English and brings up the word "I." There are lots of variations on this in Japanese that immediately reveal a lot about a person:
"In Japanese, even for a single subject, we use different words like 'ore,' 'boku,' 'washi,' 'watashi,' and so on, but in English they all become 'I' or 'my'."
This prompts Horii to re-join the discussion, saying simply that over the years he has been forced to accept that English is a basic language:
"English is a simple language, so I've accepted that it can't be helped."
Since studying one of the world's most difficult languages, with perhaps the most difficult written language in the world (where three separate alphabets are used simultaneously), is not an option for all gamers, we will probably have to live with the fact that translations do not always give us the whole picture.
Is this something you have thought about?