How accurate are Chinese symbols in games?

[Sketcz-1000]

In HG101's recent Metal Wolf article we feature ascreenshot from the San Francisco level, complete with neon signs displaying is Chinese han symbols. And it got me thinking about the use of Chinese symbols in games...



Deus Ex 3 is another game full of Chinese symbols:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvD9jkiYks

Another example if The Apprentice on CDI, which uses Chinese/Kanji symbols all over the place, for no apparent reason whatsoever. And they don't even match the game. For some reason the symbol for HORSE adorns everything. Other symbols I don't even recognise.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eT3HrOfsw4


My question is:

How accurate is the use of these characters in games?


Deus Ex 3 is made by a Western company, whereas Metal Wolf was by From Software, a Japanese company. Now, having studied Japanese I realise there's a difference between Chinese han and Japanese kanji - but there is overlap, and I would trust a Japanese company more when handling the script for background graphics.

Has anyone who is a native reader of Chinese watched the Deus Ex 3 videos to comment on the text? Do you have a friend or relative you persuade to watch them?

There's plenty of stories of people having tattoos of foreign text and it turning out to mean something entirely different to what they thought - are there such hidden messages in the Chinese featured in Western games? I mean, there is so much Chinese in DE3, I can only assume they must have hired a consultant for it - or have a native speaker on staff. Because otherwise what did they use as their source material?

Certainly a lot of Japanese games which feature English in their visual designs have shown to be hilariously incorrect. I recall a Dreamcast game where someone enlarged some background textures which had English text, and found they were ripped from the English instructions of office supplies. Anything in a pinch, eh?

Be warned, I may randomly choose to use this stuff on our blog and name you, if it proves interesting enough.

The hilarious thing would be if we discovered something which forced the dev team to retool all of DE3's assets. Kinda like when Little Big Planet was found to contain Islamic phrases which might offend some people, and there was a recall on all copies.


EDIT:
hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

Features some hilarious examples where westerners make mistakes with Han characters. This could be ripe for examination in the game world.

[Deleted]

You brought up a very interesting question, Sketcz. Here's hoping for funny results. ;D

[roushimsx]

Only kind of related, but Deus Ex: Invisible War had instances where even the English was misspelled on various textures (among other problems and errors).

But hey, Human Revolution is a whole new crew and it sounds like it's getting the treatment it deserves. Oh, and no Harvey Smith. HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY

[Sketcz-1000]

I emailed the guy at Hanzi Smatter with youtube links, so hopefully we get a reply and see what he says.

[Trickless]

The one that particularly stood out for me in that DeusEx3 vid was 老果奴水果店 .... (Old Fruit Slave Fruit Store?)

[derboo]

Jan 15, 2011 17:13:31 GMT -5 Trickless said:

The one that particularly stood out for me in that DeusEx3 vid was 老果奴水果店 .... (Old Fruit Slave Fruit Store?)

I think they're already making fun of that in a couple of Chinese message boards.

I remember some signs in the East Germany levels in No one Lives Forever reading "Bewachung heraus!", which obviously meant to say "Watch out!" but made no sense at all in German.

[Sketcz-1000]

A google of the kanji trickless put up reveals this to be true. Awesome.

Also, found Mobygames has some pics of the apprentice. I have the game, and there is a debug mode to become invincible, but my digi cam is on holiday, so I can't take pics until next week. Otherwise I'd probably put them all up.

No idea what this intro symbol is.

Ma! it's a box of horseys!

NSFW - admin, delete if necessary

The first and third symbols are identical. But I recall there's more in-game.

From what I can tell, the game was western developed, and one of the staff must have had a serious hard-on for anime, because the whole game is full of this really awfully done, pseudo-anime artwork, with random kanji. For those curious, The Apprentice does actually contain full frontal nudity in places. Though it's more illegal than NSFW I'd say.

[Deleted]

This is a good topic. I'd ask my wife about this, unfortunately she can only speak the language. However, I remember asking her about the spoken Mandarin in Strider (after he beats Tong-Pu), and she said it made sense but didn't sound like a native speaker.

[Deleted]

Kimimi plays a lot of Chinese games. Perhaps she would be able to offer some insight?

[cj iwakura]

Fear Effect takes place in China and was developed by a western(European?) team, could also be interesting.

[kobushi]

The Japanese signs and billboards in Red Steel were laughably bad. Weird text, incorrect katakana, and some of the signs were completely upside down, IIRC.

Jan 15, 2011 18:04:40 GMT -5 Sketcz-1000 said:

No idea what this intro symbol is.

Castle.

[Trickless]

Jan 15, 2011 18:04:40 GMT -5 Sketcz-1000 said:

No idea what this intro symbol is.

城

In Chinese, it would usually be read as 'City', as in '城市'

In Japanese kanji, it would usually be read as 'Castle', as in '悪魔城ドラキュラ'

Although i think those definitions can be used in both languages, sometimes it depends on the context.

Not in a game, but I remember reading an issue of GamesTM and they did a feature on fighting games - it had gibberish kanji/hanzi plastered over it which was cringeworthy

edit:kobushi beat me to it

[Sketcz-1000]

EDIT: Thank you for the Apprentice clarification gentlemen. Posted while I was typing.

Yes, I vaguely recall said issue of GamesTM - it had nothing to do with me though! However, I did get our designer on Retro Gamer to put Final Frontier in katakana on the Japanese computer article. Which may not have been to everyone's taste. Personally I hate it when designers use symbols without knowing what they mean, especially when they use symbols which either don't exist, or physically look like English characters. I think that's the worst, when they're supposed to be kanji, but in reality are just a ridiculous Roman font.


---
So we can add Fear Effect and Red Steel to the list. Having played neither I don't have any experience with them. But I do know Einhander also had neon symbols in some areas (2.15):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EUjMptNVMA

Is there any value in trying to document all these in various games, or have forum boards already mocked them for mistakes? This kind of thing is dependant entirely on harassing our multilingual posters - something which I always feel a little guilty of, considering it's such a valuable skill.


In truth though I'm surprised with game companies. When you're making a multi-million dollar game, how much does it cost to hire a language consultant to spend a couple of hours going over your basic image assets to check for accuracy?

[ReyVGM]

This would make a pretty cool article. Or at least a blog post.

[kobushi]

Jan 15, 2011 18:39:57 GMT -5 Trickless said:

edit:kobushi beat me to it

On the contrary, you provided better information. I didn't know that the meaning of 城 was different in Chinese (I have zero knowledge of Chinese).

In truth though I'm surprised with game companies. When you're making a multi-million dollar game, how much does it cost to hire a language consultant to spend a couple of hours going over your basic image assets to check for accuracy?

I think they just don't care. When I mentioned Red Steel, I was talking about the Japanese version of the game. They didn't even try to fix their mistakes for the gamers in the one country that would be 100% guaranteed to notice.

Moving away from video games, look at the TV show Heroes. The actor who plays Ando is a Korean-American with no knowledge of Japanese. And yet he has hours and hours of cringeworthy Japanese dialogue. His dialogue is so bad that they actually dubbed over him in the Japanese DVDs! But hey, he's Asian - close enough, right?

It's always fun to point and laugh at this kind of stuff, but I'm not sure how much it really matters. I'm sure someone from Iran could say many bad things about Prince of Persia, but I'm still going to love that series no matter what.