Posted by Shih Tzu (cf-i2.doshisha.ac.jp/202.23.191.26) on March 12, 2002 at 00:52:33
In Response to So, any thoughts on Tomato's page about Woosley... posted by KingMike on March 11, 2002 at 18:00:44:
> Well, I also thought negatively of Woosley's changing stuff, but I would now have to agree with Tomato. The guy didn't get much time to translate. I also would say before I heard the rumors, I did enjoy his version of the FF6 & CT stories, and I didn't think he did such a bad job, coming from someone not fluent enough to read the original script.
> Not to say that I condone making stuff up, but to say Woosley could at least write an interesting story.
I always liked FF6's and CT's translations. They were quite a step above most of what got shoved out in that era. I might take issue with Tomato's defense of the original "FF2" translation, at least the claim that it was a huge step forward. What I remember most is it being awkwardly phrased and oftentimes incomprehensible. I'll grant that NOA's policies surely contributed to much of that ("My mom's dragon FELL, so..."), but other things, like Yang's wife randomly going "You are too!" in the ending... I distinctly remember being confused by one scene, soon after the liberation of Baron, when all the heroes convene for a meeting in Cecil's room (I think? Might've been an inn room or something), and the translation just falls apart for a few lines. I was 12 years old and hadn't been terribly discriminating up to that point, but even there I was like "What? This makes no sense." I was only dimly aware, if at all, that this was a translation of a Japanese game, but I could tell something was seriously wrong.
I don't recall Dragon Warrior III and IV having those issues (though IV might've come out after FF2...I forget exactly). I don't think even Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, for all its typos and weird-assness and all, ever quite imploded in on itself as much as FF2, though that distinction may be subjective. I surely wouldn't say one was very far from the other, at any rate. I love FF2 because it made its world come breathtakingly alive for this 12-year-old despite the overall cruddiness of the translation. I'd like to see arguments against this, though.
Thanks for pointing that article out (and thanks for writing it, Tomato)! I rather enjoy Tomato's translation articles, especially since I'm forming my own translation philosophy even now. I suppose I should come out, as it were, and state that I'm attempting the translation of Just Breed. It's my first shot at a game translation, and I'm only just completing my third (school-)year of Japanese studies, but I think I can do it with enough effort and patience (helps that I'm in Japan for the next few months yet). It'll take a while, but I'm planning on doing it as a capstone project for my East Asian Studies major, so I'm gonna strive to do a careful job.
And hoo boy, there's a lot that circa-1992-NOA would've cut out of this one. I dunno about swearing (That's an especially subjective thing to translate, isn't it? Especially since the concept doesn't exactly exist in Japanese as it does in English, or at least that's my impression. It's not terribly nice to go up to a little old lady and say "Kuso! Chikushoume!", but it doesn't seem as regimented as it does in English, with some segments of the population calling a certain list of words evil. I wonder if that'd make a neat article, Tomato? Anyway, I digress.), but there's lots of other stuff to corrupt our youth...mass drunkenness, child neglect, transvestites, graffiti, hostess bars... Probably typical RPG stuff, but this is only my fourth game played in Japanese and it's all new to me. Maybe Game Gear games are more chaste somehow.
But yeah, it's tough a lot of the time, figuring out what kind of style to use in which situation. In fact, it's really hard figuring out what to do with examples like the one Tomato gave, where the words say one thing but there are extra stylistic considerations. Japanese seems so much more flexible that way, with the written syllables so connected to the pronounced syllables, so that you can stretch vowels or mumble things or whatever and it's all there. Like old-person-speak. How does one convey old-person-speak in English? Can and should it be distinguished from polite but plain housewife speech? Should a translator have particularly "old-fogey" words in mind (the classic arguably being "newfangled")?
If anyone wouldn't mind discussing this, I have a couple of examples relating to style. One's from Sylvan Tale, which was released nearly a year ago. I wasn't the translator for that, but MO graciously allowed me to edit the final script (on this board, even), and so the same kind of issues crept up, especially since I was partially taking my interpretations of the Japanese script into consideration as well.
This particular instance is entirely my fault either way you look at it: the player's character, Zetts, encounters a mole digging underground who offers a hint about the Mole Form's abilities. I don't have the original Japanese line with me offhand, but the moles' speech patterns were somewhat colorful, with a number of extraneous elongated vowels and so on. When I looked at the line in (my interpretation of) the mole's style of speech, a silly pun came to mind, and I ended up taking the stylistic considerations as the liberty to insert it, so the final line was more or less thus:
"When the ground looks funny, try doin' a spin-dig! Might find a room below! Ya dig? Har!"
The last three words don't have a literal equivalent in the original Japanese line; indeed, they can't have a literal equivalent, since the "dig" part depends on dual meanings of the word in English. Still, I justified it to myself as a way to convey the color of the original, and simply because I personally liked it. However, I've always wondered about this line, and I'm interested to know what others think about this, especially since it has close connections with my still-nascent translation philosophy. I can provide the original line, eventually, if anyone asks.
The other example I was thinking of involves Just Breed (and ever-so-slight spoilage). I'm still in classes, and still in the middle of playing through the game, so I haven't begun hardcore work on the translation yet, but even as I play through I'm constantly thinking about translation issues. There's one town defined by its large elderly population, and consequently there's a lot of old-person-speak. As the heroes do certain things, good things happen to the town, until it appears revitalized, and one rejoicing resident utters the line:
これからは 水も せきゆもあるからよ
ナウなヤングの ホットなハートで
村をリフレッシュしてほしいもんじゃのぉ
One could translate this (poorly, in my case) along the lines of "Now that there's both water and oil from now on, I'd like the village to be refreshed with a hot heart that's young and now." But aside from my shoddy translation, I think this approach would be a big mistake that misses the point of the line. It isn't the words, it's the fact that this old dude is suddenly spouting katakana English like the young folks do (or like he thinks they do), like he's Hamasaki Ayumi or something. (Who taught this guy these words?) Especially in this case, where converting the katakana directly into English makes the sentence sound stupid, I'm thinking of loosening up quite a bit here in order to convey the "old-guy-trying-to-adopt-youngun-speech" feel. Anyone have any opinions on this, or any other interesting examples?
Wow, I didn't mean to go on this long. But I find this stuff fascinating.
> And Nintendo did censor the FF4 stripper, but apparently Valvalis' sprite was just fine (too lazy to play all the way up to there. You remember, the speedo-wearing tornado girl.
The part of that that strikes me as fricking hilarious is how, rather than do all the work to stick a dress on all the stripper sprites (since she had to dance, you know, and the only dress-wearing sprite was the forward-facing one), they just cut out the dress entirely. It's the dress coming off that's the lewd part; take it out, leave her in her skimpy underwear the whole time, and the kiddies'll never pick up on it. And you know what? They were right.
I always found it amusing how the EvilBook or whatever enemies in Secret of Mana got past the Nintendo censors. Leave 'em alone long enough, apparently, and they pop open to a li'l naked elf girl or something.
For a really amazing article that goes in-depth on Nintendo's censorship policies in the early 90s, check out The Untold Story of Maniac Mansion, from a way old issue of Wired. Especially if you've ever played Maniac Mansion.