Getting It Localized #1: Skies of Fury DX

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In 2018, I wrote an article about common problems when translating games into Japanese. Many game developers took notice and shared the article with others. A few even reached out to me for advice and consultation work, which I offered to do for free. They also agreed to let me write articles about their experiences.

This time we'll be looking at the Japanese version of Ace Academy: Skies of Fury DX for the Nintendo Switch
When people talk about translation and localization online, it’s usually from an outsider’s perspective and rooted in guesswork based on the final product. Even most of what I write here on the site is written from an outsider’s perspective, decades after each game’s release.

With this new “Getting It Localized” article series, my goal is to shed light on actual things that have happened during actual game localizations, from the developer/publisher’s point of view. My hope is that these inside looks will help other developers avoid the same issues and improve the overall quality of their own localizations.

This time, we’ll be looking at Ace Academy: Skies of Fury DX and some specific problems that appeared during its localization into Japanese.

About the Game

In 2017, SEED Interactive released Skies of Fury, a World War I-themed airplane combat game. In 2018, the company released an upgraded version for the Nintendo Switch and called it Skies of Fury DX.

The game was originally only playable in English, but the new Nintendo platform inspired SEED Interactive to localize it into other languages, including Japanese:

We didn’t consider it (originally), as Play Store and AppStore are global, whereas Switch eShop is divided by territory (NA, EU, Japan) so it made sense to cover Japan separately.

For this article, we’ll be focusing only on the Japanese localization, as that’s why SEED Interactive contacted me in the first place.

First Steps

How do you even get a game localized into Japanese if you’re a small developer? Where do you start? Who do you turn to? Who’s good, and who’s not? There’s a lot of confusion at this point, and making one wrong decision here can make or break the final product.

A peek at part of the finalized translation spreadsheet
SEED Interactive had never dealt with English-to-Japanese localization before, so this was a huge learning experience for everyone involved.

The process began with a partner company hiring a freelance English-to-Japanese translator to translate the game’s text, which was stored in a big spreadsheet. The translator submitted the finished translation some time later.

It might not be common knowledge, but spreadsheets and Excel files are pretty much the unofficial norm in the game translation and localization industry. It makes it easier to organize text while allowing for extra information, data, and images in other columns for easy reference. It also makes it easier to automatically calculate things like character counts and line lengths.

Checking the Translation

Actual in-game screenshots and videos are an absolute godsend for translators. If a game translator doesn't need any at all, be wary.
The people at SEED Interactive didn’t know Japanese, but the lack of communication from the translator left the team concerned about the quality of the translation, especially after reading this section of my article about English-to-Japanese game translation problems. An even bigger warning sign was that the translator hadn’t asked for screenshots, videos, or for confirmation about context or game jargon.

That’s when a producer at SEED contacted me and asked if I’d skim through the translated text to see if it was good or not. I agreed, but explained that I’m only a professional Japanese-to-English translator. I’m not formally trained in English-to-Japanese translation, so I usually don’t do English-to-Japanese work – after all, that’s how you get things like “all your base are belong to us” and “a winner is you”. So I only offered to check the basic quality of the text and provide some thoughts on it.

I also asked for context material, and the producer kindly provided a 22-minute video of the Japanese translation in action, as well as a free download code for the English game so I could see other things in action. I spotted many issues almost immediately.

Translation Notes

After going through the translation spreadsheet and watching the Japanese game footage a few times, I jotted down a few notes for SEED Interactive. I’ve listed a few of the problems below, some big and some small.

It’s always difficult to explain translation issues found in a foreign language – in fact, most Japanese gamers still don’t really understand why “all your base are belong to us” is a problem in the English version of Zero Wing. Because of this, some of the Japanese translation problems listed below might sound less (or more) problematic than they really are when explained in English.

Mistranslations & Peculiar Choices

There were some genuine translation mistakes, like "level" being translated in the sense of leveling a plane out / keeping it level to the ground, resulting in things like "Fuselage Leveling Out Unlocks 40" instead of "Plane Unlocks at Level 40".
There were some genuine translation mistakes, like "level" being translated in the sense of leveling a plane out / keeping it level to the ground, resulting in things like "Fuselage Leveling Out Unlocks 40" instead of "Plane Unlocks at Level 40".
Description text was regularly awkward and inconsistent. For example, although not technically wrong, the English line "Co-op with another player to increase your change [sic] of survival" transformed into a polite Japanese request: "The player will please cooperate with other players and increase the possibilities of survival".
Description text was regularly awkward and inconsistent. For example, although not technically wrong, the English line "Co-op with another player to increase your change [sic] of survival" transformed into a polite Japanese request: "The player will please cooperate with other players and increase the possibilities of survival".
Similarly, loading screen tips are all over the place and often follow the infamous koin ikko ireru problem. It's hard to explain in English, but in this case the translation "feels" akin to "It does the saving of ultimate abilities for large enemy groups".
Similarly, loading screen tips are all over the place and often follow the infamous koin ikko ireru problem. It's hard to explain in English, but in this case the translation "feels" akin to "It does the saving of ultimate abilities for large enemy groups".
"Health Points" is transcribed as-is, resulting in ヘルスポイント (herusu pointo). This isn't wrong at all, but for a variety of reasons it might've been better to call it "HEALTH" or ライフ ("life") or something similar instead.
"Health Points" is transcribed as-is, resulting in ヘルスポイント (herusu pointo). This isn't wrong at all, but for a variety of reasons it might've been better to call it "HEALTH" or ライフ ("life") or something similar instead.

Unnecessary Translations

The translator translated everything into Japanese, which is a common misconception when it comes to English-to-Japanese game translation. Translating this isn't wrong, but given expectations and the foreign theme of the game to begin with, it probably would've been better to leave this as "WIN" or "VICTORY" or whatever.
The translator translated everything into Japanese, which is a common misconception when it comes to English-to-Japanese game translation. Translating this isn't wrong, but given expectations and the foreign theme of the game to begin with, it probably would've been better to leave this as "WIN" or "VICTORY" or whatever.
Similarly, the text for "LOSE" or "DEFEAT" was translated when it didn't need to be.
Similarly, the text for "LOSE" or "DEFEAT" was translated when it didn't need to be.
Basically, if there's any text that is part of a user interface or used in a UI sort of way, it's probably safe to leave in English. Translating this text, for example, isn't wrong, but the phrase "TIME UP" is far more common in Japanese games.
Basically, if there's any text that is part of a user interface or used in a UI sort of way, it's probably safe to leave in English. Translating this text, for example, isn't wrong, but the phrase "TIME UP" is far more common in Japanese games.
Same here - this could've been written in English as "POWER UP!". This English phrase has been in Japanese games forever and ever, so it's okay to leave it untranslated. Also, maybe it's just me, but this big Japanese font just yells "SUPER MARIO!" whenever I see it. It's probably fine though.
Same here - this could've been written in English as "POWER UP!". This English phrase has been in Japanese games forever and ever, so it's okay to leave it untranslated. Also, maybe it's just me, but this big Japanese font just yells "SUPER MARIO!" whenever I see it. It's probably fine though.

Missing Translations

I was told that there were still some untranslated text strings that needed to get translated, which is what we see here.
I was told that there were still some untranslated text strings that needed to get translated, which is what we see here.
But I noticed that not every untranslated string was labelled as such. Accidentally skipping text during translation is a common thing, so I made sure to point out what I noticed just in case.
But I noticed that not every untranslated string was labelled as such. Accidentally skipping text during translation is a common thing, so I made sure to point out what I noticed just in case.

Translation Tone Issues

The Japanese language has a very distinct "military speaking and writing style" that is mostly missing from this 100% military-themed game. Military officers also speak to each other with flat, clinical-sounding speech styles.
The Japanese language has a very distinct "military speaking and writing style" that is mostly missing from this 100% military-themed game. Military officers also speak to each other with flat, clinical-sounding speech styles.
Even simple things like mission objectives drop the Japanese military speech style in favor of more koin ikko ireru-esque problems.
Even simple things like mission objectives drop the Japanese military speech style in favor of more koin ikko ireru-esque problems.

Text Issues

There's lots of strange text formatting in the translation that could use some work or rephrasing. In this example, it'd be kind of like if "Available Skill Points" had been written as "Available Skillp oints".
There's lots of strange text formatting in the translation that could use some work or rephrasing. In this example, it'd be kind of like if "Available Skill Points" had been written as "Available Skillp oints".
The text formatting here is a disaster.
The text formatting here is a disaster.
The term "Ultimate Ability" was transcribed as-is, resulting in the humongous Japanese phrase アルティメットアビリティ (arutimetto abiriti). A better localization would've given it a snappier, shorter name in Japanese, and this screenshot is one reason why: the transcribed word is too long and gets covered up/cut off. Other text is also clearly too long and needs some formatting work. And the menu on the left is mostly hiding in limbo.
The term "Ultimate Ability" was transcribed as-is, resulting in the humongous Japanese phrase アルティメットアビリティ (arutimetto abiriti). A better localization would've given it a snappier, shorter name in Japanese, and this screenshot is one reason why: the transcribed word is too long and gets covered up/cut off. Other text is also clearly too long and needs some formatting work. And the menu on the left is mostly hiding in limbo.
Japanese text can be written left to right the same way English text works, but it can also be written top to bottom, from right to left. The formatting in this picture makes it a little unclear which direction is intended though, so I bet at least a few players would get briefly thrown off by reading it vertically first.
Japanese text can be written left to right the same way English text works, but it can also be written top to bottom, from right to left. The formatting in this picture makes it a little unclear which direction is intended though, so I bet at least a few players would get briefly thrown off by reading it vertically first.
Here we see that some text touches or extends outside of the text bubbles. In this example, this issue makes the top-right character で look like て. It'd be kind of like if a text bubble covered up the top parts of the letters "d" and "b".
Here we see that some text touches or extends outside of the text bubbles. In this example, this issue makes the top-right character で look like て. It'd be kind of like if a text bubble covered up the top parts of the letters "d" and "b".
Here we see that a Japanese character is unsupported by the font being used. This is a really common problem in Japanese localizations!
Here we see that a Japanese character is unsupported by the font being used. This is a really common problem in Japanese localizations!

Post-Translation Check

After I wrote down my translation notes and thoughts, I sent them back to a producer at SEED, along with the recommendation that the game get retranslated or at least fixed up by a different translator. I suggested a couple English-to-Japanese experts I follow on Twitter, but reaching out to random people on Twitter who only post in Japanese was understandably intimidating:

Thank you Clyde! This was very helpful (even if it now means more work for us 😆)

I wanted to contact those guys on Twitter you recommended but they are not really approachable – almost everything is in Japanese, they don’t have emails, and their websites lack English versions. So I think we will opt for a specialized video game translation agency – a quick search yielded (company) and (company) as potential options. Please let us know if you know anything about their credibility, lest we end up with another poor-to-mediocre translation 😬

Unfortunately, I hadn’t worked with either company nor heard anything much about either one, so I couldn’t offer much advice about them.

Some time later, the producer at SEED sent me this e-mail:

We then ended up picking (company) to enhance the translation for us, but we are underwhelmed with the result. We’ve actually sent them your doc to better convey what we want, but what we got from them was a grand total of 13 improvements! So a far cry from leaving portions of the text in English and other suggestions you said would make the game feel truly localized.

I looked at what this second translator had changed – and it wasn’t much. I don’t think they fixed much of anything – they mostly just translated the dozen lines of text that used to say “NO TRANSLATION”. And even then, some of those ended up mistranslated too. Gah!

The whole thing cost us US$190, which is not a huge sum but still feels like a waste since it didn’t get us what we need. It seems that finding a good Japanese localization partner is extremely difficult.

By this point, everyone was understandably frustrated.

Second Thoughts

With the amount of time and money already poured into the Japanese localization, the team at SEED had to decide whether to continue to pursue a Japanese release or just ditch the idea altogether. Would all this time and money even be worth it in the end?

SEED decided to keep at it, but time and money were getting low:

In fact, what we will probably end up doing now is try to find an exchange student from Japan who is also a gamer here in Toronto and give him some cash to help us…

In the end, though, this plan didn’t work out:

We never got to searching for a Japanese gamer in Toronto since we decided to cut our losses and release the translation as is. We’d love to be able to sink more time and money into making it perfect but it’s simply not a feasible proposition for an indie studio like ours. That’s why we would love to share our story and hopefully help other people out there in a similar boat.

So it sounded like everything was set and decided by this point… but things weren’t over yet.

Unexpected Steps

There’s more to game translation than the main translation itself. Every project has lots of little side things that need to be dealt with that don’t seem obvious at first.

In the game of Skies of Fury DX, the developers had to implement a new font, program a new shading system for the Japanese text, and translate external assets (such as digital store descriptions) into Japanese.

CERO's "A" rating indicates a game is appropriate for all ages
The team also had to get formal approval from Japan’s game content rating board, CERO. Getting a game rated can be surprisingly frustrating and expensive, and having to do that in Japanese made it even more problematic, as one producer explains:

The CERO process was more lengthy and challenging than expected. They conduct all their business exclusively in Japanese which as you can imagine was a problem. Luckily, we could at least write to them in English – even though they would still reply back in Japanese! We had to use Google translate to figure out what they were saying. However, they would often send us PDF forms that Google translate couldn’t help us with. In those cases we would have to more or less guess what goes into what field!

Another issue we had was making payments to CERO – we had to wire money to their bank account, but it was notoriously difficult to figure out how much our bank and their bank would eat up in fees. Because of this we ended up short changing them so we had to make up for a difference in a second transaction (which ate up more fees!!)

All in all, getting CERO’s certification cost us approximately $5000 CAD, which is not a trivial amount of money to recoup from Japanese sales alone.

This is another reason why I strongly recommend translation and localization companies that specialize in games only – some English-to-Japanese game translation companies will even act as professional advisors, serve as in-betweens, and deal with all the Japanese organizational bureaucracy, in addition to handling the actual text translation. Some companies will even handle the game’s marketing and promotion for you.

The Long Wait

I helped SEED navigate the CERO stuff a little bit, but we went our separate ways for a while after that. I kept an eye on the Japanese eShop to see how the final Japanese version of Skies of Fury DX turned out, but months passed and it never appeared. I started to assume the Japanese release was called off.

Finally, in February 2019, the game was released in Japan. The eShop listing said the game had Japanese support… but when I bought the game, it was literally exactly the same as the English game. There were no language options or anything else.

The game's Japanese listing mentioned that it supported English, French, and Japanese, but if you downloaded it from the Japanese shop, it was just the original untranslated English version

I e-mailed SEED and let them know about the problem with the Japanese release. It turns out the Japanese update had gotten stuck somewhere in the process and nobody had noticed or been notified. The issue quickly got resolved, and the Japanese language version was finally available for download in April 2019.

I briefly played through the final release, and was glad to see that a few of the fixes I suggested had been implemented. Most of the translation problems still remained, however.

It’s now May 2019, which means the Japanese language version hasn’t been out long. Unfortunately, the game debuted without a Japanese translation and stayed that way for two months, which probably drove interested players away. It’s also been drowned out by the torrent of other games on the Nintendo Switch since its debut, so I haven’t seen any comments or articles about the game in Japanese yet.

Lessons Learned

After the Japanese version was finally updated and available, I asked the team at SEED a few questions:

  • If you could go back in time, what would you tell yourself before starting the Japanese version?
  • Similarly, what would you suggest to other developers who are interested in localizing their games into Japanese?

The answer was pretty simple:

Find a Japanese speaker who can translate the game (or at least address localization questions) and handle CERO emails. It’s quite an undertaking otherwise.

And here’s another lesson the team learned:

The problem with good localization is that it costs money to do it properly, and it’s not clear whether it will recoup the cost. So it’s definitely a shot in the dark.

Final Thoughts

It’s easy to point and laugh at games that get bad translations, but sometimes it isn’t always obvious how things got that way behind the scenes.

In this instance, the game developers were proud of their work and wanted to release it in other languages. But a number of factors tripped them up, including:

  • The developers’ inexperience with the localization process
  • Poor work from two different translation providers
  • The frustration of trying to get things fixed
  • Budget concerns as the process wore on
  • Navigating bureaucracy in a foreign language

The biggest lesson that comes to mind is this: if you’ve released a game, you probably spent years and lots of hard work and money to develop it. You’ve created a complex thing, so if you want to translate it and release it in a different language, you can’t simply hire a translator like you would a plumber and let them handle everything. You will need to hire a specialist, of course, but you’ll also need to be pretty closely involved from start to finish.

The translation industry is massive and confusing and daunting for newcomers, as we’ve seen here. What’s more, game translation – and entertainment translation in general – is rarely straightforward. It’s a constant battle against unexpected problems. But it’s my hope that this inside look at the process can help other creators avoid those mistakes and improve their own localizations.

If you're an indie game developer and have had similar experiences with getting things translated, let me know - I'd love to hear more inside stories like this. Or if you're looking for some more articles about English-to-Japanese game translation, see here!

17 Comments
  1. bronzeheart92

    Well, it’s obvious that if your Japanese stuff ain’t gonna cut it, why even bother in first place?

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    1. GT

      I’m not C|yde, so i’ll speak for myself: it’s because good translating (at least trying to) actually matters, because bad translating can have unpredictable (generally bad) consequences.

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      1. bronzeheart92

        True, it really does. And that’s why translations should be done with precision and care. So yeah, this site definitely needs more articles like this. English-to-Japanese translations should be equally valid as the usual Japanese-to-English ones.

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    2. Haze

      It’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Unskilled translators don’t even know that they’re unskilled.

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  2. Xythar

    I’m curious about “dab” being translated as 名人 on that spreadsheet. Is that what the pose is called in Japanese?

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    1. Clyde Mandelin

      I’m not really sure it’s as big of a thing in Japan, but I’ve only seen it as ダブポーズ or DABポーズ myself so far. Here’s an article about it, in fact: https://sygmwt.com/1744.html

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    2. Kakahan44

      If Wikipedia is to be trusted, “dab” is a very obscure term for an expert. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dab#Etymology_2

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      1. Blackjack

        Yes, like a “dab hand”.

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  3. SinsOfScience

    LoL continues to grow and expand. Awesome work, Mato. Missing your streams. It’s fun trash talking SAO.

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  4. RadioShadow

    From what I have seen playing Japanese video games (plus other entertainment), they use English words like WIN, LOSE, VICTORY, DEFEAT, ON, OFF, STAGE, HP, MP, etc. all the time. They know what these words mean. So it seems very odd the translator went and translated VICTORY as 勝利.

    It would be like translating the French sentence “déjà vu” to “seen before?”. That is the correct translation, but déjà vu is such a common French term that is used in the English language, plus English users knowing the meaning of the word, it would make sense to just use déjà vu.

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    1. Kakahan44

      It helps that déjà vu is so common that dictionaries consider it to be an English phrase.

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    2. bronzeheart92

      That’s exactly what I have observed as well. And funny thing is, it clearly seems very natural. A good rule of thumb is that only the actual text such as subtitles appears in Japanese while text on various interface elements won’t. And of course, expect these to be translated as well when it’s time for German/Italian/Spanish/French versions to come out. Like, picture a typical RPG battle menu. Chances are, the menu items as well as the text on hint bar will be in Japanese as expected. At the same time however, the ‘command’ header will appear in English instead and so on. And even then, you get games such as the recent Persona games where even menu items will appear in English as well. In general, it’s kinda fun to look around and see how much English you will encounter. And as the example game of this article shows, somehow western developers have this habit of translating literally EVERYTHING to Japanese no matter whether it’s aesthetically pleasing or not. Of course, this can happen in Japanese-developed games too albeit usually they’re titles meant for younger audience that are still learning to read. ‘Course it’s not a fast and hard rule and you get titles such as Ace Attorney where there’s absolutely no English in sight, labels included. Overall, fascinating stuff.

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  5. Roland

    Fascinating article, would love to see more of these! With how complex the translation process is I’m kind of amazed any indie games get translated at all.

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  6. Peace

    I kind of wish you’d name names for the benefit of developers trying not to get ripped off, but that’s probably unprofessional, huh.

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    1. Clyde Mandelin

      Yeah, I wasn’t sure about what to do about that, so I figured I’d let the client decide whether or not to go public with those details.

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  7. Blackjack

    Wait, having games rated is a pay service? And it costs HOW much? How do solo devs compete in that sort of market?!

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    1. Clyde Mandelin

      Yeah, you gotta pay for ESRB and CERO ratings. Apparently $3000 is on the low end and it can get much more expensive depending on the game’s budget.

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