Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Localisation Review (2)

This is an entry in a series of posts looking at the localisation of the first chapter of the game, Phoenix Ace: Ace Attorney. You can find the first post here. Thanks for reading!

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	Japanese	English
Phoenix 1	矢張　政志。‥‥小学校からの大親友だ。”事件のカゲに、ヤッパリ矢張”と言われつづけて２３年。	Larry Butz... my best friend since grade school. Our school had a saying: "When something smells, it's usually the Butz."

1. This famous saying about Larry pops up a number of times throughout the series. Translated literally (and therefore also awkwardly), it means, “Behind every incident will no doubt be Larry.” The saying in Japanese is founded on the wordplay around the similarity of “yappari” (meaning, “no doubt” or “just as you would expect”) and “Yahari”,  Larry’s name in Japanese. The English translation of this phrase is really impressive. It retains the use of Larry’s name (this time his surname), it retains the core meaning of the saying, and then goes a step further by including a butt joke that is both amusing and convincing as saying that would originate from young school children. I wonder how long it took to come up with this translation. It is sterling translation work.

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	Japanese	English
Judge	裁判を進める前に、本当に ”準備完了” しているか、たしかめさせてもらいましょうか。	Mr. Wright, given the circumstances... I think we should have a test to ascertain your readiness.
Phoenix 2	え、ええ‥‥。（うわあ、アタマの中がマッシロになってきたぞ‥‥）	Yes, Your Honor. (Gulp... Hands shaking... Eyesight... fading...)

2. In the Japanese, Phoenix's mental reaction to the judge's remark is far more basic. Simply, it reads that his mind has gone blank. Literally, it reads, "Uh oh, my mind's gone completely blank!" Although the English translation slightly exaggerates the emotion, I like it because it makes for more entertaining imagery than the Japanese.

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	Japanese	English
Payne	さて。矢張くん。キミは最近、被害者にフラれたそうですね？	Mr. Butz. Is it not true that the victim had recently dumped you?
Larry 3	なんだとコラ！今世紀最高のカップルに向かってなんてことを！	Hey, watch it buddy! We were great together! We were Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Mark Anthony!
Phoenix 4	（い‥‥いきなりかよ‥‥）	(Um... didn't they all die?)

3. The English initially downplays the intensity of the Japanese's second sentence, "We were set to be the couple of the century!", but then ramps it up (by diverging from the script) via some examples of famous couples from history. This addition also serves to set up something amusing for Phoenix to point out in the next line.

4. In both languages, Phoenix's line is a reaction to Larry's statement, but the content is considerably different in each. In the Japanese, Phoenix simply reacts to Larry's proclamation (that they were set to be the couple of the century) by thinking, "Isn't that a bit sudden to say!?" In contrast, the English injects some black humour by pointing out how the famous couples Larry mentioned all met premature and tragic deaths. Although this dialogue isn't accurate to the Japanese, I think it is far more humourous, and helps create the (accurate) image of Larry as the kind of guy who always somehow puts his foot in his mouth.

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	Japanese	English
Payne 5	裁判長。被害者のパスポートです。亡くなる前日まで、彼女は、ニューヨークにいたようですね。	Your Honor, the victim's passport. According to this, she was in Paris until the day before she died.

5. The Japanese initially appears easy to translate, but it is actually a line that was likely given a lot of thought because it ended up sculpting the entire localization of the game, and indeed the whole series. This is because time-difference is a key part of the case, and makes it necessary to define the country in which the game takes place. In the Japanese, Payne states that the victim had visited New York prior to her death, but in the English he says she had been in Paris. This is because Los Angeles, America was decided as the setting for the localised version of the game. Janet Hsu, who handled the localisation of the Phoenix Wright from the second game forward wrote about this decision on her blog:

Because of the time zone difference trick in the first episode, there was a need to decide on where the game was going to take place. Thus, the localization team of PW:AA had already picked the direction of the localization for me -- total localization. And while that decision has left me with a teeny-weeny dilemma for every game after that, I still feel that moving the setting to AU Los Angeles was the right choice to make because I think it helped make the characters and their dialogue more relatable to a wider audience. But not only did it make them more relatable, it also made it easier to convey the same emotional experience that a Japanese player has while playing Gyakuten Saiban to a Western player playing Ace Attorney.

I recommend reading the whole article, as it gives an interesting insight into her views as the lead localiser for the Phoenix Wright series. I think setting the game in America was the correct choice. The entire game (its world, its characters, its judicial system) is often fairly quirky, so I feel that having the game take place in an America that is interwoven with some Japanese cultural elements isn't a choice that ever negatively harms the experience. It has certainly required the translation of the game's writing to be more creative, but this has only served to further strengthen the game's quality. Anyway, in the Japanese version the game is set in Japan, and the victim was in New York the day before she died. We later find this was a romantic getaway organised by a new admirer of the victim. A romantic trip from LA to NY doesn't hold the same gravitas as trip from Japan to New York, so in the English the appropriately localised new destination is Paris, a perfectly lavish romantic holiday spot for people in America. Time difference plays a key part in the case, so for the entire case the remarks related to the fourteen hour time-difference between New York and Japan are altered to fit around the nine hour time difference between France and America.

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Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above points or Phoenix Wright's localisation as a whole, so please comment if you've got something to say.

If you enjoyed this post, I bet you'll like the next post in this series:
http://www.localireview.com/2015/03/3.html