Dark Souls Localisation Interview

We rarely deal with the topic of localization here on GameBanshee, since a sizable portion of the titles we cover is already developed with the English language in mind, but that doesn’t make this EDGE interview with Dark Souls’ creative director Hidetaka Miyazaki and translator Ryan Morris on the title’s localization any less interesting. Not unexpectedly, the localization of the new Prepare to Die Edition and Artorias of Abyss DLC is also touched upon. Here’s a snippet:

How is your English? Do comprehension issues ever hinder your ability to judge how pleased you are with drafts of Dark Souls’ localisation?

HM I’m not competent in my verbal abilities at English, but my reading and writing are ok. Because Dark Souls isn’t the kind of game that has a huge volume of text, I’m able to go over it closely. With Ryan and [his staff] working on the drafts and being involved very early in the process, there have never been problems and I have a lot of confidence in them to do their part in making it all work. And it helps that Ryan is a gamer himself and understands what needs to be explained or foreshadowed in dialogue.

You’ve spoken at length about your love of Western fantasy literature. And Ryan, you’ve been a fan of Japanese culture from an early age. Does that reciprocal cross-cultural interest aid the localisation process?

Ryan Morris It’s much more than you usually get. There are a lot of cases where clients are not aware of, or interested in, the fact that you need to have that sort of dialogue to really get it done well. There are a lot of times where we just have to go with text and not enough context and ask questions through email, and not get satisfactory responses. It comes down to a lack of understanding on the client’s part about what needs to go into a localisation if you really want to do it right. There are a lot of good translators out there who aren’t provided with enough context to do the job properly.

Does the sparseness of dialogue add extra pressure to the localisation effort, since each line has to carry more weight in conveying story and gameplay direction?

HM One of the goals of the Demon’s Souls concept was to tell more with less, and so the sparse dialogue becomes very important. We did our best with the localisation. I’m not confident that I’ve perfected this method of storytelling. There are probably things that weren’t clear enough, or could’ve been done more effectively. When I was young and reading fantasy novels – and this is at an age where I could only understand maybe half of what I was reading – there was an allure to not knowing entirely what was going on. So I had this idea that perhaps there would be some way to create that kind of feeling in a game. My method of storytelling comes from that inspiration, from the shadowy parts of a story or a legend that you can’t make out.