“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
- zoom
- png (416 KB)
- cred: nago
1.5K
Switch in 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon to the Active Spot.
· Supporter rule: You may play only 1 Supporter card during your turn.
illus. NC Empire
External: Pokemon.com ↗, Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗
Ambassador
The JP print of this card has the exact same language as all previous prints. This “Switch in”/”Switch out” language is new to the EN TCG starting with the SV block. The previous text was significantly more accurate to the original text, so I’m actually getting quite worried about what the EN TCG team is doing here.
Terms they’re inventing out of thin air like “Pokémon Checkup”, “Active Spot”, are starting to appear more than I care for, and “Switch in”/”Switch out” seems like a reintroduction of the old idiosyncratic (re: made up out of thin air) language conventions. This is genuinely regressive and stupid. Like, you just finished taking over 20 years(!) to phase out the majority of the WOTC language conventions that were a constant thorn in the EN TCG’s side, and someone at TPCI has decided “oh, hey. do you know what we should do? we should fill that void in with New Garbage!!”
Like ffs. I don’t know what kind of person they have on staff that is pushing this, but just translate the cards. AI is right around the corner and if you think you’re future-proofing your job you’re mistaken.
Andrew P
my friend it is just cardboard
Ambassador
i’m glad you have that opinion. if you have a collection i’ll take it off your hands, no questions asked
p
this is deeply unserious
ambassador_tcg@proton.me
Yeah man these are just cardboard cards for kids none of it is serious and it’s all going to zero so it doesn’t merit any critique whatsoever. But if you wanna put your money where your mouth is here’s my e-mail so you can contact me for a PO Box to mail your collection to thanks in advance!
Camsey16
You’re really just grasping at straws here. Like yeah, maybe the card text isn’t exactly accurate but it’s changed to help people understand it. Like clefairy pfp says, it is just cardboard. It ain’t that deep. Also resorting to AI for why you’re late is kinda cringe.
Ambassador
If you think the text of a card has to be changed because you cannot understand “Switch 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon with their Active Pokémon.” you need to find a different card game to play.
Twylis
This discussion is super weird. Like, okay, it is just cardboard. That’s true. But why are any of us even here then.
Obviously, despite being a game about fake animals played using pieces of cardboard, it’s still something people are passionate about. And translation and localization are an incredibly big component of that. But even that aside, the idea that “who cares” is somehow a better contribution than insights on localization practices is rather odd. What are we supposed to be talking about, then? What are the approved topics that we can discuss with regard to cardboard depictions of fake animals?
Twylis
Anyways, my own stance is that TPCi’s decision to frame “switch in” and “switch out” as New Terms
is very weird and silly, and the same clarity could’ve been achieved with a much more grammatically fluid “Switch 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon into the Active Spot.” I’m not enough of a linguist to articulate why it feels more correct that way, but leading with “switch in” definitely feels unnatural and is the main reason I don’t like this change.
It’s also very arbitrary. You could just as easily say you’re switching their Active Pokemon out with one of their Benched Pokemon. I’m curious what the future Repel wording will choose — “Your opponent switches out their Active Pokemon with one their Benched Pokemon”, which is almost the same as before, or “Your opponent switches in one of their Benched Pokemon to the Active Slot”?
It invites a level of decision-making when translating that really shouldn’t be necessary.
SIMBA
I can only assume Camsey & Andrew P wanted to get their daily internet arguing in as reddit is closed.
The changes in the translation were supposedly made to help with clarity for new players. In fact here’s a short pokebeach article on the subject! https://www.pokebeach.com/2023/03/new-scarlet-violet-wording-for-switching-pokemon
But god the wording on this card is hellish and the use of “switch in” made a more casual player I know do a double take, no clue how it helps newer players.
DaneeBound
I don’t really agree with either of your lines of thinking, as it attributes to TPC Japan a level of authority over the international edition of the game, that they should not be entitled to, IMO.
To give just one example of what I believe to have been too much influence from the Japanese side, look no further than the unfortunate case of Oranguru UPR and Sableye DEX. Two cards that were seemingly tailor-made to tear the Expanded format asunder, along with many other degenerate cards from the BW, XY and SM blocks. Or at least that’s the impression you’d have if you’ve been playing the TPCi rating zones, where 50 or 75 minute Best-of-3 games rule the roost. In Japan, meanwhile, all tournaments (except for the Japan Nationals finals) consist of 25 minute Best-of-1 matches, with tie-games being ruled as a mutual loss for both players. This means that Oranguru UPR’s and Sableye DEX’s ability to stall out games wasn’t anywhere near as valuable there as it was here, so Japan did not hit them on the Extra Regulation ban list.
And TPCi were seemingly unwilling to take the initiative, as they instead just imported the ban-list updates from Japan, “maintaining a global ban list” according to them, but irrespective of the difference in both regions’ tournament structure.
Now, most of these bans that were just imported, rather than being responses to actual meta developments such as with Surge’s Strategy and Pick-Pick Ice Axe, were deserved. But others, like Flabébé CEC and Unown DAMAGE, were a lot less justified, considering the resource looping Oranguru UPR and Sableye DEX, as well as the near-infinite card draw provided by Shaymin-EX (soon to be taken to its extreme by Scoop Up Net) that were still running rampant.
It wasn’t until November 2020 (arguably more than a year too late), that TPCi finally listened to reason and put the ban hammer onto Oranguru UPR and Sableye DEX.
Why am I telling this tale on this page and in response to a rant about an innocuous formatting change? This is to remind y’all that, despite the new silver border, the Western and Japanese game are still distinctly different games. And to insist that these two distinct worlds /should/ be exact mirrors of each other would be foolish. Japanese venues are too expensive and too crowded to consistently host best-of-three games. American game stores would never stomach more than five core product releases in a year. An innocuous card in one format breaks the game in another. I could go on.
So if our product now includes keywords that actual players, judges and casters are using in a real tournament setting, then who is Japan to argue with that?
Ambassador
“Who is Japan to argue with that?”
Bro, they’re Japan. PCL designs the game and of course they should have full authority over any international edition of the game. Otherwise TPCI is repeating the exact same sins of WOTC, misunderstanding themselves as equal partners rather than franchisees. As an end user, I like Pokémon *for* its Japanese character, because with it comes certain aesthetic, stylistic, and other sensibilities, that can even bubble down into things like the text – my write-up on Shine of Punishment wasn’t for the sake of it, language and ideology go hand in hand, and once you get into this idea of changes being “innocuous” or that it’s foolish to wish for TPCI to better mirror the original game as much as possible, it really inspires a knee-jerk negative reaction from me because now you’re compromising *my* ability to enjoy these cards as export culture consumer products to which I really do genuinely ask: If people don’t care that Pokémon is a Japanese franchise, why do people like Pokémon? Like, why even play the Pokémon card game? This idea of overriding authorial intent just because of cultural barriers is ridiculous and negligent and I really can’t be bothered to go on at this time but I am wholly and utterly opposed to the sentiment you’ve expressed here.
ectocandy
Stupid question – should this new version of Boss technically not be considered a reprint of older Bosses due to the new phrasing? Or should it still be considered a reprint because the change in phrasing is an overall game change and not a change in the card’s effect?
flagrama
According to the Tournament Rules Handbook you can play an older version of a reprint reprint if:
1) The name of the new card is identical to that of the older card;
2) All text printed on the new card is functionally identical to that of the older card.
The examples given are:
1) Copycat (CES, 127) and Copycat (TRR, 83) are functionally identical. Although the wording has
been altered, the effect described remains unchanged.
2) Rainbow Energy (CES, 151) and Rainbow Energy (TR, 17) are not functionally identical, as the
former “put[s] 1 damage counter” while the latter “does 10 damage”—damage counters and
damage are separate mechanics in the Pokémon TCG, and cannot be referenced
interchangeably.