Why do official TM translations resemble fan translations?

[Cypher Attic]

I noticed recently that the official translations (of the anime/spin-off games/merchandice, at least. Idk about the Mahoyo translation.) stick closely to the standards set by Mirror Moon and others when it comes to terminology, spelling, et cetera. Why is this?

I'm very curious, considering some of these terms have multiple ways to translate/transliterate them. For example:

• アルクェイド・ブリュンスタッド → Arcueid Brunestud, instead of Arkueid Brunstad or something stupid like Alkwade Bryunstud.
• Neco-Arc over Neko-Arc/Cat-Arc
• I read something on here once about Dead Apostle Ancestor being a pun in Japanese, and the English version could only translate one meaning? I can't remember.
• Probably some dialog that I don't know because I can't read Japanese.

[Ratman]

It's a mixed bag. Basically all the official translations we have gotten have respected the basic fan-established setting terminology, but when it comes to work-specific terms, you get some funny outliers.
- Rakkyo is a work that makes translators fall into a fetal position and suck on their thumb, so I don't think those are even something you can judge well in that regard (but they should be judged for their licensing shenaningans).
- Extra translation is completely fine wide-terminology-wise, and pretty much captures the spirit of the work, but it suffers from lack of proofreading, some very memorable particular mistranslations, and the translators memeing pretty hard.
- FGO translation similarly threw accuracy out of the window a long time ago, especially in joke events. This is understanadble, as translating faygo would mindbreak anyone.
- Actress Again translation is fine, save for a few truly hipster references. And it even gets most of those right.
- Type Lumina translation seems completely fine, there isn't really much to screw up there.
- lol who cares about extella
Someone who actually knows runes correct me if you must, this is the general hearsay I get.

The basic paradigm of translating TM works seems to be 'go by fan terminology except when TM itself says something should be written a specific way'. Thus we get Altria in FGO EN. A fan translation will just use Arturia, because we know Nasu. He is wrong on that one. That's just how it is.

[Cypher Attic]

Rakkyo is a work that makes translators fall into a fetal position and suck on their thumb, so I don't think those are even something you can judge well in that regard (but they should be judged for their licensing shenaningans).

Please explain this, I don't get it.

[TomPen94]

I actually think it's strayed away from the fan consensus terminology over time, be it because of TM mandated stuff or other reasons.
"Altria" is the easy one, but we also have stuff like the word "fairy" being avoided like the plague in LB6, there's the "Mystics" vs "Mystery" thing with some entries using the former exclusively (like FGO & Mahoyo), and other(s) flipflopping (like FSR).
But most of the common terms of old have been kept in line with fan translations, like "Dead Apostle", and most notably to me, "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception" which is itself a liberty taken by Mirror Moon (I think) replacing a japanese pun in the term with an english one.

KnK's official english sub also has a couple outliars iirc. I remember it using "Deterrent Force" over the much more common "Counter Force".

I think Tsukihime will be a better measure of how they adhere to the fan terms, or not. I'm certain stuff like "Arcane" will revert to "Mystics" or "Mystery" (probably the former), the "Fount" will definitely be the "Root" again, and there's a bunch of new terminology regarding the church and vampires I don't think they'll follow Tsukihimates on.

[Ratman]

Please explain this, I don't get it.

It's full of hipster kanji and cheeky puns. Comparable to translating something like Nisio Isin's Monogatari series. Good luck keeping 100% of the meaning intact. If you want a taste of the actual bullshit that goes on in the text, I invite you to read this blogpost of Dullahan's on the Epilogue.

So there's this cool site named Baka-Tsuki back in the day where people translate LNs for free, right, the quality can be dubious but if 20 people yell at the translator through the wiki comments, they should eventually get something approaching what the runes actually say. One policy of the site is that people tend to stop translating works that are licensed - translating a book is a lot of work, so it makes a good excuse to focus your efforts on something else.
Now in 2008, this company called Del Rey Manga got the license and said they would translate KnK, but they stopped existing before they could. Kodansha worked with this company though, the license went to Kodansha. Kodansha proceeded to do nothing with it for 15 years, while nobody wants to translate a book for free that someone else might translate and sell legally.
That's about it.

[Comun]

1998: Type-Moon started releasing works with no English market even in their most ambitious dreams.

2006: Mirror-Moon released terminology-defining fan patches of their VNs.

2011: Fate/EXTRA hit the West with a completely original set of terminology translations. Everyone hated that.

2017: FGO was preparing for its NA release, so they hired Arashi of Beast's Lair as a lore consultant to make all terms recognizable and avoid the bad publicitly Extra's loc has.

Every year an anime adaptation comes out: If the translator is a fan, they know to use fan terms. If a translator knows nothing about Type-Moon, they will check their terms on the wiki.

2022: Aniplex picked a Beast's Lair veteran to be Mahoyo's translator, and Mew actually returned here during the job to do some Mahoyo terminology discussion hidden in plain sight.

Lately I'm tempted to go change all the majutsu in my old translations again. Are people good with 'magecraft' these days?

[Reign]

I assume it's because the fan translations predate official ones by quite a long time, so you have a mix of the terms already being out there on the internet (ie if people hired to localize don't know anything about the series and look up the fan wiki they'll see the terms there) and people who are already fans and therefore already familiar with the established fan terms.

Disclaimer I don't know anything about the localization business and am talking out of my ass.

[Paulie25]

It's a mixed bag. Basically all the official translations we have gotten have respected the basic fan-established setting terminology, but when it comes to work-specific terms, you get some funny outliers.
- Rakkyo is a work that makes translators fall into a fetal position and suck on their thumb, so I don't think those are even something you can judge well in that regard (but they should be judged for their licensing shenaningans).
- Extra translation is completely fine wide-terminology-wise, and pretty much captures the spirit of the work, but it suffers from lack of proofreading, some very memorable particular mistranslations, and the translators memeing pretty hard.
- FGO translation similarly threw accuracy out of the window a long time ago, especially in joke events. This is understanadble, as translating faygo would mindbreak anyone.
- Actress Again translation is fine, save for a few truly hipster references. And it even gets most of those right.
- Type Lumina translation seems completely fine, there isn't really much to screw up there.
- lol who cares about extella
Someone who actually knows runes correct me if you must, this is the general hearsay I get.

The basic paradigm of translating TM works seems to be 'go by fan terminology except when TM itself says something should be written a specific way'. Thus we get Altria in FGO EN. A fan translation will just use Arturia, because we know Nasu. He is wrong on that one. That's just how it is.

TL is pretty shit actually believe it or not, mostly because the the translators clearly know little to nothing about wider TM lore. Petri would explain better.

- - - Updated - - -

I actually think it's strayed away from the fan consensus terminology over time, be it because of TM mandated stuff or other reasons.
"Altria" is the easy one, but we also have stuff like the word "fairy" being avoided like the plague in LB6, there's the "Mystics" vs "Mystery" thing with some entries using the former exclusively (like FGO & Mahoyo), and other(s) flipflopping (like FSR).
But most of the common terms of old have been kept in line with fan translations, like "Dead Apostle", and most notably to me, "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception" which is itself a liberty taken by Mirror Moon (I think) replacing a japanese pun in the term with an english one.

KnK's official english sub also has a couple outliars iirc. I remember it using "Deterrent Force" over the much more common "Counter Force".

I think Tsukihime will be a better measure of how they adhere to the fan terms, or not. I'm certain stuff like "Arcane" will revert to "Mystics" or "Mystery" (probably the former), the "Fount" will definitely be the "Root" again, and there's a bunch of new terminology regarding the church and vampires I don't think they'll follow Tsukihimates on.

Mahoyo has one line about Mystery where it says something like “Mystics, or Mystery, is blah blah”. It kinda has to address it cause the dialogue is directly talking about the fact it comes from the Greek word. Translations appear to use Mystics 90% of the time unless the context doesn’t make sense if it’s not Mystery. Samurai Remnant does a similar thing where it uses Mystics consistently until the Ray of Light ending where they switch to Mystery.

[TomPen94]

Mahoyo has one line about Mystery where it says something like “Mystics, or Mystery, is blah blah”. It kinda has to address it cause the dialogue is directly talking about the fact it comes from the Greek word. Translations appear to use Mystics 90% of the time unless the context doesn’t make sense if it’s not Mystery. Samurai Remnant does a similar thing where it uses Mystics consistently until the Ray of Light ending where they switch to Mystery.

I think the Mahoyo line (it uses "mysteries" in plural) is like that because the japanese text actually uses the katakana for "mystery" as Aoko is explaining it. Unless I'm misremembering something, but I did swap back and forth between the english and jp a few times for stuff like this and the use of imperial units when I couldn't be bothered to do the math in my head.

As for FSR, I don't think it's just Ray of Light. The first time it's used is when Giovanni comes for Shousetsu and that scene exists in every version of the story. Though the term does come up again in Ray of Light, yes. I think it's just a case of whoever was in charge of that stretch of the game opting for "Mystery" for whatever reason (maybe they're an old fan) and there not being sufficient proofreading to catch that inconsistency.

[Cypher Attic]

Also, is the Sci-Fi aesthetic that Type-Moon's magic terminology has a product of whimsical translators, or does it actually read that way in Japanese?

It's full of hipster kanji and cheeky puns. Comparable to translating something like Nisio Isin's Monogatari series.

That's an exaggeration, right? Just knowing one or two commonly discussed examples of Nisio's wordplay scares me as an aspiring Japanese learner (Shinobu's name, anyone?).

[Ratman]

It's something of a hyperbole, but it's complicated enough to deter all but the most determined. Primarily due to cultural (like zen buddhist) references interwining with the author's own personal terminology. Not really the case with Mirai Fukuin.
Rather, a proper translation would have to include so many translator notes at the bottom of the page that they'd take up 25% of the text.

You have to understand that the average level of fan translation is this:


Since the average westerner has no idea what this is, the various KnK movie subs have 'arranged into a swastika' which also gives a comedically wrong impression of what is going on there.
The actual point is that 1) manji is used in repeating patterns in japanese culture, especially in the sayagata which may be a way of denoting Shiki's inner duality 2) in Buddhism this is representative of the samsara and reincarnation (this lets you retroactively know that Araya did most of the killings as a way of baiting Shiki out).
To a japanese person these things are kind of obvious, unless, you know, they're dumb.

[Namelesss]

Back when FGO NA started, they did admit they used the FGO WIKI as a "guide" to help them kek. God it would be so hilarious if they pulled a taimanin yukikaze fan translation shenanigan's on more type moon works

[Paulie25]

I think the Mahoyo line (it uses "mysteries" in plural) is like that because the japanese text actually uses the katakana for "mystery" as Aoko is explaining it. Unless I'm misremembering something, but I did swap back and forth between the english and jp a few times for stuff like this and the use of imperial units when I couldn't be bothered to do the math in my head.

As for FSR, I don't think it's just Ray of Light. The first time it's used is when Giovanni comes for Shousetsu and that scene exists in every version of the story. Though the term does come up again in Ray of Light, yes. I think it's just a case of whoever was in charge of that stretch of the game opting for "Mystery" for whatever reason (maybe they're an old fan) and there not being sufficient proofreading to catch that inconsistency.

I think they used Mystery when it was talking about concealing information and stuff is the thing, and in Ray of Light the term Mystery most makes sense for what the character is talking about

[pinetree]

If you need to keep going back to a different terminlogy so scenes make sense then that means you made a bad choice to begin with.

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

Could they....not just google what a manji is

[Cypher Attic]

Could they....not just google what a manji is

Probably because either your not going to bother or find yourself on TV Tropes and then forget the anime exists.

[OnesFleetingGlory]

That's what footnotes for. Back in the day, when I used to read Toaru in BT (darn Yenpress had to copyright them) I often came across those for explain Japanese customs and sayings. Though there could be alternatives like putting the Japanese Kanji (卍) to explain the shape better.

[Petrikow]

2006: Mirror-Moon released terminology-defining fan patches of their VNs.

This is sort of a misconception. A lot of the common terminology used (especially for Fate) comes not from the VN translation, but from Fate/Zero anime fan translation, which itself based a lot of its lingo on common fandom terminology. The Mirror Moon stuff (with say, magic/sorcery, 'the spiral of origin', etc) is generally not used.

[Paulie25]

This is sort of a misconception. A lot of the common terminology used (especially for Fate) comes not from the VN translation, but from Fate/Zero anime fan translation, which itself based a lot of its lingo on common fandom terminology. The Mirror Moon stuff (with say, magic/sorcery, 'the spiral of origin', etc) is generally not used.

thaumaturgy sounds so wrong nowadays.

[OnesFleetingGlory]

Why? Too mouthful?