Does having a slightly higher age and more modest clothing change the way the characters interact with each other? No.
Does having a slightly higher age and more modest clothing change the characters' motivations? No.
Does having a slightly higher age and more modest clothing change how they react to the events of the story? No.
Then do you care to tell me how this changes characterization?
Thanks to my newly-acquired (as of about 3 hrs ago) "skills" in GIMP, I can
show you.
This is Ika Musume.
She's very brash and has too much confidence for her own good. She's also very clueless about a lot of things, but underneath her invader persona she's incredibly sweet and innocent. Her age is not given, if such a thing can be determined about the sea's messenger. However, she looks about 8-12 and her personality reflects this.
Let's age up our little squid girl, give her less clothing, and see what giving her the same personality does.
This is still Ika Musume. She thinks the same as her younger counterpart and acts the same as her younger counterpart. However, she seems a lot less innocent now, one of her defining characteristics. In addition, the older Ika seems slightly less mentally well than her younger self, since she still acts like the 8-12yo she was even though she looks closer to 14 or 15 now. Even if our squid girl still thinks and acts the same, her companions would probably behave slightly differently in her presence. It's just weird for a 14yo to act like a 10yo.
Remember the old Wizard of Oz movie from the 1930s? Dorothy is supposed to be a very young character, which is why her speech patterns and behavior (and to an extent, her friends') seems so uncanny when she's played by a 20-something Judy Garland. It's just
weird, and attempting to make it less weird involves subtly changing how other characters act towards her and what they think of her.
Way to put words into my mouth. I said it had a good translation, not a perfect one. If you honestly think that FEA has a bad translation then you've never seen an actually bad one at work.
I've played games where the translation messed up clues that were critical to progression in the main story. I replay Xenogears annually. Just because a translation isn't Zero Wing levels of bad doesn't make it good.
I forgot to mention this earlier: The incompetence of the Awakening translation team caused one of the main characters' names to get mispronounced, now and probably forever since the screwup is part of Smash. Lucina's name should be pronounced with a hard C, but thanks to nobody doing their job, it's now "Luseena"
You ever play Pokemon? Many of the Japanese names don't make any sense to English speaker, thus they're changed to be reflective of the original intent but to English ears.
Only ever played Pokemon, so I'm responding to that one.
Pokemon was a perfect example of Morton's Fork in translation.
's name could be "Odd seed" or "Weird, huh?". The pun doesn't translate. Both translations (or the third option of just leaving it alone) would be a bad choice for a name. Leaving the name alone would just cause it to get butchered by nine-year-olds, so the translation team came up with what they could under the limits they had to work with. This is one of those rare cases when it made sense to change things. Another example of a good change was in Wind Waker. The "Triumph Forks" is what the game calls the Triforce, to indicate that all that exists of Hyrule is a bunch of half-forgotten legends. This was changed from the Bucket and Hose, which shares a similar pronunciation in the Japanese version and exists for the same purpose. A few lines had to be changed to cutlery gags, but they were likely similar in the original version (which I haven't played). This was a good change, because the purpose behind the old lines were kept and translating the old lines literally would only cause confusion to an aspect that was easily understandable in its original incarnation.
Unlike, say, removing the implication that Henry was about to kill the injured dog he found. In the translation Americans were given, the implication is that Olivia jumped to conclusions.
Don't go around trashing on translations when you don't get the art.
It's not as much of an art as you seem to think it is.
But here's the thing that I think we've all been forgetting in all of this: Translations are almost never exactly like the original.
You don't say.
You'll be hard-pressed to find a translation that directly mirrors the original version (especially in video games or television). We have altered, changed, and yes, even censored since translations have been a thing. And you know what? That's okay.
According to you.
When you localize something, it's far more than just changing a few words and calling it a day. You have to bring something from a completely different culture to one that may or may not mesh with it all to make sure the message is read loud and clear.
What I take issue with is that so many things are changed unnecessarily. For every instance where changing something would improve things (like that Secret of Mana puzzle that involved walking around the season-changing woods, where one of the seasons was represented by flowering sakura), there are about five instances of "THESE DOUGHNUTS ARE GREAT! JELLY-FILLED ARE MY FAVORITE! NOTHING BEATS A JELLY-FILLED DOUGHNUT!" - That is, a completely unnecessary change that takes away from the flavor of the original and more often than not makes you scratch your head.
And let's be real here, if we burned every company who hadn't made at least one change or altered a bit of text, we would have no one left. It's not just Nintendo that does this, every corporation as we know it does it. It's not that they hate the original text, nor because they're out to get the fans. It's because they understand that not all cultures are the same, and thus have to accommodate for that.
I think you're severely underestimating peoples' intelligence here. Not many people I know are cavemen that get angry when they see rice balls and go on a rampage. To reiterate: I don't object to necessary changes that are made so that the new audience can understand what's going on. I do object to all other changes made during the localization process.
