rar talks translation

hey I'm rar!!! I like talking about weird translation things, usually in video games, usually in Kingdom Hearts. I speak Japanese at a 202 level, currently, and am always finding really interesting stuff. Feel free to shoot me a question about something you'd like me to look into! ~ Links and things ~ > Read my literal academic essay about KH translation, or my 6000+ words on misc. notes between JPN and ENG KH! > Curious about weird/awkward lines in ENG KH? I have a tag for that! > Shout out to Everglow because I literally wouldn't be able to do this without their youtube channel! Thanks for all the work you do!!

[yoroshiu]

Translating Scenes From Kingdom Hearts (Japanese to English) (Part 4)

Scene: Roxas's Grief (Dream Drop Distance) (Specifically Roxas and Sora talking)

NOTE: I've been experimenting with what would make these posts easier to read through/comprehend. Any suggestions or feedback on what works and what hasn't would be great ^o^

Sora: Hey wait! Who are you—

S: You're...Roxas—

S: If you're also here, then is this a dream?

S: Answer/say something

Roxas: If I were you, that would have been fine.

S: Eh?

R: But it's no good without you

S: What does that mean?

R: Your heart is connected to many hearts. You are me so you carry my thoughts/feelings.

S: That's wrong—

S: Roxas is Roxas, you're not like me. I wanted to say that, Roxas is Roxas so [you] should exist too*

R: Sora— That's why it's no good without you.

(Roxas gives his memories)

S: Again—

S: Was this the work of those guys too? What did you want to show me!

(I linked a timestamp starting at the "Again" part since taking out the rest of the line felt a bit off, but I wanted to share how Sora says "What did you want to show me" because it's so visceral TvT)

~~~

1* I wanted to break down the phrase Roxas says here:

「俺がおまえであってもよかったはずだ」

ore ga omae de atte mo yokatta hazu da

I am you even if I'm glad should (literal literal translation)

the italics are the "[Even if] I was you" and the underlined part is the "could/should have been"

*Have made an edit to fix the translation I chose there. I think my brain was just mush doing that part at the time ToT

よかった (yokatta) on its own is kinda like a "glad to" or a relief sort of good feeling (like when you finish a long task, it's like a sigh of relief; you're glad or you'd be glad to) (I feel like this phrase is one of those multi-meaning phrases) and はず (hazu) is "should" in a 'I thought this is how it should be' kind of way like an expectation (this will be important with Sora's response in 2*)

The meaning of the phrase is "I could have been you" though literally breaking down each part literally kinda says "It could/should have been me" which does show how Roxas holds onto his sense of self despite his resignation. (At least from all the searching and cheking I did). That's why I think the English dub part of this line was a great choice. "This could have been the other way around" captures the essence of that line the best it could in a natural way I feel.

2* The part of Sora's line I want to point out is:

「ロクサスはロクサスとして存在すべきだって」

Rokusasu ha Rokusasu toshite sonzai su beki datte

Roxas is Roxas so to exist should too (literal literal translation)

べき (beki) is "should" but in a "this is how it should be" way (more oriented towards expressing an opinion on how things should be) which says a lot.

Roxas's use of "hazu" shows that he wants to be and believes that he's his own person but has been resigned to think that it's something only he wants (It's an interesting dichotomy of how he believes that but also has been made to believe that he is Sora and is shown to take some comfort in that a little).

Sora's use of "beki" shows how he believes that Roxas is his own person hence he should exist, and that's that. (I was researching this to be sure of the difference lol, they can cross over to some extent but they are used differently)

I'm sorry if this became more confusing, in my mind I get it, but I'm not sure if I could explain this well (and heck I might be misunderstanding something here so correction is always welcome)

~~~

-There isn't anything wildly different between these scenes. The point gets across in both, I was just curious as to how JPN did it LOL

-"hazu" and "beki" are both translated to "should" but have different contexts in which they're used so I have to reiterate that the English dub handled this scene really well.

-The notes/analysis section was really me going off the rails here, any need for clarification from me or a want to correct something is very much welcome always, but especially this one LOL

-I kinda want to go into how sentences can be ended in Japanese but I don't know if people are interested in that. Cause in some ways, a sentence might end with something that's meant to emphasize it like "desu yo" over just "desu" (A lot of things like formality and whatnot go into this as well)

-I've been seeing some 3D posts going around so it made me want to do this post LOL The Roxas and Sora dynamic has me wanting to pick them apart like I'm a scientist

-Like I obssess over what and how they speak to each other constantly ToT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Making Kingdom Hearts Stuff Until KH4 Comes Out (Day 134)

[rartalkstranslation]

...In KH2, there's a lot less text when Roxas goes to the stained glass/dive to the heart, on The 3rd Day, but not none.

"Be careful. Beyond that door lies a completely different world. But don't be afraid. Don't stop walking..."

And, in KH3, there's "There are seven hearts to save..." and the descriptions of the various. Desires? I guess? Balance, Body, Mind, for HP and MP, the sword, staff and shield leveling ability stuff.

And my question is. As you're the expert in KH1's dive to the heart/awakening. Does the text in those games still have the same speaking patterns as in KH1, in Japanese? Is it still. Mickey. Talking to Roxas and Sora?

It seems like it's meant to be a call-back, at least in English the. Font. Is the same. But I don't know enough about the Japanese script of either game to know if Mickey's distinctive speaking patterns and pronouns and the like got missed again.

anon is referring to these posts

oh, yeah, okay, i started poking at this before doublechecking the question, and i was gonna start with, well, i think the "choose your weapon" flavor text is the usual roxas-brand flavor text, roxas-voice narration style,

"This sword seems like it would make you stronger" kind of stuff (i'm paraphrasing, this is not an accurate translation)

even when you go to pick them up, teh questions "do you care most about magic?" "is protecting yourself the most important?" etc (paraphrasing) all end with かな which is definitely a wondering to self vibe.

now, for the main star of the show:

"Be careful. Beyond that door lies a completely different world. But don't be afraid. Don't stop walking..."

once again shoutout to Hana and Minami for playing KH2 in Japanese AND!!!!! reading the textboxes aloud. super helpful.

check out their KH2 playthrough here, linking directly to the video we dive into the heart

well. that tells us approximately nothing! lol!!!!

this is not a surprise to me, exactly??? the fact it's mickey reaching out to sora in kh1 is like a word-of-god thing that always confused me; the heck is nomura talking about? [sees the jpn script] oh nevermind, yeah, that's definitely meant to be mickey

but here in kh2... no one's said who this is. nomura hasn't made any claims that i'm aware of. and roxas's dive into the heart is overshadowed heavily, anyway, by both his connection to sora, and uh,

this part. which has been there since kh2 og. but is easy to miss (the cloaked figure is onscreen for maybe one full second) until you can go back and pause in a recording.

is this a manifestation of roxas's past, or memories? is this, secretly, xion?? theories abound. but my guess is it is this person who is talking to roxas,

at least, of course: the real question here was "is that like obviously mickey?" and the answer is "no, it is not"

it could still be mickey! 4 lines of text is not enough to make that kind of call, though.

i do think the desperation of "don't be afraid. don't stop walking." is definitely a hint of "someone hoping roxas will remember" so it could be roxas himself

or it could, you know, be namine, who 1) already went to poke at roxas today

and 2) shouts out to roxas right before he wakes up in his dive into the heart moment anyway

i went and glanced at some of namine's other scenes, but these 4 lines of text really genuinely don't have enough in them (in ways of speech markers) to make any obvious guesses.

mickey really commonly uses first person pronoun 僕 and ends questiosn with かい, so you can spot him a mile away

everyone else in kh? they all have their distinct voices, but again, 4 lines of text - that lack pronouns, questions, etc - is not enough to go on. all we really know is that it's someone who's comfortable being casual with roxas - or rather, someone who doesn't speak in polite desu/masu form... and uh, basically no one in the kh cast uses desu/masu? i think aqua might regularly to superiors (which is where you're supposed to) and i think queen minnie does, which only leaves.... the rest of the entire cast, because kh is a shounen, so most everyone is using plain/casual speech, lol

conclusion: not obviously mickey. not NOT mickey. could be anyone!

-

kh3.... okay, hana and minami save me, kh3!!!

[kh3 playlist here]

there are 7 hearts to save, yeah,

"what do you wish for?"

the descriptions of the choice are also different, of course, (this isnt' straight staff/sword/shield, after all) but so are the ways sora is asked to choose,

kh3 on top, kh1 on bottom

kh3's "is this the strength you want?" and kh1's "is this the power you want?" but... these aren't.... there isn't enough here to say anything, about either one, technically. the major difference is the use of 強さ (strength) instead of 力 (power), which is like.... nothing. that's just word choice

and watching the lead up to these scenes, in kh1 vs kh3, the lead up to kh1 is very gently leading sora through "you can choose to awaken a sleeping power within you" and kh3 just drops sora into "okay! make your choice!" in a much more brisk way that seems to want this over and done with. it does NOT feel like mickey at all, to me. it could be, but it's so... especially if the kh3 dive into the heart is technically occurring non-linearly, and (i think) what sora sees in the final act when he's about to use the power of awakening (7 hearts to save...) then - well, Mickey's one of those 7 hearts who needs saving? is it even possible for it to be Mickey?!???!

...I guess it could be Jiminy, who IS in sora's pocket during the power of waking sequence--

-- wait. zoom in. on jiminy's dialogue.

that's desu. JIMINY uses desu/masu form.

okay, so it's NOT jiminy in the kh3 intro, got it,

misc asides:

the way sora responds to the question, btw, is identical to how he answers in kh1 (except they've put chigau on top so you don't accidentally say yes with a misclick)

kh3

vs kh1

chigau vs sou sa

and since i'm here, i might as well point out,

roxas does - well, he has different questions, but also, answers this differently

"is protecting yourself the most important thing?" "absolutely not" and "of course it is!"

interesting little fact! either this is because it's how sora answers things (character voice!) or becuase kh3 was so desperately trying to emulate kh1. without scanning the textboxes for kh2's options, it's hard to say. that's for a later time

back to the kh3 dive into the heart

and the second question you get in kh3 is

"what do you want to study?"

this is still - brusk, short, to the point. not even a か (ka), as a question marker particle, not that it's necessary (since 何 nani/"what" makes this obviously a question)

"is this the power you want to study?"

not much different than the kh1 dialogue, tho,

kh3's surprise third one: "what kind of adventure do you want?"

"is this the adventure you wish for?"

"this good?" "this what you choose? "are these settings okay?"

it's like they've dropped all pretense of of anyone saying this to sora at all... but.... BUT....

guess it could be this little guy. i'm not seeing any specific quirks in chirithy's speech that points here, just context clues from what i believe the surrounding lore is. (it's been a while since i played kh3. i don't remember)

results: INCONCLUSIVE!!!!

-

also like, here's teh thing about KH1's dive into the heart, just to reiterate

1) by the second or third line, the dialogue has given you 僕, boku, which instantly narrows it down Mickey, Donald, Goofy.

2) and then at the end of the first block of dialogue, you have this:

no one freaking talks like that but Mickey!!!!!!

not only the question marker かい, which is (almost) exclusive to Mickey, but the ごらん?! LOL....

i'm not as much of an expert (though it was fun taking a peek at kh2 and kh3 to answer this post, i'll admit) vs like. you start up kh1 and within 20 seconds - if you know what Mickey speaks like, you go oh, hi, that's Mickey.

not only is it obviously Mickey, I think it was intended to be obvious

but kh2? kh3? pretty ambiguous....

[rartalkstranslation]

if you know you know.

aitsu is a gender neutral pronoun, full stop.

i know that anime often translates it to "that guy" or "this guy" but it's not masculine. it's not "neutral but masculine leaning".

listen to me. japanese does not have gendered pronouns like this. if japanese wants to gender something a pronoun, it has to add onna or otoko to it (onna no ko 女の子 girl, otoko no ko 男の子 boy, literally "child who is a girl" and "child who is a boy", because 子 ko, meaning child, is also genderless.)

aitsu is gramatically gendered in the fact that japanese has consistent ""gender"" for location. koko soko asoko (doko). koko here, soko there, asoko over there. (doko where).

you can read more about ko / so / a / do words here, thanks tofugu

location based: koitsu = this person here by me, soitsu = this person there by you, aitsu = this person over there far from either of us.

tofugu also says that koitsu is emphatic, you want to emphasize it. soitsu has no nuance. aitsu, meanwhile, is often used to refer to mutual friends who are not physically present - its' a person we both know but they are not here right now!

that's the nuance of it, not gender

"but japanese first person pronouns--" do not inherently have gender, they just have societal conventions that make their usage imply gender.

speaking of: koitsu / soitsu / aitsu are so genderless you can use them to refer to inanimate objects. you can use them to refer to situations. they are simply demonstrative pronouns and there is no gender attached because japanese does not, really, have gendered pronouns the way english does.

in sum: aitsu is not masculine, it is not gender-neutral but "masculine leaning" , aitsu simply does not have gender, because japanese does not have gendered pronouns

[rartalkstranslation]

some examples

so: translating aitsu as "he" or as "she" is perfectly valid, because, usually, the context makes it clear who the speaker is referring to, and presumably you know the gender of who they are referring to.

the gender is in the context - japanese is a context heavy language! there are probably cases where a translator has gotten it wrong because it was vague enough you couldn't tell. i definitely have had cases of seeing a character say aitsu and going well, hm, the rest of that sentence wasn't clear, so i'm not 100% sure who they're referring to, and since aitsu isn't gendered, i can't really narrow it down by gender.

which is also rough because like, english does in fact need a gender in that pronoun, even if singular they for gender neutral is catching on. who are they talking about? i don't know, and i also don't know the gender, because aitsu itself does not give me gender, so do i use he or she or they? you don't always know!

in fact, there's a good chance - THOUGH I AM NOT CHECKING, SO DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS, - the reason that ffxiv nael has that "oh shit, that's a woman, uhhhhh, she stole her brother's name when he died" problem is that the gender was not clear to the english localizers in 1.0 (because, famously, japanese does not have gendered pronouns!), so when they got to 2.0 and coils they had to go oh, fuck, oh that's a woman model. uhhhhhh here let's add in some lore to rationalize our mistake.

it is in fact possible to translate aitsu wrong re the gender, because aitsu itself does not have gender, so it's up to the translator/localizer to figure out the context and that's SO HARD. sometimes. you know?

that said: here's an example where the context is ESPECIALLY clear who is being talked about, so it's very easy to translate, and there's literally no way the translator could have gotten it wrong:

Sora: あいつにあやまらなきゃ English: I have to apologize to her. English, localized: I really let her down...

you may be wondering "hang on, how is this obvious? you JUST said aitsu is gender neutral, and that inferring who Sora is referring to by using aitsu could be difficult, if there's no context!"

but let's look at JUST the context in this screenshot. he's holding Namine's good luck charm. also, this is Chain of Memories, the game in which Sora's memories are actively being rewritten to make Namine his Most Important Person. Pretty safe bet that he's talking about Namine.

Just to be sure, let's rewind and see a bit more of this converastion.

I'm not posting the whole scene in screenshots, but this is the scene where Sora pulls out the charm and tells Donald and Goofy the story behind it: that there was a meteor shower, and Namine was scared, and he promised to hit the meteors back into outer space to protect her and keep her safe, and so she gave him this charm, as a sign of their promise - which is significant, since she had the charm since she was a baby, and it meant a lot to her!

(here's a link to the game's script: searching "I really let her down" will take you right to it, since it's only said in the game once.)

Now, let's get the immediate context for Sora's aitsu line.

Donald: そんなに大切なものをくれたんだ... English: She gave you something so important to her... English, localized: And she gave it to you? Wow...

note 1: Donald doesn't use a pronoun at all, because Japanese doesn't generally use pronouns, since it's a language that depends on context. But since we are talking about Namine's good luck charm, and Sora just said that Namine gave it to him, the context is clear enough that we know Donald is talking about Namine giving Sora the good luck charm. Did Donald say "she"? no. but who else could he be talking about!

note 2: the english localization doesn't actually 1:1 match the japanese sentence, but that's not a bad thing! the same thing is conveyed just the same: that Donald is surprised that Namine would give something so important to her to Sora. both sentences convey this, so, mission accomplished.

Sora: うん。それでナミネと約束したんだ。 English: Yeah. So, I made a promise to Namine. English, localized: Yeah. So I promised her...

Oh, hey look! He said Namine's name outright! (Indicated in red.) If we were somehow worried about not knowing who they were talking about, we certainly aren't now!

Sora: これからは、お守りのかわりに　俺がナミネを守ってやるって English: From then on, this charm represented keeping my promise to protect Namine English, localized: "From now on, I'll bring you good luck. I'll keep you safe."

Oh, wow! The localization really went somewhere different with this one... but not necessarily in a bad way. The localization picks up the fact that this is a "good luck charm", and has Sora promise to bring Namine good luck - since the charm can't, if he's holding it.

If I was keeping it literal but more natural, I would probably go for "This charm represents the promise I made to protect Namine." Even still, Sora saying he'll bring her good luck in the stead of the good luck charm is cute... and it's clear that the localizer understands what is going on in this story.

Anyway, after that, Sora has this little "..." animation

and then we're back here, at our aitsu line

this time, with the timestamps and such included, in case you want to watch it yourself. the screenshots were all taken from this longplay of Chain of Memories, Part 5; the scene occurs at 1:17:20 (though the link should directly take you there).

note: the person playing definitely has emulator speedup through the cutscenes, so watch at half speed, or prepare to pause and go thru frame by frame with the comma and period keys on your keyboard.

final conclusion: wow. there is no possible way that Sora could be talking about anyone other than Namine, or that he could be thinking about anything other than apologizing to her / feeling bad for feeling like he failed her by letting her get captured by bad guys in this castle.

which isn't really a surprise, since, again, Chain of Memories is the game about Sora's memories getting so fucked with he only cares about Namine and her safety, to the point of abandoning Donald and Goofy once they are done with Twilight Town, telling Jiminy to shut up and stop talking if he's not going to be helpful (since Jiminy lives in Sora's hood and wasn't abandoned), and barely having any words to say to Tidus / Wakka / Selphie on the upcoming Destiny Islands world, to the point of barely remembering their names. Sora's dialogue from this point on consists mostly of "where's Namine" and "I promised to protect Namine, so I will," and "the only thing I care about is Namine".

and, you know, you may ask: "but what about Riku, he could be talking about Riku - aitsu is gender-neutral, after all", and I'll tell you that's not exactly what I meant. aitsu is less gender-neutral and more gender-void. There is no gender attached to it, only "this is the demonstrative pronoun I am using to refer to the mutual friend who I am talking to you about" - which, in this scene above, is very clearly Namine.

"But Japanese doesn't encode single/plural into pronouns, either, maybe Sora meant a promise to both Riku and Namine -" what? Sora's memories are of Namine and Namine alone. The only memory he has that includes Riku is how they used to play fight over who she would draw next. The whole reason Sora and Repliku keep fighting each other to the death is because they have the IDENTICAL MEMORY of making this promise under a meteor shower to Namine - and they both believe that THEY AND ONLY THEY made that promise, so they're fighting about it. Sora did not make a promise to Riku, not in these fabricated memories he's holding. He made a promise to Namine, and Riku was not even there. You think Namine fleshed it out that much? No. She copy+pasted the fabricated memories of herself from Sora to Repliku, after all. That's the whole reason they're fighting about it.

In sum: if you are saying that Sora could possibly be referring to anyone other than Namine in this scene, or that the line "あいつにあやまらなきゃ" (despite the surrounding context???) could secretly be about Riku in Japanese, then I don't believe you speak Japanese, or that you do but didn't actually look at the context of this scene, and therefore you are making a frankly insane reach.

also as i've said before. it's not that deep. YES japanese is context heavy but also when the context is clearly presented to you... that's it. that's how japanese works. it works by you having the context so that when you are in the converastion you understand who you are talking to you, even if they do something like drop the first-person pronoun from the sentence. aitsu is not vague to anyone speaking the language. it's only vague when you are a translator and were not given the whole context - and the translator here, working on GBA CoM, clearly had the whole context

"""aitsu is masculine-leaning, so Sora wouldn't use it for Namine, he must be talking about Riku""" is blatant misinformation, and I'd really appreciate if people would stop telling lies about my favorite Kingdom Hearts game on the internet, just for the sake of their shipping goggles <3

[rartalkstranslation]

@etrangeres

#imo his shift to aitsu is meant to indicate he feels emotionally closer to namine now#it's not a hard rule or anything#but anoko feels like there's a level of…distance?#prob bc so much about her is still unknown#but aitsu does indicate a level of familiarity#ie: the brainwashing is DEFINITELY working

OH.... THAT'S A FUN DETAIL I HADN'T THOUGHT ABOUT. THANK YOU.

[rartalkstranslation]

if you know you know.

aitsu is a gender neutral pronoun, full stop.

i know that anime often translates it to "that guy" or "this guy" but it's not masculine. it's not "neutral but masculine leaning".

listen to me. japanese does not have gendered pronouns like this. if japanese wants to gender something a pronoun, it has to add onna or otoko to it (onna no ko 女の子 girl, otoko no ko 男の子 boy, literally "child who is a girl" and "child who is a boy", because 子 ko, meaning child, is also genderless.)

aitsu is gramatically gendered in the fact that japanese has consistent ""gender"" for location. koko soko asoko (doko). koko here, soko there, asoko over there. (doko where).

you can read more about ko / so / a / do words here, thanks tofugu

location based: koitsu = this person here by me, soitsu = this person there by you, aitsu = this person over there far from either of us.

tofugu also says that koitsu is emphatic, you want to emphasize it. soitsu has no nuance. aitsu, meanwhile, is often used to refer to mutual friends who are not physically present - its' a person we both know but they are not here right now!

that's the nuance of it, not gender

"but japanese first person pronouns--" do not inherently have gender, they just have societal conventions that make their usage imply gender.

speaking of: koitsu / soitsu / aitsu are so genderless you can use them to refer to inanimate objects. you can use them to refer to situations. they are simply demonstrative pronouns and there is no gender attached because japanese does not, really, have gendered pronouns the way english does.

in sum: aitsu is not masculine, it is not gender-neutral but "masculine leaning" , aitsu simply does not have gender, because japanese does not have gendered pronouns

[rartalkstranslation]

some examples

so: translating aitsu as "he" or as "she" is perfectly valid, because, usually, the context makes it clear who the speaker is referring to, and presumably you know the gender of who they are referring to.

the gender is in the context - japanese is a context heavy language! there are probably cases where a translator has gotten it wrong because it was vague enough you couldn't tell. i definitely have had cases of seeing a character say aitsu and going well, hm, the rest of that sentence wasn't clear, so i'm not 100% sure who they're referring to, and since aitsu isn't gendered, i can't really narrow it down by gender.

which is also rough because like, english does in fact need a gender in that pronoun, even if singular they for gender neutral is catching on. who are they talking about? i don't know, and i also don't know the gender, because aitsu itself does not give me gender, so do i use he or she or they? you don't always know!

in fact, there's a good chance - THOUGH I AM NOT CHECKING, SO DON'T QUOTE ME ON THIS, - the reason that ffxiv nael has that "oh shit, that's a woman, uhhhhh, she stole her brother's name when he died" problem is that the gender was not clear to the english localizers in 1.0 (because, famously, japanese does not have gendered pronouns!), so when they got to 2.0 and coils they had to go oh, fuck, oh that's a woman model. uhhhhhh here let's add in some lore to rationalize our mistake.

it is in fact possible to translate aitsu wrong re the gender, because aitsu itself does not have gender, so it's up to the translator/localizer to figure out the context and that's SO HARD. sometimes. you know?

that said: here's an example where the context is ESPECIALLY clear who is being talked about, so it's very easy to translate, and there's literally no way the translator could have gotten it wrong:

Sora: あいつにあやまらなきゃ English: I have to apologize to her. English, localized: I really let her down...

you may be wondering "hang on, how is this obvious? you JUST said aitsu is gender neutral, and that inferring who Sora is referring to by using aitsu could be difficult, if there's no context!"

but let's look at JUST the context in this screenshot. he's holding Namine's good luck charm. also, this is Chain of Memories, the game in which Sora's memories are actively being rewritten to make Namine his Most Important Person. Pretty safe bet that he's talking about Namine.

Just to be sure, let's rewind and see a bit more of this converastion.

I'm not posting the whole scene in screenshots, but this is the scene where Sora pulls out the charm and tells Donald and Goofy the story behind it: that there was a meteor shower, and Namine was scared, and he promised to hit the meteors back into outer space to protect her and keep her safe, and so she gave him this charm, as a sign of their promise - which is significant, since she had the charm since she was a baby, and it meant a lot to her!

(here's a link to the game's script: searching "I really let her down" will take you right to it, since it's only said in the game once.)

Now, let's get the immediate context for Sora's aitsu line.

Donald: そんなに大切なものをくれたんだ... English: She gave you something so important to her... English, localized: And she gave it to you? Wow...

note 1: Donald doesn't use a pronoun at all, because Japanese doesn't generally use pronouns, since it's a language that depends on context. But since we are talking about Namine's good luck charm, and Sora just said that Namine gave it to him, the context is clear enough that we know Donald is talking about Namine giving Sora the good luck charm. Did Donald say "she"? no. but who else could he be talking about!

note 2: the english localization doesn't actually 1:1 match the japanese sentence, but that's not a bad thing! the same thing is conveyed just the same: that Donald is surprised that Namine would give something so important to her to Sora. both sentences convey this, so, mission accomplished.

Sora: うん。それでナミネと約束したんだ。 English: Yeah. So, I made a promise to Namine. English, localized: Yeah. So I promised her...

Oh, hey look! He said Namine's name outright! (Indicated in red.) If we were somehow worried about not knowing who they were talking about, we certainly aren't now!

Sora: これからは、お守りのかわりに　俺がナミネを守ってやるって English: From then on, this charm represented keeping my promise to protect Namine English, localized: "From now on, I'll bring you good luck. I'll keep you safe."

Oh, wow! The localization really went somewhere different with this one... but not necessarily in a bad way. The localization picks up the fact that this is a "good luck charm", and has Sora promise to bring Namine good luck - since the charm can't, if he's holding it.

If I was keeping it literal but more natural, I would probably go for "This charm represents the promise I made to protect Namine." Even still, Sora saying he'll bring her good luck in the stead of the good luck charm is cute... and it's clear that the localizer understands what is going on in this story.

Anyway, after that, Sora has this little "..." animation

and then we're back here, at our aitsu line

Sora: あいつにあやまらなきゃ English: I have to apologize to her. English, localized: I really let her down...

this time, with the timestamps and such included, in case you want to watch it yourself. the screenshots were all taken from this longplay of Chain of Memories, Part 5; the scene occurs at 1:17:20 (though the link should directly take you there).

note: the person playing definitely has emulator speedup through the cutscenes, so watch at half speed, or prepare to pause and go thru frame by frame with the comma and period keys on your keyboard.

final conclusion: wow. there is no possible way that Sora could be talking about anyone other than Namine, or that he could be thinking about anything other than apologizing to her / feeling bad for feeling like he failed her by letting her get captured by bad guys in this castle.

which isn't really a surprise, since, again, Chain of Memories is the game about Sora's memories getting so fucked with he only cares about Namine and her safety, to the point of abandoning Donald and Goofy once they are done with Twilight Town, telling Jiminy to shut up and stop talking if he's not going to be helpful (since Jiminy lives in Sora's hood and wasn't abandoned), and barely having any words to say to Tidus / Wakka / Selphie on the upcoming Destiny Islands world, to the point of barely remembering their names. Sora's dialogue from this point on consists mostly of "where's Namine" and "I promised to protect Namine, so I will," and "the only thing I care about is Namine".

and, you know, you may ask: "but what about Riku, he could be talking about Riku - aitsu is gender-neutral, after all", and I'll tell you that's not exactly what I meant. aitsu is less gender-neutral and more gender-void. There is no gender attached to it, only "this is the demonstrative pronoun I am using to refer to the mutual friend who I am talking to you about" - which, in this scene above, is very clearly Namine.

"But Japanese doesn't encode single/plural into pronouns, either, maybe Sora meant a promise to both Riku and Namine -" what? Sora's memories are of Namine and Namine alone. The only memory he has that includes Riku is how they used to play fight over who she would draw next. The whole reason Sora and Repliku keep fighting each other to the death is because they have the IDENTICAL MEMORY of making this promise under a meteor shower to Namine - and they both believe that THEY AND ONLY THEY made that promise, so they're fighting about it. Sora did not make a promise to Riku, not in these fabricated memories he's holding. He made a promise to Namine, and Riku was not even there. You think Namine fleshed it out that much? No. She copy+pasted the fabricated memories of herself from Sora to Repliku, after all. That's the whole reason they're fighting about it.

In sum: if you are saying that Sora could possibly be referring to anyone other than Namine in this scene, or that the line "あいつにあやまらなきゃ" (despite the surrounding context???) could secretly be about Riku in Japanese, then I don't believe you speak Japanese, or that you do but didn't actually look at the context of this scene, and therefore you are making a frankly insane reach.

also as i've said before. it's not that deep. YES japanese is context heavy but also when the context is clearly presented to you... that's it. that's how japanese works. it works by you having the context so that when you are in the converastion you understand who you are talking to you, even if they do something like drop the first-person pronoun from the sentence. aitsu is not vague to anyone speaking the language. it's only vague when you are a translator and were not given the whole context - and the translator here, working on GBA CoM, clearly had the whole context

"""aitsu is masculine-leaning, so Sora wouldn't use it for Namine, he must be talking about Riku""" is blatant misinformation, and I'd really appreciate if people would stop telling lies about my favorite Kingdom Hearts game on the internet, just for the sake of their shipping goggles <3

[rartalkstranslation]

if you know you know.

aitsu is a gender neutral pronoun, full stop.

i know that anime often translates it to "that guy" or "this guy" but it's not masculine. it's not "neutral but masculine leaning".

listen to me. japanese does not have gendered pronouns like this. if japanese wants to gender something a pronoun, it has to add onna or otoko to it (onna no ko 女の子 girl, otoko no ko 男の子 boy, literally "child who is a girl" and "child who is a boy", because 子 ko, meaning child, is also genderless.)

aitsu is gramatically gendered in the fact that japanese has consistent ""gender"" for location. koko soko asoko (doko). koko here, soko there, asoko over there. (doko where).

you can read more about ko / so / a / do words here, thanks tofugu

location based: koitsu = this person here by me, soitsu = this person there by you, aitsu = this person over there far from either of us.

tofugu also says that koitsu is emphatic, you want to emphasize it. soitsu has no nuance. aitsu, meanwhile, is often used to refer to mutual friends who are not physically present - its' a person we both know but they are not here right now!

that's the nuance of it, not gender

"but japanese first person pronouns--" do not inherently have gender, they just have societal conventions that make their usage imply gender.

speaking of: koitsu / soitsu / aitsu are so genderless you can use them to refer to inanimate objects. you can use them to refer to situations. they are simply demonstrative pronouns and there is no gender attached because japanese does not, really, have gendered pronouns the way english does.

in sum: aitsu is not masculine, it is not gender-neutral but "masculine leaning" , aitsu simply does not have gender, because japanese does not have gendered pronouns

[rartalkstranslation]

I recognize it would be unreasonable to ask you to watch a world in KH3 and also two Pirates of the Caribbean movies in Japanese, and I'm not quite, but something I just thought of is. I don't know if Davy Jones's heart is a "Kokoro" or a "Shinzou"? It's a literal beating heart, but he took it out to not be sad anymore, and when it's close to him he starts feeling sad again. And I don't know how that was translated when the films were released in Japan, and how that in turn affects how it gets used in KH3? Like, people talk about the pun of that bit in KH3, and. It was already a pun in the movies, in English? But, a pun for drama, and not comedy. Because in the movies it does seem to work like the KH Kokoro Hearts. Only is also a literal organ. And I wonder if, how it was translated for Japan, affected how the Japanese KH writers understood it?

Like, maybe they always said "kokoro" in Dead Man's Chest until it got opened up at the end?

In general, I'm curious about the way that. Kingdom Hearts is made by a Japanese company and written in Japanese, but a good chunk of the series deals with Disney movies and their lore, concepts, plots, symbolism and themes, which were made by a mainly American company in English.

And then when it gets released internationally, and translated back, I imagine the translators try to make the words match the way things were in the original films, but I can't help but wonder if someone, somewhere. Misunderstood something, because a concept didn't translate?

man these thoughts are so interesting, i can't just like, leave them in my inbox lol????? so i'm posting them for the world.

no i do not have the time to do that at the moment, but i definitely like. i see what you're getting at. these are fun questions!!!!!!!!

if anyone following me knows then sound off in the notes,

otherwise, like, maybe i'll try and get to this later--

[rartalkstranslation]

Mickey's Super Recognizeable Speech Patterns In JPN (Part 2?!)

i was playing kh1fm with a friend-who-is-blind-to-kh friend last night, and we got to the cutscene where Mickey reaches out to Riku in the Realm of Darkness. This is an unvoiced cutscene, so it's really unclear who is reaching out to Riku here, at least in English - a real mystery!

but it got me thinking. if it's pretty obvious it's Mickey in the JPN text for Sora's Dive into the Heart (post on that here) then... is it obvious it's Mickey here, too?

oh yep! literally first thing Mickey says is リク聞こえるかい？ (Riku, can you hear me?) - that's got that funny kai question particle!

(info about kai/かい here, here - it's a particle that is used for yes/no questions, and used to soften the question, so you don't sound as harsh)

as far as I've encountered, Mickey has a fondness for かい that no one else in the KH cast does. of course, Mickey has a lot of other things that make his "voice" distinctly Him, as is true of all character voice writing, but this use of かい is one of those quirks that makes it instantly obvious that it's Mickey.

footnote: in ENG character "voice" shows thru things such as: "this character doesn't use contractions" and "this character uses long complicated words", among other things; i really don't want to dissect that all for Mickey, like, that's silly, but trust me when i say his voice is Really Distinct in JPN, just like it is in ENG - when the localizers KNOW it's Mickey talking, anyway, and not just some random mysterious voice - and it's not just Mickey's use of かい

anyway, here's a "boku" for good measure. Again, as far as the main KH cast goes, "boku" is a first-person pronoun used only by Mickey and Donald and Goofy, so that also very quickly rules out this being anyone else.

(sidenote: this is dialogue about how they need to close the door from both sides. but like. i can assume that's, 閉じる but i have never seen that permutation of it in my life??? weird font choice, i guess.)

---

and then, tangent, here's some other places where these particular Mickey quirks (boku, use of kai) pop up, just to have some Screenshot Proof, i guess. research is research!

here he is in KH2, using boku,

僕からまだここ街にいるよ / As for me, I'll still be here

here he is in BBS, using かい to Aqua, and then in re:CoM, using だい

だいじょうぶかい？ / Is everything okay?

うわっ？何するんだい？くすぐったじゃないか / Haha, hey! What are you doing? That tickles!

mainly putting this up because dai/だい is a counterpart to かい - while かい is for yes/no questions, だい is the same but for questions of the what/where/who type (mentioned here)

"wait hey mickey just uses か there, not かい!" yeah japanese is a very context dependent language

and here's some other fun things I found while researching

this is the famous "Say fellas, did someone mention the door to darkness?" line , and it's really funny to me, because like. that's not what he's saying in japanese at all, and i get why they went with something else, due to what he's saying in japanese is:

ドア・トゥ・ダークネスは闇の扉という意味だね [DOOR TO DARKNESS(ENG)] means "door to darkness"(JPN), doesn't it?

which, yeah, fair. i too would do everything in my power to remove that from the english script, considering, like, that's useless to the english player

it's especially funny to me tho because this scene also has the famous (to me) "password? oh, you mean like a code!" moment, which i figured was this [says an english word, translates it to japanese word] kind of moment and, yep,

ぱすわーど？ ああ　合言葉のことだね

which is "password?(ENG) oh, wait, password!(JPN)"

which they were not given the chance to translate out, since the cutscene plays out as it does, not only with actually seeing Mickey say it, but also with Sora and co.'s response. lol.

okay that's everything. thanks for coming to a surprise Mickey's-really-recognizeable-character-voice-slash-speech-patterns, part 2!

also shoutout to Hana and Minami, a youtube channel where two friends Lets Play Kingdom Hearts (and other games), becuase I had to take my screenshots from them - digging up the JPN text is getting a lot harder than it used to be....? (I did forget to check Everglow, tho,)

[rartalkstranslation]

...Does Jane Porter say that Sora speaks English, in Deep Jungle, in the Japanese version of the first Kingdom Hearts game?

oh sure, this took about five seconds, so

Jane says: まあ　言葉はわかるのね？

Which is more like: "Oh, you understand language!"

tbh, english-centric as english is, this reads as identical to me to saying "oh, you speak English!" as far as (perhaps secondary) meaning goes - it's exactly what you'd say to one of Tarzan's friends when you aren't sure yet if they were raised by gorillas like he was or not

[rarmaster]

some research i did when ttyd for switch was announced; ppl noticed some lines got tweaked and i went and looked into each line from the trailer, both in eng and in japanese

turns out the script changes are happening at the japanese level, so it's not like ttyd is getting retranslated for funsies. they have to retranslate because the japanese script is being tweaked for quality control, and so the english version must, obviously, reflect these tweaks

here's my research, screenshots, notes from twitter, etc

--

i could clean this up for presentation but i'm focusing on preserving the revelations as they happened

--

12:18 PM · Sep 16, 2023

i dont think theyre retranslating ttyd, actually, I think they're just cleaning up the script. so much of that is 1:1 and the changes are extremely minor "we changed one word". ofc this is a really small sample, but.

again, small sample, but changing one of bowsers insults to be more nonsensical (fair) and making goombella clarify shes a junior and not just a student at her university does not a retranslation make....

tho ofc if it's not broke dont fix it, so if the localization was already solid minus a handful of errors, it would make sense that it looks like barely anything has changed at all. no need for them to not use the og script when the og script was already fine etc

well. there were several other lines of dialogue from the trailer that weren't in the video I retweeted, so let me comb those before i make any more statements.

---

1:22 PM · Sep 16, 2023

okay i've found nothing interesting every other line in the ttyd hd trailer looks to be 1:1 the same words from ttyd og, meaning the only changes from the trailer are: 1) goombella saying "junior" instead of "student" and 2) bowser saying "lunkhead" instead of "airhead"

AND . BIZARRELY. THIS LINE OF DIALOGUE WHICH HAS BEEN GIVEN TO FRANKLY INSTEAD OF GOOMBELLA.... .????? why did they do that. why did they do that. why did they do that. why did th

(original gamecube on left, switch trailer on right)

---

1:34 PM · Sep 16, 2023

[quote retweeting my images of the line that has been given to frankly]

just sitting here since i realized it likeなになになになに！！本当に！？！ナニ？！？本当じゃないか？ウソだろう？何？？？？？？？どうして？？？

this is goombella's line even in ttyd jp for the gcn so i'm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so baffled

here's the screenshots comparing the jp version for proof

gamecube left, switch trailer right

((the translation is literally what the english is.))

--

1:41 PM · Sep 16, 2023

me: idk they probably won't do anything crazy with ttyd's script them: [gives a line to frankly instead of goombella] me: WHAT. WHAT. HUH. WHAT. WHAT. HUH. NANI.

i don't know what to believe now. anything is fair game. these mad lads could do anything.

--

2:04 PM · Sep 16, 2023

anyway i don't expect more than minor tweaks to ttyd's script to match current quality standards; no full retranslation here.

And Then There's Whatever The Fuck Is Happening With Goombella 's Line Being Given To Frankly (yes, the gcn jp version is still goombella's line, before you ask)

--

(off screen, it occurred to me maybe i should check the other lines from the trailer in jp.....)

--

2:11 PM · Sep 16, 2023

なになになになになに？？？同じじゃないか？！

japanese text rendered for your pleasure:

gamecube:

あたしの名前はクリスチーヌ クリフォルニア大学に通っているのよろしくね！！

switch trailer:

あたしはクリスチーヌ！ クリフォルニア大学の3年生よ よろしくね！！！

((aside: they use the line break for sentences instead of punctuation, i guess! fascinating things i am learning about japanese textbox formatting standards....))

((aside 2: Goombella's name is "Christine" in JPN, and U Goom is called Kuru-fornia University, being a pun on kuribo (what Goombas are called in JPN) and . california. very cute))

-

ok so the crystal stars line is the same except who is saying it but goombella's introduction is jsut STRAIGHT different. i see the quality control is happening at the jpn level so they do, in fact, have to retranslate things

like its just minor word changes but. yeah. given goombella now says that she's a third-year student at university goom (kuri-fornia university in jpn. cute). instead of that she's from university goom then yes. yeah. the eng switch version obviously reflects that change.

i should probably comb the other lines of dialogue as well but that will have to wait

((i never did that, ftr))

--

2:24 PM · Sep 16, 2023

despite my surprise i genuinely respect the change to goombella introducing herself so much. they say the same thing but it's way clunkier/long-winded in the gcn script.... half those words did not, in fact, need to be there

but becuase "i'm known for attending this university" or "i'm from this university" is not a common way to introduce yourself in eng, the eng translation just. already removed the clunk. so the only apparent change in the eng script is goombella specifying what year she is

it's like "my name is goombella and i'm attending university goom, nice to meet you!" vs "hi i'm goombella! i'm a junior at U Goom. nice to meet you!" as far as the difference in vibe goes

not only do i think her introducing her university is more natural in the switch version but i also respect them dropping her going "my name is goombella" in favor of "i'm goombella" you know. they have just made the script more concise and easier to read/understand

sorry to not shut up but like. the switch version also did not require me to look up kanji. because i had never heard the phrase 大学に通っている (what they use in the GCN ver) before. i know what a 大学の3年生 is. and it's the same information being conveyed!!! ultimately!!

this leads me to a perhaps baseless assumption that some of the script changes also exist to make things easier to understand for a younger audience, which i do know paper mario has been seemingly written towards in the past ten years ANYWAY,,,,

but yeah i respect this. genuinely.

if only i understood WHY THEY GAVE FRANKLY GOOMBELLA'S LINE....!!!!!!

---

that's everything thanks guys

[rarmaster]

“sasuga wagahai no rival!!” - or, bowser is like really gay in paper mario: the origami king

localization/translation notes post about like two lines of dialogue that floored me when i saw them while watching someone play origami king in japanese lol

im a little bit biased but i also went from “idk mario/bowser is a fun ship sometimes ^v^” to converted wholeheartedly after two months of being unable to stop thinking about these lines of dialogue

but also just fun translation notes!!! between english and japanese!!!

Bowser, That’s Kinda Gay,

Keep reading

[rartalkstranslation]

put this post on main, figured i might as well reblog it here

if you followed me for kh, im sorry, but you have to also witness my bowsario agenda i freaking guess

excerpt from the first paragrah under the readmore:

i never thought i’d have strong opinions about mario localization but im sitting here shaking because some of the origami king dialogue from bowser is just. radically different. from what it was in jpn.

twice in japanese mario solves a puzzle and bowser is like “aha! just what i expected from my rival!!!!” but that’s not anywhere in english and im just. sitting here. one part mad about localization three parts in shock over how gay that is.

[rartalkstranslation]

I was playing through kh2 again and I realize when Roxas falls of the tower and talks telepathically with Kairi he goes, “Oh your that girl he likes!” Is that the same in the Japanese version? Or did the translators just have an agenda lol

知ってる　あいつが好きな子だ

(lit) I know you, you’re the girl that guy likes

it’s the same

unsurprisingly. kh writers have an Agenda already, the localization team doesn’t have to add anything

12/15/2024 addendum about japanese "ambiguity":

first of all let me be clear about the intention of anon's ask: there is NOTHING ambiguous about 好きな子/suki-na ko/"kid he likes". no agenda has been added, there plain in the original text, roxas is calling kairi the kid that sora likes

the "ambiguity" comes from the fact that TECHNICALLY there are no gendered words in this sentence, but Roxas IS saying to Kairi's face, I know you, you're that 子/ko/kid that あいつ/aitsu/"that person" likes.

you can make some kind of argument that oh! roxas didn't say girl! he said kid!! but he is saying. this to kairi's face. roxas saying to kairi's face "you're that kid he likes" means the same thing as roxas saying "you're that girl he likes" because. obviously he is referring to kairi. he is talking. to kairi.

"what about aitsu" aitsu = "that person" = the guy they are both talking about right now (sora) that they don't know the name of. english obviously translates this as "he" because that's the gendered pronoun that sora uses (aitsu itself is not gendered - japanese does not encode grammar into pronouns like english does. even first-person pronouns aren't gendered as much as they simply have societal expectations about who uses them.)

Japanese is a context-heavy language, so the context of the converastion happening right now changes the meaning of the words a lot. were Roxas talking to someone else, or about someone else, then

知ってる　あいつが好きな子だ

could just as easily mean "i know him(implied), he's(implied) that kid (子) she(あいつ) likes" (if roxas were talking about a third party)

or "i know you(implied), you're(implied) that boy(子) he(あいつ) likes" (if roxas were not speaking directly to kairi's face, and instead speaking to, riku's, i guess,)

or even "i know that(implied). i'm(implied) the boy(子) that xe(あいつ) likes" (if roxas pridefully referring to himself???)

but even with all the so-called "ambiguity" in the actual words, the context is clear. kairi and roxas have just made telepathic contact with each other, and kairi is like who are you, and roxas is like wait, ive seen you in my dreams. you're that girl that the guy i'm always dreaming about likes.

so. it's a 100% accurate translation.

also i think there is a danger here of leaning too hard into insisting japanese is ambiguous. here's the thing.

in english, saying to someone's face "you're that girl that he likes" is JUST AS AMBIGUOUS, the only extra information we are getting is the gender of girl (who we are talking to, so we know the gender of from the context due to WE ARE TALKING TO HER FACE) and the gender of "he", this third person we are talking about, which, if we both know who this person we are talking about is (which kairi and roxas do, even if they have both forgotten his name) is also not some kind of secret layer.

it's really genuinely not that deep.

[rartalkstranslation]

So, if you ever get a copy of the KHIII Ultimania, would you ever translate it yourself? There's a lot of translations out there right now, and people are getting angry and fighting over it a bunch, and rar I think you're a cool bean and a good noodle, so! I wanna know how you'd translate it, sorta?? Or, like, your personal translations of KH3 itself or.

i don’t have the money to afford the ultimania i think (though my friend is getting a copy, so maybe i could ask her for scans/pictures!!) and also the ultimania is Very Big so i don’t know if i’d really be able to translate the whole thing, just points of interest!

i don’t have any points of interest currently but uhhhhh i guess if anyone has something they’re curious about, shoot me an ask, and i can check it out for you

i just remembered there was something re: the stars in kh3 i wanted to check out so maybe i’ll do that soon--

[rartalkstranslation]

so ive been listening to chikai a lot and i just remembered that I heard "onegai" means "i'm begging you" and is the only instance of anyone in the series saying onegai that bit in khii where sora begs saix

okay i don’t remember any other instances of it occurring off the top of my head but like, it’s an important phrase in japanese (more equivalent to “please” than “i’m begging you”, it just depends on the context, because hoo boy you use it in daily life Constantly) so there’s no way that’s the only moment???

“onegaishimasu” is probably one you’ll hear more often, if that rings any bells, they’re the same word conjugated differently (casual vs polite form) 

i meant to take some time and do some casual digging for other instances in kh where “onegai” happens but ended up sending this to draft purgatory instead, oops

[rartalkstranslation]

Tales of Symphonia: Japanese Notes (Part 4)

I’m currently recording a playthrough of Tales of Symphonia with the Japanese voices, which was at least partly done so I could take notes of the differences between the Japanese and English in this game. 

In Episode 4, we talk about things that weren’t translation errors, and a couple different ways one can say ‘you’ in Japanese.. 

Watch Episode 4 here!

If you’d rather read this on google docs, head over here!

Notes on other episodes can be found here!

> This episode opens with some, er, “Desians”—Can I call them Renegades at this point? They’re Renegades, okay, I’m keeping a lid on some spoilers but not fucking all of them. Anyway it opens with them discussing how it’s unfortunate, there’s no way Lloyd will escape execution. However, if you know anything about the Renegades, you know that “killing Lloyd” is not on their agenda list. @texanona contacted me wondering if this was a mistranslation—it’s not!

Here’s screenshots of the lines in Japanese just for posterity. (Thanks again to EmriuTheKnight and their playthrough in Japanese!) They say essentially the same thing as in English.

Guard 1: …if that’s the case, I feel sorry for Lloyd

Guard 2: Yeah, there’s no way he’ll escape execution. 

The thing of note here is that we don’t see the entirety of what Guard 1 is referring to, just that “Lloyd won’t escape execution”. Perhaps Guard 1 is talking about how Lloyd won’t be able to escape the Desians, and the information was just omitted to make Lloyd and the player think that Lloyd was in immediate danger of execution, hence the need to escape. Otherwise, Renegades this far down on the ladder just aren’t privy to the full of the plan, I guess.

> At 1:41, Lloyd’s battle intro translates to “This will be an easy victory!”

> The English has Yuan say “Why you little—” but in Japanese he just straight up says kisama, which is the most insulting second-person pronoun you can use, often translated as “you bastard” but like most Japanese swears is only a swear if you choose to translate it as one.

> The next line is: “An exsphere! You’re Lloyd!?” which in Japanese is まさか、きさまロイドか？ It’s not a big difference other than that まさか (meaning ‘It can’t be!’, roughly, or other generic exclamations of surprise) was cut out, though Yuan’s surprise is probably conveyed well enough in his words/tone alone, really. Also he uses kisama for Lloyd again.

> The Renegades all call Yuan リーダー, literally, “leader”, said in English.

> Yuan uses watashi as his first-person pronoun of choice.

> Botta uses polite speech when addressing Yuan.

> Honestly I have never heard Yuan use a second-person pronoun for Lloyd that isn’t kisama, though perhaps towards the end of the game that changes. We’ll find out when we get there, I suppose.

> Botta uses kisama @ Kratos, again.

> Raine shows up and says “Ah, Lloyd, Genis told me what happened. I’m sorry for the trouble he caused you.” It’s roughly the same in Japanese, the Japanese just feels more like “Genis told me a lot of things. It seems like he’s a troublesome child, isn’t he? I’m sorry.”

> Lloyd uses anta (instead of say, omae,) when addressing Kratos during the night scene in Triet. They’re both words for “you”, with the only difference being that anta is “more polite”. It’s hard to make definitive calls this early in the game, but since Lloyd uses omae pretty consistently with Genis and Colette (Genis especially), it’s possible that Lloyd’s use of anta @ Kratos (which is a common thread) is indicative of the slight distance in their relationship. Like, they aren’t distant enough for Lloyd to use super polite forms or anything, but they aren’t close enough for Lloyd to use omae, you know? Maybe I’m reading too much into it.

> (I said in the first episode’s notes Lloyd uses omae for Kratos at some point, but I forget what I was referring to? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a thing that happens late-game, after they become closer, nor would I be surprised if it only came up in Tales of Fandom vol 2, which is post-game. I’ll keep you updated on this, as well, I suppose.)

> Since everyone loves swearing: Lloyd says kuso, here, which is translated as ‘damn’. This is pretty standard. Of course, kuso can be translated as ‘crap’ if you want to be more tame, or ‘fuck’ if you want to be more extreme, but this game is rated PG-13 so we ain’t getting anything more explicit than ‘bastard’.

That’s all for this episode!! If you want to keep an eye out for more posts like this, check out the tag for this series!

[rartalkstranslation]

oh, i just remembered, what does the dusk actually say in the prologue when it tells Roxas "we have come for you my liege"

It says the same exact thing in Japanese! Like, literally.

The line is: お迎えに参りました　我らが主人よ, which translates more literally to “we’ve come to welcome you, our master”, but like. That’s still the same thing, just with a little fuss over word choice.

The reason why this line is so clunky is that it’s one of the lines from Another Side Another Story/Deep Dive. There’s a lot of lines from KH1′s secret endings that they lifted straight and plopped into KH2′s script in this way, actually. I guess it’s because they wanted ASAS/Deep Dive to be foreshadowing?? And so they really really wanted the lines to be a 1:1 match, even when it didn’t make a lot of sense???

Other lines from ASAS/Deep Dive that were lifted for KH2 include: “What took you so long, Kairi” “His voice... It’s left me” “You are the source of all Heartless”, as well as the less clunky “This time I’ll fight” and “We’ll go together”.

You can find a full list of these lines on the khwiki’s page for ASAS, as well as a section telling you where each line shows up in KH2 at the end of the page.

I’m assuming all of them translate 1:1 from Japanese to English as well. (Maybe they don’t, and maybe I should check someday, but.) They’re only clunky because it feels like they bent backwards over themselves to fit them into a script that had no use for them anymore, but were too committed to the “foreshadowing” shtick to uh, rewrite them or toss them out. 

[rartalkstranslation]

Tales of Symphonia: Japanese Notes (Part 3)

I’m currently recording a playthrough of Tales of Symphonia with the Japanese voices, which was at least partly done so I could take notes of the differences between the Japanese and English in this game. The following is a list of differences and other interesting things I noticed from Episode 3 of the playthrough.

In Episode 3, we mainly talk about a handful of different ways you can refer to your parents.

Watch Episode 3 here!

If you’d rather read this on google docs, head over here!

Notes on other episodes can be found here!

> For some reason I didn’t mention it in Part 2, but for the record: Lloyd calls Dirk oyaji, instead of otousan. According to jisho.org, 親父 oyaji literally means just “one’s father”. So it’s probably got more formal connotations than otousan? Dirk being oyaji also means that when Lloyd’s talking about either of his two fathers (not that we’ll know who the other one is for a long time) (unless you’ve been spoiled), it’s really clear which one he’s referring to, because the other one gets tousan! I suppose if the localization had really wanted to keep this nuance, Lloyd could have called Dirk “papa” in English, not that it matters too much, because context usually makes it fairly clear which one he’s talking about without them having separate names. STILL.

> Lloyd uses kaasan, and not okaasan for his mom! It’s a minor thing that doesn’t mean much, just a lack of an honorific. (Maybe I could argue it’s more masculine, or more casual.) Really I’m just fond of pointing it out.

> While we’re on the subject of parent terms, Dirk uses hahaoya 母親to refer to Lloyd’s mom. Makes me wonder if the oya line of parent terms is like, a dwarf thing?? Or maybe just a Dirk thing. It’s interesting, nonetheless. (Also, it doesn’t actually come up in this episode! It comes up in the previous, I just… forgot about it.)

> Lloyd asks “So you’re forgiving me?” and… it’s really a minor thing I don’t even have to point out, but it’s by recognizing such minor things and pointing them out that I’m getting my practice, so: In Japanese, Lloyd uses the giving form of to forgive, 許してくれる yurushitekureru, which has connotations more like “So you’re doing me the favor of forgiving me?” The localized English is fine and more natural, but like I said, the point of this is to note down these things!

> Again, really minor: Dirk says “You’re my son, regardless of blood” and instead of 俺の息子 ore no musoko, he says 俺の子供 ore no kodomo, which means he says “you’re my child,” and not son, but. Again, it doesn’t matter, I’m just having fun pointing things like this out.

> Lloyd calls both Marble and Phiadra Marble-obachan, Phiadra-obachan, which like Dirk-ojisan is an honorific that happens to point out they are, grandmas. It’s probably considered polite even though it’s strange in English, though it’s definitely a little more cheeky than just Marble-san, (which is what Genis calls her).

> Colette’s letter is written in polite speech! From what I know about letters in Japanese, this is definitely not a surprise (they tend to be more formal than spoken Japanese). Also, considering Lloyd’s comment that it “reads like a will”, and the fact it kind of is one, Colette may have also used polite speech for that reason as well.

> Forcystus shows up and says 我の名は ware no na wa, which 1) 我 ware is the most pretentious first-person pronoun you can use for yourself (see my notes about Remiel) and 2) that’s not even the proper grammar for it??? I mean I guess it’s obviously allowed, but up until this point I have only encountered 我が名 waga na, (the waga being what’s important) because 我 is special and has its own conjugation for being possessive, 我が, except here Forcystus just uses the regular old possessive formula, pronoun+の, and I’m?? Kind of reeling?? I can’t make any assumptions on what this means, I’m just in shock over it being a thing I just heard.

update: In the OVA he uses “waga na wa” like a normal person so I????

> Rando Desian dude uses 我々wareware, for his ‘we’, which actually as a first-person plural pronoun is less pretentious than a first-person singular pronoun. You see company presidents and members use it to refer to their company as a whole, so it’s more common than singular ware. Granted, since it’s coming from a Desian, maybe the intent is still to be pretentious. Either way it’s a much different flavor than 俺たち ore-tachi.

> When addressing Forcystus directly, the Desians use polite speech, though they used casual when addressing Lloyd. Not that I would have expected anything else. (More detailed nuances of this here.)

> Marble also uses the verb stem + nasai command form, or at least she does here. As I said when I first brought it up with Raine, it’s often used by parents/teachers, which makes sense for Marble.

> Genis says “What was that voice? It sounded like Marble!” But in Japanese, instead of It sounded like Marble, he says It can’t be! Marble!? まさか！マーブルさん？！

> In English, Marble says “Thank you, goodbye” but in Japanese it’s just “I was so happy…” (Or maybe “you made me so happy”) and then she dies.

> Lloyd apologizes to the mayor with a gomen-nasai, instead of just gomen, which shows just how bad he really does feel about this.

> Lloyd also uses polite speech when he agrees to leave (14:22). He’s taking this situation seriously.

> I learned that 悪い warui means not just ‘bad’, but can also mean ‘at fault’. Genis uses it constantly and the English translates it as “at fault”, which jisho.org then confirms.

> At 15:20 Lloyd uses sumanai to apologize, which doesn’t have any ~deep meaning~, it’s just a different way of apologizing vs gomen. Mainly I’m just marking down every time it shows up. The only thing to say about sumanai is that it’s more likely to be used by guys, according to this, and based on the fact I’ve yet to hear it said by a female character. I’ll update if that changes.

Since the scene in the village is the final one with voices (other than some skits I don’t have interesting notes on,) that concludes this episode! If you want to keep an eye out for more posts like this, check out the tag for this series!

[rartalkstranslation]

Tales of Symphonia: Japanese Notes (Part 2)

I’m currently recording a playthrough of Tales of Symphonia with the Japanese voices, which was at least partly done so I could take notes of the differences between the Japanese and English in this game. The following is a list of differences and other interesting things I noticed from Episode 2 of the playthrough.

Episode 2 is shorter than Episode 1, and also has a lot less interesting facts. I could have combined Episodes 2 and 3 into a single post, but I’ve already been procrastinating on posting this for two weeks now, so...

Watch Episode 2 here!

If you’d rather read this on google docs, head over here!

Notes on Episode 1 (and in the future, other episodes) can be found here!

> When Genis gives Colette her birthday present, in ENG she just says “No it’s fine I love your cookies!!” But Japanese has an added “your cookies are delicious and so I love them”.

> I accidentally skipped the text box before Colette could finish thanking Genis, oops. My bets are on it was just “domo arigatou” but did she add a gozaimasu at the end? We’ll never know! 

> I forgot to mention it earlier, but Lloyd has a post-battle line that’s literally just “All right!” in English. (You can see it at 8:50.)

> Marble uses more honorific leaning speech, “sochira” to refer to Lloyd. (It’s a politer version of “sore”/ ‘that (person) over there’). And I thiiink I heard her add the honorific o- to tomodachi. (However, adding the o- prefix to words is also just called “beautification”, something which female speakers tend to do.)

> Marble ends a lot of her sentences with “wa”, which as far as end-of-sentence particles go, carries a feminine vibe.

> Genis and Colette call Dirk ダイクおじさん which is really kind of just “old man Dirk”. ダイク being Dirk’s name in Japanese.

> 16:20, Genis says “What? Aren’t we gonna get in trouble?!” which is still, basically what it says in Japanese, the Japanese is just more literally “Are you sure that’s okay?” “そのことをしていいの？”

> Lloyd says “Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?” In Japanese he says “バカ、いいんだよ” lit. “Idiot, it’s fine.”

> Upon examining the jump Lloyd made down a cliff, Forcystus says “How did a mere human make that kind of jump?” but in Japanese it’s something more like “What happened just now… Is that really just the power of a human?” I probably would have localized it the same way, but noticing even the little differences is all part of my practice, so.

> The scene where Colette and Lloyd say goodbye (starting at 31:00 exactly) is like… It’s translated literally in English and still has the same feel, but knowing that saying “sayonara” in Japan is a loooot less common than saying “goodbye” in English (sayonara being reserved for more permanent goodbyes) the transition from Colette’s “ja ne” (see you later) to Lloyd’s “ashita na” (see you tomorrow) back to Colette with a final, seemingly unnecessary “sayonara” (goodbye) punches just a Lil Bit more.