Based on what I’ve read, Shantae games have always been translated badly. No need to even review the localization when the basic translation is already bad. While I can’t confirm that it’s always been bad, I know it’s not good in both Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse and the last entry, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. And the Ultimate Edition of Half-Genie Hero doesn’t change the translation at all, so it’s still really bad. This seems to apply to every language available since I read reviews from Japanese users stating that, while the gameplay is good, the text has issues.
To show how bad the current translation is and how the localization could be improved, I decided to copy two parts of the game’s original (English) script and then translate and localize them to Spanish myself. After that, I decided to copy the current Spanish translation just so that it can be compared with my translation. I also translated the current Spanish script back to English to compare it with the original English script and also so that people who know English but not Spanish can see how bad it is.
Continue reading “Example of how Shantae HGH’s bad localization could be improved”