Googleshng,

Wow. I know this letter will probably be cut, but ... you spent hours making sure that you weren't going to be wrong? (I refer to the Kefka vs. Cefka issue) That is devotion! Good work!
Anyway, in case this letter actually gets posted, (which, by the way, is about as likely as someone shooting a leaf with an arrow ... from 6,000 yards away) I was wondering about something. I wasn't very interested in NES RPGs until recently, and I have been getting confused. I have heard that what is Final Fantasy 6 in North America was Final Fantasy 3 in Japan. If that is true, then what, in Japan, is North America's Final Fantasy 3? Then again, I am probably asking some question that everyone knows the answer to. Or maybe I got the question wrong. If either of those are the case, maybe you shouldn't post my letter...
--Ewcoolio

Regarding the person who sent you the rant about Final Fantasy VI's translation, you are absolutely right. I tried some searching on google.co.jp and found that Kefka in Japanese would be written Ke-Fu-Ka. The accepted romanization for the character "Ke" is, as you can see, with a K, not with a C. Yes, you could equally validly romanize the name with a C, but there is no reason to, the name looks better with a K anyway, and you donÕt have to worry about people not being sure whether itÕs a soft C or a hard C. You can see that the name that appeared in the translation is almost literally what it is in Japanese, only the letter U is omitted from Kefuka to Kefka, which is pretty standard, you wouldn't want Edgar to appear as "Eddogaa," would you?

Regarding the toning down of the language, you could make a valid argument for this, but it wouldn't be Ted's fault, as the submitter pointed out, Nintendo's American branch was the one who imposed self-censorship. Besides, it's difficult to translate "swearing" from Japanese as the language is completely different from English. For instance, the word "kuso." It literally is a somewhat offensive term for excrement, and therefore I would probably translate it as "s**t," but the connotations aren't quite that offensive, parents wouldn't wash out their kids' mouths with soap for saying it. You could also translate kuso as "crap," but the connotations are a bit more offensive than that. As you can see, kuso doesn't translate perfectly into either term, as you pointed out in general, and while if Woolsey didn't have guidelines requiring him to keep the game rated E, he probably would've used s**t, using crap isn't an invalid translation. Another thing that's hard to translate is politeness levels. If you use the wrong politeness level you will sound mean and condescending, but you wouldn't really be swearing in any real sense. You would probably translate this by having the person speaking use more slangy language and by sounding mean or annoyed or whatever, which Woolsey and most translators do, and you might add in some swearing, but again, Nintendo's guidelines (besides, that would be less literal, so if you wanted to stay as literal as possible, you wouldn't add any swearing in). A third area which is hard to translate would be offensive terms for referring to other people as. "Kisama" and "temee" would literally be translated as just "you," but have the connotation of something more like "you jerk" or "you asshole" or "you jackass" or "you S.O.B." or something to that effect. Actually translating this is kind of difficult, dialogue like "You asshole killed my mother!" sounds kind of weird. You could translate it as something like "You killed my mother, you bastard!" Or to keep the E rating "You killed my mother, you jerk!" Or to add some humor and make it obvious that you had to have as clean a translation as possible, "You killed my mother, you son of a submariner!" The term "yarou" literally means something like "rascal" or "vagrant," but would generally be translated as bastard. You could of course use a less offensive term in you translation. You might even translate it differently based on the context and how offensive the person speaking was trying to be. Basically, in conclusion, if you did an absolutely literal translation, you'd sound completely moronic. Maybe whatever fan translation he played is better, but it probably isn't in most respects. The swearing it contains might be SLIGHTLY closer to the original, but I bet it doesn't flow as well. Worse, it might be full of dialogue like, "Baka, my senshi can korosu kisama no senshi!" (Using some Japanese terms in a translation is fine, but many fan translations and especially fanfiction (not so much the stuff on this site, as it is actually read over first) (Hey! Nested parentheses! Yippee!) use so much it just sounds retarded, and often use the wrong term (such as senshi vs. seishi or something))

Of course the English translation is going to have made-up terms like MagiTek! The Japanese version would've had made up terms too, they just wouldn't be the same terms and if you tried to translate/romanize them they'd end up sounding inane or unintelligible. Moreover, "esper" isn't a made-up term, at least not by Woolsey, it's used as an occult term in many works of fantasy and science fiction made both before and after Final Fantasy VI. I'm not sure if it's a term from another language, or if it's something some fantasy writer came up with, but it's not Woolsey's. Oh yeah, that reminds me of a dumb joke I came up with once: What language to Espers natively speak? Esperanto! *rimshot*

The main reason I've heard of people not liking Woolsey was because they thought his humor wasn't funny. That's their opinion, and while I never rolled around on the floor laughing at Final Fantasy VI (I would think that might've taken something away from the experience), I never groaned at any of the little jokes.

Heh, heh. Itadakimasu really is a translator's worst nightmare. I might translate it as bon appétit, as the connotations are pretty close, but that would sound weird in a lot of places. "Let's eat!" Or something of that sort often still sounds weird to me, so itadakimasu might be one instance where I might leave it untranslated. I semi-literal translation could also be used, I suppose. Something like "I (we) will receive food!" Or "We will eat!"

Regarding Hellsing, I don't think calling him Arucard was THAT bad. It makes it less obvious than if it was Alucard, though I do suppose it's kind of funny that he'd be called "Dracura."

My question is why there aren't any appropriately scathing reviews of the PokPmon games on this site. Nobody has given them a 1 or 2 rating for having a complete lack of story, character development, or originality! Oh, I suppose the only people who'd bother to play through it and be eligible to write a review would be the ones who enjoy the monotonous, endless character building. D'oh!

Whoa! According to my word processor, this letter has over a thousand words! Maybe I should put this much time into writing my school essays!

Ah Goog,
The Cefca-Kefka rant is well-intentioned, and as a student of Japanese for many years I am well-aware that there would be no c-k difference in the Japanese alphabet. Before you jump your gun, though, it would be wise to take note that Square, Game Arts, Namco, and other Japanese RPG designers routinely design their characters' names in English first. In Square's case, they go so far as to make first and last names (the last names are seldom if ever written in katakana, and are largely unknown in Japan), which in Cefca's case is Cefca Palazzo. As you said, the name is then transcribed into katakana, and later when the game is translated, back into English. In the case of the Final Fantasy VI character, it is without a doubt Cefca. Even light research would have revealed this, whether you look at Japan~Final Fantasy (an NTT-published book of Amano artwork and interviews), the Final Fantasy VI Original Sound Version, other official Square Japan sources, or numerous Japanese webpages.

No support, by the way, was intended for ROMs, which I do not play. My intention was to take note of a script of signifcant quality that is readable as a .txt file for reading online.

I would be quite curious to hear how many people have actually examined the Japanese VI and can attest to the preservation of mood in Woolsey's text. As has been said, his dialogue flows welll, Working Designs-caliber well, but if the storyline and tone of dialogue has been altered (which it has), some problem still exists.

Maou

• Translation Nitpicking

• E3 Goodness