Even though FunPlus Phoenix (FPX) won’t be competing at this year’s Worlds LoL, their mid-laner Kim “Doinb” Tae-sang isn’t shy about giving his thoughts on the competition on his personal stream. But malicious third parties have delivered erroneous and distorted translations of the player’s words.
There are the bad buzz and the good buzz, and this one definitely falls into the first category. As the League of Legends World Championships take their course in Shanghai, players not fortunate enough to participate are observing the competition very closely. This is the case of Kim ” Doinb ” Tae-sang, the mid laner of the Chinese training FunPlus Phoenix (reigning world champion). During his personal streams, he easily answers questions from his community, which asks him for his opinion on the various meetings and the performances of the players.
The language barrier is often a hindrance and it is sometimes difficult to find exact translations of the personal streams of foreign players, especially Asian players. Internet users have therefore decided to translate the player’s words into English so that a greater number of enthusiasts can benefit from it. If the intention seems laudable on paper, it was in fact made for a single purpose: to create buzz. Rather than sticking to a rigorous translation, the translators would have deliberately distorted the player’s words so that he appeared like a “trash-talker” . And since an example is more telling, here is one of the supposed translation error (it concerns the DRX vs DAMWON semi-final):
- Wrong translation: “Deft was so bad. I don’t know how he made it to Worlds.”
- Correct translation: “Deft was bad? His performance was bad? So how did he qualify for the Worlds?”
I've seen some of these videos, that maliciously mistranslate the wordings of Chinese players for "spicy content" and clickbaits.
It's such a shame that esports has come to this. Players, and what they say on interviews/streams/etc, should be represented fairly.
— Ashley Kang (@AshleyKang) October 21, 2020
FPX Response
The response from the player’s organization, FunPlus Phoenix, was swift. The structure decided to initiate legal measures against the said videos (which have mostly been deleted since).
“We recently discovered that on Youtube, Reddit and other platforms, malicious videos of our players’ streams containing translation errors were shown. Such behavior not only violated the law and our laws. rights, but they have also seriously damaged the image and reputation of our players. Thanks to our fans who have informed us and sent us evidence through various channels, FPX has initiated legal proceedings with related parties in order to resolutely safeguard the rights and legitimate interests of our players and the organization. “
This buzz also reveals another problem, the lack of correctly translated VoD from the organization, which the community is increasingly fond of. The videos produced by the structure also contain many errors – the most recent (which you can discover on their official channel) having been singled out. Many fans highlight the lack of expertise of the translators of the organization on the game. This affair will therefore perhaps push FPX to better control the image of its players and to offer, in the future, more of video content translated into English by their care.
Doinb mentioned on stream recently that his Facebook got completely flooded by angry Korean fans because of what he said about DRX.
Would be very shitty if it was because of videos and subtitles like these.
— Sher ʕ•̫͡•ʔ (@gzeebee) October 16, 2020
You can read more on this Reddit thread:
Hey guys, I’m the translator of Doinb’s recent Worlds review videos and I’d like to clear some things up about the recent appearance of my VODs on FPX’s main channel. from leagueoflegends
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