Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

XSEED Localizer Chooses the Dumbest Hill to Die On

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • XSEED Localizer Chooses the Dumbest Hill to Die On

    Yesterday, a localizer for the publisher XSEED took a dramatic stance on what he saw as potential censorship, asking his company to remove his name from the credits of the upcoming JRPG Akiba’s Beat after the developers removed a controversial phrase involving the KKK from the game.


    Yesterday, a localizer for the publisher XSEED took a dramatic stance on what he saw as potential censorship, asking his company to remove his name from the credits of the upcoming JRPG Akiba’s Beat after the developers removed a controversial phrase involving the KKK from the game.

    “I wanted to make a statement,” localization specialist Tom Lipschultz wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t think it’s right to make any change, no matter how minor, for the purpose of ‘sanitizing’ a game.”
    Localization gets thorny when certain cultural themes don’t make sense in other languages—or, worse, when they’re too controversial. Akiba’s Beat’s “most egregious change,” Lipschultz wrote in an XSEED forum post, had to do with a parody of the Japanese light switch company NKK Switches. A sign in the original Japanese version of the game read “KKK witches,” a play on the phrase. He wrote on XSEED’s forum, “I personally felt ‘KKK witches’ was pretty funny for its shock value, but when I mentioned it to my coworkers, they... were not as amused.” Lipschultz has long been an advocate against what he sees as censorship in localization, and he says his priority is retaining as much of Akiba’s Beat’s original meaning as possible.
    XSEED (sans Lipschultz) e-mailed Acquire asking what originally inspired the sign. Ken Berry, XSEED’s executive vice president, helped explain what the letters meant in the U.S. “Acquire immediately responded that they had no idea the sign could be taken that way in English,” Berry told me in an e-mail. Two weeks later, Acquire removed the phrase from Akiba’s Beat, with no further conversation or discussion, replacing it with “ACQ witches.”

    Although this decision was made by the developer, Lipschultz decided to take a stand, asking XSEED to remove his name from the credits of Akiba’s Beat. As a result, he won’t appear in XSEED’s credits again—XSEED has a policy maintaining that “If someone is ashamed to be associated with one of our games, then they are ashamed to be associated with the company as a whole and won’t be credited in future games either.” Lipschultz says that, because “KKK witches” isn’t being removed to “aid the player’s comprehension,” but to “avoid offending people and to avoid the possibility of retailers protesting,” it infringes on the game’s artistic value.
    So the game's original developers didn't know what the KKK stood for in the States. The original meaning behind the "KKK Witches" in Japan was a joke reference to a Japanese company. That's the intent of the name. The localizer wanted to go "hurr hurr" and change the intent of the reference for the local version and is getting pissy that the game's original developer had the nerve to change their own game. Upon learning about it, they quickly changed it. This isn't censorship. This localizer is a moron and this is the hill he chose to die on.

  • #2
    Wow losing his job and letting the industry know why over this?... Not worth it period. Acquire did nothing wrong, and XSEED certainly did nothing wrong. A real shame his employment was affected over this unnecessary whistleblowing.

    Comment

    Working...
    X