Well, here's the infamous "father/dad" scene. This specific part of the official translation felt so unnatural it turned into a joke.
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| "No, genius, I mean your mom!" |
グラーフ
「ふふふふ。
……似ておるな。父親に。
Guraafu
「Fufufufu.
......Niteoru na. Chichioya ni.
"Fufufu" is typical villain laughter, but at times it can represent a girl giggling ("tee-hee"). 似る (にる, niru) means "to resemble/look like".
フェイ
「父親？
親父？
お前、親父を知っているのか！？
Fei
「Chichioya?
Oyaji?
Omae, oyaji o shitteiru no ka!?
Both 父親 (ちちおや, chichioya) and 親父 (おやじ, oyaji) mean "father", but there's a little difference between these two. 親父 is like calling one's father "old man", like Tidus does in Final Fantasy X. In Japanese, Tidus calls his father "oyaji" ("my old man"). So Fei's line is quite accurate, and that is the problem. So I had no option but to change it.
New version:
And below's an example of blind translation:
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| Which Gear, Fei? What are you talking about? |
フェイ
「その為に……
俺をギアに乗せる為だけに村を襲った
というのか！？
Fei
「Sono tame ni......
Ore o Gia ni noseru tame dake ni mura o osotta
to iu no ka!?
As you can see, there are no この (kono, "this"), その (sono, "that") or あの (ano, "that") in the sentence above. They're supposed to be next to a noun (e.g. このギア, kono Gia, "this Gear"). And below's the correction:
Another interesting difference I noticed was Citan's line below. It was hard to take a screenshot of it, because the game doesn't let you read it completely, despite there being a piece of code that lets you press X. I think it's a bug, I don't know.
Is Citan really being pessimistic here? Let's take a look at the original:
フェイ
「お前は……
ラハンの！
Fei
「Omae wa......
Rahan no!
シタン
「やはり……
Shitan
「Yahari......
やはり (yahari) is something along the lines of "I knew it" or "as expected", so Citan was confirming his suspicions, and he somehow knew Graf. The translator(s) at Squaresoft didn't misread this line or anything, this change was done on purpose. Why? I don't know.
New version:
Citan is such a suspicious character, always acting strange and making such remarks.
I found this part weird at first. Is God a female? Any religious person in our world refers to God as "Him", never "Her". Did Graf really say "Mother God"?
フェイ
「俺の力が必要だと言ったな？
力を得てどうするつもりだ！
Fei
「Ore no chikara ga hitsuyou da to itta na?
Chikara o ete dou suru tsumori da!
As you can see above, in Japanese, we don't actually need question marks to make a question. This led to numerous mistakes in the translation including "What!". lol
グラーフ
「知れたこと。
母なる神を……
滅ぼすのだ。
Guraafu
「Shireta koto.
Hahanaru Kami o......
horobosu no da.
母なる (ははなる, hahanaru) does mean "mother", and it's generally used to refer to Mother Nature or Mother Earth, but not exactly one's mother ("mother" is simply 母 (はは, haha)). The new version is:
And here's more:
Official version:
Fei sounds a bit like an atheist here, saying "your god". Or maybe, he simply doesn't share the same religious beliefs as Graf. But is Fei truly irreligious? Did he actually say "your god"?
フェイ
「か、神を滅ぼす？
Fei
「Ka, Kami o horobosu?
グラーフ
「そうだ神を滅ぼすのだ。
それが我等が目的。
我等が天命。
Guraafu
「Sou da Kami o horobosu no da.
Sore ga warera ga mokuteki.
Warera ga tenmei.
There should be a comma after "sou da". Even the Japanese script wasn't safe from typos.
フェイ
「ふざけるな！
俺はそんなもんに手を
貸す気はさらさらない！
Fei
「Fuzakeru na!
Ore wa sonna mon ni te o
kasu ki wa sarasara nai!
フェイ
「神だか何だか知らないが、
そんなに滅ぼしたきゃ
お前一人で殺ればいいっ！！
Fei
「Kami da ka nan da ka shiranai ga,
sonna ni horoboshita-kya
omae hitori de yarebaii!!
Fei didn't say お前の神 (omae no kami, "your god"), just 神 (kami, "God/god"). So he believes in the same god as Graf after all.
New version:
"To do someone in" is informal and means "to kill", so I decided to go with that.
And here's one more:
The same line in Japanese:
フェイ
「くっ……
Fei
「Ku......
This may have many meanings, but I think Fei was going to curse here, but he hesitated. One can infer that the swear word was くそ (kuso), which literally means "shit", but has the same impact as "damn" or "dang". The new version:
I don't know, maybe I should change this to "D--", Japanese game developers love to abuse ellipses.
Below's the full conversation between Fei and Graf, in the correct order. From here on in this post, I'll stop commenting on the images.
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End of conversation.
Yea, I'd change the "D..." to "D--"
ReplyDeleteActually, I'd change it to "Da--", as that more closely mirrors the original shortening of "Kuso" into "Ku..."
Hmm, I'm not sure "D--" (or "Da--") works in that one caption... Another suggestion would be something like 'Ack...' or 'Hmph...' to get across that kind of clipped exasperation I think Fei is expressing here?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I wanted to say this is a really exciting project - as a fan of Xenogears since its release I've been looking for something just like it! I'd like to help out - unfortunately I'd be clueless about the technical side, but I do know the game and its lore very well (and I study Japanese) so maybe I can contribute to the translation cleanup somehow?
Best of luck with this valuable service to humanity!
Well, there were a few things I couldn't translate. Do you know what these mean?
Deleteアクヴィ (translated as "Aquvy") - this is one of the four regions in Xenogears. Some Japanese sites state that the regions are named after the 4 elements (fire, water, earth and air) and that this means water, but... from what language this came from? And what's the correct spelling?
ミミー - this is the name of a Gear-size worm monster. Maybe it's Mimir?
リグ, ルド, エラ, レイ (rigu, rudo, era, rei) - these words appear before every spell's name (e.g. リグ・ダーム, ルド・ホルス, エラ・ゴルド, レイ・アルオム), possibly to indicate its element. I've no idea if they're actual words, and they aren't very suggestive. レイ is probably 冷 (rei, "cold"), but the spell element is water (水), not ice or cold.
コルンの祈り and ムルムの祈り - these two are Chu-Chu's abilities. I know what 祈り is, but what are コルン and ムルム?
キファインゼル (translated as "Kefeinzel")- I suspect this is in German, as there's a lot of German words in the game, but I could be wrong.
スカイギーン (translated as "Skyghene") - スカイ is obviously "sky", but I have no clue what ギーン means. Probably not English.
エーペイル - this is the name of an old city in Shevat. Full name is アウラ・エーペイル (aura eipeiru), in this order. Perfect Works says アウラ means hall, auditorium, so it's more likely to be "aula" than "aura". But it doesn't say what the other word means.
I'm still looking for the bit of text that mentions the "Arebato Grounds". Arebato's probably a mistranslation too.
Yep, you're on to the trickier stuff there - I've got no suggestions about the spell names but feel there must be a key to them! Things I do have a take on:
DeleteAquvy - My guess would be they just wanted a spin on the 'aqua' stem that sounded interesting. 'Aquvi' scans a bit better to me.
Skyghene - I think the ぎーん here is onomatopoeia for 'screech' (can also be ぎーっ). So, Skyscreech? Would match up with the similar effect in グランガオン.
Aphel Aura - A mystery to me, but googling some different translation attempts shows aphel is another Hebrew word (dark/darken) so I'd go with the official translation here.
On another note, I'm in the camp that believes the Gazel do reference 'Nigredo' in that one scene ('Knigret' in the official translation). Nigredo has been seen as either ニグレド or ニグレト in Japanese, and given the Jungian flavour throughout the game it would fit with Ramsus' state of mind. Soraya Saga has stated the word was meant to be 'neglect', making it a typo of ニグレクト in the original Japanese, but it seems doubtful they would have used an English loan word for something so basic here.
When is it going to be released? Any clues? I want to play the game again, but it needs to be with your script corrections haha :)
ReplyDeleteThere's no release date yet, sorry. I originally wanted to release this hack in February 11, the day Xenogears was released in Japan, but I think it's gonna take a little longer. But I still want to release it this year. 2018 is the year Xenogears turns 20, I can't miss this opportunity.
DeleteSadly, not much was done in December. I haven't been feeling too good lately. And I'm not quite happy with how things are going with my project. No ROM hacker has showed up yet to help me with the font, so I guess I'll have to keep the official one. It's so ugly and limiting; if there was a proportional font, more text could be displayed without problems. I wish I could contact Gemini and ask him if he still has the font file he created, but he shut down his PM box years ago at RHDN and can't receive any messages there. I sent him an email once years ago reporting a few errors in his Castlevania SotN translation, but he never replied back. I don't know why, he's generally a nice guy. Maybe he hates when people keep annoying him with hack/translation requests, so he probably just ignored my email.
I see what you mean. I think the font is actually okay, not ugly, just normal, but if it gets in the way of allowing you to give the game a proper translation 'cause of lack of space, it really sucks. I wish someone could help you with this! Don't give up man, I will keep following your progress ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks. I've been idle for too long, and I think it's time I finish this project already. I don't feel like waiting for the font. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to learn ASM by myself.
DeleteOh I forgot to ask you, will your patch include japanese audio for cutscenes? If not, will it be compatible with Alcahest patch (Xenogears 2.0)?
ReplyDeleteI want my work to be compatible with his undub patch. I'm not sure if it'll be possible, though. If I remember correctly, his patch creates a new ISO instead of simply modifying the original.
DeleteHi! I just wanted to drop a comment here and say I fully support what you're doing and I hope your work is going well again. This is my favorite video game and I'm so happy to see someone putting this much time into a re-translation/touch up of the game's dialogue.
ReplyDeleteAs soon as this is released, you can bet I'll be downloading and sharing it immediately. Good luck!
Waiting for some good news! Don't give up :)
ReplyDeleteIs this project dead?
ReplyDeleteWish I knew how to help you with the VWF implementation, but sadly too advanced for me.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, hope you're feeling better.
I hope this project isn't dead, I just recently went through this game for the first time and it's quickly become my favorite game of all time. I've even been thinking of doing a similar project to this even though I have no experience.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to help out in any way I can. I just started with hacking Xenogears.
ReplyDeleteI always wanted to do the same thing you're doing, but I don't know Japanese. If you'd like me to do some work on fonts, I'd be happy to.
Are you still working on this, Almagest?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHello, we are working in the same direction as you, making also other optional changes. If you are interested in merging efforts, please take a look here ;)
ReplyDeletehttps://perfectworksbuild.wordpress.com/