Nich Maragos is Mr. Localization for Atlus. To get us on the same page, Atlus also published the awesome Contact. In an interview with Siliconera, he pulled up a chair (probably), lit up a cigarette (maybe) and spoke at length about how they're going about translating the dialogue for upcoming Atlus title Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja (Best. Name. Ever).

The localization process is always an interesting story when some effort and/or love goes into it (see Treehouse for reference), and this is no different. Most interesting is probably the approach taken towards the game's humour: already a slightly comedic game from the outset (unemployed ninjas find it hard to be taken seriously), the western release of Izuna sees some added gags from the title character.

One of the odd things when working on Izuna was that a lot of the situations lent themselves to humor-like the premise of the unemployed ninjas, and the ridiculous curses that affect the townspeople-but the actual dialogue was pretty tame. So although we left a lot of the villagers' lines more or less alone, we focused on making Izuna herself funnier. Since she's involved in just about every conversation in the game, there were plenty of opportunities to do that.

If Contact was anything to go by (in the humour department, at least) Izuna should be good times. Luke Plunkett Nich Maragos on Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja [Siliconera]

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