Tung Fu Rue
Tung has the honor of having the most unique lines in the entire game. He's got nine lines total, below Andy's ten, but Andy has to share a bunch of lines with Terry so I'm gonna say Tung is the real champion here. Not bad, gramps!
Manual
Fighter title
| My translation | Arcade translation | SNES translation |
|---|---|---|
| The Master Sage of Hakkyokuseiken | The Schizoid Martial Arts Old Guy | Ancient Tai-Kyoku-Ken Master |
Arcade translation sourced from The Arcade Flyer Archive, SNES translation from the manual on the Internet Archive.
Uhhhhhh...?
Okay, so lets go a little deeper into the Japanese. Getting super literal, it's like "the sage/teacher who completely mastered Hakkyokuseiken". This sounds dumb in English, so I went with "Master Sage" and am just going to trust that everyone reading this is enough of a weeb or has seen enough kung fu movies to make that sound completely normal.
As for the English...okay, I can understand not wanting to translate Hakkyokuseiken. I wouldn't want to either. (Everyone be glad you're not seeing the version I wrote down before I looked up how to romanize it properly.) But..."The Ancient Kung Fu Master" is right there.
Then the SNES version makes it sound like Tung does Tai Chi, like Cheng. Which is bizarre, because the style names don't look anything alike in Japanese. I guess the SNES translator didn't want to figure out how to write Hakkyokuseiken either. No one does!
Quote
| My translation (FFS) | SNES FFS | Sega CD FFS |
|---|---|---|
| I can't lose to Terry and Andy, even now they've grown up. Watch closely, my wife! | Don't be deceived by appearances -- there's plenty I know that those youngsters don't! | With age comes wisdom, and with that comes my power. |
Tung's married?
This is the first time I've seen any reference to him having a wife! You'd think they'd at least give her a cameo, like Cheng's wife.
Maybe she's already dead?
Both the English translations ignore the Japanese line completely in favor of talking about Tung's age. The SNES line sounds more SNK-ish, as usual, while the Sega CD is just off doing its own thing. There's a bit of Jubei in the SNES line, really...
Fatal Fury Special
Normal intro
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Think I'm just a little old man? You had best not underestimate me. | I may be old, but I still have... Hmm, I forgot what I have. |
The Japanese is a pretty standard anime line. (What fool would underestimate a little old man in a fighting tournament?) The English throws that out to go for a senility joke. I, uh, sure.
Normal win
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Are there any strong people in this world? | Are there no strong people in this tiny world? |
Meanwhile the win quote is FF2-level straight. It does sound like it's been edited a bit to sound better, though.
Intro against Terry/Andy
| My translation | Official translation | SNES |
|---|---|---|
| You’ve gotten burly. I’m happy I get to face you again. | Oooh, you're so muscular. It will be a pleasure to tangle with you. | Oooh, you're so muscular. It will be a pleasure to defeat you. |
Translation provided by Upthorn! Thank you!
Oh my.
Well, it's basically the same. I think if I was doing this for real I'd probably edit it to "you look so strong" or "you've gotten tough" or something. The official English version chose to just fucking run with it, which sure is a choice.
This could be an incident of editing without context again. I can see how someone would go for it just given the Japanese line and not knowing it's coming from kung fu grandpa. Or it could be the official translator/editor's sense of humour, of which we have seen much in this project. (I'm inclined to go with a mix of both)
SNES version...punches Tung up a bit? On the Neo Geo he just wants a friendly match with his grandsons, on the SNES he actually wants to beat them down. Damn.
Win against Terry/Andy
| My translation | Official translation | SNES |
|---|---|---|
| You've become strong. In time you'll be a true wolf. | You've become a true fighting wolf! Ah-oooh! | You've become a true fighting wolf! |
There's a minor difference here where in Japanese Terry and Andy are still in the process of becoming wolves and in English they're already there. Another translation might be "bit by bit you're becoming a true wolf", but it doesn't change the overall meaning that much.
The...howling? We'll call it that...is added for the English version. It reminds me of one of Terry's win quotes from KoF96, which I will get to...eventually. It's pretty damn goofy here, though.
SNES version drops the howling.
Intro against Joe
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You're full of energy as usual. | Just as ever, spunky to the end. |
Yep. "Spunky" is some pretty good English slang, though kind of inappropriate here. Not nearly as much as the other time we'll see it, though!
Intro against Tung
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I never expected to meet someone that wanted to imitate me. | Copy me to the most fine detail will you? Okay. |
Translation help kindly provided by estragon! Thank you!
Okay.
The point of the Japanese line is more or less "you really want to imitate me? Weird", which is lost in the English. I guess you could read it that way still, but it mostly just comes off as stilted to me.
For all he has a ton of lines, it doesn't feel like the translator put a lot of effort into Tung.
Intro against Geese
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Your evil fist will be stopped here. | Your fists of evil are about to meet my steel wall of niceness. |
Of course I say that and then this comes up next.
The idea is clearly there, but "steel wall of niceness" is goofy as all hell. It feels like a joke a native speaker would add, though, even if it's not something anyone would ever actually say. It feels a lot like SNK was aiming for "Saturday morning cartoon" with their translations, and this hits that for sure.
Win against Geese
| My translation | Official translation | SNES |
|---|---|---|
| Your bloodlust is as ferocious as always. | Still have that killer instinct Huh. | Still have that fighting instinct. Huh. |
Yep, pretty straight. The kanji for "bloodlust" is more literally "kill" + "spirit/nature", so in light of that, "killer instinct" is a pretty reasonable translation. The game didn't come out until the year after FFS, so it's not a reference or anything.
There should be a comma before "huh" and it shouldn't be capitalized, but...eh.
Monolith switches "killer" out for "fighting", which makes sense, though it does end up toning Geese down a bit. What's stranger to me is making the "huh" it's own sentence, which changes the feel a bit. At least to me, it changes it from a rhetorical question to a bit of actual confusion. Huh.
Win against Krauser
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| To frighten me to such an extent... A terrible man. | Wow, that was a close one. I'm still shaking. |
Not 100% on this one, so as always, corrections welcome.
The phrase I translated as "frighten" is more literally "to give the shivers", so that's where that came from in the official version. The tone/voice is a bit off, but this is pretty close and sounds decent. I'll call it good.
Ending
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I'm getting old. Better take it easy from now on. | Ouch, from now on it's feeding pigeons for me. |
Four years later: "Guess I'll show up in Real Bout Special and adopt another kid." 15-ish years after that: "I got this new disciple, time to show up to King of Fighters". So much for feeding pigeons, eh?
Anyway, the basic thrust of the line is still there, but edited a bit to add something specifically associated with old people taking it easy. Honestly, I like it.