@Nuebot Why is it cool? What was wrong with the old name?

This is the same bow camo that they've decided to rename for some reason:

Season 1, March:

Current season, July:

I'd really like to know why they decided to rename it. Is this what they plan on doing every time they need an item to fit a theme?

While it's true that the exploit allowed people to get their hands on lots and lots of money and AC tickets, all that's doing is flooding the market with more stuff, which only increases supply and makes it cheaper.

Exploiting the market by buying low and selling high is something literally anyone can do, so I wouldn't attribute that to anyone who exploited the system back then. All it takes is patience.

When you consider that in the JP version, there are photon arts with German names that were changed for the NA version, it wouldn't surprise me if they decided to change Etoile (a French word) to english as well.

EDIT: LOL Maybe it's because the game can't display the É in Étoile properly...

You also can't type anything in chat that isn't part of the latin alphabet. I've tried Hiragana, Katakana, and Cyrillic, but while you can type them into the chat box, it won't display if you hit enter.

Alright, another chance to talk about the localization! This is going to get long...

Here are my thoughts and feelings on the localization:

1 - I'm pretty sure some of the localization team are not native English speakers. There are a lot of grammatical errors that most native speakers would not make if they were working in a professional capacity (such as localizing a game). On top that, there is some choice of wording that seems kind of off. Things that make sense grammatically, but just seem... odd. For Example:

There's nothing wrong with what this says, but who talks like this?

2 - It definitely seems like the localization was done by separate teams which had little to no communication with each other concerning their respective assignments. This has lead to places where sometimes the same thing can be referred to differently depending on where you look.

Examples of this include such things as:

For those unaware, in the Japanese version, Alliances are referred to as Teams. Here we see that while the NPC is referring to this Alliance Order properly, the system message refers to them as Team Orders.

Another one:

Here we're looking at the Hurricane Kick potential for the Nox Sagephus Katana. In it, we see that the potency of Snatch Dodge is boosted by 300%. What is Snatch Dodge though? You would have no way of knowing this unless you were familiar with the Japanese Braver skill tree, but the skill they're referring to is called Sidestep Tackle in the English localization. For some reason, it's been translated as Snatch Dodge for the description for Hurricane Kick.

A third example that comes to mind, that I unfortunately don't have an image to share is from the Urban Lifestyle AC scratch. There was an emote called Wall Slam included as one of the potential pulls. The item is called Wall Slam in your inventory, but when you consumed the item and attempt to go use it from the emote list, you'll find the emote is now called Kabedon.

3 - This kind of ties in with my second point above, but it seems like there was no style guide for this localization. From what I know of localization, there's typically a style guide or something similar that the whole team would use as reference so when there's a question as to how to translate something, you would follow the guide. From what I've see, it seems there's no method to the madness that is the NA localization.

4 - My personal feeling is that there was no thought put into some of the translation choices. By that, I mean that everything is translated without thinking about context or intent, and in some cases they just flat out changed things that I suppose they couldn't find a proper translation for. There are many instances where transliteration, rather than translation would have been more appropriate. The biggest example here are the Photon Arts...

For those unfamiliar with Japanese, there are three main scripts used for writing. Among them is one called Katakana. Katakana is used for several things, but among them is the transliteration of foreign words. In the Japanese version of PSO2, all of the photon arts are written in Katakana, because almost every one of the game's Photon Arts are foreign words. Mostly English, but some other languages too. You would think then, that since the PAs are already mostly foreign words, that they're like that for a reason, and the localization team would simply transliterate them back to their appropriate languages... but they kind of don't do that.

The example I often use is that the Gunblade PA Rage Dance is written as レイジダンス in Katakana, and would phonetically be pronounced Reijidansu. That's a pretty simple transliteration job there. Reijidansu = Rage Dance, and that's what we got. However, there is a Gunblade PA that's referred to as Rayblade Shot in the NA version, but in Japanese, it is written in Katakana as エインラケーテン, and phonetically would be pronounced Einlaketen. Now, you may be thinking "There's no way that's an English word." and you'd be totally right. It's German. Ein Raketen is what it says. We didn't get Ein Raketen though, we got Rayblade Shot for some reason. This to me is a case where simply transliterating the name would have been sufficient rather than coming up with a completely new name for the Photon Art simply because it's in German.

And since I'll never pass up an opportunity to mention it, I would like to point out that despite nearly ALL of the Photon Arts in the game being foreign words transliterated into Katakana, the Photon Arts for the Katana, while still written in Katakana, are all Japanese words. Despite that, all of these PAs were translated, rather than transliterated.

In this case, knowing that all of the other PAs are in foreign languages, and only the Katana PAs are still in Japanese to me would mean that was an intentional choice, and were I the one localizing the Photon Arts, I would have left them as they were, rather than translating them. They also sound way cooler in Japanese.

You could argue that they wanted to translate ALL of the Japanese in the game to English, but I would simply say that isn't true at all, since there are Katanas like Yasha and Yamigarasu which are still in Japanese, plus you have the Kabedon emote I mentioned before, and of course we can't forget the all mighty Fluorescent Bulb... or should I say...

KEIKOUTOU!

Okay that's all I have to say about that.

The English voice banks for both Miku and Luka aren't very good to begin with. Vocaloid is good for Japanese, but not so much for English.

It's been a bit, but now that this group chat campaign is up, I would like to also chime in and say that there should be an option to friend people in PSO2 only.

I shouldn't have to add every person I play with in PSO2 to my xbox live friends list.

@coldreactive said in Katana Photon Art Names:

Localization =/= Translation

The people who worked on localizing this game for the west had to take into account older Phantasy Star games and their attacks. Localization also has to take into account Context, not just translating with proper grammar.

The older phantasy star games didn't have these attacks, and if they were considering context then the PA names for Katana would be in Japanese, and PAs for other weapons would have names that make no sense in the context of what the attack does.

The events that occur while doing expeditions seem to be called "Code Emergency" in this NA release, however the voice says "Emergency Code" and that's exactly what these mini-events are.

It's "Emergency! Code: Attack" not "Code: Emergency: Attack"

Why was this changed to Code Emergency when Emergency Codes are a real thing? Like, when a hospital has a Code Blue, or a Code Black... those are Emergency Codes, not Code Emergencies.

Thanks for your time

This is probably one of those suggestions that has a slim chance of happening but I'd like to suggest all of the Katana Photon Arts for the Braver class retain their Japanese names.

In Japanese, most of the Photon Arts are English words, written in Katakana. For example, the Gunblade has PAs like レイジダンス, which phonetically is Reijidansu, and translates nicely to Rage Dance, and in NA, that's exactly what that PA is called. Then you've got エイミングショット, which phonetically is Eimingushotto. Again, that translates to Aiming Shot, and in NA, that's called Aimed Shot. There aren't only English names of course, there's a PA called エインラケーテン, which phonetically is Einlaketen, and translates to Ein Raketen. That's German, and it translates to 'a rocket' but in NA, that's called Rayblade Shot.

Anyway, I needed to point out that bit of information to get to my main point: Although most PAs are English words in Katakana, the Katana PAs are still Japanese words written in Katakana. ゲッカザクロ is Gekka Zakuro, サクラエンド is Sakura Endo (which I geuess would be Sakura End). But in NA, those two PAs are respectively called Lunar Flourishing, and Cherry Blossom Finale.

To me, these PA names being in Japanese despite all the others being in English (and sometimes German) means that was done for a reason. That reason is probably because Katanas are Japanese, but whatever the reason, I think they should remain in Japanese. Especially when there's no problems with keeping Japanese names for some of the Katanas in the game like Yasha, and Yamigarasu. In fact, there's even a bow skin in the Mission Pass called Kagiya Tsuzumi.

So there it is, that's my suggestion, and I hope it'll get some consideration.

Thank you