English Localization Cleanup

The original Glitter Force discussion marked the first time the localization policy spread outside the site. I remember getting hate over it on LiveJournal.

Yuck, I know I had people messaging me to just "fight the decision" on the Other Wiki back then which... uh, no? I think I was largely on break from this site anyway so I wasn't here for the original move and I really largely avoid organized fan communities now anyway because of... well, what you went through.

I would like to settle whether to use the Toei USA titles for the Pretty Cure shows or not though, since it would need to be consistent if we use them and at bare minimum Huggto Precure and Maho Girls Precure need to be retitled. I did a little research on TV Tropes to see how shows with heavily localized or altered dubs are presented to try to solve this conundrum. So far, what I've found seems to suggest that if a page uses the title for the dub, the page will focus mostly on the dub with anything that didn't make the dub being described separately. Megaman NT Warrior for example is entirely from the perspective of the English dub, including using character names that differed from the video game localizations that already existed. Japanese names are only used for characters that appeared in seasons that weren't dubbed.

Then I looked for Beyblade which seems to be the opposite, where the page uses the full Japanese title and not the shorter dubbed name and seems to be covering the Japanese version of the franchise over the localized dub. Notably The Other Wiki does not do this and puts the edited dub first.

There's not much guidance in policies on TV Tropes that I can find on how to handle situations where a show may have multiple presentations in English. Let alone what's apparently happening with Pretty Cure. In *this* situation, edited, heavily localized dubs were produced for two seasons of a show. However, after the rights to that reverted back to the licensor, they seem to be shifting to trying to sell the Japanese version with the Japanese title to English language streaming services. They have created English language presentations of all of those shows including the two that had the edited dubs, and some of the sister shows are now starting to appear on an English language streaming service using the titles we've seen the licensor wants to use now. The presentation of the show is subtitled and features no other localizations (i.e. new names or cut episodes).

By the way I keep going to The Other Wiki a lot because it's usually the best resource for me to figure out what the current international presentation of a property is. And because it's much less painful to move a page to a new title compared to TV Tropes, it seems that new localized titles are generally kept up with.

Edited by Rebochan on Feb 20th 2021 at 1:45:25 PM

I still think it's worth making a guideline page for English localizations. Yeah it shouldn't be a hard and fast rule but it's pretty clear to that we do need something to use as a frame of reference at this point.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 20th 2021 at 9:33:54 AM

I think that would be great, if nothing else to make these discussions smoother.

Question, I noticed that Super Mario RPG refers to Peach by her old name, Toadstool, even though she's been retroactively called Peach since Super Mario 64. Should I change every mention of Toadstool to Peach, which is her name now?

I'd say leave it be. The explanation is already given under Dub Name Change so we don't need to sledgehammer the point home.

It's not so much sledgehammering the point as it is being consistant with other Mario games. Heck, even the pages for Genesis Sonic games call him Eggman from time to time, despite his localized name at that moment being Robotnik.

The most recent official English translation of Super Mario RPG is the one made in 1996 and slightly revised in 2008. It calls her Princess Toadstool, despite Yoshi's Safari having already established the name Peach.

Accordingly, she's Toadstool on our page for the game.

There isn't really any continuity between SMRPG and any other Mario RPG, so there is no inconsistency using "Toadstool" for specifically her SMRPG incarnation. The English translation has always used Toadstool in that game.

Edited by Albert3105 on Mar 7th 2021 at 10:47:06 AM

Don't forget about calling a Cheep-Cheep "Gobi" and Exor's mouth "Neosquid."

Kiki Kai Kai

Some time ago I had posted about this due to the re-release of the arcade version last year, but it never went anywhere. Since then a new Pocky & Rocky game was announced, so I'd like to revist the matter.

I'd like to see the Kiki Kai Kai page be moved to Pocky & Rocky. This link though is currently set as a redirect, so it's not easy to revert the redirect, so here's a link to the Pocky and Rocky page history.

Basically if some other tropers can agree to a move, the Pocky & Rocky page can be the page for the full series and if there's enough content to split the individual games, they can be listed under:

• Kiki Kai Kai - Covers the previously Japanese-only arcade game and still Japanese-only NES port.
• Pocky And Rocky 1 - Covers the first Super Nintendo game.
• Pocky And Rocky 2 - Covers the second Super Nintendo game.
• Pocky And Rocky With Becky - Covers the Game Boy Advance game.
• Pocky And Rocky Reshrined - It's too soon for its own page since it's very vulnerable to speculative troping at this time. This page could be set as a redirect to the series page until the game releases later this year (unless more concrete info releases beforehand).

If there isn't enough stuff for a split for some of the earlier games, their info can remain on the general series page until enough material becomes available to allow for a split someday.

The problem is, as it stands, there isn't nearly enough content to split that page into two, let alone five different pages. I think, at most, you could probably make a folder for series-wide tropes, and then folders holding the tropes unique to each sequel.

The other issue is that Kiki Kai Kai has been released in America under its original name, whereas its sequels have all been released under a localized name. Switching the namespace the page and the redirect doesn't actually solve that problem.

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab on Mar 9th 2021 at 3:21:03 AM

I believe Mega Man X DiVE should be moved to Rockman X DiVE, as there's no concrete evidence it's coming to the West.

Never mind, an American version was released for early access on June 30, 2021 under the title Mega Man X DiVE.

Edited by rjd1922 on Jul 14th 2021 at 11:47:20 AM

That's a weird case; are there at least rumors?

^^^ Is this the same reason why the EarthBound series page was never moved from the Mother page? Was that the precedent to justify not moving the Kiki Kai Kai series page to Pocky & Rocky?

Feel free to PM me if any details are beyond the scope of this thread. I'd like to understand this better and not slow this thread down.

Edited by Ngamer01 on Mar 10th 2021 at 1:07:11 PM

No Mother game has been released in English under that title, but official references to the name of the series are split. Our current solution of calling the series Mother avoids having to year-disambiguate Earth Bound, the page for the 1994 game.

If Mother 3 were to be released in English under the EarthBound name, this solution goes away and we'll have to disambiguate.

Isn't it only Mother 2 which is called Earthbound, and Mother 1 is called Earthbound: Origins? I imagine if they localized Mother 3, they'd give it a name like Earthbound: Epilogue, or something like that.

EarthBound Beginnings, but yeah, pretty much. Mother 3 famously lacks a localization.

Okay, so Mother 3 would probably be localized as Earthbound Endings.

We don't generally deal in "probably" around these parts.

I misunderstood the initial post a little. Still, I don't know why the third game getting localized would affect the franchise page's name.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 11th 2021 at 1:48:46 PM

^^ That's right. Although the point I was trying to establish both EarthBound and Pocky & Rocky have more localized games to non-localized games and yet their series pages are kept to their Japanese names.

I could understand leaving a game series page to their non-localized name if there were many unlocalized entries to one/few localized ones like in the case of the Stafy/Starfy series, but yet Starfy has an English series page despite The Legendary Starfy being the only localized game in that series compared to Japan's four Stafy entries.

Edited by Ngamer01 on Mar 11th 2021 at 3:00:22 AM

I might as well say where we currently are: At this time, in games such as Smash Bros., Nintendo refers to the series as EarthBound and Lucas's home game (which does not have an English-language release announced) as Mother 3.

If the page were to be made today, it would absolutely be at Earth Bound and the second game at VideoGame/Earthbound1994. However, the sheer number of wicks to the game's page along with the reluctance of anyone to actually make the move means it most likely won't be happening, similar to how Detective Conan hasn't yet been moved to Case Closed (the latter is a redirect.)

Kiki Kai Kai/Pocky & Rocky does not have the "excuse" of a large number of wicks, so the only reason it hasn't been moved is that no one has done it yet.

Edited by RallyBot2 on Mar 11th 2021 at 4:08:19 AM

Community consensus decided a long time ago to use the title Detective Conan over Case Closed, so that shouldn't be moved unilaterally. Mother works for the series page unless Mother 3 is localized under the EarthBound name.

Edited by rjd1922 on Mar 11th 2021 at 3:21:34 AM

What about VideoGame/EarthBound for the game and VideoGame/EarthBoundSeries for the series?