Paper Mario (マリオストーリー): Dialogue Study 2
Welcome back. This is part 2 of my Japanese dialogue study posts, where I break down Japanese sentences, meant for someone who can read kana and has a basic grasp on grammar already. I'm playing Paper Mario where I'm Mario, attending a party at Peach's Castle, and speaking to the guests before going on with the game proper.
ピーチ姫って うわさどおりの やさしくて すばらしい お姫さまですね
As with last time, some games forego most kanji and with that, they use spaces to make it more parsable. Let's break it down:
ピーチ姫って: Princess Peach tte
This Noun + って construction is something you'll come across a lot when reading Japanese depicting casual spoken conversation. It is essentially an emphatic topic-marking は when used this way. You often see it used when expressing a certain emotion about the Noun it's attached to.
うわさどおりの やさしくて すばらしい お姫さまですね: She is the kind and wonderful princess she's rumored to be ne
Here we have a string of adjectivals. うわさどおりの, as rumored, though it has a の at the end, we can assume it is not linking to the very next word as we're so used to, since the next word やさしくて is an adjective. We're going to have to wait and see what the noun is after all the descriptors. We do get a classic やさしい->やさしくて, te-form here to allow for すばらしい to chime in as well! It may be more accurate to say that the の in うわさどおるの is linking うわさどおり to the entire noun phrase やさしくて すばらしい お姫さま, in case you need help grasping the placement of that の.
This sentence is spaced very interestingly, and can be a tough one to figure out if you don't have enough prior knowledge. I'm going to break it down in chunks that feel more natural for our English brains
ごあいさつに きた: lit. "Came to greet", could be localized as something like "having come to meet"
This is a complete sentence, but as you may have learned, complete sentences (those with verbs at the end of them) can also themselves be used as descriptors for nouns.
Here's where Japanese being a popular language to learn comes in handy. You would be correct in assuming this is some noun かい + が + ある, a pretty familiar construction so you might go digging into what かい could be. It can be kind of vague, especially with no kanji! Always keep in mind that Japanese dictionaries tend to include phrases, so if you're having trouble understanding this sentence, you might type in: "かいがある" which will reveal that this is a phrase meaning "to be worth it." The sentence modifying かい (in this case the kanji is 甲斐) clarifies what was worth it, in this case, having come (=きた) to meet & greet (=ごあいさつに) (Princess Peach)!
Putting it altogether, a straightforward localization might be:
"Wow, Peach is the kind and wonderful princess she's rumored to be, huh? Coming to see her was worth it!"
Compare the official localization: "Princess Peach is such a generous and wonderful lady, just as I was told. It was worth coming to visit."
You can see it's also pretty straightforward with a couple liberties. "generous" seemingly in place of やさしい is interesting, I suspect it was chosen because the usual translations for やさしい don't sound grandiose enough for describing a princess! I like this decision. Using "visit" instead of meet/greet for あいさつ also feels more natural while conveying the same sentiment, which is always the goal!
マリオさんも ぜひ いちど サムイサムイ地方に あそびに きてくださいね
も means "too/also" here, as it usually does. You'll find in the official localization that it's not really translated, and this is fairly common. I feel in English we're more likely to use "too"/"also" if the person is doing an action that is the very same as what was also done/is being done/will be done. In this sentence though, the Toad is saying that, just as he came to Toad Town to visit Peach's Castle, Mario should come to his town to visit as well. I think in terms of including "also"/"too"/"as well" in this specific case, it could really go either way.
ぜひ いちど サムイサムイ地方に: certainly sometime Shiver region ni
いちど here is 一度, literally "one time," or "once," but I find "sometime" is a natural translation of it in some cases, here included. サムイサムイ地方 literally means "Cold cold area," but it was localized as Shiver region... Which is kind of confusing, considering there's another region in the game called Dry Dry Desert, so it would have been cute I think to mirror that here. What do you think?
What I really want you to take from this though is ぜひ. Dictionaries will say it means "certainly," "by all means" (in this context at least). This is another one of those words where it being translated to English is kind of a crapshoot. When used in inviting sentences like this, it simply expresses your sincere desire to have the person as your guest/company.
あそびに きてくださいね: Please come by to see us ne
あそぶ is often taught as meaning "to play," but in English this is pretty much exclusively used for playing games or when kids get together to have fun. In Japanese, あそぶ can be used amongst adults as well, though! It can have the nuance of visiting, seeing, or hanging out with someone. Putting it into あそびにくる is just the same as あそびにいく, just with くる instead of いく - movement to a place in order to perform an action. Since this Toad is suggesting that Mario, the listener, move towards the speaker (not literally, but the speaker's home, where he will be), くる is just more appropriate.
The official English localization: "Mario, please come visit us in the Shiver region someday!"
This is pretty much a direct translation, with the omissions I alluded to in the breakdown: も and ぜひ didn't quite make their way into the translation. And that's alright!