Report: External Translators Speak Out About Nintendo’s Pattern of Miscrediting
Posted on July 13 2024 by Kristen G. Rosario
One of the key things we look for in the workplace is credit and recognition for doing an honest day’s work. According to a recent report from the game industry news site Game Developer, Nintendo has repeatedly failed to provide this for some of the outside help they’ve received when localizing some of their biggest releases.
Multiple sources told Game Developer that Nintendo has ineffectively given external translators credit on the work they’ve done for some of its first-party titles, including Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, among others. These sources, who wished to remain anonymous, are claiming that Nintendo has failed on multiple accounts in giving them credit for months-long work on translating each of the company’s larger projects.
One source who used to work internally as a translator for the company before going freelance shared that they were always credited as an in-house employee, but that wasn’t exactly the case in other departments.
“I was always credited [at Nintendo]. I remember seeing my name in the credits of a Nintendo game for the first time. It feels really great to be acknowledged for your work. It’s like a warm thank you from the developers and the company for all the work you put in. I do remember one project where the company decided not to put the in-house testers in the credits. This was one of the Professor Layton games by Level-5. Nintendo of Europe handled the localization and publishing for the Layton series at the time. The translators on that project protested strongly against this decision, but in the end the testers were not credited for this project. I don’t know if this has since become policy.”
The source continued by saying that, after leaving Nintendo, they haven’t been credited for their work on titles they translated through the localization agency Localsoft. They also claimed that this pattern of miscrediting applies to Nintendo projects they worked on at the Ireland-based game company Keywords. While they did admit to being accepting of these circumstances at the time, the source said that what’s going on isn’t right.
“I kind of accepted [miscrediting] as ‘part of the business’ but that doesn’t mean it’s fair or right. The fact that these companies are not able to give any reasonable explanation for omitting external translators (and even developers) from their credits is proof of this, I think. Professionally, it’s hard to tell how much this has impacted me. It’s entirely possible that more translation agencies would have approached me if my name was out there in all these big blockbuster Nintendo games, but who knows?”
Another source corroborated claims of miscrediting, as they were also not given any credit for the work they did for Nintendo while at Localsoft, where they spent over a year working on multiple projects for the company. The source explained that, due to Nintendo’s policy of not adding the names from external agencies to their game credits, they cannot even list the titles they worked on to their CV.
According to the source, you can see an example of Nintendo failing to include the individual names of external contractors in the end credits of titles like Tears of the Kingdom and the HD remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Based on the evidence the source indicated, the external translators are either not shown at all, or only listed as a single entity under the Localsoft name.
“If you look at the credits for Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, for instance, you will notice that only six people were credited for localizing a full title that’s available in eight languages. [In my experience] a game like this would normally be localized by a team of around 25 translators. Some languages are skipped over completely like they got magically added to the game. For games like Animal Crossing or Breath of the Wild you don’t really notice that 15 or 20 translators are not in the credits, as there are all the other names from their in-house translators, which is why Nintendo’s policy of miscrediting might have flown under the radar. But almost every big title that Nintendo releases which uses external translators actually fails to credit translators.”
One of the big sticking-out points with miscrediting comes in the form of Nintendo’s non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). A source said that, when they began work on Nintendo games as an external translator, they were asked by the company to sign an NDA that, on average, would have a lasting duration of ten years. Game Developer followed this up by confirming that one of the sources showed them an email supporting this claim, as it showed a ten-year NDA on multiple projects.
The claims don’t just stop with the first-party company though, as a couple of other sources cited Localsoft as another reason for their lack of recognition. One external translator who worked on Tears of the Kingdom shared that they were never openly told by anyone above them that they would not be credited. The source did admit that, while it was upsetting, they thought it was just business as usual in the company at the time.
“We were never openly told that we wouldn’t be credited, it was just a topic we sometimes discussed among us Localsoft translators during lunch breaks. It was upsetting, but sadly, that’s generally how things work when working through translation agencies, so as much as we were upset (at least some of us), in the end, we shrugged it off as just another day in translation.”
Another source said that they feel that the higher-ups at the company would just give countless excuses. Then, whenever major issues would arise, agencies and clients like Localsoft and Nintendo would simply point the finger at someone else or simply go dark on the matter. Even when the external translators wanted to discuss said major issues at Localsoft with other co-workers, the source claimed that they were often penalized for doing so, as the company perceived it as sharing sensitive information.
The source continued by admitting that, even after the realization that they were not going to be credited for their work, they were “upset but not surprised.” However, they were more concerned with the repercussions on a professional level. In the end, though, they said that the blame comes down to either the company that hires them or the studio that oversees development on the project, as freelance translators are simply “caught in the middle.”
Game Developer states that they have tried contacting Nintendo, Keywords, and Localsoft weeks before publishing their report, but have yet to hear back from any of them.
What do you think of Nintendo miscrediting the external translators they hire? Who ultimately is at fault for not giving these translators the recognition they deserve? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Game Developer (via My Nintendo News)
Kristen G. Rosario is an Editor who joined Zelda Dungeon back in September of 2015. His current goal is to become a full-time video game journalist, hoping to eventually gain a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism. While he pursues that dream, he not only takes care of his adorable dachshund Angel, but also helps run a YouTube channel with his brother. The Zelda series is a quest he hasn’t fully completed yet, but hopes to get there one day.
