Persona 3 & Persona 4 Translators Left Out Of Recreation’s Credit

When Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden were released on new platforms last week, a lot was product of the truth that for the primary time ever the latter was going to characteristic French, Italian, German and Spanish subtitles. That was nice information for European followers, however the individuals most accountable for this achievement aren’t getting the dues they deserve.

Final week Katrina Leonoudakis, a former localization coordinator at Sega who left the corporate in 2022 (and now works in TV), sounded the alarm that the FIGS (French, Italian, German & Spanish) translation group she had labored with had not been totally credited for his or her work on the video games.

These groups weren’t immediately employed at publishers Sega; as a substitute they had been contractors and workers at Key phrases Studios, an outsourcing firm that dealt with the video games’ localisation duties. Within the credit for the video games solely essentially the most senior employees at Key phrases, and never the precise staff accountable for the localisation, are included.

“The individuals disregarded are the translators, editors, and different localization professionals who created the French, Italian, German, and Spanish localizations of the ports of P3P and P4G”, Leonoudakis tells me. “These individuals had been workers and/or contractors of Key phrases Studios, a language service supplier that SEGA of America employed to provide the FIGS localization. I used to be the Localization Coordinator on this title at SEGA from 2021 by means of my departure in July 2022; a part of my job included staying in touch with the FIGS groups, answering their localization-related questions in regards to the challenge and passing on any questions/issues to the Japanese builders”.

G/O Media could get a fee

Up to $100 credit

Samsung Reserve

Reserve the next gen Samsung device
All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.

She says this isn’t an issue with Sega, who to their credit make “internal steps during credit creation to ensure anyone who’s touched a title is represented in the credits, even reaching out to every individual to make sure their name is spelled right”. Rather, she says the blame here lies with Keywords themselves. “Keywords has a ‘policy’ not to credit any contractors or localizers that work on a project, preferring to be credited as ‘Localization produced by Keywords Studios’, Leonoudakis says. “Unless SEGA’s producer, or Japanese developers, tell Keywords specifically that they MUST credit their contractors, they will not pass that information along.”

“I’ve been told by contractors who work at Keywords that they have been ‘forbidden to speak out about crediting’ and ‘low-key threatened’ about it”, she says. “They do sometimes credit their Project Managers, but not the contractors who actually write the text FIGS players read to play and enjoy the game. Given that Persona is an extremely dialogue and narrative-heavy game, the localization is crucial to the game experience for FIGS players.”

Keywords has not responded to a request for comment on these policies and omissions,.

Leonoudakis chose this moment to speak up because she’s fed up with what has become a pattern in the AAA games industry. “Localization teams may work on these games for months or years, often being paid very little, to zero credit”, she says. “Not only is it morally wrong, but it makes it harder for translators and localization professionals to find work later. If you can’t prove you did all the translation for a triple-A game, how can you put it on your resume?”.

This is similar argument being made throughout the trade, and one thing we’ve written about extensively. Individuals essential to an enormous online game’s launch are disregarded of its credit on a regular basis, for quite a lot of causes, from petty energy performs to administrative oversights. Regardless of the excuse, the end result is similar: individuals who have spent years of their lives working to convey you a recreation are lacking out on the general public thanks ({and professional} recognition) they deserve.

“Sadly, translators are nonetheless fairly invisible”, Leonoudakis says. “A great translation is seamless, and doesn’t learn like a translation in any respect to the reader. That is why it’s all of the extra essential to credit score the translators, writers, and localization employees that create the localizations of video games. If recreation builders need to revenue from the areas they’re localizing their video games for, the least they’ll do is credit score the individuals who made all that revenue doable.”