Granblue Fantasy Side Story: Memories of Arshivelle (Chapter 3)
Hey, everyone! Have another chapter. :)
There are a few localizations that I had to do here that I should talk about briefly, just for transparency.
The first relates to Annette’s accent. Her Japanese word choices (when not casting a spell) are decidedly masculine, expressing that her personality is pretty strongly tomboyish, and that she should be written with a brash demeanor. She also has a tinge of Kansai dialectic choices in her words, though it’s not nearly as pronounced as someone like Yuel, which implies that she’s intended to come across as somewhat low-class, but probably not so far as to appear as a country hick sort of person. I thought about what sort of accent would convey this sort of demeanor and personality in a natural fashion to a Western audience, and ultimately concluded that an Irish accent would probably get the job done. Obviously, this is a complete creation from whole cloth on my part, but given that I can’t exactly literally convey “a slight Kansai accent with a masculine tinge” in English, I figured this would be the next best thing to keep the effect on a native English reader the same as the original script would’ve been on a native Japanese reader.
On the other hand, when Annette is casting a spell, she uses somewhat archaic word choices like waga and attaching the particle yo directly to a subject, which are completely unlike her normal speaking tone of voice. I followed suit by having her speak in Shakespearean English for those sections, and I translated the yo attachment to a subject as “I beseech you” - not at all a direct translation, but my approximation as the intention of emphasizing her address towards the element she’s using.
The second relates to the way Pommern first talks to Annette that upsets her, and then how he corrects himself after that. In Japanese, there are three different auxiliary verbs you can use after the -te form of a verb to talk about doing that action for someone. The standard verb is ageru, which is typically used in a neutral setting where the social hierarchy difference between the speaker and the listener is either equal or unknown - for example, to speak of telling someone something, one might say oshiete ageru. However, there also exist two others, the first of which is kudasaru, which is used in cases where the speaker’s status is lower than that of the listener’s status; and the second of which is yaru, which is used in cases where the speaker’s status is higher than that of the listener’s status.
In the original Japanese, Pommern first says to Annette, Owari ni shite yarou, which literally means, “Let me bring this to an end for you,” but contains two things that offend Annette - firstly, the fact that he uses a form of -te yaru, implying that he thinks she’s at a lower social status than he is, and the second is using the auxiliary verb in the first place, which implies that he believes that resolving things would be doing her a favor. Then, after the conflict, he amends his statement to, Owari ni shiyou, which literally means, “Let’s bring this to an end,” with both of those previously mentioned aspects now absent from his words.
In English, there’s no direct way to translate this, so as a stand-in, I had Pommern use somewhat belittling language the first time in a way that would indicate that he’s not treating her as a serious equal, and then had him use much more polite and respectful language the second time. Hopefully, that has the same sort of effect for an English audience as the original would’ve had on a Japanese audience.
