In an interview conducted by Factor-Tech, XSEED’s Tom Lipschultz shared with them their process on how they go about translating their games, specifically in this case their RPGs.

When asked the timescale of translating a game, he responded with this:

Our usual rule of thumb is that for every 100,000 characters of Japanese text, we’ll try to allot at least one month of time to get it properly translated and edited – but that’s not always possible, since we typically have to coordinate our efforts with the Japanese dev team, and their availability, or lack thereof, often necessitates speeding things up a bit. It’s when we have to speed things up that we start adding new translators and editors into the mix, since it’s usually best to keep that number as low as possible, with one translator and one editor being ideal […] The reason for this is because each translator and editor has his/her own style, and it’s often tough to fuse multiple styles together into a cohesive whole.

When it does become necessary to split the work, we usually try to split it along the path of least resistance, so maybe one translator will work on all story-advancing dialogue, another will work on all optional NPC flavour text, and another will work on system text – menus, item descriptions, and so on. This way, the divide among their differing styles will be much less noticeable to the end user, making it easier for an editor to go in and harmonise the text into something that’s consistent all the way through.

When it comes with nuance, it can be very difficult translating from Japanese to English while keeping its intent. Tom Lipschultz explained how he goes about doing it:

We start by asking ourselves, what is the tone of the game? Is it a silly game? A serious game? Somewhere in between? And how is that mood expressed in the Japanese? Is it overt? Subtle?”  Based on the answers to these questions, we try to come up with the best possible English equivalent. My personal motto has always been, ‘Translate the meaning, not the words’ – so rather than focusing on expressing exactly the same sentence as the original Japanese, I’ll instead read the original Japanese, process what’s being said, and to whom, and with what degree of joy or anger or confusion, and so on, then write an English sentence from scratch that conveys that same basic information in that same tone.

The end result of this tends to be something that differs from the Japanese to some extent, but – hopefully – fully captures the feel and intent of the Japanese line while still getting the same ideas or concepts across.

Tom Lipschultz stressed the point that this is how personally goes about it, and that every translator has their own way of approaching the situation.

He does say that if he were to generalize XSEED as a whole, he says that none of the employees are “literalists”:

When you’ve been around for a while, it becomes abundantly clear that Japanese isn’t a language which lends itself well to direct translations – try as you might, you can never capture the nuance of a Japanese line by translating it word-for-word, because Germanic and Asian languages are just far too fundamentally incompatible with one another […] Adaptation is the only way to really remain true to the intent of the original work, and while there’s a certain degree of interpretation inherent in that, it’s still better than giving a flat, confusing, rote translation and depending on the player to know enough Japanese to suss out its subtler nuances.

You can read the interview in it’s entirety over on Factor-Tech’s website.