Can someone explain why much ado is being made by so many of the localization of ごっつあんプリファイ into Amp You Very Much, but ゴールドラッシュ being incorrectly "translated" as "Make It Rain" was ok? I find it weird this is still brought up in this podcast even after, earlier in the podcast, there was an acknowledgement that TPCI currently seems to be out of touch with its own history.
I am
aware that the move was incorrectly translated in the video game, but that's not a reason to stack onto the problem on top of that. That is actually the source of the error. There is a long history of the TCG debuting attacks/Abilities before they appear in the video games, and while there have been misses over the years, TPCI was
generally pretty good at this (in a way that WOTC and PUSA weren't) and the backslide is, like I implied earlier, actually a pretty good example of how TPCI seems to be out of touch with the history of the brand it's managing.
If I'm translating attack names for the TCG, I should be checking;
- Does this move appear in the video games? How did we translate it there?
- Has this move been translated for the TCG before? How did we translate it there?
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(Alternatively: Has this move appeared in the anime, movie, merchandise, etc.?)
Likewise, if I'm translating new attack names for the video games, I should be checking;
- Has this move appeared in the TCG before? How did we translate it there?
-
(Alternatively: Has this move appeared in the anime, movie, merchandise, etc.?)
I'm aware that TPCI has a very outdated approach to translation/localization; this is one of the few localized Japanese IPs that, for example,
still doesn't provide a JP audio+subtitle option for its anime, but there's still a baseline of consistency in the translations you ought to go with, and TPCI generally did strive for.
This problem used to be pretty common. For example, PK Lileep and LA Lileep originally both had the おどろかす attack, which PUSA translated as
Surprise for PK, and
Astonish for LA. You'll notice the second time around, it was translated to match the video games. This kind of "clean-up" happened during Gen 4, and at the start of Gen 5, and onward, there is a kind of 'soft reboot' to how attacks are translated, etc. and it's probably why a few attacks, like Water Gun, completely changed in effect from Gen 1-to-4 and then Gen 5-and-on. It's probably not a coincidence that BW-on was the first new block translated under TPCI, and that it's the start of the Expanded format*; prior to that, translation quality was still hit-or-miss, so Expanded probably shuns WOTC/PUSA's work pretty
deliberately on that basis.
Back to the present, TPCI is incorrectly translating video game moves that originally debuted in the TCG (not just Gold Rush/Make It Rain, but
Pandemonium/Infernal Parade, and a few others) and now I'm trying to ascertain why TPC and/or TPCI seem to be issuing rulings that seem to contradict series precedent, but that's a topic I won't get into here and now because I assume people will already be annoyed enough with some of what I've already said.
Amp You Very Much, on the other hand, is just a one-off localization that attempts to preserve the presence of a pun in the original attack name. Continuing to criticize TPCI for that effort is sending mixed signals, when there was a much bigger SNAFU only a week or two earlier, that involved both (1) incorrectly "translating" a phrase that didn't need translating and (2) not bothering to check the series' own canon and history to ensure the translation would be consistent. One is a significantly bigger issue than the other, and this community has got the order mixed up.
* Which, although JP pays service to its DP1-on hall of fame format, you'll notice pokemon-card.com's Q&As will only
rarely address interactions prior to BW1.
.