Paper Mario (マリオストーリー): Dialogue Study 5
Hello, time to break down some more Japanese sentences! If you want more, check out the "darcx dialogue study" tag. Last post was introducing Bowser as he confronts Peach after seizing her castle. Now Mario has jumped into frame and Bowser of course has some comments about this.
やはり 出おったな！あいかわらず ワガハイの じゃまばかりするヤツめ⋯
For the breakdown, I'll switch to kanji where appropriate, and forgo the spaces.
やはり出おったな！: Sure enough, you have the nerve to show yourself na!
やはり, you may see more often as やっぱり, is a pretty useful adverb/phrases for when you knew something was gonna happen. It can have the same vibe as "I knew it!" or "Just as I thought!" As you can see, there's a lot of creative freedom you have for localization when it comes to words like this.
Next is 出おった. If you've been following along, you've already seen this おる as kind of an old fashioned or high register form of いる. And indeed, when attached to the て form of verbs, it is pretty much that. Here however, it is attached to the 連用形 form, or the "-masu" stem, where it has the same effect as the modern やがる, used to express contempt for the person's actions you're talking to. "Have the nerve to" is often given as a translation, but just like やはり/やっぱり, there's a wealth of options for accurate localization.
The な particle here is acting as a more masculine-coded version of the ね particle.
相変わらずワガハイの邪魔ばかりするヤツめ⋯: You rat, all you do is just get in my way, as always.
A bit awkward to put into English literally... I tried to provide a wording where the meaning is pretty much the same despite being a clunky. 相変わらず and ワガハイの should be pretty clear here.
邪魔する is a verb for being a hindrance/obstacle/etc. Putting ばかり after the noun, 邪魔, gives the sense of "just," "only," "nothing but," etc.
"相変わらずワガハイの邪魔ばかりする" all comes together to modify ヤツめ! This is broken up into ヤツ + め. ヤツ is a word for a person that is very casual. It can be friendly or derogatory depending on the tone an context. め is a suffix you can attach to words that refer to others that further express contempt, kind of a "derogatory suffix," if you will. As usual, there's really no one good way to translate this into English. To me, in this sentence, adding the め to ヤツめ feels like the "scathing 'you'" you use when you're belittling someone, and I chose the word "rat" because it feels appropriate for Bowser's Japanese persona. In reality, a lot of the times you see ヤツ (also written as やつ or 奴) it may be more akin to saying "dude," though.
So a really literal translation might look like: "I knew you'd dare show yourself! Damn guy who, as always, does nothing but get in my way..."
Compare to the official English localization: "[...] I expected you to turn up, right on cue. You're just as annoying as ever."
The やはり出おったな！sentence was mostly translated pretty evenly, but all this talk about Mario being a pest who does nothing but gets in Bowser's way is just reduced to "You're just annoying," lol. It's an understandable decision, trying to encapsulate everything the Japanese line said would be wordy. I said last time that English Bowser's characterization is that of a school bully, and I think this continues to show. Whereas the Japanese Bowser, all-powerful King of Koopas, calls Mario the ever present pest he is!
こんどこそは キサマなどに じゃまは させんぞ！
I won't let the likes of pests get in my way this time, that's for sure zo!
今度こそは: 今度 = "this time," while こそは (kosowa) adds a sort of emphasis, in that it draws special attention to the noun it's attached to, to either indicate a sort of limit, or to really mean "for sure." You also see this as just こそ, I'm not really sure if there's a meaningful difference between こそ and こそは, other than you'll likely see just こそ more often.
キサマなど: キサマ is a very insulting word. It's kind of used as a second person pronoun but Japanese "pronouns" aren't that functionally different from nouns, so, you'll see it translated a lot of the times as "bastard" or something. Since concepts of profanity are handled differently between the two languages though, I'm sure you would agree that for a Rated E Mario title, Bowser's not gonna call Mario a bastard, something non-vulgar but still insulting is more appropriate for a more literal translation. など is used to sort of "broaden the scope," let's say, kind of the opposite of こそ(は). Mario is just an example of the kind of chump that's no match for Bowser!
させんぞ: If you expect this to be a verb, at first this looks like a very weird verb and verb conjugation if you're not used to reading Japanese. And it is a verb! Plus the forceful particle ぞ. So what's させん? Well it's actually a shortening of させない! させる is the "causative" of する. Usually translated as "to make" or "to cause to" do, but it can also mean "to allow to" or "to let" do, which, context here makes it obvious Bowser's saying he will not allow someone to hinder him. This verb is why there's a に after キサマなど, when the verb is in the causative form, に marks the thing that is being made/allowed to do something!
Compare the official English localization: "Unfortunately for you, there's nothing you can do this time."
Something to note about this pair of localizations is the attention to symmetry: There is no symmetry in the English version. In Japanese, Bowser's second box here says 邪魔はさせんぞ, which is in direct reference to the previous box where he says 邪魔ばかりする - which was left untranslated in the English localization... So it would make sense to also not translate it in the second box too. This second box is definitely the most different the two versions have been, both do retain the sense of "This time is different!" Japanese Bowser is just a bit more mean spirited about it. Maybe the English developers didn't want to hurt the players' ego too bad?
