A Tale of Two Scripts: Let's play FF3 US & FF6 RPGOne!

Well, it's not like she has anywhere else she can go, right?



How conveniently convenient! And this is where we'll stop off for now. Next time, Lucas will take you back to the Wonderful World of Woolsey, where Terra, Locke, and Edgar will continue their journey to South Figaro. Until then!

Seeing as the only version of the game I've played is the GBA one it will be interesting to see just what all this Ted talk is about finally.

I don't think anyone who knows how kana work would confuse マッシュ with マシュー.


And "Rydia" for Lydia. Ha ha!



You're my favorite type to think of.

I'm more surprised to see his bed fits only one person.

finally, i can play this game without having to play it!
my save is stuck somewhere on the floating continent, i think.

I like how the localization team had an NPC that notes the 'Cefca' spelling in the Advance translation.

I don't know what's sadder. The fact that there still exist people who INSIST crazy engrish from the margins of art books are the proper way names should always be Romanized no matter what official localization efforts say, or that that same faction of people positively insist on always saying "Sakura Taisen" when not only was the name of the anime series, you know, translated when brought over to the U.S. but the original freaking jewel case to the game says, in plain English, "Sakura Wars" right on the spine. See also Super Robot Wars.

But yeah, Cefca's funny. You still seem to have done a better job than the people who handled the PSX ports of 5 and 6 though, where the big engine blocks swinging from chains are "mottle traps" and we learn that that there pirate captain is secretly Princess Faris' sister Princess Salsa.

I mean, CLEARLY they were supposed to have rhyming names. You know, Salsa and Falsa!

Oh my the translation errors in FF5 PS1 were hilarious. Especially the Y Burns. That's right up there with the mutilations of creature names in Lufia 2 (Hidora/Hydra, Gorem/Golem, Cokatoris/Cockatrice, Ork/Orc, La Fleshia/Rafflesia, She Viper/Sea Viper, Torrent/Trent, Waiban/Wyvern...). And FF7 had a lot of similar stupid mistakes (Bagrisk and Vagyrisk both for Basilisk, Kaimera for Chimera, Cockatolis for Cockatrice...) Was a lack of education of mythological creatures just common amongst translators before the invention of Wikipedia?

No, no they weren't.

They weren't hilarious at all.

All those poor, poor Tonberries

For what it's worth, it's been officially localized as "Super Robot Taisen" (apparently due to trademark conflicts, but whatever the case).


Faris is Lenna's sister, not...Faris's.


The best is when orc gets mangled to "oak" (see: Crystalis et al).

I know i asked this on the old FF6 thread, but I forget if I got an answer: if you don't use magic right away with Terra ... what happens? Will they freak out whenever you happen to use it the first time? Or is that little scene only wired for the desert before S.F.

In my head there's a playthrough where you just never use magic with her until after you find magicite and teach Locke and Edgar several spells, and then they still freak out.

Edgar: Lightning! Lightning from my FINGERS!

Sabin: Brother, you saw Terra turn into a pink fuzzy thing and fly across the world last week. And that Celes chick was absorbing enemy magic for half that time.

Locke: My HAND is on FIRE!

Apparently the script is set to activate any time before you get to South Figaro. Probably due to how it was coded, it only ever seems to activate in that first battle. However, I've seen the old SomethingAwful hack of FF3US called Awful Fantasy have it activate in the first random battle after that one instead, so... Yeah, not really sure what's going on there.

Who cares? It's just one word, and if someone thinks Taisen sounds cooler than Wars, what's the problem with that?

I dunno, Organics is still my favorite Final Fantasy translation gaffe ever.

The thinking behind this re-translation patch -- and I'm happy to see the author has repudiated its most notable excesses -- reminds me of my first E3, in 2004. After the show ended, I was in a local game shop in LA with Nich and David Smith, browsing imports. There was a guy talking to (or rather, at) the shopkeeper, loudly, about the superiority of Japanese games. He kept referring to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker as "Kaze No Takuto." Over and over. It made me hurt a little bit, inside.

1. It obfuscates communication for people that are not already familiar with the subject matter.

2. In the case where one insists on using Japanese romanizations rather than official localizations, it pays undue reverence to the preferences of persons or groups that likely don't actually have a working knowledge of the language these romanizations are supposed to be used in, as well as the aforementioned obfuscations of communications.

Fortunately I was never THAT bad even at my worst. I at least got that you need to actually translate everything into English if you're going to translate a game into English (location names aside very occasionally, but that's pretty rare). Pity I didn't understand the concept of "editing" at the time. Or "not being so damn literal". That would've helped a lot.

I'll just be over here listening to my FAINARU FANTAJII ORIJINARU SAUNDOTORAKKU

1. So? That's like saying someone calling Final Fantasy VI "Final Fantasy III" obfuscates communications, yet people do it all the time and noone complains about that...

2. What?

I don't get what's funny about "Cefca". I'd assume it was a hard c sound and say it as I've said it for the past 16 years.

Edgar and Locke are both plainly shocked when they see Terra use magic... but before that Edgar straight up says that he doesn't care about Terra having magic (due to her being hot), and Locke doesn't react at all if she incinerates a bunny rabbit outside of Narshe.

Oh the mysteries of FF6.

It is confusing and I do complain about it. I have one friend who bragged about how awesome her "Final Fantasy II" characters are. As far as her world is concerned, the NES FF's after 1 don't exist.

Ask yourself: how many times in your life have you had to launch into a small spiel about how America got Final Fantasy's 4 and 6, but since we didn't get blah blah blah blah Final Fantasy 2 and 3? I've had such a conversation so many times it starts to pop a vein in my head, because

a) I REALLY DON'T CARE AND IT MAKES ME SOUND LIKE A DORK but
b) By not correcting them I will inevitably need to ask them which version they mean when they ask me about a game called FF2 or 3 (since they've now all been released here), and at that point I'm all of a sudden an even bigger dork than in a).

I think fanboy was saying that there's a difference between clarity and reverence. If you're keeping some word deliberately untranslated (i.e. "Taisen") because you think it sounds cooler/more correct you're likely just going to confuse everyone who isn't familiar with what the word actually means. And come off as a bit of a dick.

- Eddie

Yup, I'm with Eddie on point 1. On the second point though, I think fanboymaster was talking more about how people who use untranslated words come off as serious japanophiles when the Japanese just don't give a fuck whether you use the translation or not. They might think they're showing reverence but the intended recipients neither know nor care about it.

Well, there's a difference between downplaying her magic abilities for calming/seductive effect and "HOLY SHIT THERE'S FIRE SHOOTING OUT OF HER". Locke just isn't smart enough to realize what's going on before Edgar tells him.

English and Japanese have more differences than the glyphs that make up the alphabet. Things are expressed differently. The names and expressions were chosen for native Japanese speakers; transliterating them to English abandons their inherent connotations. Tina, for example, was chosen to be an exotic name for a very unique being. In English, it just doesn't have the same qualities. Retaining everything as-is for the English market inadvertently alters the intentions of the original script, often more than a less-literal approach.

On a related note, I often find myself wondering if there's any conceivable way to get my money back for this here wiiware copy of "Wonder Boy 3."

I mean, I DID know I wasn't actually grabbing the awesomeness that is The Dragon's Curse but it's still a terrible game with an exceptionally confusing title, you know?

On the one hand enemies use magic all over the place, on the other hand Sabin/Mash shoots a beam of light out of his hands and that's apparent normal.

Plus Bannan can apparently cast Cure2 with no difficulty, and no one finds that strange.

Then again could also be the difference between "magic" and "Magic Warrior magic". So shooting light beams from your hands = magic, chanting etc. = MAGIC!

I suppose the difference could be whether you can do these things through years of training (like Blitzing or [maybe] Banon's prayers) vs. being able to do it innately.

That's exactly it. While they do get kind of silly (especially Phoenix Dance), Matias' deathblow "Blitz" attacks are all manifestations of his strength converted into martial arts attacks. It goes along the same lines as any Anime-style martial arts: if it looks cool, you can will it to be so by sheer force of awesome. And Banan does indeed pray to heal; censorship forced it to be renamed to Health in FF3US. In both cases, they're drawing upon some force that's distinctly different than magic. Hence why neither one uses MP.

Is Matias really his name (over Matthew)? Or are you just referencing it due to the LP?