Since I finally have a working scanner and Pandora Hearts is on my mind thanks to the new merch in Japan, I though I would update this post with the translation of Oz's letter to Echo in the 15th anniversary event and her response letter. Because I keep on fretting over the details.
To Eko-chan,
Writing a letter to youā¦makes me feel nervous. Sorry if there are any typos.
That day when we looked around the St. Bridgetās Day festival together,
you said thatĀ
you were ājust an echoā.
When we first met, I might have said āThatās not true!ā Butā¦
now I think āThatās okay.ā
Whether or not itās a reverberation,
Eko-chan is a unique and beautiful sound to me.
ā¦ā¦Iām just repeating something I heard from Gil.
I was happy when he said āThereās nothing wrong with being fakeā to me.
When Iām with you, itās different from when Iām with Alice or Gil.
It makes me feel kind of awkward.
I want you to show me all kinds of emotions, like ādelightā and āhappinessā.
Like the fireworks we saw that day, I want to go look at the sights youāve never seen before together.
Heheā¦ So, at that time,
āāāwill you let me take your hand again?
āEcho.ā
To Oz-sama,Ā
Thank you for your letter.
No one has ever sent a letter to me personally, so I was very surprised.
I was even more surprised by the content.
Oz-sama, I'm amazed that you can write such embarrassing sentences for me to read.
Do you know how many times I had to stop reading because my face got hot?
The rest is not explained sufficiently enough.
You said when youāre with me, āit makes me feel kind of awkward,āĀ but what does that even mean?
Itās a strange coincidence, but when Iām with you, I also feel āawkwardāĀ
but it's something I can't really describe,Ā Ā
so please tell me the true meaning of that word next time.
Muzugayui (ććēć), my arch-nemesis returns... Before, I mentioned that the main translation is "itchy" but it can also mean "uneasy feeling" or "indescribable state of mind". I also had to choose carefully due to the context that comes up in Echo's letter. While I went with "uneasy" before, there's a negative connotation that comes with that word which made it not sit right with me. I believe I've seen "awkward" used as the translation for this before, and it was the best synonym of "uneasy".
I want you to show me all kinds of emotions, like ādelightā and āhappinessā.
I didn't mention this last time, but these next two sentences were also HUGE pains to put into somewhat normal English. Where I put "delight" this time, it actually says "fun" for the emotion in Japanese. But...that's not an emotion in English. So I had to dig a lot into the uses of this word and find something that actually worked that wasn't also "happy".
Like the fireworks we saw that day, I want to go look at the sights youāve never seen before together.
Yet another turn-of-phrase problem seemed to be here. The literal translation is something more like he wants to go see the "scenery" she hasn't seen, but fireworks aren't really scenery by English language terms. I went with "sights" last time, and tried to make the rest a bit more natural-sounding.
I pointed this out last time, but apparently kimi (å) is a version of the pronoun "you" that, among several other possible contexts, can be used by a boy referring to his girlfriend. BUT I do not have access to the Japanese text of the series, so for all I know this is just what he normally does.
"ćØć³ć¼ā
"Echo."
Also noting again that this is, of course, Oz saying her name properly. And in Japan, you could hear these voiced at the event locations. So excuse me while I go cry again.
Oz-sama, I'm amazed that you can write such embarrassing sentences for me to read.
This sentence was a big reason I wanted to revisit this, and it ended up surprising me in the end. Before I had it just talk about how a lot of them were embarrassing, but I was bothered that it might not be clear that she's chastising him. I may not know the various connotations of Japanese, but she totally is, bless her. Then all of a sudden, this version with "amazed" came up for me. I dug into this, and it seems as though some characters associated with that are present in the sentence, so I absolutely ran with it because it made the tone stick out more.
Itās a strange coincidence, but when Iām with you, I also feel āawkwardāĀ
Another interesting pronoun note I mentioned last time. Echo uses the word watashi (ē§), which is a first-person pronoun in Japanese. From what I've heard, she never uses a first-person pronoun for herself in the series until that big "I am" moment. Just for whatever noting that is worth!
(Also, I have Break and Sharon's response letters if anyone out there is looking to translate those or something.)
I will never forget how on I got stuck on my first playthrough after Alex told me I couldn't do it, and since I knew he'd be right and telling the truth, I stopped trying. I was so confused I had to look up a walk thru on what to do next...
I think it's a shame that they never added Botta to Tales of the Rays. If only because I like to imagine Yuan trying to introduce him to Martel.
"Soooo, you remember that woman that we couldn't let be alive again at any cost? ...Yeah, this is my wife."
And of course Martel would go "Nice to meet you! Thank you for helping him so much!" :D
The sheer level of "HUH?" we could have had from Botta... (The relationship wouldn't be a surprise, obviously [not sure if Yuan knows that or not though], just the weirdness of it all.)
11/29/24 - I HAVE AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS AVAILABLE HERE. Because I felt like there were some nitpicky issues with this.
Being this time of year, I wanted to share my translation of Oz's letter to Echo from the 15th anniversary event and her response because I haven't seen it anywhere else and frankly I need to finally scream over it publicly.
DISCLAIMER: I do not know Japanese. I ran these through Google Translate, DeepL, and a website or two. But, as you can see, I used multiple sources on multiple occasions months apart, which adjusted the results due to the updates the tools had gotten. I've chipped away at this for about 18 months. Also, I really focused on specific research for a few words, which I note below. I hope this makes it as accurate as it can possibly be.
I apologize for the image quality, my scanner is broken.
To Eko-chan,
ā¦ā¦Writing a letter to Eko-chan isā¦.kind of nerve-wracking.
Sorry if there are any typos.
That day when we went to see the St. Bridgetās Day festival together,
you said that
you were ājust an echoā.
When I first met you, I might have said, āThatās not true!ā,
But now I think, āThatās fine.ā
Whether or not itās a reverberation,
Eko-chan is the one and only beautiful sound to me.
ā¦ā¦This is second-hand from Gil.
I was happy when he said āThereās nothing wrong with being fakeā to me.
When Iām with you, itās different from when Iām with Alice or Gil.
It makes me feel kind of uneasy.
I want you to show me different emotions such as āhappinessā or ājoyā.
Like the fireworks we saw that day, I want to go look at the sights you donāt know about together.
Heheā¦ So, at that time,
āāāwill you let me take your hand again?
āEcho.ā
To Oz-sama,
Thank you for your letter.
No one has ever sent a letter to me personally. I was very surprised.
I was even more surprised by the content.
Oz-sama, a lot of the sentences you wrote were embarrassing to read.
Do you know how many times I had to stop reading because my face got hot?
The rest is not well-explained.
You said when youāre with me, āit makes me feel kind of uneasy,ā
but what does that mean?
Itās a strange coincidence, but when Iām with you, I also feel āuneasyā
and it's something I can't even describe,
so please tell me the true meaning of that word next time.
NOTES:
åÆäø ē”äŗ [Yuiistu Muni] ā I invariably got this as "one and only" until recently. While that's what I see listed as the translation first in most cases, I also see it means "unique" or "irreplaceable" and the like. So it could also be something like "uniquely beautiful".
ććēć [Muzugayui] ā This word has become my arch-nemesis. The main translation I find is "itchy", which just does not make sense in English sentences. I've also found it can mean "creepy" or "uneasy feeling", and a friend who looked into it for me saw someone say it can mean an indescribable state of mind. I went through several options before I settled on "uneasy".
å [Kimi] ā After learning about the various words for "you" and their meanings recently, I revisited this just to see which ones I saw here. I kind of lost it when I found this at the end of Oz's letter. Now, this can be used in several circumstances (in another letter, I saw him use it in a quote from Break), but it can be used by a boy talking to his girlfriend. I will also note that I have no reference to the Japanese text in the manga, so for all I know this is what he normally says to her and I'm overreacting.
ćØć³ć¼ [Echo] ā I just wanted to note that these were actually voiced at the events apparently. So I like to think about that at the end of his letter...
ē§ [Watashi] ā Because it's noteworthy, Echo uses a first-person pronoun, which she only does after that "I am" moment in the story, I'm told.
Now, some background. I was ordering various things from the event, including the booklet which contains the Letters From Oz to the main cast, and a few of the random pack responses, which I was extremely lucky to get Echoās from.
I actually got the responses first, which meant I was left guessing on what Oz wrote. Without context, I really couldn't decipher the results very well. I thought there might be a vague reference to the ship, which is Word of God confirmed canon, but neither of them had any clue yet.
But, then I got Oz's letter. I think I literally screamed when I was reading the first pass through Google. It makes me so upset that you see next to nothing of them in canon, and literally nothing in the official artwork. The fact that you only get to see Echo with her abusers just enrages me.
"But Noise is feeling better." NO. It's not okay, it's not nice. She deserves so much better both inside and out of canon. Don't even get me started on Vincent...
Anyway, I'm very happy because this is the closest there is to having Something for them in the midst of that literal nothing.
EDIT: WOW THANKS TUMBLR, apparently my draft posted when I wasn't actually finished getting this together. There may be a few other changes. Sigh...
EDIT 2: Okay, this is the final version. Sorry about that.
As a Golden Sun fan, when I was setting up my town in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, I really felt as though I had no choice but to name my town Belinsk.Ā So of course this meant I needed to make my town tune the Belinsk theme music (the default town song, not when the musicians are rocking Mountain Roc Rising).Ā I didnāt think too much about it until my friend came to visit my town and started spazzing when she realized what the song was.Ā It was at that point that I realized that most people canāt just hear a song and easily duplicate it.
SO I figured out a bunch of Golden Sun melodies that people can use as their Town Tune!Ā I will note that many of these are NOT perfect, but due to the constraints in the system I did the best I could.Ā Any [?] notes are optional and were just me trying to fill in gaps left by odd phrasing thanks to this very limited system of song writing.
Otherwise, feel free to use these crappy pictures from my cellphone to copy my attempts at duplicating these in you own town.Ā Hopefully I did the captioning right.Ā I really need to use Tumblr moreā¦
Remember this? I started a second New Horizons island, and putting in the main theme made me realize it was a little low for their notes. SO I transposed it into a higher key!
Itās been awhile since we announced this zine. it shouldāve been finished for a long time, but good things are worth waiting for.
Many people worked hard on their contributions to make this little project real. In this zine lies the heart of the Golden Sun community and we are happy to share the final work with everyone on #goldensunsunday!
Thank you for all your amazing work and time!
You can find the direct download here:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1fV6Yjk_DDmiGAb3ZwW5G5yopzLPBXCJt
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
yousharknotpass
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
prguitarman
