Mario Party - Hip Drop

The Japanese language uses a separate syllabary known as katakana to spell loanwords from foreign languages. It is therefore often fine to literally translate these words into English. オレンジジュース (orenjijuusu) becomes orange juice, and ホットドッグ (hottodoggu) becomes hotdog. However, this is not a viable translation strategy for every katakana word. First, there are words that originate from languages other than English, such as デッサン (dessan) which comes from the French word "dessin", the word for a drawing. Second, there are Japanese words that are constructed from elements of English that would be nonsensical if translated back into English, such as マイブーム (maibuumu), a word used to describe something that you've recently got into/obsessed with. It goes without saying that it would be incredibly strange if a character in a book said, "My boom is tennis."


This second point is what I see as the reason behind the presence of the term "Hip Drop" in the first Mario Party game (as highlighted in the above screenshot) for the move we now know as a "Ground Pound." The Japanese is "ヒップドロップ"  (hippudoroppu), so presumably the translator just opted for a direct translation. However, this ignores the fact that the English word "hip" and the Japanese "ヒップ" (hippu) have slightly different meanings. The former typically refers to the upper thigh area, whereas the latter usually refers to the buttocks. I imagine a Japanese person reading the term in an instruction manual could easily visualise how Mario would animate in this situation. Conversely, I think a native English speaker with no prior videogame experience might visualise a "Hip Drop" as sideways attack akin to the exercise shown in the video.

Happily, this mistake has long been since corrected in later Mario games, and instruction manuals (as highlighted below) now refer to the move as a "Ground Pound." Personally, I prefer the term, "Butt Stomp." More often than not, Mario is stomping on enemies rather than pounding than the ground, but I can imagine that Nintendo may have wished to avoid officially using the word "butt" in its game. Regardless, it's much better than "Hip Drop."

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Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above point, so please comment if you've got something to say :)