Shin Megami Tensei finally arrives in Brazil
The Shin Megami Tensei series just had a game released with a Brazilian Portuguese translation for the first time
And I had the honor of helping lead its localization effort.
Seriously, I've never thought I would see the day an Atlus game would be translated into Brazilian Portuguese, much less with my involvement. As a long-time fan, I couldn't even say it was "a dream coming true" because that dream never existed in the first place. Although Brazil got noticed by gaming companies and localization picked its pace up 10~15 years ago, "obscure" and "not so popular" series still aren't commonly translated, especially from Asia. And although Brazil has some sort of cultural connection with Japan, it is no exception to this rule.
But well, it seems some games are becoming more popular now, and the winds are starting to change. We'll see where they take us. Just to make it clear: I don't work for Atlus or Sega. I'm a professional under contract for a small "boutique" localization agency, hired to work internally as a translator, editor, and project manager. Our services are sold to gaming companies in need of localization services. Some of those companies are indie developers and publishers, others are giants in the industry with a lot of legacy and history. Sega fits the latter, of course, and we are not the only localization agency they hire.
The Process
We don't know which projects will be assigned to us until they are assigned, and I thought I was going crazy when I saw the emails about this one. I jumped right in and, with my better half who works at the same company and position as myself, we started to prepare for the project while doing very little to contain our hype.
It's worth noting the process was a bit more involved than usual: people on Sega's side were thoroughly concerned about quality — which is fair, to be honest — and there were quite a few back-and-forths regarding the creative direction the localization should follow, how to keep it closer to the producer's vision for the game, and some terminology vetting either due to cultural sensibilities or because it wouldn't fit the tone of the game. I call this period "pre-loc", since we were preparing the terrain to smooth the job ahead, much like game development has the "pre-production phase". And this is not standard.
I've been working exclusively in this field since 2012 and I've never seen or done something like this before. It doesn't mean it never happened — I'm sure it does — but, for a language that's not part of the Big 5 Western Group, EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish), I don't think it's that common. We usually start working straight on the translation as soon as we can, and go around defining terminology, style, and so on while on the job already. Sometimes the first few batches need a lot of rewriting to fit what was defined later, which throws a wrench on everything, so having a calm period to prepare for the storm is, I believe, one of the biggest reasons the job was so successful.
Another thing that factored in was that this is a "re-release with extra content". Not only Sega has provided us with plenty of references to help mold our creative decisions — within the direction they wanted, as expected — but the game having a previous release made it very easy to find other references, and we sometimes even resorted to watching Let's Play or walkthrough videos to grasp what was going on. With the new content, this wasn't possible, of course, but we were able to fill in the missing pieces, and also send a lot of questions to Atlus, which were always diligently answered. It is very important for translators to have as much context as they can about the game because, while on the job, we only see lines of text in a fancy table, so we need to understand how things will fit when everything is finished.
And, at last, the team was also a big part of it. My partner and I translated and edited the text, but we also managed the job's scheduling (remember, everyone in this project, except for us and our boss hidden among the translators, is a freelancer, so they work for other people too), wrote internal guides and documentation about tone and styling, reviewed new terminology decisions, and we did everything so people could work as independently as possible while being cohesive as a team. The worst thing one can do is to micromanage what people are doing, so we do our best to let them work freely — within the constraints of the project — and just guide their general direction. We, as managers, should strive to keep problems out of the translators' way. And the team, comprised of seasoned professionals and a few other series fans, handled this aspect very well, as we rarely had to intervene directly during discussions regarding which way to go with one decision or another, and when we did, what we said carried the same weight as everyone else's. We only used our "authority" when vetting something that didn't fit within the game's overall tone or concept.
We also had three people who knew Japanese in this project, two of them with experience in living and working in Japan before, so whenever the English source was confusing (we always translate games from English, not from the original language), we could ask for someone to check the Japanese text to see if it clarified anything. When I say this was a team effort, I'm not overstating it: it really was. Everyone played a crucial aspect in this job, and it would be impossible to say the result would've been the same due to this or that person.
Now, most project managers aren't credited as translators or editors but, here, we were. Why? Well, during "pre-loc", I was responsible for vetting and/or choosing a lot of the terminology and creative direction, and I also did quite a lot of work on the UI translation and editing, and some lore entries. My partner, meanwhile, reviewed and edited almost half of the game — which totals a bit above 500,000 words if I remember correctly. Despite our job managing this project (and a few others going on at the same time), we were frequently in the thick of it too, working side by side with the rest of the team.
And I say this truthfully, again: this project would've never been this good if it wasn't a team effort. It's impossible to state that someone did more or less than another to elevate the project as a whole. There's no way to separate or highlight individual contributions because that's not how things work in this field, with projects of this size. It is an important aspect that should never be forgotten, and that's why I wanted to find a screenshot with the team fully credited before writing anything.
Last, but not least, I'm really glad that people are enjoying being shit-talked by demons in our own native language. The positive response has been everything to us, meaning we hit the right spot with every decision. People have no idea how relieved I am, though other professionals in the field might imagine why one would be so tense before a big release, especially when it's the first game of an acclaimed franchise being localized in your language.
So, again: no one would've been able to do this job alone. The whole team deserves to be praised.
Human Labor
I might be preaching to the choir here, but I think it's important to emphasize that all the translation was done through human labor without any sort of automated translation system. The only software used were Excel — which does so much heavy lifting — and MemoQ — one of the most popular Computer-Assisted Translation Tools (or CAT Tools). There was no "AI", no LLM, no Machine Translation.
This is important.
Every line in this game oozes personality and creativity, all heavily contextualized by the game's setting and theme, helped by each character's tone, be they story NPCs or demons. Each line required real creativity to be translated with the correct nuance and to sound fluent and natural. Automated translation systems are nothing more than "averaging machines" and they would never be able to keep the individual identities of the whole cast intact. People who know SMT are aware of how demons talk, what their personalities are, and how that's visually represented through text and style. Some demons even talk only in upper case, while others alternate casing, and some even modify existing words to fit their mannerisms.
What to say, then, about turns of phrases, euphemisms, slang, jokes, and everything in between? It's delusional to think any machine system would be able to keep it up, maintaining each character's consistent tone, through 500,000 words, and someone would just come along to do some "post-editing".
I'm forever grateful many companies out there, big and small, still believe in the value of human labor and recognize the craft that goes into our work.