Kim Kaphwan
Pioneering Korean representation in fighting games.
It was kind of weird when I realised that.
Manual
Fighter title
| My translation | FF2 MVS | FF2 AES | FFS Arcade | SNES FFS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hotblooded Man of Earnest Taekwondo | Taikwando Titan | The Tai Kwando Champion | The Tai-Kawn-Do Genius | Tai Kwan Do Expert |
Arcade translations from The Arcade Flyer Archive, home translation from RQ87, SNES translation from the manual on the Internet Archive.
I'm not super sure how to translate the "earnest" there, since the word can mean a lot of things and it's kind of ambiguous from just a bit of copy. But Kim sure is earnest, so...
There's a lot of confusion of how to render 'taekwondo' here. I'm using the version Wikipedia uses, but Google also brings up tae kwon do. I know Korean has spaces but am not entirely sure how they work, so I'm just going to say that both are valid but use the Wikipedia version for consistency.
Taikwando is...sort of legit. It's apparently an older romanization, though I'm not sure when the switch to the modern version happened. According to my Korean-speaking brother the tai part is sort of legit, in that you can reasonably get 'ai' out of the sounds. Kwan is weirder, since the sound is kind of an oo/uh sort of sound, so it's not just someone writing down whatever sounds they heard. No idea what happened there.
So SNK used a romanization that was legitimate at one time, but it's a weird romanization in that it doesn't really represent the sounds properly. But romanization is always a tricky business, and Korean doesn't even map as nicely to the English character set as Japanese does.
All that aside, I like the alliteration of Taikwando Titan over just calling Kim a genius. The original wasn't going to translate well no matter what, but I feel like titan suggests kind of...a solidness that goes with Kim. The home version surprisingly makes it more boring by calling him a "champion", and SNES Special downgrades him to a mere "expert".
Harsh.
Quote
| My translation (FF2) | FF2 AES | FF2 CD | SNES FF2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| You lot are nothing before my taekwondo. | Will there be free food after the fight? | You are not worthy to be my enemy. | None of you are a match for the power of my Tai kwan Do! |
Home translations from RQ87, SNES translation from SNES manual on the Internet Archive.
It's a pretty generic quote in Japanese. It's also a tiny bit ruder than I'd expect out of Kim, but I suppose it was early yet. He doesn't become a complete justice freak knight until Special.
The editor decided it was boring and arbitarily made Kim a hungry man. I have no idea why. The CD version cleans this up by apparently going back to the source - hyper-literally Kim does say his opponents are no enemy to his taekwondo, but idiomatically that means they don't stand a chance. The CD version blurs the line between Kim and his taekwondo a bit in the process of taking that line literally.
Then the SNES version is just...fine. Completely normal translation. Huh.
| My translation (FFS) | SNES FFS | Sega CD FFS |
|---|---|---|
| Look, kids! Papa's gonna show the whole world the glory of taekwondo! | My mission -- to spread Tai Kwan Do, the noblest of the martial arts, throughout the world! | To let men in the world know of Tai Kwando...glorious! |
SNES manual from the Internet Archive, Sega CD from Sega Retro.
These all read like varying interpretations of the Japanese line, which is better than a lot of other characters got.
Some notes on the Japanese line: Kim says he's going to spread taekwondo's wonderfulness/splendor/etc across the world. I went with "glory" because I couldn't think of anything better. He is clearly speaking to Dong Hwan and Jae Hoon here, though they don't have names yet.
Both the translations drop that bit and have Kim not speaking to anyone in paticular. There's also some nuance changes between them, namely if it's taekwondo that's the best, or if the mission to spread it is glorious.
Fatal Fury Special
Normal intro
| My translation | Official translation (FF2) | SNES (FF2) | Official translation (FFS) | SNES (FFS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I’ve heard rumors about you. I’d like to request a match! | I've heard about you. Please say you'll fight me! | I've heard about you. Prepare to do battle! | I've heard about you. You don't look like a weenie. | I've heard about you. You don't look like a wimp. |
Translation provided by Upthorn! Thank you!
The legend of weenie begins here!
(Yes I know about King in Art of Fighting, but that's "weeniemeister" and don't you forget it)
A lot of people have called it the ultimate in SNK insults, which is clearly not true. Everyone uses weenie. Chill Dad Terry uses weenie! Clearly the greatest insult would be one that is too powerful for everyone and their mom to use, one that can only be brought out by the direst of circumstances or the master of taunting. Thus I declare that the ultimate SNK insult is, in fact, dweebenheimer.
All joking aside, weenie is one of the first things people think of when they think of SNK translations. It's a word that stands out as oddly childish for a bunch of tough fighters to be tossing around, and it just keeps showing up across games. And it allows for dumb jokes about weiners, which is important.
Using weenie to mean a sausage apparently dates to around 1906, with the insult following much later in 1963. Google Ngrams shows a sharp uptick in use a little before 1980, though I have no idea why.
Anyway this has the native editor with a weird sense of humour all over it, doing his once-over of Kim before moving on to Geese and Krauser. He obviously didn't touch the first sentence, it's consistent across both games. But there's some difference between asking for a match and backhandedly saying the opponent is tough. There's a relationship (opponent is not a weenie -> fight me) but it's pretty vague.
But SNK was all about making fighters trash talk, and this sure counts for that.
Takara actually punches Kim up a bit, which gets away from his Japanese characterization a little. Monolith decided that, like pansy, weenie was too strong for Nintendo and dropped it down to wimp.
Normal win
| My translation | Official translation (FF2) | Official translation (FFS) |
|---|---|---|
| As strong as the rumours say. I look forward to our next match. | You're as strong as your reputation. I look forward to fighting you again. | As strong as the rumours say. Until we meet again. |
Meanwhile, all of these are pretty straight.
There's some nuance lost in Special, where it sounds more like a generic farewell than Kim looking forward to his next match...but after stuff like the previous line I'm not gonna nitpick.
Intro vs Kim
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I'll teach you the true terror of taekwondo. | I'm about to teach you the terror of Tai Kwan Do. |
...yep.
See my point on Cheng's page about the B-listers getting straighter translations.
I already ranted at length about how to romanize taekwando, so I won't go over that again. Everything else here is pretty minor. I guess I could talk about how 'true terror' makes it sound like other Kim has a deeper mastery of taekwondo or something, but that's really all there is to say about that.
Intro vs Geese/Krauser
| My translation | Official translation | SNES |
|---|---|---|
| I cannot allow evil! | Evil makes me want to kill. Conscience prevents me. | Evil makes me want to destroy. Conscience prevents me. |
Here we go.
As you may have already guessed, the Japanese line is Kim's standard "evil cannot be forgiven/aku wa yurusan!" intro against evil characters. Except Kim's entire thing is reforming criminals, so I made an executive decision to go with "I cannot allow evil!!" instead.
Anyway, this got punched up! Sure, it lost the exclamation point, but basically threatening to kill the villain counts as a punch-up in my book. So the English version is, once again, more violent. Mortal Kombat was released in 1992, so I wonder if there's a connection there. If you're trying to appeal to American arcade-goers in 1993...
...then again, if you were trying to appeal to American arcade-goers in the mid-90s you probably wouldn't use 'weenie' so much it became one of the most recognizable parts of your games.
Obviously, killing was not on for the SNES.
Win vs Bosses
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I'll educate you from now on. | From today, you can call me teacher. |
Billy, Axel, Laurence, Geese, and Krauser, for reference.
Anyway this is pretty straight and I actually like the official one better than mine. "From today onward" would be more grammatical, though. As always, SNK needed to pay some copyeditors.
It's interesting this line applies to all the bosses, but "evil cannot be allowed!" is only against Geese and Krauser. Guess the subbosses are just mistaken and need a bit of guidance?
Ending
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| What are you doing? You're not going to become the best Taekwondo fighters in the world like that. | No, kick with one leg, not two! |
...huh?
It's come up before, but sometimes I just can't follow where the official translators were going.
I guess the same idea of Kim correcting Dong Hwan/Jae Hoon is there, but it's softened in English. I'd almost assume that was on purpose because of differing ideas about child raising, but it's really hard to tell sometimes.
Fatal Fury 2
Normal wins
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis |
|---|---|---|
| Even though we don't use the same martial art, that was excellent practice. | It was good practice in martial arts. | That was a good practice. |
| You're completely helpless in the face of my taekwondo! | You can't do anything against Tai Kwon D. | You are powerless against my Tai Kwan Do! |
| My taekwondo is the strongest! No one can stop it. | My Tai Kwon Do is the strongest! No one will stop me. | My Tai Kwan Do skills are unstoppable! |
ARE YOU KIDDING ME I ALREADY DID A THREE PARAGRAPH RANT ON HOW TO ROMANIZE TAEKWONDO
...well, anyway, let's go over these in my entirely arbitrary order, shall we?
The first one is truncated, but the general idea is the same. I think a bit is lost by removing the first part and as usual is pretty stilted (I'd be surprised if a native speaker were majorly involved in FF2) but it's not terrible.
And then we see a third romanization of taekwondo, one that is more correct in that 'wo' is a better rendering of that vowel. This version is more common on Google now than the kwan version, but I'm not sure what would've been common in the early 90s. What gets me is the difference from the arcade flyer. It wouldn't surprise me if the flyers here were outsourced, as the English is a fair bit better there than in-game, but there's weirdness around Special that makes me wonder...
Well, anyway, it's a fairly straight translation. Ultra-literally in Japanese he's saying "arms and legs are useless!", which generally means "completely helpless". If you take out the typo, it's actually a pretty good rendering of the line!
For the last one, it's kind of ambiguous what he's saying cannot be stopped, but I went for his taekwondo. No one can stop Mr. Kim.
Takara did their thing here too. The first line loses the entire thing about practicing against a different martial art but that was already gone in the Neo Geo so. Everything else is just some polishing. Very sad that SNES kids didn't get to learn about how the power of Kim's Tai Kwan D.
Win vs Kim
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis |
|---|---|---|
| Now do you realise the power of the real Kim Kaphwan? | Now you've learned a lesson from the real Kim Kaphwan. | Now you've learned what it is to fight the real Kim Kaphwan! |
It's kind of weird that they managed to spell 'Kaphwan' consistently in FF2 but couldn't manage it for Tung in FFS. I wonder what's up with that.
Honestly, "learned a lesson" actually sounds like something Kim would say? It's pretty good.
Takara loses that nice bit of characterization, but overall the line sounds a little better.
Ending
| My translation | Official translation | SNES/Genesis |
|---|---|---|
| How about it, Krauser? Living right isn't so bad after all. | How is it, Krauser? It's not so bad living right. | See Krauser, doing good isn't so bad after all! |
Krauser's face.
It's...yeah. The official line could probably stand to be edited a bit, but it's fine. And then Takara did edit it, so good for them.