What the Japanese Translation Tells Us about the Character Trapped in the Code
If you have been active in the Deltarune fandom for any amount of time, you have likely come across discussions of the unused strings of text found in the game files, seeming to contain dialogue from a character who is lost somewhere.
Here are the strings in English, in case you forgot:
“Where…”,
“Where am I?”,
“Hello…? Anyone…?”,
“Is… is anybody out there…?”,
“Someone!? Anyone!? Can anyone hear me!?”,
“…”,
“It’s dark.”,
“It’s so dark here.”,
“Someone, anyone, if you can hear me…”,
“Say something… please…”,
The identity of the character saying these lines has been the subject of much theorizing, with Dess, Asriel, Ralsei, and even the discarded vessel being some suggestions, but overall these lines do not provide much information to go on.
I believe, however, that we might be able to find more clues in the Japanese version of these lines:
“ここは…”,
“どこ…？”,
“ねえ…誰か…”,
“誰か…いないの？”,
“ねえってば！誰か答えてよ！”,
“…”,
“暗いよ…”,
“真っ暗だ…”,
“お願い… 誰か… 聞こえてるなら…”,
“なにか…言ってよ…”,
In all previous analyses of the Japanese translation I have seen, these lines have been dismissed due to the fact that they do not contain first-person pronouns, which would generally help clarify the gender of the speaker. First-person pronouns are not the only way in which such information can be conveyed in Japanese, however, and I would like to draw your attention to a few aspects of two of these lines in particular:
“誰か…いないの？”,
“ねえってば！誰か答えてよ！”,
“Is no one…there?”
“Hey, I said! Someone answer me!”
While the interrogative particle の (no) can technically be used by males, it almost always carries feminine connotations and is therefore used mostly by females.
ねえってば (neetteba) is an expression of impatience used when the speaker is attempting for the second time to get someone’s attention. It is extremely childish, and the ってば ending in particular also carries feminine connotations.
The imperative ending てよ (teyo) of the command 答えてよ also has feminine and childish connotations.
As such, it is likely that the character speaking in these strings is a female child (or at least a character that speaks in such a manner–notably, Flowey affects this persona when he attempts to appear cute and nonthreatening).
This dialogue is actually highly similar to the way Noelle speaks in the Japanese version, albeit with a more childish tone, so the speaker could be Noelle when she was younger (or perhaps even Noelle at her current age, if she were very afraid and this were making her sound more childish). It also lends some credence to the interpretation of the speaker as Dess, as she is female, though I and the majority of the fandom have interpreted her as being teenaged and a bit masculine, so if this character is in fact Dess, perhaps the events of these strings occurred when she was younger than previously thought, or perhaps she will turn out to be a bit more feminine than the fandom interpretation of her. It is of course also possible that this character is not in fact Dess. While the femininity of the speaker might also call into question the Asriel or Ralsei interpretation, the connection of these two characters (whether confirmed or simply theorized) to Flowey, who as previously mentioned sometimes speaks in a similar manner to this unknown character, makes it hard to definitively rule them out. Heck, despite generally speaking in a highly masculine manner, considering the fact that she occasionally uses the hyper-feminine pronoun atashi when caught off guard, it could even be a young Susie!
Also of note is the fact that the Japanese version of these strings also clarifies the “… can anyone hear me? Help…” line from Spamton in Chapter 2:
I had seen some disagreements as to whether this was in fact the character in the code speaking through Spamton or simply Spamton himself speaking, but as you can see above, these lines match exactly those spoken by the character in the code, down to the feminine の discussed earlier, which Spamton would presumably not use, as he is male and uses the hyper-masculine pronoun ore in casual speech. We can therefore safely presume that this is indeed the character in the code speaking, and not Spamton himself.
Overall, we still do not have concrete evidence pointing to any specific character being the speaker of these lines, and this post might have created more questions than it answered, but I hope I have nonetheless provided some more information to incorporate into to your theorizing lol
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