Pokemon TCG Pocket sent many players a notification today to say that it had improved the translation on the French Palkia ex card. As a player with an English collection, I didn’t even know there was an issue, but it’s nice to know, I guess.
However, this has caused more players to take to social media to share the worst translations in their languages, and they range from the silly mistakes to the downright confusing.
Italians Have It Worst
A post on the Pokemon TCG Pocket subreddit showed me that the Italian wording for Uxie’s Mind Boost attack is wrong. “Take innumerable [Psychic] Energies” would be completely broken if the card worked as written but, unfortunately for the Italians, Uxie works as intended. However, the comments beneath this post were even more enlightening.
“I’m Italian but I can’t really play this game in Italian because the cards are worded so weirdly that sometimes I have to re-read them 2-3 times to understand what they do,” writes one player. “The English cards are worded in a really clear and simple way by comparison.”
While others detail Arbok issues in Portuguese and Spanish, it becomes obvious after a short while reading that these problems have persisted in Pokemon games for years. In Italian alone, Pound was translated as Libbra, the unit of measurement; Counter as Contatore, a device used for counting; Glare as Bagliore, which refers to a sheen or shimmer like light bouncing off snow. Double-edge could be the most egregious example, translated as Sdoppiatore, a made-up word that people think might mean ‘doubler’ but nobody’s really sure.
Focus Energy is translated as ‘Energy conc.’, presumably short for Energia Concentrata but for some reason using the English word energy instead of the Italian.
To put it simply: it’s a mess. And Pokemon should do better.
The Global Game
Pokemon is the biggest franchise in the world. It has a global audience, and milks that audience dry at every opportunity. And yet it doesn’t show even a modicum of respect to those fans and players who speak anything other than Japanese or English.
While many of the above examples have been fixed in subsequent games, it has often taken years to come to fruition. That’s not good enough. Pokemon generates billions of dollars a year and yet it can’t afford to pay decent translators? Something’s rotten.
This goes double for Pokemon TCG Pocket. While not the fault of Nintendo directly, confusing descriptions for attacks is a far bigger problem than messing up some homophones. If an attack has a poorly-worded description, players won’t know how it interacts in a match. This would be like Monopoly saying “Do not pass Go. Maybe collect $200.”
The fact that players have to switch the game to their second language is abominable. Pokemon TCG Pocket is a bona fide cash cow, raking in millions of dollars a day. Every new set brings in more and more cash, so there’s no excuse for poor translations ruining the experience for non-English speaking players.
Now that Palkia has been fixed, it’s time for Pocket developer DeNA to turn its attention to Uxie. Then check that all of the other attack names have been translated correctly. At this point, there’s no way of knowing how deep this rot lies. Pokemon fans across the world deserve better than this, and multi-billion dollar companies should treat those who play their games with a little more respect.
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