On January 16th we reported on news where NIS America spoke on censorship/localization during a Twitch.tv livestream.
Awareness of this issue was brought on largely by YouTuber Yellow Flash in this tweet.
Looks like this is actually @NISAmerica showing off the Switch version of their SJW friendly translation
— YellowFlash (@YellowFlashGuy) January 15, 2020
Our rough transcription;
“Sometimes it will be jokes, Japanese jokes that have different values than we do.”
“Heheh, yeah. So things we try to like work around.. Things that might be a little sexist for example. In Japanese humor, with those things we try to make it more culturally appropriate for our players.”
“And that doesn’t mean it has to be less funny either.”
“No, not at all. We can work in something even better sometimes.”
Well, now it seems that NIS America has responded to the criticism.
Operationrainfall allegedly made contact with Erin Kim, PR Coordinator for NIS America, who responded to their inquiry;
“NIS America does not engage in censorship or overzealous editing. We stand by our dedication to the authenticity of our localization efforts to properly contextualize a title within a localized framework for an English-speaking audience.”
Erin Kim | *Public Relations Coordinator *
*NIS America, Inc.*
Steve Baltimore of Operationrainfall also said this;
“While I was waiting to hear back from NIS America I did some extra research into this topic on various forums and boards around the net. I couldn’t find a single player that played this game in Japanese and English that could point out any major changes to the text”
We, unfortunately, haven’t had much luck either. A number of people we spoke to in the comments on this video were familiar with the game but, to no surprise really, there aren’t many people that have played both the ENG and JP versions to compare. And even less that are aware of our reporting that can chyme in with their experience.
Still, Erin Kim’s response seems rather odd. Almost pointless to have even responded, if that was all to be said. More or less deflecting the criticism entirely and doubling down on the statements made by localizes, which even included a claim that Japanese humor is “sexist” and needs to be changed for their western audience.
This is especially odd considering NIS America is a a branch of NIS ( Nippon Ichi Software ), a Japanese company based out of Kakamigahara, Gifu, Japan.
One Response Comment
When I first heard that NISA was handling the translation for Cold Steel III, I had high doubts that it would handle it properly, especially after what happened with Ys 8 (In addition to their hilariously crappy track record when it comes to localizations that I knew before that). After seeing that most of the XSEED staff was going to do the translation, those doubts were diminished but not completely. Months after the PS4 release, I hear no complaints about the script so I was thinking that NISA actually pulled it off and I was therefore going to buy it as soon as it came out on PC. Then that interview happened and I’m not sure what to believe! They say they made things more culturally appropriate but I guess the changes they made were so subtle that no one detected anything wrong. So, why say something like that? Do they just want people to speculate over what they supposedly did? Should we just take them at their word?
This sucks because my brother and I played the first two Cold Steel games and I’m currently playing the second Trails in the Sky game, just to show how invested we are in this series, and I do not appreciate being jerked around by “lolcalizers” who, before the PC version of CSIII comes out, decide to act like a couple of Prinnies revive my doubts (That’s if you think they’re just retarded instead of malicious AND retarded)!
In any case, here’s a Reddit post showing an example of a scene that was probably altered. You can check the posters history for more on that discussion. https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/er804o/gaming_steve_baltimore_nisa_responds_to_trails_of/ff2gxuq/?context=3