Over the past few months, I've partially returned to my former life as a localization writer/editor, completing several freelance projects that I can't talk about just yet (don't get too excited, though -- unless you're a 14-year-old girl, you're probably not the target audience for most of 'em!). But localization isn't just translating, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to give a little insight into the various types of projects I've been working on.

Obviously, localization conventions vary by company. The bigger publishers have top-notch in-house translators, which makes the entire process a whole lot easier. For a localization editor like me who's almost exclusively dealing with outsourced translations, though, there are more or less three types of editing jobs:

1) The brush-up

Congratulations! You've found a translator who happens to be a great writer. The editing job boils down to tightening sentences and adding commas between two independent clauses. Definitely the easiest project, but it doesn't allow for much creativity.

2) The punch-up

A technically competent translation, but it just doesn't capture the spirit of the original Japanese. This requires a bit more work, often changing the translation to something less literal so that the intention -- always the most important part of the original Japanese text -- is preserved.

3) The rewrite

Uh-oh! You've hired an incompetent translation company, and someone's gotta clean up their mess. Either that, or the translation's fine, but it's way too literal, referencing obscure Japanese cultural touchstones (contrary to what many Japanophiles might think, they are not the target audience for most of these games). While these projects are probably the most fun because of the creativity involved, they're also the most difficult. I've seen a couple of cases where the original translation was so bad that I had to play through the segment in Japanese to actually understand what the hell was going on -- and I'm not exactly fluent.

I mention all this because these past few months have given me a new respect for the Japanese role-playing games I spent the past few years reviewing. Specifically, the localizations. While my previous career helped me understand the process more than the average reviewer, I'd also been away from that side of the industry for about three years, so I'd actually forgotten how difficult it can truly get -- which is why I have an especially newfound respect for Atlus' job on Persona 4. We're talking about a game that takes 100 hours to beat, let alone localize! Sure, Square Enix and Nintendo have tackled projects of similar length, but they also have a lot more resources and money. Atlus isn't the tiny operation they once were, but they're certainly approaching these gargantuan projects from a minor disadvantage.

So if you enjoy the work of Atlus -- or any other niche localizer, for that matter -- please let them know. Because there's one more thing these past few months have taught me: Localization can be a pretty solitary job without a lot of direct feedback.