Years and years ago, more than half my life at this point, I spent a year living in the Middle East. I was looking at the world through the eyes of a child uprooted from everything he knew and understood, dropped into a country not only foreign but completely alien. I didn’t understand the first thing about Islam, I didn’t even really understand Christianity or how it had affected the development of the Western world, and now I was placed inside a country that didn’t even have what few markers I could place.
I was ignorant and I was scared. I wanted to hide away, stay locked up in our little island of Britishness: a flat in a tower block stocked almost entirely with western expats. It was very loosely something I recognised from home, a hazy image of it at least, and it gave me some comfort. But then the word came that I would have to attend school, something I had not even considered, and the fear rose again.
English school was bad enough for me, and awkward and introverted child with bad teeth and glasses that would have made Harry Potter utter a derisory snort, and I understood the constraints of that world. I had intrinsically picked up on the “way the world works” as I had grown older, I knew my place and the social language required for what limited interactions I undertook with the outside world, and none of that had particularly helped me fit in. How could I hope to fit in in a world that was so different, so alien when I couldn’t even do that in a world I comprehended? The answer was that I couldn’t.
I was a child and I was ignorant. When that year ended and I moved back to the UK I was relieved. I was home, back in my world, the real world, the civilised world. I was an idiot.
It is only with hindsight that I realise how idiotic I was during that time. Perhaps it was the situation that brought me to Kuwait, perhaps it was my age, or perhaps I merely lacked the cognitive capability to properly understand my situation. In any case, looking back on that time in my life as I do now reveals just how stupid a child can be.
I thought that the Middle East was alien, different and somewhat backwards because of their strange clothes and customs and the abundance of sand. Trivial differences. In fact, I was so immured in the childish sanctuary of sulk that I overlooked the similarities between the Middle East and “my world”. Beneath the superficial differences lay the same type of soul, clad in different clothing but still fundamentally the same.
I understand that this may sound like an apology for the thoughts of a long departed child, and that’s because it is. As well as this, however, it is also an excuse: I was a child, young and stupid and ignorant. While my thoughts were wrong, they were not born of malice but of a lack of understanding. Children learn and develop and grow, we understand this, and as you learn and understand your beliefs shift. Mine did. A child, though still accountable for his thoughts, should be allowed some leeway so that he may learn.
An adult, however, should be given much less, and it is at this point that this article finally connects with the world of video games. I have noticed, in most media that deal in fiction, that the Middle East has now become a popular destination for your resident superspy or maverick soldier. This is understandable. The area has become increasingly more important since the end of the Cold War, and fiction will always strive to reflect contemporary dominant conflicts. That I understand and accept.
What I do not understand, however, is the insistence that, in such a multi-cultural society, each race must be pigeon-holed into a set of easily identifiable characteristics. Not only is it lazy writing but it also encourages the same childish ignorance that I experienced all those years ago. Think for a moment: name for me any non-villainous Arab in a video game. It’s harder than you think.
Whenever they appear in a video game, Arabs are either terrorists or arrogant, oil-rich masterminds. Usually both. In the rare cases where this is not so, something is done to “Westernise” these men (for they are always men). Consider Altair in Assassin’s Creed. Ostensibly an Arab, his anachronistic American accent strips away this identity. What other friendly Arabs there are in the game tend to despise or distrust Altair, albeit for good reason, or are so insignificant that their allegiances barely matter.
Even the most famous example, the Prince of Persia, is not true to his roots. Depending on the game he’s either a sardonic Brit, brooding emo or slimy Yank. Not once is he identifiable as a Persian in any way other than his name. Steps are taken to ensure that he is more easily seen as Western than Persian, jarring in that the villain in almost every game is easily portrayed as “Arab”.
To be fair on some games, they haven’t quite caught up with this. Strategy games are the main offenders in this regard: if they haven’t managed to use the Middle East then that is probably because they are still hung up on the Russians. That said, these tend to be the most justifiable in their use of stereotypes in any case, the zoomed-out overview of the conflict not providing much in the way of opportunity for character development, and the opposing forces can be distinguished from the population at large.
Transport war into the first person perspective, however, and this distinction is gone once again. We’re back to generic Arab terrorists being evil because that’s what they do. The middle block of Splinter Cell games do this with astounding clarity, as does Modern Warfare. Alpha Protocol has the perfect example however: the main Arabic character is an open terrorist leader, oil tycoon and, given the chance, a hugely pragmatic and disloyal turncoat. As a character he goes from vile and evil to snivelling and conciliatory, then back again. He’s nothing but a grab bag of every negative personality trait they could find.
What this is, then, is both a judgement on the media in general, but primarily on video games in this case. Perpetuating this myth that a character must be Westernised to be acceptable does nothing but draw on the same childish ignorance that fuelled my fear when I was young. This one-dimensional characterisation of an entire broad and diverse area is pathetic. There is no reason for this other than sheer laziness, ignorance and unjust fear.
This is not to say that one cannot use a character from the Middle East as a villain, that would be absurd. What I do say, however, is that characters should be true to themselves. If you are using an English character in a certain role, make him English. If you are using a character from Iraq, make him Iraqi. Don’t muck about with the character by bolting on various other ethnicities for no reason other than to appease the stereotypes forged from ignorance.
Maybe this is a two-fold argument. Perhaps I’m being overly apologetic and over-sensitive, calling things out on aspects of their characters that are actually justified, or at least not nearly as bad as I have made them out to be. However, even if that is the case, the writing used for these characters is still lazy and uninspired, clichéd and stereotypical. That an entire nationality can be the villain du jour, regardless of how they are actually portrayed, should be enough to show that something is wrong in the collective consciousness.
The Arab world is no more or less sinister than the West. We know this, logically, rationally and instinctively. The idea of a nation comprised entirely of evil characters is a fictional fallacy, that is not how humanity works. A nation led by an evil man may appear to be evil, but there will always be good people within it, just as the opposite is true. Their geographical location to your own nation shouldn’t factor into this realisation.
We should, as adults, have moved beyond racial classification by now. We should understand that it is a person, not a race, that is evil, and we should not feel the need to alter the ethnicity of a character to help hammer this home. Be true to the character, not the stereotype. It’s not progressing as a species, it’s where we should already be.
Great article. I suppose the more general problem is that games (or their designers, or their marketers) are rooted in the world of comic book caricatures and blockbuster action films. These media are irretrievably infected with xenophobic propagandism and sexism, so the little brother follows suit, mostly. So what’s different is antagonistic, and not wholly human. Not our kind of human anyway. People didn’t care about the yellow menace or the ruskies depicted in cold war era Captain America, and most people don’t care about the slimy bullet-fodder Arabs and the fanatical North Koreans nowdays. I find it hard to see any way the paradigm will shift in any positive way. I say “positive way” because there’ll always be another enemy to slaughter; maybe the Nazis again.
The only examples to the positive I can think of are GTA IV and stuff actually out of Russia and similar places (STALKER, Metro).
Sad state of affairs.
At the risk of sounding narrow-minded or ‘jingoistic’ I completely disagree with this article. While I partly agree with the whole ‘racism is bad’ point that you’re trying to make, you seem to be very muddled on what exactly you think racism is and how it’s presented in games.
Through out the article you put put contradictory points on what you’re rallying against.
“If you are using an English character in a certain role, make him English. If you are using a character from Iraq, make him Iraqi. Don’t muck about with the character by bolting on various other ethnicities for no reason other than to appease the stereotypes forged from ignorance.”
You don’t really explain how making a character English or Iraqi is not just ‘bolting on’ an ethnicity. Couldn’t you just take any character and make him any ethnicity? Couldn’t you just take someone like Tracer Tong from Deus Ex and make him Swedish, slightly rewrite his back story and it would still work, wouldn’t it? Isn’t it a good way to avoid stereotyping by not limiting what a character can and can’t be based on what ethnicity a character is when you make him? Tracer Tong is in China so he’s Chinese, what ethnicity should a terrorist from Saudi Arabia be?
“We’re back to generic Arab terrorists being evil because that’s what they do.”
Well, isn’t that what terrorist do regardless of ethnicity? Are you saying that because games like Alpha Protocol and Modern Warfare have middle-eastern people as terrorists they’re trying to ‘pigeon-hole’ all middle-eastern people as terrorists? What about all the other ethnicities in those game? Alpha Protocol has Russians, Chinese and Americans as terrorist but you didn’t say that all Russians, Chinese, or Americas are stereotyped as terrorists. The Russians and the Chinese do just as much ‘terrorizing’ as the Arab terrorists don’t they? And the Americans end up being responsible for almost all the the terrorist activities in the game because they sold the missiles or hired the pretty much all the terrorist organizations in the game, aren’t the Americans presented much worse than the Arabs?
“the main Arabic character is an open terrorist leader, oil tycoon and, given the chance, a hugely pragmatic and disloyal turncoat. As a character he goes from vile and evil to snivelling and conciliatory, then back again. He’s nothing but a grab bag of every negative personality trait they could find.”
I’m assuming that you’re talking about Shaheed. I mean, reading you’re description makes him sound like a really well developed and multi-faceted character. Isn’t he a much better developed character than some of the other ‘bosses’ like Brayko or Marburg? Would Shaheed have been a better character if he was changed him to a different ethnicity? Would his ‘negative personality traits’ not have bothered you if he was Russian or Chinese or American?
I also thought Shaheed went against the ‘middle-eastern stereotype’ really well, he’s not like one of those puppet terrorists from Team America who shouts ‘Jihad’ or ‘Death to America’ as a shout taunt like Omen Deng says ‘You’re in over your head’ or anything like that. He just seems like a ‘terrorist organization leader’ who happens to be middle-eastern rather than a ‘middle-eastern terrorist organization leader’. You seem to be more upset with the concept of a middle-eastern person with negative character traits rather then a middle-eastern person with an simplistic stereotyped personality.
Articles like this really just get under my skin and irritate me because people still think this needs pointing out. Whenever someone writes something like this it always feels like it has the opposite effect. It feels like it just ends up drawing more attention to the fact that middle-eastern people are stereotyped as terrorist rather then discouraging it. It feel more like a racist version of ‘The Summer of the Shark’ pulling peoples attention towards that middle-eastern people are thought of as terrorist rather than them being thought of as normal everyday regular people.
I’m not the author, but I think you’re taking this the wrong way.
Couldn’t you just take someone like Tracer Tong from Deus Ex and make him Swedish, slightly rewrite his back story and it would still work, wouldn’t it?
I don’t think he meant the environment, and I think he meant if you took Tracer Tong, as he is, without changing his backstory, but suddenly gave him a Swedish accent, without explanation for it (as in, it’s not in the backstory at all). Wouldn’t that be weird? I believe that’s what he was referring to with Prince of Persia.
Well, isn’t that what terrorist do regardless of ethnicity?
With that statement, I don’t think he’s saying that the games are intentionally pigeonholing them as middle eastern, but rather, it comes off that way, as a result of a white male-centric industry. I’m also thinking that he meant that games should show the OTHER perspective as well as terrorist perspectives. Y’know, good people. We don’t see them very often in games. It’s always terrorists. (such is my understanding of what he meant.)
Would his ‘negative personality traits’ not have bothered you if he was Russian or Chinese or American?
I think I addressed this in the last paragraph; it doesn’t matter what ethnicity, it matters about the perspective.
He might have meant it to apply to Prince of Persia, but the ‘bolt-on ethnicity’ point was several paragraphs after mentioning Prince of Persian and in between he also mentioned Splinter Cell, Modern Warfare and Alpha Protocol so I thought he was just putting it out there as a general thing without attaching it to a specific game.
With Tracer Tong I meant that his ethnicity is not really made an issue. He’s a character that happens to have a certain ethnicity. Tracer Tong’s race, ethnicity or nationality is never really made the point of his character. He’s not the Chinese character. He’s just a character who has a certain role and he happens to be Chinese. His view-points are never applied to the entirety of China. If ‘Tracer Tong in Hong Kong’ wasn’t ‘Tracer Tong in Hong Kong’ and instead he was a Swede in Sweden or a Italian in Italy then character would still work. I saw Shaheed as a terrorist who happened to be middle-eastern, just as I saw Marburg as a terrorist who happened to be American. Who they are never depended on what ethnicity they were. Just because Michael Throrton is an American doesn’t mean that he is the hero, even thought he is. And because Shaheed is middle-eastern doesn’t mean he is a terrorist even though he is.
Race shouldn’t be an issue for what people, real or fictional, can or can’t be. But then why it such an issue when middle-eastern people an portrayed as terrorists? If it’s wrong to say that all middle-eastern people are terrorists, then why isn’t it wrong to say that middle-eastern people can’t be terrorists? Isn’t that just making broad generalizations about people who have a certain ethnicity?
Another thing is that ‘bolt-on ethnicities’ are used all the time, and no one really seems to mind. How are the Brits in Call of Duty 4 quintessentially British other than the accents and being in the SAS? Wouldn’t it still work it they had Russian accents and worked for Spetnaz? Or American accents and work for the airborne infantry? How is them being British not a ‘bolt-on ethnicity’? How is Michael Throrton being American not a ‘bolt-on ethnicity’? Is a ‘bolt-on ethnicity’ only a bad thing if the target in the villain or antagonist of the game? Why is it alright to have hero characters like the Brits in Call of Duty or J.C. Denton have a ‘bolt-on ethnicity’ but not the bad guys? Why is it alright to have a terrorist with the ‘bolt-on ethnicity’ of Russian, but wrong to have a terrorist with the ‘bolt-on ethnicity’ of middle-eastern? If Shaheed and his terrorist organization were Bolivian or Cuban instead of middle-eastern would they have as offensive? How is it wrong to say that there are middle-eastern terrorist but not wrong to say that there are South-American terrorist?
I’m also thinking that he meant that games should show the OTHER perspective as well as terrorist perspectives. Y’know, good people. We don’t see them very often in games. It’s always terrorists.
But why it always such an issue to have middle-eastern people given ‘equal perspectives’ and not every other ethnicity or nationality portrayed as ‘evil’ or ‘bad guys’? In games the enemies are rarely given any real back story. It’s usually just presented as just being that they are fighting against us because we’re fighting against them. World War 2 games never go in to the sociological or political reasons that World War 2 started and no one really cares. No one cares that you only fight Germans who are ‘evil’ Nazis and you never see the Germans who helped Jews escape or helped in the resistance. Why is it that everyone seems to defend middle-eastern people when they are generalized as terrorists even thought their terrorists attacks pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by the German during World War 2? I hope I didn’t just bring up Goodwin’s Law by writing that. Also, no, I’m not saying that middle-eastern people are Nazis or in any way like the Nazis. I’m just using the Nazis as an example of a one-sided view that is omni-present in video game that no one seems to care about. I REALLY hope I didn’t invoke Goodwin’s Law*.
I think I addressed this in the last paragraph; it doesn’t matter what ethnicity, it matters about the perspective.
Yeah, but he says “We should understand that it is a person, not a race, that is evil, and we should not feel the need to alter the ethnicity of a character to help hammer this home. Be true to the character, not the stereotype.” But when he talking about Shaheed he makes it sound like Shaheed is “a hugely pragmatic and disloyal turncoat. As a character he goes from vile and evil to snivelling and conciliatory, then back again.” because he is presented as an Arab. I was trying to point out that Shaheed has all those ‘negative characteristics’ and happens to be an Arab. He is an individual character who has those traits. If his ethnicity shouldn’t define who or what he is then how come he can’t be presented as an Arab who has those negative traits? Again, why is it wrong to say that he has these character traits because he is middle-eastern, but it isn’t wrong to say he can’t have these traits because he middle-eastern? Isn’t that just making broad generalizations?
The main point that I was trying to make was that everytime someone writes an article like this it just pulls the issue back in to the spotlight, and back in to people’s minds. It just ends up prolonging the life of the idea by making people focus on it. When playing Call of Duty, Splinter Cell or Alpha Protocol I never once thought that all middle-eastern people were being presented as terrorists. But because of this article the whole idea of middle-eastern terrorists has been stuck in my mind for the last few days. Now, whenever I think of the mid-east my mind is drawn to the word terrorist. That never happened last week or the week before. Whenever played a game that took place in the mid-east and had terrorist like Call of Duty or Alpha Protocol it never really occurred to me that the two were related beyond the separate labels of ‘location’ and ‘enemy type’. And I never once thought that the ‘location’ only had that ‘enemy type’ and only that ‘enemy type’ in real life.
*I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope I haven’t invalidated my argument by invoking Goodwin’s Law. I tried thinking about any other race or nationality that was portrayed as so un-ambiguously evil without a real in game explanation but my mind kept getting drawn back to the Nazis. Germans who are Nazi are horrible people but so are Arabs who are terrorists. Nazis don’t represent the whole of the German people during the 1930′s and 40′s and middle-eastern terrorists don’t represent the whole of any middle-eastern culture now.
I hope I didn’t just bring up Goodwin’s Law by writing that.
Ohhh… Lilliputian… Lilli, Lilli, Lilli, Lilli, Lilli… In the end, you did.
Sorry, but that was one of my favourite Alpha Protocol lines. The way it was delivered was so smarmy, it was a joy to listen to.
On point. I’d say you both fulfilled and invoked Godwin’s Law there (heh). Anyway, however, I think the comparison you made is quite reasonable and not a standard reductio ad Hitlerum, so I don’t see how it could invalidate your argument.
I’m agreeing with you here actually, and for the sake of time, I’m just going to say that in the process of trying to keep things quick, I mangled exactly what I meant.
I did sorta speed read the article too, so I probably missed some details (like Shaheed).
Well, I was kind of hoping that you would disagree with me. At least in part. I still have a few other points I wanted to angrily ramble about.
Well said, fella. I think the main problem with clichés and stereotypes in games is the fault of the same syndrome that affects the Hollywood film industry. The syndrome that causes film upon film with stereotypical foreign villains simply because “that’s what people expect and what people will buy” according to the people who produce.
But let’s face it, a game or film can be creative and critically acclaimed even if it doesn’t follow the stereotyping formula. Sometimes, it can even make money. I wish someone would try.
I admit this doesn’t have much relevance to the content of the article but was I the only one who read this
“Think for a moment: name for me any non-villainous Arab in a video game. It’s harder than you think.”
and thought you could just as easily substitute Arab for posh voiced Brit.
Can’t trust the posh twats, I’m telling you!
I want a game that involves offing toffs.
Got to agree with Machine here. What would have been the alternative to making the Arabs in Saudi Arabia terrorists? Given that you dive right into presumably equally seedy “communities” in other countries, wouldn’t having noble freedom fighters trying to shake off US oppression come off as positive discrimination?
I’m surprised you picked on Prince of Persia. Is there any particular reason why he should have been speaking with a “Persian” accent? (What is a “Persian” accent, anyway?) Think about it – he’s not actually speaking English so why shouldn’t he just have the slightly snooty upper class accent he does? What if the VA had been forcing through some generic Middle-Eastern accent? What does that tell us? That’s he’s from Persia? We gathered that from the game’s title. What does his British accent and tone (that we can now relate to) tell us about him? To insist Lowenthal speak with an Arabian accent potentially robs the dialogue of a lot of subtleties.
You tend to see stupid accents in games where dialogue doesn’t tend to matter – strategy games for instance – or where the language being spoken in English actually is English, rather than some other language. Foreign accents can help create a wonderful atmosphere, but people sometimes forget that that’s all they’re good for.
I disagree with this. I think you underestimate the value of atmosphere. It can really make or break a game sometimes.
Which part do you disagree with? You haven’t exactly contradicted anything I said.
Sorry, by “this”, I meant THIS!:
You tend to see stupid accents in games where dialogue doesn’t tend to matter – strategy games for instance – or where the language being spoken in English actually is English, rather than some other language. Foreign accents can help create a wonderful atmosphere, but people sometimes forget that that’s all they’re good for.
Specifically the bolded part.
OK, I could be really pedantic and say that technically you still haven’t contradicted me but that’s not going to help anyone.
I think I know what you’re getting at. As you may know, the Translation Convention means that when we hear English somewhere where it’s obvious no one’s speaking it, or it doesn’t even exist, we can intellectually say “Ah, they’re not really speaking English, they’re speaking Insert-Appropriate-Language.”
This effect is expansive, and anything fancy that the English does, we can infer that IAL was doing the equivalent. This is how/why dubs work.
All well and good; now consider what happens when we introduce IAL accents to the English. It’s the equivalent of the director punching a hole in the fourth wall and letting us all know that we’re not in the US, or UK, or wherever else he chose to source his cast. It adds nothing of analytical value: we can’t interpret anything else beyond the fact that we’re actually in IAL land – and in PoP’s case, a glance at the box can tell us that in less time.
The second problem is that if the VAs have to concetrate on doing a funny accent – unless by some miracle you have a VA who’s an IAL native speaker – they’re going to have a harder job conveying the necessary emotions to make the voice not sound either flat or hammy.
Go to YouTube and do a search for Hamlet. You’ll notice that Hamlet is speaking in Received Pronounciation. Intellectually we know that it’s highly unlikely Hamlet would have spoken this way, but do you think the play would have improved had Branagh or whoever been affecting a (however accurate) Danish accent?
Atmosphere is important, but if you’re relying on a bunch of stylistically illogical accents to carry it for you, then you’re in a little trouble.
(NB. This only applies to main characters; side characters – whom we hear very little of – can be used for scene-setting with little consequence.)
I’m far out of my league here, I have little clue about how pronounciations work.
Just sayin’. :P
But I do agree with your assertion here. In being quick, I didn’t quite fully get across what I meant.
I think it’s still possible that that kind of accent could be useful in a certain scenario, not necessarily the ones presented above.
I do agree that you’re correct, however. Ghost in the Shell comes to mind as a dub that works (IMO) well enough that it doesn’t matter (it’s actually strange for me to use the Japanese version; I started with the English).
This is how/why dubs work.
Won’t comment on anything else, but dubs don’t work.
Won’t comment on anything else, but dubs don’t work.
Metal Gear Solid? Phoenix Wright?
Every Miyazaki film ever made?
The disadvantage of making an absolute statement like yours is that you’re inviting people to try and find counter-examples. :)
You just gave me (Metal Gear) Solid examples of why dubs don’t work, except for instances of comedy like “Snake…SNAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!!!”
The Miyazaki dubs are almost always atrocious (Mononoke was OK) and, given the option, I’ll pick subtitles every time. This goes for any foreign language film. Dubs irritate me so much that even subtitles are less immersion breaking. Then again, I might be in the minority.
I’m afraid you are sort of in the minority, although the subs vs. dubs debate has raged for years. I can definitely see the attraction of subtitles, and dub voice acting can be a bit of a wild card, so I share many of your sentiments. Bad acting can break a dub, but subtitles tend to be guilty of awkward or shakey translation. Because the language isn’t spoken, there’s a temptation to just put out any old rubbish and let the viewer puzzle out the rest himself. Even commercial subtitles of anime tend to be guilty of this now, which is why I stay far away from the medium these days.
Even the BBC’s sub of that Wallander show suffered a little from this. Although the subtitles were (mercifully) idiomatic and sensible, they were still a bit stiff in places. For someone constantly analysing and criticising any written language, it can be incredibly distracting when the subs start feeling unnatural. At least with a dub, we can be reasonably sure this is intentional.
For this reason, I tend to be more forgiving of dubs. I found the Disney dubs of the Miyazaki films to be perfectly fine. (I especially loved it when Billy Crystal was cast in Howl’s Moving Castle.) I’m not bilingual so I can’t personally comment, but I’ve heard that the English dub for Cowboy Bebop has better voice acting than the original Japanese.
It’s been a while since I’ve played MGS, but I think it’s a little unfair to condemn the entire dub on a single hammed up line. It had some great writing and I don’t have any complaints about the major VAs.
The dub for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had very strong Chinese accents, but since they made no real effort at lip synch, I’m assuming that immersion wasn’t their priority.
As a general rule, I give a dub a chance, unless I find one of the actors unbearable to listen to, or an actor I like is on the original cast, then I’ll switch to subs.
Agree with you about the occasional shakiness of subtitles, particularly in anime. I would say, though, that dubs are frequently almost as bad in terms of translation, and may have the opposite problem of subtitles – they can omit parts of the original dialogue either through necessity or preference.
An undeniable advantage of a dub is that it allows one to focus on the action, however. The more fast paced a film is, the more a dub makes sense.
I still prefer subtitles, though.
I think we’ve strayed a bit from the topic!
Straying from the topic is what internet debates are for!
Do we consider the same things to be a “bad translation”? A bad translation is Yoda-speak; it’s broken English. (e.g. modern manga translations) A mediocre translation just tells us what the guys are saying – kind of what an interpreter does. (e.g. the Bible) A good translation won’t even let on that it’s a translation – the idea is that you’ll enjoy it just as much as the original audience was able to enjoy it (if not more) only you don’t need to know anything about the original language or culture to do so. (e.g. Final Fantasy VI)
Rather than focussing on what is lost during the dub process, think about what we can gain. English is perhaps the richest language in the world, and it would be a shame not to use it to its fullest.
What I’d consider to be a poor translation ranges from inaccuracies in actual content to, as you say, bad-at-English-you-are Yoda speak. I remember watching an anime a few years ago (might’ve been Neon Genesis Evangelion) that was technically grammatically correct in both dub and subtitles, yet there were so many things that just didn’t seem to translate well to English. That might’ve been the way the show was, though. There’s also all kinds of debate about the interpretation of some lines, or so I’m told. In some ways, it was completely alien to me. Again though, I suppose I’m blurring the lines between language and concepts, though they are obviously linked.
Both dubs and subtitles are in English, so I don’t see how either would benefit from the mishmash richness of our language more than the other. Subtitles at least preserve the original lip synching. ;)
The way I see it, subtitles have an implicit requirement to pretty accurately mirror what’s being said. That’s fine for most scenarios, but it gets a little awkward when you come across some kind of situation that doesn’t translate easily. Maybe it’s a cultural in-joke, or a concept that only native speakers would understand, but whatever it is, the subbers have to pretty much grin and bear it.
A dub has more flexibility. It’s much easier to treat it as an extension of the translation convention: “Were they speaking English, this is what they’d say.” One can sidestep difficult parts by either excising them altogether or simply couching them in a way that the foreign audience can better relate or understand.
What’s more, you can change names or other important bits. For example, this can be useful if a character’s name is a homonym for something rude. (Remember when Toyota released the MR2 in France? Same idea.) You also rescue the audience from Engrish or other well-meaning but cring-worthy attempts at foreign languages.
This article is far, far too long. You spend seven paragraphs to tell us that you once went to the Middle East, were scared by it and now feel differently.
There is also a constant failure to back up your arguments with fact. For instance you call strategy games “the main offenders” of stereotyping Arabs but never provide an example of any strategy games that do . Nor do you produce evidence that strategy games are worse than any other genre at this. Based on the examples you do provide it would seem that FPS’s are the main offender as they are most prevalent. Surely you could write about C&C: Generals, which features suicide bombers and Rise of Legends, which features a playable Arabian Nights themed faction? There are a half dozen other examples where you have made a point only to fail to back it up with any sort of proof.
You claim that all Arabs are either presented as “terrorists or arrogant, oil-rich masterminds” without presenting examples of such. Even if they are, is this inaccurate? The Middle East does indeed have a higher proportion of oil-rich individuals and terrorists than elsewhere. Nor do I think all Arabs are presented as such. Modern Warfare after all features Arab civilians and Arab soldiers whilst it actually opens with us ‘playing’ as an Arab politician about to be executed. Through his eyes we see the murder of innocent Arabs and the impact of violence on their lives as they flee.
Are we really likely to see beyond a certain number of roles anyway? Certainly we might expect so from an RPG but an FPS about modern warfare can only really be concerned with who you are shooting, who are most likely to be terrorists or soldiers. FPS’s lack depth and it seems silly to expect it. The medium is simply not optimised for it. You really need to differentiate between the different genres of videogames.
At no point do you tell us what the actual impact of these supposed negative stereotypes is. Is it making us all want to murder ‘Ragheads’? Does it deprive us of better games in some way? Without facts and examples this entire argument becomes unquantifiable and worthless.
Which brings me to the desirability of variation. Why is this a good thing? You only argue that not to do so is undesirable but again provide no real reasons why beyond blanket statements about “progressing as a species” which mean nothing. (The desirability of progress is not necessarily borne out by history either.)
At no point do you compare the treatment of one region to another. You complain that the Prince of Persia is not “true to his roots” but then, is Kratos? He’s hardly a good, or positive, representation of a Spartan or Ancient Greek. You complain that the Prince is voiced by Americans (and Brits) but then, so are the Space Vikings of Too Human.
Let me take a more negative and topical example. Many modern games do feature Russians or Arabs as the bad guys but they also frequently reveal Americans to be bad too, if not worse. In Metal Gear Solid the world is controlled by a shadowy cabal of evil Americans. In Modern Warfare it was a US General who started the war and the actions of the Americans and British frequently lead to disaster. In Splinter Cell it is Americans who murder Sam Fisher’s daughter and who are doing something evil (I never really understood what they were actually doing). Wouldn’t it be interesting to do an article on that too?
To conclude. You need to cut every irrelevant word, sentence and sentiment possible. This article would have been twice as good with half the word count. You need to back up every point with some form of evidence. You need to cover more ground as you can only understand representations of characters from one region by comparing them to representations of characters from other regions. You also need to cut out the sentiments, about progress or race, and replace them with argument. Finally, you really need to make clear why this matters to games, otherwise its just waffle.
This comment is far, far too long. You spend nine paragraphs to tell us that you think the article doesn’t mention every game and argue points that people already discussed in the same comment thread, before telling Steve how to write.