More “Paradox Rift” English Cards Revealed, Gholdengo ex’s Attack Translated to Match Video Games

[LightYearLiam]

This never bothered you?

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I'm amazed you would bring up an example like this as though it proves your point of how awful the translators supposedly are at their jobs. The amount of people who are actually bothered by this "problem" with the Mega cards is probably tiny.

You simply care about something that the vast majority of Pokemon card fans do not care about. Nothing wrong with that, but it's weird how insistent you're being.

 

[Frost]

do you sincerely think Pokemon is an objectively worse product because in English the water and dark Eeveelutions are named Vaporeon and Umbreon instead of 'Showers' and 'Blacky'?

Pokemon is an objectively better product for not having Umbreon named that in English. lol

 

[MiltankMoment]

No it doesn't, it's not 1998 anymore.


You're being very charitable assuming it's a conscious effort. At this point I think it's fair to ask if it's being driven by incompetence and/or malevolence.

The question about 'Showers' and 'Blacky' wasn't rhetorical--really, how do you feel about those names as opposed to Vaporeon and Umbreon with regard to the quality of the franchise? Do you have a strict 'always transliterate when possible' policy? You've made no comment on the concept of reasonable localization, as in deliberately making changes to appeal to varied global cultures/sensibilities--which in fact takes more time and effort than simply transliterating everything. Also, you're proposing incompetence/malevolence while still not presenting a single objective reason that the attack being named 'Make it Rain' is bad to back it up. Right under that attack name is the attack effect which functions as intended by the Japanese creators of the TCG, so we can't conflate WotC's gameplay-harming errors with this situation. We've already established that this attack is different from Alolan Dugtrio's as you can discard any type of basic energy instead of just metal, so an attack name/effect consistency argument doesn't apply here. All that in mind, what exactly is the problem?

My reason for pursuing this conversation isn't some Modern Pokemon apologist angle, mind you. I skipped Sword/Shield; I bought Scarlet and returned that garbage the very next day--frankly I think the true soul of Pokemon left with Satoshi Tajiri after gen 2. The problem is that you're saying all this and that about an 'uncritical' fanbase and 'gobbling anything', which, without any objective reasoning, just boils down to you insulting the others here on subjective matters because you personally feel very strongly about them.

 

[Scoop]

This never bothered you?

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Not at all, Megas are my favorite cards in the TCG and considering the text on the card artwork is entirely a stylistic choice, with no bearing on card function, I’m not bothered by it. If anything, it’s a neat localization quirk that at least makes the two different and gives reason to collect both English and JP prints for some people.

Again- I see why you might be annoyed by this in some cases- But enough to go on this much and for so long because somehow this is a way bigger issue than it needs to be? I’m not going to be a little kid and insult you. I just don’t get it and I feel like there’s more important things to worry about.

 

[angooseburger]

From a brand consistency point of view, yes, choosing to name the attack to match what its name in the video game is, is a good decision. However, when they were translating the attack for the video game in the first place, whoever chose to incorrectly translate the attack to anything other than Gold Rush did something dumb, for 2 reasons;

1. TPCI is insisting on translation where transliteration suffices. ゴールドラッシュ is literally Gold Rush. It's not something where subjectiveness/interpretation have much room here, it's phonetically spelling out the English phrase "Gold Rush" as close as possible with katakana. There's nothing to 'translate', or 'localize', simple transliteration is all that was required. (I'd suggest anything on top of that should be considered intrusive.)

2. TPCI is not taking care to ensure continuity across all pillars of the franchise. It is starting to become suspect that whoever does the video game translations is not checking to see if what appear to be "new" attacks are actually those which already made their debut in the TCG. This is at least the second time that the game translation team has 'missed' the fact an attack already made an appearance in the TCG;
- S7D Gourgeist's ひゃっきやこう was translated for EVS as "Pandemonium".
- When ひゃっきやこう appeared as an attack in Pokémon Legends Arceus, it was translated as "Infernal Parade". [link]
If the attack ever appears in the TCG again, we'll have another instance of inconsistency much like what we're seeing here.

From a business logistic point of view, it doesn't make sense to always align attack translations across pokemon products. Keep in mind that translator teams are most likely different everytime and maybe translations are outsourced to other companies. It's not reasonable to expect a translation company/team to be aligning translations with another company/team. How would anyone know what exact terms need to be consistent? They'd need to always review translations from other companies/teams and that's a lot of work for little payoff.

 

[Jurgenator647]

You're spending dollars for cards which cost cents to print – why? If you don't care what they say, how can you justify their value?

shiny cardboard ?

 

[ZDude]

From a brand consistency point of view, yes, choosing to name the attack to match what its name in the video game is, is a good decision. However, when they were translating the attack for the video game in the first place, whoever chose to incorrectly translate the attack to anything other than Gold Rush did something dumb, for 2 reasons;

1. TPCI is insisting on translation where transliteration suffices. ゴールドラッシュ is literally Gold Rush. It's not something where subjectiveness/interpretation have much room here, it's phonetically spelling out the English phrase "Gold Rush" as close as possible with katakana. There's nothing to 'translate', or 'localize', simple transliteration is all that was required. (I'd suggest anything on top of that should be considered intrusive.)

2. TPCI is not taking care to ensure continuity across all pillars of the franchise. It is starting to become suspect that whoever does the video game translations is not checking to see if what appear to be "new" attacks are actually those which already made their debut in the TCG. This is at least the second time that the game translation team has 'missed' the fact an attack already made an appearance in the TCG;
- S7D Gourgeist's ひゃっきやこう was translated for EVS as "Pandemonium".
- When ひゃっきやこう appeared as an attack in Pokémon Legends Arceus, it was translated as "Infernal Parade". [link]
If the attack ever appears in the TCG again, we'll have another instance of inconsistency much like what we're seeing here.

You have to remember that in Japanese the same word may mean multiple different things and can be translated differently according to the context, google translate isn't always right. Also, there may not be an easier way to convey that meaning in Japanese so it gets dulled down for us.