Final Fantasy XIV - Midgardsomr's Dragon Speak

This blog is home to my thoughts on game localisation. I sometimes write thought pieces, but most of my posts involve comparing the script of a Japanese game with its localised English. I dig down into the minutia of the text to reveal some nuggets of information that were lost in translation, or just highlight some particularly impressive translations. The internet is a big place, especially in this age of user-generated content, yet analysis or discussions about the localisation of games is notably sparse. This is one of the reasons why I decided to make this blog! However (as this blog never gets any comments) it occasionally feels like I am alone in having this interest.

I was therefore overjoyed when my friend linked me to a message board discussion about Final Fantasy XIV's localisation. Though it concerned just a tiny aspect of the game's localisation, it was debated with deep care and consideration! 'There are other people in the world like me,' I thought. I found it incredibly enjoyable to read through the nine pages of discussion about this one localisation aspect. That's why, for this post, I want to share with you some of the highlights of this heated discussion.

Super Mario RPG - Localisation Review (1)

This is an entry in a series of posts looking at the localisation of the beginning segment of the game, Super Mario RPG. Thanks for reading!

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	Original Japanese	Game's Translation	Literal Translation	LocaliReview Translation
Peach	クッパにきをつけてマリオ！！	Don't let Bowser bruise you, Mario!	Pay attention to Bowser, Mario!	Be careful, Mario!

The phrase Peach uses, ki wo tsukeru, is a common everyday Japanese expression. The JMDict definitions of, "to be careful; to pay attention; to take care," perfectly summarise its usage. It's a simple sentence to translate, yet the game's translation is fairly quirky. The Japanese is closer to specific advice than the official English translation, but both comments have the same function; Peach is warning Mario so that he will be less likely to be hurt by Bowser. There's no denying that the word bruise can function as a verb, but I don't think this usage is particularly widespread. It's hard to imagine a fight occurring and either participants or bystanders using the word bruise as a verb. Given that this is a Mario game, set in the fantasy world of the Mushroom Kingdom, it will always be possible to argue that quirky sounding dialogue is always passable. While I acknowledge this point, there is no such quirkiness in the Japanese. Unless the translator was given the directive to make the dialogue more quirky, I don't think it was necessary here to deviate from a more straight forward translation. In this case, the difference isn't particularly pronounced, but it is a matter that become more noticeable further down the line. (Just look at the next paragraph I discuss).

As an aside, it's worth noting that in Japanese, the villain Western players know as Bowser is called kuppa (Koopa). According to MarioWiki, "Bowser was created by Shigeru Miyamoto as the villain of Super Mario Bros. Miyamoto stated that they considered naming him either Kuppa (국밥), Yukke (육회), or Bibinba (비빔밥), which are all Korean dishes as they are known in Japanese. In the end, 'Kuppa' was chosen. For the later North American release of the game, which also introduced the anglicized spelling Koopa, the character was named 'Bowser.'" As for how this translation came about, an article on 11points,com states, 'During the import process, there was a concern that the American crowd wouldn't understand how the little turtles and big bad guy could both be called Koopa. So a marketing team put together dozens of choices for a name, they liked Bowser the best, and slapped it on him.' I'd be surprised it really was a marketing team that had the final say over this decision, but I couldn't find any other sources related to this matter.

Final Fantasy XIV - Hunberct's Package

This, a quest item from Final Fantasy XIV, is one of the most peculiar localisation examples I have ever seen. I wanted to post a screenshot as evidence, but for the sake of convenience I have typed up the text.

Japanese	English
フンベルクト宛ての小包	Hunberct's Package
シルフ族の商人から送られたフンベルクト宛ての小包	A new package for Hunberct Longhaft (not that he was dissatisfied with his current one).
逢いたい背中	Stroking the Haft

Academia & Game Localisation - Locali Thoughts

I think it's fair to say that videogame localisation is a fairly new part of the Japanese to English translation industry. However, it has long been an essential part of the videogame industry. This is because it allows the English-speaking world to enjoy Japanese games, especially those that feature a lot of text. This makes it surprising that in the early nineties when these games were coming to the forefront in the form of JRPGs, this part of a game's development was generally not given the attention it deserved. In an interview on the Player One Podcast, Ted Woolsey (the main translator of Square's JRPGs during the nineties) commented that for Chrono Trigger, 'I was given thirty days to do it, which is not a lot of time. I think there were about 1,300 pages of text and it wasn't contiguous.' Thirty days!!! That's unbelievable! Thankfully, things have changed since the nineties...

The Count Of Monte Cristo's Retranslation - Locali Thoughts

While the field of videogame translation can be said to still be in its relative infancy, literature translation dates back aeons. Translating videogames has its own unique qualities (such as the added consideration that must be paid to the animation on screen), yet at its core it is still based around the task of expressing the sense of a set text in another language. The majority of this blog's posts involve shining a spotlight on the English translations of Japanese videogames, pointing out moments of superb translation or when it diverges from the source text. The translation of some videogames (in particular, JRPGs from the nineties) have long been a target of criticism, and have even seen retranslations. Indeed, translator Tom Slattery did this for the rerelease of a number of Square Enix games (such as Final Fantasy VI), and once commented that his job was, "translating games that have been translated already." Some games have also even have fanmade retranslations; see Final Fantasy VII or Chrono Trigger. One day I intend to devote some time to analysing the necessity of these retranslations, but for this post I mention them as way to highlight how some classic videogames have translations that have caused tongues to wag and new translations to be produced. The same is true of classic literature!

One of the most common pieces of advice for aspiring translators is to read as much as possible. On the forums of Gengo (a freelance translation company), Mohamed Yehia, an English to Arabic translator offers the following advice...