8. Sega and Japanese games localization

Japanese games have always been popular in the West, for instance the likes of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth was one of 2024’s top-sellers in the US. Of course, given that these games are originally in the Japanese language, they have to be localized for western audiences… But Japanese company Sega caused something of a ruckus when they said that “[the player] should understand and feel the same thing as someone playing in the original language”.

This seemed to suggest that Japanese game markers should culturally revise their games to make them more successful in the West, instead of achieving a nice balance between localization and “direct translation”. One example is the use of the word “ramen” instead of noodles in Sega’s popular Like a Dragon series, a more Japanese name for the famous dish. And the name of the Like a Dragon series itself was changed from Yakuza to reflect Japanese’s peoples increasing disdain for the yakuza too, even if the debate and controversy about how Japanese games should be translated no doubt rages on.

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