
Games with Famous Bad Translations into Japanese - polm23
https://legendsoflocalization.com/games-with-famous-bad-translations-into-japanese/
======
euske
There's a more elusive issue in translating English into Japanese that's often
overlooked: the two languages have very different "axes" of freedom. One of
such examples is honorifics. Japanese has a massive variety of words in
different politeness, and it's very common for Japanese novels to exploit its
freedom. But English has little varity in it, so this freedom is often not
utilized in a translated Japanese. Another type of freedom is the creative use
of Chinese characters. On the other hand, Japanese has almost no concept of
rhymes (because its phonetics is not based on syllables), so it's very hard to
convey the feel of rhyming in Japanese text (as a native Japanese guy, I still
don't quite get it either). I don't think these "axes" are comparable in one
way or another, and it probably adds another layer of difficulty.

~~~
hechang1997
This is very strange to me. Isn't Japanese supposedly to be very easy to rhyme
due to its very simple phonetics?

~~~
laurieg
This is correct. In Japanese it's so easy to rhyme things that rhymes just
aren't interesting or unusual.

~~~
earthboundkid
Japanese rap tries to make the rhymes more interested by rhyming multiple
syllables instead of just one.

------
tkgally
Translation is always difficult, but especially so when the translator does
not know the overall context and intended use of the text. If one is
translating a novel, most of the context necessary to understand, say, a line
of dialogue is right on the page. According to a talk I heard about twenty
years ago by a game translator working between Japanese and English, however,
at that time all translators usually had to work with were isolated bits of
text in Excel files. No wonder so many mistakes have crept into localized
video games.

In her talk, she stressed the importance of actually playing through the game
while translating, but said that the finished game often wasn't available and
that deadlines or low translation rates could make that unfeasible.

I was a freelance translator myself at the time, mostly doing business-related
texts, and her talk did not make me want to go into video game translation.

~~~
Legogris
One great example of that was how in some later Sims game (2 or 3), one of the
actions possible on a bonsai tree in the Swedish version is "Katrinplommon",
translated from "prune" \- unfortunately, prune as in a dried plum, not the
pruning of plants.

~~~
elygre
Ah, nice! I guess all languages have legions of these. In Norway, dell sold
computers with “brannkabel”, or “burn cable” [1].

[1] IEEE 1394 — FireWire.

~~~
toyg
Considering the eventual hackability of Firewire, maybe the translation was
prescient... you’re gonna get burnt by that cable!

~~~
ejolto
That makes no sense in context of Norwegian as "get burnt by" is an English
idiom.

Closest Norwegian equivalent to getting burnt I can think of is "å få lang
nese" which translates into "to get a long nose", e.g. you get a long nose
when someone tricks you. So in that case the cable should be called IEEE 1394
— LongNose.

Translation is difficult..

------
corey_moncure
I've seen Let's Plays of the Japanese translation of Portal and felt that it
misses the sardonic notes of GLaDOS' script, and as a result falls completely
flat. In my opinion, this aspect is essential to the Portal experience. It's
not that I couldn't think of how to express certain lines in Japanese, rather
it just seemed that the translation team didn't get the jokes at all.

That said, translating jokes can be very, very difficult. Sometimes you're
lucky and there's a low hanging fruit to grab, a pun that works in both source
and target languages, or a similar idiom that's recognizable if you switch out
a word with another one in the same category. All too often with language
pairs as distant as English and Japanese, you just end up writing your own
joke.

Having grown up with "spoony bard", "this guy are sick" and many other
memorable zingers, it is somehow ironic, somehow comforting, to know that bad
translations aren't a one-way street.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I'm not entirely sure you meant it that way, but "spoony bard" is _not_ a bad
translation, as evidenced by its inclusion in every official translation of
FF4 since Woolsey's. The bard is indeed spoony[0], and it is the kind of
archaic language you might expect from an old man like Tellah.

[0][https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spoony](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/spoony)

~~~
hapless
It's a correct translation, but funny because of its stilted language.

It would have been merely old-timey in Japanese, but in English it's rendered
as centuries-old vernacular. "Spoony" ceased to be common language in the 19th
century. "Bard" in the _18th_ , except in limited senses referencing archaic
usage. No one is that old!

It's not _wrong_ , just a little _too far._

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
You'll note that in the fantasy genre, such archaic words as _bard_ are
actually quite common, so I don't think 'spoony' is ridiculous at all. It is
not uncommon for media to use completely made up words, why is pulling a
single instance of an archaic one "too far"?

------
fenomas
This reminds me of an interview I read with the guy who did the Japanese
localization of Overwatch (a game that I imagine this article would mention if
it was updated).

The interviewer asks what the localizer thought about all the weird Japanese
dialog and copy in the English version of the game, and he answers to the
effect that: a lot of the text would definitely be out of place in a Japanese
title, but on the other hand it kind of fit with the game's off-kilter style.
He likened it to the way Hollywood movies often indiscriminately mix Asian
cultures together, saying he was fond of the effect, and that "fixing"
everything in localization might break the humor. So when Blizzard asked him
for input he says his answer was "Frankly the Japanese is pretty messed up but
let's go with it".

source (JP):
[https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2017/03/17/72229.html](https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2017/03/17/72229.html)

~~~
princeb
the two japanese characters in overwatch were more "blizzard" than japanese.
one of them, before doing some special skill, would shout "taste my blade" in
japanese. unsurprisingly, this phrase also appeared in the warcraft series as
part of the blademasters voice lines. the other yells something like "dragon
devour my enemies".

it's all a bit odd of course, because in typical japanese fighting games (or
even chinese wuxia films) the characters normally yell the name of the skill
before doing their special skill, like "wave fist" or "dragon subduing 18
palms", rather than yelling something the hero intends to achieve. they'll
never say something like "die!" because that's just not heroic.

the game is nice, but those two characters just feel very not-japanese, even
with all japanese work for them.

~~~
fenomas
The "shout the name of the move" thing is neither here nor there, I think.
Overwatch isn't a fighting game, and voice lines like that aren't common in
shooters (Japanese or otherwise).

For the rest, I'd guess it's a simple matter of Blizzard not having anybody in
house who can check content. They've never done JP versions for any of their
games, and the mistakes they make tend to be of the "copy/pasted from Google
translate" variety. Also the 3rd-party localizer in the interview mentioned
Blizzard asking him to check their Japanese, even though that would have been
pretty late in the process.

(One also suspects that the JP voice lines may largely be the work of the
voice actors. That would explain why Genji (voiced by a native speaker) has
tons of Japanese voice lines, while Hanzo speaks only English outside of his
ult.)

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
A friend of mine did some freelance Japanese-to-English translation for a
video game you've heard of some time ago. Her source material consisted, in
entirety, of an Excel spreadsheet with one column called "Japanese" (filled)
and another called "English" (empty). That's it: she never even saw the game
in question, and wasn't familiar with the series in general either. And then
we wonder why the translations are bad...

~~~
laurieg
This is maddeningly common, even these days.

Unfortunately, many mono-lingual people don't realise that language does not
map perfectly from one word/phrase to another.

When I used to translate people in the office would come up and ask me "What's
xxxxx in English?". I would reply "Well, what situation is this?". More often
than not they would switch off at this point.

~~~
pdpi
I'm more or less bilingual (Portuguese/English), and it annoys me to no end
how often I have the exact word I want, but it's in the "wrong" language.
Often, the alternatives in the "right" language just lack the appropriate
connotation/subtext.

~~~
shifto
I feel this about language in general. Sometimes it takes way too many words
or sentences to convey what I mean.

I think it's time we develop some cool telepathy tech.

------
hapless
I enjoyed plugging these into translate.google.com to see what machine
translation made of poor applications of Japanese.

The best one was the "Brutality Bonus," which after re-translation from the
developer's Japanese, came back as something like "Allowance for Atrocities."
Not _wrong_ , but hilariously off-kilter. It still makes complete sense, but
it utterly fails to convey the original tone.

I can see, at some remove, why this stuff is funny!

------
umvi
Opposite direction, but Super Mario RPG's localization team apparently didn't
get half of the pop-culture and cross-game references of Mallow's "psychopath"
ability and the net result is that English "psychopath" text is hilariously
non-sensical.

For example, if you use "psychopath" on Magikoopa, the English translation is
"That's... my child?" which makes zero sense. A better localization would have
been "You're that baby from that one time!?" \- a reference to Super Mario
World 2: Yoshi's Island.

There's also a Donkey Kong-looking enemy named "Guerilla" whose psychopath
text is "Don't confuse me with someone else!" In Japanese though, the enemy's
name is more like "Dankey Kang" and his psychopath text is "This character has
no relation to any persons, living or dead. Any resemblance is purely
coincidental." (apparently this particular case was more due to memory
constraints than the localization team "not getting it" though)

You can read more here: [https://legendsoflocalization.com/the-pop-culture-
obsessed-m...](https://legendsoflocalization.com/the-pop-culture-obsessed-
monsters-in-japanese-super-mario-rpg/)

------
jhanschoo
On a related note, I'd like to highlight two localizations that completely
parodied their source material:

from English -> Japanese, there's Transformers: Beast wars

I can't find subtitled clips of them, so I'll just link to discussions on what
changed.

[https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Beast_Wars:_Transformers_(cartoon)#J...](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Beast_Wars:_Transformers_\(cartoon\)#Japan)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/transformers/comments/8zqixk/why_is...](https://www.reddit.com/r/transformers/comments/8zqixk/why_is_it_that_when_a_western_transformer_show_is/)

In the other direction, you have Ghost Stories. I'll let this clip compilation
do the talking

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0w6EffYfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0w6EffYfY)

------
SeanLuke
Going the other way. When I lived in Japan I would collect Japanese products
with unfortunate English names or ad copy. And there were so many. "Angel
Relief" cookies ("Relieve the Relief!"). Dunk Beer. Grape and Lemon "Skat"
drink. Creep. But easily my favorite were boxes of Kleenex which showed up
regularly at my local 7-11. They were festooned with cute pictures of puppies
or kittens. But on the outside they said simply "Tissues of Puppy" or "Tissues
of Kitten".

Japanese friends would ask why this was so horrifying sounding. I gave up
explaining what "tissues" meant beyond Kleenex. So I eventually asked them to
consider how you might get a "tissue of puppy", perhaps by freezing the puppy
and then slicing very thinly. They got the idea.

~~~
IIAOPSW
There's an obscure island somewhere in Japan where they force the native
Pocari to do hard labor and then they get wrung out like wet laundry for their
sweet Pocari Sweat.

------
gnarbarian
All your base are belong to us!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQE66WA2s-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQE66WA2s-A)

Growing up in the 80s I remember thinking that this was just a quirky aspect
of vidja games. I mean I understood it and it was weird. but it didn't
register as bad English until I was older.

a winner is you!

------
murat124
When I first played Modern Warfare years ago I thought "no Russian" meant
don't kill any Russians. I guess I'm not smart.

------
beebmam
This person (Clyde Mandelin aka Tomato) did the fan translation/localization
of Mother 3 into English. That game profoundly affected my life and I'm so
thankful to him for making it possible for me to experience it

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gatherhunterer
The odd thing about the “all your base” line is that it communicates the
correct meaning in a way that is obviously incorrect and that is why it is so
funny and memorable. When the language is technically correct but
mistranslates the meaning it is easier for a mistranslation to go unnoticed or
to be subjected to over-analysis in order to justify the poor translation, as
detailed in the article.

Translation and interpretation belong to a nuanced inter-lingual skillset. One
cannot expect anyone who speaks two languages fluently to correctly translate
text between the two.

~~~
anonu
That's usually why translators are called interpreters.

~~~
eropple
Interpreters are a type of translator. The reverse is not true, generally
speaking.

There is also _localization_ , which is what Clyde (the article author) does,
and it incorporates both translation and cultural understanding.

------
WalterBright
When the Olympics were in Beijing a few years back, a fast food vendor hung a
large banner behind his establishment that read "404 Not Found".

He'd evidently typed his food offerings into a translator, and printed the
result on his banner.

------
aasasd
Russian had its fair share of funny bad translations. In a pirate version of
Starcraft (I think), ‘Overmind’ was translated as ‘надмозг’, which is pretty
much ‘above-brain’. So for most of the 2000s, ‘надмозг’ was slang for bad
_translators_.

------
1wd
"The bizarre, true story of Metal Gear Solid’s English translation - Written
by the man who did it" is quite a fun behind-the-scenes story about Japanese-
to-English translation. Apparently the original creators did not appreciate
creative translation that improve flow, and preferred to go with more
nonsensical but "accurate" (word-by-word) translations for the sequels.

[https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/18/20696081/metal-gear-
solid-...](https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/18/20696081/metal-gear-solid-
translation-japanese-english-jeremy-blaustein)

------
greggman2
Random comments

* Translation is hard. If you needed something translated to Japanese how would you know it was well done? Maybe you personally have a bunch of Japanese friends or colleagues but most people don't. And so it is going the other way.

* Especially for games/movies/books translation is not enough. The content needs to be localized. For example jokes need to be funny in the target language. Subtle innuendo in the original language needs to be translated into subtle innuendo in the target language. Cultural references need to be translated into relevant cultural references in the target culture, etc. One company that specializes in game localization (not just translation) is 8-4.jp. They handle not just translation and localization of text but even managing voice work etc...

* I've always wished RockStar would make GTA Tokyo (they'd need a ton of local input or a local team). I bring up GTA because so much of those games, at least for me, are full of things that have not been localized and would be nearly impossible to localize unless the game itself took place in the target country. The hardest part is probably the radio stations. Driving around in GTA3 (and the sequels) brought back for me some uncanny feeling of actually driving with the radio on. The DJs, the ads, the different channels from talk channels to the various music genres. You'd need local DJs making local sounding comments about locally popular songs or parodies of those songs, local talk radio, local public service announcements, etc, etc, etc... Also the posters, signs, store names, around the city would all need to be localized so they evoke the same feeling of being in on the joke. And of course hearing local actors voice the characters vs just subtitles. Subtitles for characters dialog is the only thing that's been localized in any GTA game so Japan has never actually experienced one. I'm not even sure the random NPCs get translations but all of that would need to be made into something locals would get. I have no idea if a full localization would be a hit, especially now given console/PC games in Japan are mostly dead, but I've been disappointed that I could never share that experience with my Japanese gamer friends.

~~~
agent008t
There is Sleeping Dogs. Not quite the same, but interesting to experience GTA-
like mechanics in Hong Kong. And at night with rain it looks very cyberpunk.

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rolltiide
I wish Translation Party was still around, where it translated English into
Japanese and then back to English 30 times so you can see how unintelligible
it becomes

I do this when I am using google translate even if I am familiar with a
language

~~~
KozmoNau7
You mean this?

[https://www.translationparty.com/](https://www.translationparty.com/)

~~~
rolltiide
Yes, they had a disruption in api they used a long time ago Glad they found a
solution

------
etiam
The biggest revelation for me for me here was on Metroid after clicking
through to [https://legendsoflocalization.com/the-problem-with-l-r-
and-o...](https://legendsoflocalization.com/the-problem-with-l-r-and-other-
letters-in-japanese-translation/) (and by extension
[https://legendsoflocalization.com/a-look-at-the-metroid-
seri...](https://legendsoflocalization.com/a-look-at-the-metroid-series-varia-
suit/))

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29athrowaway
"Translation server error" is the best translation I have seen.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
This deserves the picture: [https://boingboing.net/2008/07/15/chinese-
restaurant-c.html](https://boingboing.net/2008/07/15/chinese-
restaurant-c.html)

------
Kootle
I asked my Japanese colleagues for what the correct way to say 'koin ikko
ireru' would be, but none of them thought it sounded funny.

------
innocentoldguy
There isn’t anything wrong with saying “koin o ireru” in this context in
Japanese. The phrase is correct. “Koin ikko ireru” is weird, but not because
of the lack of verb conjugation. The problem is that the sentence structure is
grammatically incorrect and the counter is wrong in this context. It should be
“koin o hitotsu ireru.”

~~~
glandium
The counter for coins is mai or ko. Ikko is thus correct. Only wo is missing
for perfect grammar, but in informal spoken japanese, it's often omitted. So
overall the sentence is correct... except for the conjugation. Because ireru
doesn't really invite to insert a coin.

~~~
innocentoldguy
No, it is not correct in this context. If you are speaking with your friends,
then it is OK to say “ikko.” However, in an instructional setting, which this
is, “hitotsu” is the correct phrasing. “Ko” is used in casual situations. I
have been localizing software, manuals, marketing materials, training
documents, scientific papers, etc. for over two decades with native Japanese
speakers. I’m also married to one. Trust me on this.

~~~
syockit
Well, this is an arcade machine, and the setting is much more casual, so ikko
is just as acceptable. The problem is, as GP pointed out, with ireru. I can
think of some alternatives

1\. koin wo ikko irete kudasai 2\. koin wo ikko ireru no da! 3\. koin ikko
irete! 4\. koin ikko ireru no! 5\. koin ikko irenai? 6\. koin ikko irenai ka?
7\. koin wo ikko ireru to purei dekiru

~~~
innocentoldguy
Of course, there are other correct alternatives in Japanese. That is not my
point. The article makes two statements that are not correct:

1\. "koin ikko ireru" is wrong because of the verb conjugation. The reason it
is wrong is that "ikko" is something kids say to each other, or that parents
say to their kids, and is weird/incorrect to say in a context where teens and
adults are involved. It is also missing the "o" (or "wo," if you prefer).

2\. "koin o ireru" is incorrect, again because of verb conjugation. There is
nothing wrong with this phrase.

Of course, you could say コインを入れてください, コインを一つ入れる, コインを一枚入れる, コインを入れる, Insert
Coin, and other variations on that theme. My only point is that the two
asserts above are incorrect in the article.

~~~
matvore
I also didn't feel that anything was wrong with using 入れる instead of 入れてください.
If it's already clear a process or instruction is being explained, sometimes
you don't use a grammatical command - I've seen it before.

------
wodenokoto
Are coins normally counted with ko (個)? I'm as bad with counters as the next
guy, but I'd expected something a little more flat-sounding. A cursory google
check seems that indicate that the internet agree that it should be mai (枚)

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greenyouse
Does anyone know the history behind the Pokemon green translation (or maybe
pocket monster green). I remember that there were some roms with pretty funny
translations. Was that the unofficial English port before Pokemon Blue was
released?

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rolltiide
Nice a Mahoujin Guru Guru reference, its is definitely worth a watch if you
can find it

I think its English name was “Magic Circle Guru Guru” or Magic people Guru
Guru

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gwbas1c
Sometimes I wonder if the mistranslations are left as-is just to make a joke?

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jansan
Why does "It enters the coin" remind me of The Silence of the Lambs?

