Jeremy Blaustein

Jeremy Blaustein is a video games translator & localizer.

### Early Career

He was born in 1966, in Long Island, New York, as one of five children, at least three of whom would one day work in video games and Japanese media. He grew up playing video games from a young age.

He entered the industry working for Jaleco in Chicago in 1990 as an associate producer, but was fired after three months for ‘insubordination’. In the early nineties he moved to Japan and spent a year teaching English. His twin brother was working at Konami in Chicago at the time and helped arrange an interview for him in Tokyo. He was hired to the International Business Department in 1993.

His job consisted of coordinating with international branches on the global releases of games, and as the only native English speaker, he was often part of writing the English text for games like *Sparkster,* and *Snatcher*. Blaustein spent two to three months working as reviewer and editor of the game’s script, with the translation done by someone else.

He wasn’t as involved in the making of games as he wanted to be, and he'd also started a family and wanted to return home to the USA to spend more time with his daughter. To achieve both, he made the decision to go freelance as a translator. One of his early projects was *Contra Hard Corps*, which he credits as his first translation and V.O. direction job.

In the early days of games translation, Blaustein had to buy kanji dictionaries and reference texts on the topics he needed, depending on the project: military novels for *Metal Ge*ar; Japanese culture and myths for games like *Dragon Quest*. He was often the only translator, working on projects that today would be handled by a team.

Games he was involved in translating or localizing include *Valkyrie Profile, Dragon Warrior VII, Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit, Alundra 2: A New Legend Begins, Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Silent Hill: Book of Memories, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Lost Odyssey,* and *Jump Force.* His most recent project is *Trek to Yomi*, where he worked as voiceover scripting support.

### Metal Gear Solid

The first *Metal Gear Solid* would take six months to translate and would find Blaustein overseeing the voice direction without an official credit. Many of the games’ more famous militaristic terms, like the CODEC, originated in Blaustein’s translations.

### Silent Hill

Blaustein was heavily involved in Silent Hill 2's development, assisting the team in developing the scenario and script, the themes and motifs of the game, and discussing what would be considered appropriate for an American market. He was in charge of casting and directing the voice actors, translating the script, and overseeing the motion capture. At times, he would even step onto the mocap stage, such as during the motion capture for the scene with Angela on the stairs, where he took on the role of James. He feels *Silent Hill 2* was likely the game on which he had the "biggest influence". He was the one who chose many of the characters' last names in the second game.

> *"Forget about having started the game, even while Owaku was throwing around ideas for his story, they called me in to have a big conference and meeting about what I thought would be acceptable themes in America. There was a solid team of about four or five guys, including Owaku and the monster creator guy, Tsuboyama."*
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For *Silent Hill 3*, he would be less involved in the general project and more focused on the voice acting and mocap. He translated all the spoken lines of the game, casted and directed the actors, and oversaw the mocap, and once again took to the stage as the mocap actor for the Cancer monster. In *Silent Hill 4*, he would act as the mocap actor for the ghost Andrew DeSalvo.

### Wordbox

Together with some associates – including Harry Inaba - Blaustein formed a company called Wordbox, which would handle all the casting and hiring of voice actors for the *Silent Hill* games on PS2.

### Sources

* ZPang Website
* Twitter

#### Interviews

* Central Silent Hill Interview
* Silent Haven Interview
* Rely on Horror Interview
* Game Developer Interview
* Arcade Attack Interview

#### Articles

* The Bizarre True Story of Metal Gear Solid (Written by Blaustein)
* Reddit AMA

#### Videos

* A Chat with Jeremy Blaustein
* Legends of Localization
* Metal Gear Mondays

Blaustein and Yamaoka with Silent Hill 3 Voice ActorsBlaustein in mocap as JamesSnatcher team; Blaustein is in the brown jacket marked F