Localization can be a very diffcult task.

Now add to that the burden of trying to provide a translated version of a movie via voice dubbing and it only gets harder....

Let's look for a moment at Frankthesaiyan's efforts provide a Japanese version of one of the coolest parts of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (the song What would Brian Boitano do?).

Here is the first version he posted, last June:

And then here is the version he posted a few months later:

Now I am not going to talk about the translation quality (I only have a little bit of Japanese under my belt, not enough to follow along with something like this!), or about the voices themselves and how close they are to Cartman, Stan, and Kyle. But whether you speak Japanese or not, you can see the biggest difference between the two videos: how well the sync-up is between lip movement of the cartoon characters and the words. Would this be a factor to consider in localization?

Looking at another Japanese version, like this one without good sync but with Japanese subtitles:

Now the queston to ponder: this can't have too much to do with suspension of disbelief since obviously these are cartoons and the voices are faked anyway. So what exactly does having the lip sync seem more real give us? And personally I find the subtitles distracting even though I have an easier time following along with my meager Japanese skills!

Of course I have trouble judging the quality of the Matt and Trey-provided translations in this other song from the movie, though I suspect that they are not accurate (those guys are mainly going for the sound, and it would be more in character for Cartman if they were incorrect!).

Thinking back to all of the foreign films I have seen and all of the dubbed TV outside of the US, there is not a whole lot of time spent trying to get the lip syncing to be perfect. Yet I don't find that to be as distracting. Am I really asking for more reality from cartoon characters than I am of actual people?

And then to bring it back to software, assuming that someone using a localized product did not need to read a bit of text that was clipped (meaning that there is no actual technical loss for them), does such clipping translate into the same kind of perception of quality issue? And would it be as annoying as the cartoon case, or as ignorable as the non-cartoon fiction case?

Random thoughts on sunday afternoon....

 

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