Neat article; thanks for posting it!
This is slightly blatant blog broadcasting, but I thought it might be of some interest to some people on the paizo boards, so I'm posting it here in case.
I recently discovered that there is an unofficial (ish?) Japanese translation of Pathfinder, and I recently joined a group at a convention in rural Japan who are playing this version of pathfinder. It was my first experience of role-playing in Japan, and I'm aware that not that many people in the west get a chance to do this, so I've put a description of how it happened at my blog, which is here. If any pathfinder players here are interested in seeing how and whether it's done differently in Japanese by the Japanese, or in how Japanese nerds do western nerdish stuff, perhaps there's something there to interest you. otherwise, sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming, and please ignore this post.
Interrupt nothing, that was an interesting read. Its nice to know pathfinder is spreading, and that people are enjoying it. You also shouldn't put down your language skills so much, if you managed what you did, you are far more capable then most non-native speakers, games and other informal activities are always difficult because of slang. Heck sometimes I dont know what ENGLISH SPEAKING gamers are saying. That you managed to get your foot in the door so to speak is very impressive.
Yes. That was highly edifying. Thanks for sharing!
Faustus, this is a good piece of writing - quirky, funny, astute and gentle; all much-loved qualities of a certain school of travel writing.
I'd think about stowing this, polishing down the linguistics angle some rainy day, and playing up the people and situation. This could be a quirky, fun chapter in a quirky, fun book. Japanese reassemblings of Western cultural corner-cases, chapter by chapter...as an ex ex-pat, I'd buy that.
Anyway, gambatte yo! Keep writing, and thanks for the memories.
Thanks everyone, I'm glad you all enjoyed the read.
Kolokotroni, I have since checked with a Japanese friend and confirmed that yes, the language that Japanese nerds use is just as weird as the language English-speaking nerds use, which is why I find the guys so much harder to understand than some of my other friends. I think my non-nerdy Japanese friends might also find them hard to understand.
brent norton, the GM described our world as "basic fantasy," so I think for them that is like importing a cultural trope wholesale. All the Japanese-made games they played featured Japanese high fantasy (with schoolgirls!!) so were obviously set in their own cultural mythos. I imagine that if they chose to import cowboys they wouldn't be able to resist embellishing them somehow :)
Japanese gamers seem very fond of Warhammer, probably because it's European and, despite the English-speaking world's fondness for claiming otherwise, the centrepiece of Japanese adoration of the west is Germany. For example, the wikipedia Japanese entry on RPGs has a picture of Germans playing a German game, along with a picture of D&D. So I think they really like the dark, gritty Europe of Warhammer. That's probably the best example of importing a cultural phenomenon wholesale.
Thanks porpentine! ganbarimasu!
Anyway, thanks for the encouragement everyone!
I must admit I've always been curious what sorts of campaigns/game systems our Asian counterparts are interested in. One of my high school friends is living in Beijing for the time being, and I've been trying to get him to join a tabletop gaming group to see what it would be like. I'm especially curious about what sorts of adventures gamers over there are interested in... Are they similar to the adventure paths/kill bad guys & get loot that are common here?
Your descriptions of the difference in rules grammar make it seem quite a challenge to keep everything straight, especially if you have an idea how the rules work in the English version of 3.5/PFRPG. Looks like you managed to not be completely confused, however, and managed to bring to us this enlightening look into how this Western-born (well, AFAIK) hobby is played in non-Western settings. Thanks!
damn, but this is wonderful.
The only tabletop RPGs that I knew for a fact were being played in Japan were a seriously modified/original version of D&D played with d6s and I think five or six classes that was wildly, wildly popular(it is rumored that is what the director of Record of Lodoss War played when he made the series of the same name; that world has become incredibly popular since then and has been the setting for other sword and sorcery fantasy anime including the hilarious Louie the Rune Soldier), and the Gundam RPG that I foolishly did not pick up the GIGANTIC Player's Handbook for years and years ago. It's good to know that Pathfinder can be found there, and I look forward to reading your blog.
I loved the line about "Edition wars are universal!" LOL
Great read!
GP
Tanoshisou!!
Looks like you had a great time.^^
I've been trying to get some of my Korean friends to play, but they're too intimidated for some reason...
great story,
i take it you enjoyed discussing the finer points of 'attack actions' as applicable to cleave? :-)
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This was a great read, and with me forming some tentative plans to go on exchange there next year, I think I've found another thing to add to my to-do list: try gaming in Japanese!
While I have heard that TTRPGs aren't uncommon over there, I've never really heard much about it (short of Maid RPG which I doubt is a representative example...) Got any names, titles, or links to any of those Japanese RPGs? (Japanese language is OK.)
Incidentally, the translated PRD is kinda surreal albeit cool. As a learner of the Japanese language, it's weirdly interesting to see how they've translated some things. Getting used to Wizards being first alphabetically (uizaado!) in the class list is going to take some time though... ;)
Thanks for the link!
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Thanks for the link to that F.E.A.R. place, I will be thoroughly digging through there when I have the time. And I will definitely keep an eye on your blog. (I loved your entry about women gamers, it was really well written!)
The more "lower class" idea you're suggesting is rather interesting, seeing as the TRPG market seems to be in some ways connected with the anime/manga market... at the very least for cover and internal artwork. And I always thought that anime/manga market had some huge amount of disposable income... strange. Interesting, though. I wonder what all the grognards who complain about "cartoony/animeish" art would think about all this... :)
Ironically, it seems that whereas you had a Japanese->English translation problem for the term "slippery dip", I had an English->English translation problem for the same term!
According to Wikipedia, "slippery dip" is an Australian term for a playground slide. You learn something new every day!
I found this an interesting read as well. If you go back next month, I'd love to hear more about Japanese gaming.
This is slightly blatant blog broadcasting, but I thought it might be of some interest to some people on the paizo boards, so I'm posting it here in case.
I recently discovered that there is an unofficial (ish?) Japanese translation of Pathfinder, and I recently joined a group at a convention in rural Japan who are playing this version of pathfinder. It was my first experience of role-playing in Japan, and I'm aware that not that many people in the west get a chance to do this, so I've put a description of how it happened at my blog, which is here. If any pathfinder players here are interested in seeing how and whether it's done differently in Japanese by the Japanese, or in how Japanese nerds do western nerdish stuff, perhaps there's something there to interest you. otherwise, sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming, and please ignore this post.
YES!!! This is the coolest thing ever! I tracked down the Japanese wiki mentioned (well, more like followed the convenient links), and sent the links to my fiancee, showing her the sections of the core rulebook I wrote. Now that it's translated into Japanese, she can FINALLY understand what in the world I'm talking about! (She can read English, but it's a little beyond her level.)
Thanks for posting this!
Hi everyone, this thread is a bit old now but I thought I'd come back and update it with a (vaguely) related piece of information. I was at the role-playing convention where this all started last week and I think I encountered my first Japanese grognard.
Ha! Awesome.
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BTW, the de facto organizer of the PRD_J wiki porject said recently on his blog in Japanese that he's so happy to see this thread and he's wishing that Paizo's staffs will see this and start thinking to publish official Japanese version Pathfinder RPG someday...the whole bunch of Japanese translation text in PRD_J is waiting there for Paizo to pick up for free.
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And I'm from Japan and loves Pathfinder, too!
Fascinating read.
This reminds me of when I got the chance to go over the Cyberpunk 2020 and Mekton Z translation playtest notes several years ago, and discovered that the Japanese testers had discovered that it was more cost-to-ammo efficient to simply huck a dozen grenades at your target, taking a cumulative -3 penalty to each roll (due to multiple actions penalty), and simply let the grenade deviation rules do all the thinking for you.
Turns out that the grenade deviation rules, as translated into Japanese, allowed for a grenade to never miss by more than one hex, meaning your target was ALWAYS in the blast radius, even if you missed by dramatic amounts of failure.
The writers fixed THAT in the errata right quick, let me tell you. :)
One of the first times I saw the 3e core rulebooks was at a geek store at the top of a department store in Shibuya, just before I moved back to the US.
I was surprised that the titles were all rendered in katakana - surely there's a more natural word in Japanese for "Player's Handbook" than the English titles rendered into katakana! Maybe that's just a convention for the translated Western RPGs.
I wanted to pick up copies, but they were really expensive IIRC, like four or five thousand yen each.
I'll also be putting up more information about the Japanese-made RPG I played, Double Cross 3, but I won't be linking to them here. If you're interested, stay tuned...
I've been reading your further posts about Double Cross 3, and I'm finding it very interesting. So you have at least one Double Cross 3 session interested reader on your blog :)
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- romantic titles get turned into katakana and lose their feeling compared to the original.
Sho ga nai, as they say...
That reminds me of my first impression (kind a furious rage inside my geekness) towards the Japanese title of the "Lord of the Rings" movie. It was "Roodo obu za Ringu" in katakana incomplete transliteration. It sounds quite nonsense and unintellectual to many of the old-time fans of the established translation by Teiji Seta, of which title was "Yubiwa Monogatari" in kanji ...but, maybe, there had been some copyright issue on using the title of the established translation.
Anyhow, I guess the Japanese language generally doesn't have much hesitation to hybridly use existing (traditional/native) vocabulary and brand-new loanwords. Cos, she's been doing so over 1,200 years, using kanji, katakana, and hiragana, ...plus the alphabet today ;-)
Mmm, yappari shou ga nai kamo ne.
I just did a check at the pathfinder translation wiki and it is as I thought, every spell is listed by its katakana transliteration, but then the Japanese interpretation is given.
Hopefully no one uses Google Translate on the Japanese spell names; I'd hate to think of a druid going around casting "Arousal" or "Animal of Ecstasy" on forest creatures. :-)
(That's Google's translation of the Japanese versions of "Awaken" and "Animal Trance".)
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Interestingly, the people I play with don't use these translations; they say "Hideous Laughter" rather than "daibakusho," which is the Japanese translation.
In this respect, there's a big possible reason why choose transliterations rather than traslations. It's simple: foreign words sound exotic and magical.
I still remember the fantastic atmosphere I felt from the meaningless (cos I didn't understand a word in English in my childhood) spell names like ZAP (lightning bolt), HOT (fireball), FOF (force field), WAL(wall) etc used in Steve Jackson's Sorcery! gamebook quartet. But it was really hard for me at that time to learn those "meaningless" spell names. (The quartet were my initiation to fantasy tabletop games. And I still love them.)
And there's another (lesser) reason to use transliterations. It's easier to identify original words, and is helpful when you introduce untranslated supplements into your game.
