Dragon Quest creator says English loses 'flavor' in translation

Localization is a tricky process. Yuji Horii, creator of and continuous lead developer on the Dragon Quest series, spoke about it to Famitsu, as translated by Automaton: "When it comes to English, the flavor tends to get lost in many ways," and "Things inevitably end up sounding simplistic." Having made games since the early '80s and contributed to almost every Dragon Quest entry, Horii says he has made his peace with how the writing fluctuates across regions.

"I’ve come to accept that English is a simple language, so there’s no helping it," he adds. The series has a mixed history in English-speaking territories. The games were re-titled Dragon Warrior when put out by Nintendo in the US and underwent a number of changes, and various teams across Nintendo, Enix and Square Enix have taken different approaches to translating the JRPGs.

The British-English MO of Dragon Quest 8 became a standard-bearer for the modern era.

United States

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