Interesting Kingdom Hearts 1 Translation / Localization Insights!
I just found this interview today (linked below) by Jack Yarwood on the website Time Extension with Amanda Jun Katsurada. She worked on some of the localization of KH1. They talk about various things in the interview, but in this post, I am only going to highlight what was stated about Kingdom Hearts 1 (and the fact that she was the one who suggested localizing Tidus' name in FFX - in Japanese his name is Tida (ティーダ), though she stated that she didn't provide any pronunciation for it (and she knows that there is debates and issues over that nowadays.).
Time Extension: Besides what we’ve mentioned above, you’re also credited on Kingdom Hearts, which is now a huge blockbuster series for Square. At the time, though, I can imagine it must have felt like a strange proposition: mixing the worlds of Final Fantasy with traditional Disney characters. Do you remember what the process of localising that game was like?
Katsurada: I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this was the first time Disney let another company develop a video game using its characters. Until then, Disney was hiring other companies to develop games for them. But this was a collaboration, very much an equal partnership thing, and I think there was a lot of struggle for them to let go.
I recall, initially, Ryosuke Taketomi and I were selected as the translators on the Square side, and our assumption was, 'Okay, we'll just do our usual thing and just translate everything.' And then Disney said, 'No, no, no, no, we have chosen the translator. And they have a wonderful track record.' We saw the resume, and we were going, 'Whoa, I would love to see their work.' But, unfortunately, this person didn't know the odd formats or parameters that he had to work within at Square. So, pretty much everything had to be re-translated by us. So that reduced the time we could spend on translation, which was hard. My translation partner also left partway through, too, so in the end, I had to finish the project by myself.
I was working every single weekend, every single day for a long time — really long hours. Towards the end, I was pretty much living in the office, because we were so close to not making it. Honestly, it's all a bit of a blur in retrospect, because it was so gruelling. I should probably say, though, there were also some fun moments that made up for it. This was the first project where I did interpretation, for example. Some Disney executives came to the office because the Japanese voice-overs had to be done in Japan. We were recording Mickey, Minnie, and all those Disney characters in Japan, so the Disney vice president came to check in on the sessions, and I interpreted for them, which I ended up really enjoying.
Time Extension: Regarding the character names, it seems most of the characters kept their original Japanese names, such as Sora, Riku, and Kairi. I think the Heartless are even referred to in Japanese as Hātoresu (ハートレス). Was there ever any conversation with the developers about changing some of the names to appeal to a Western audience?
Katsurada: So, with this particular project, I wasn't always able to run to Nomura-san, because he was super busy, from what I understand.
From what I recall, I would usually consult the localisation project manager, and he would say, 'Sure, we can bring that up to him' or 'Let's not push that.' But from what I heard, Nomura-san typically preferred to keep everything unchanged.
I did make suggestions for the main character names and the monsters, but, from what I can remember, they had already been given katakana names, and he didn't want to change any of them. Heartless was fine, but I remember for some of the miscellaneous characters, I made the argument, 'We cannot just simply put these katakana names into English because some of them just won't sound good.'
Time Extension: I'm looking at a list of enemies here, and most of them just seem to be different variations of Heartless. I'll send you the list.
Katsurada: I guess this is a fan site. I’m looking at the list of Heartless. They look more localised, right from the beginning. So these may be the later versions. I know they amped up the localisation a whole lot starting from the second one.
Time Extension: I remember there was a miniboss character called "Stealth Sneak" for the Deep Jungle stage, which sounds slightly awkward and appears to come from a Katakana phrase.
Katsurada: It's that kind of name. Maybe I shouldn't talk about this because I have no way to verify, but it was definitely an episode. I remember there was like a skeleton-like monster/creature. It was one of those.
But I remember Nomura said, 'No, I'm gonna keep them as is.' At the time, there were some internal concerns about how that may impact sales, not just from me, but in the end, I don't know if we ended up changing them. I think in the end, it all came out alright.
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I find the most interesting part to be about how Disney had hired their own translator, but the translation wasn't done the right way (parameters and whatnot), so it had to be completely redone and then Katsurada had to finish the translation on her own. I think that really puts aspects like the lost in translation stuff or slight mistranslations of things into a better perspective. Also interesting how she states that she thinks that KH2 is when the KH translations became more localized!
Anyway, feel free to share your own thoughts on this (and anything else in the interview, tbh!) in the comments below! :)
