Geese Howard
Farewell...
Story
Story 1
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Goon: Mr. Shadow! The real Geese won! | Goon: Shadow! The real Geese has won! |
| Shadow: Ge... | Shadow: G,g,g...! |
Note: it's not Ripper. Ripper would never join this Shadow loser.
And yes, his name is Shadow Geese, shortened to Shadow in-game. The concept is basically that of a body double/political decoy, and comes up in anime/video games every so often. Usually you just find someone that looks a lot like the person they're supposed to be impersonating, but I guess Geese went all the way and made sure his double knew martial arts and had all the scars too. Poor guy.
I'm rambling about this because the actual translation is pretty straight and mostly comes down to if you think "Mr. Shadow" sounds weird or not. I wanted to show the similarity to how Geese's subordinates call him Mr. Geese, see.
Story 2
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| G-G-Ge...Geese! | G,g,g.....Geese! |
The use of commas to show the breaking up of sounds is somewhat unusual now, but I don't think the hyphen had been standardized to the same degree back in the 90s. Notice that it's just dots in Japanese, like an ellipsis. That's another option, and it's interesting that the translator didn't go for it. To me it makes more sense, but...
Story 3
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Geese Howard...it would've been better if you'd stayed dead. | Your death was greatly exaggerated,Geese. Now let's end your life. |
| I can only step into the limelight when you're not here, so...I will defeat you with my own hands! |
Now this is interesting! There's an entire extra line in Japanese that just gets cut in English. The idea is more-or-less squished into one textbox (rather cleverly, at that) but it drops the reason Shadow is doing all this: so he can be the star instead of Geese.
The English makes a sideways reference to "rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated", which is a famous misquote from Mark Twain. It's a clever reference, and I like how they use it here. It's a good line, if very much cut down.
I wonder why they cut the second textbox. Liked the line they had so much they felt like they didn't need it?
Story 4
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Geese: My warm-up's over... I hope you're ready, Shadow. | Geese: My warm up's over... I'm coming for you,Shadow. |
| Shadow: Heheheh... S-s-s-so you c-c-came, G...Geese. | Shadow: Heh,heh,heh. S,s,s...so you're here, G,g,g...Geese. G,g,g...good! |
Look, there's only so many ways to translate some of these lines.
It's interesting to me that Geese is very literally translated here, when he's a character the editor clearly had a lot of fun with on other routes. Guess they saved everything for his win quotes.
Shadow is (trying to seem) a bit more eager to see Geese in English thanks to the "G,g,g...good!" at the end. It's not a big difference, and mostly seems added to emphasize how bad Shadow is at acting. It's cute.
Win Quotes
vs Terry
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Hmph! So in the end, was this the extent of your strength?! | That's all you got? Geez! |
Differences in character voice, again. In general, SNK officially translated Geese as fairly informal, which isn't quite how he talks in Japanese but it was definitely a choice they went with.
vs Andy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Weak! All you Bogards are too weak! | Bogard,you were weaker than I ever imagined! |
He's pretty clearly referring to multiple Bogards in Japanese here, so that's something that got dropped in English. In English he's addressing Andy directly instead of commentating on the weakness of all Bogards.
Other than that, SNK did a cute job punching the line up.
vs Joe
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I thought we'd fought before, but maybe it's just my imagination. Ha ha haaah! | Hey,we've battled before. Maybe not. Wa,hah,hah! |
Kishi got this one for me.
This is cut down in English, but the idea is there. The English does make Geese sound more forgetful than actively taunting, but the laugh evens it out a bit.
vs Franco
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Why not use that strength of yours for me...for evil. | How'bout using your strength for me,for evil! |
Yep.
Geese is, again, more informal in English.
vs Mai
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Scum should know its place. | Take up knitting,weenie! |
Yep, it's Geese's old Fatal Fury Special quote, now in Real Bout form. I've fallen back on my favorite translation for consistency (and it's my favorite).
Meanwhile, in English...huh. Wow. It feels like they knew this was against Mai, if only because knitting is a stereotypically feminine activity, but it could go either way. I don't quite want to say they just made stuff up, but...yeah, they probably did.
It's kind of sad that Geese has this really common (iconic?) win quote in Japanese and that's completely lost in English because they never translated it consistently.
vs Bob
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Capoeira...there was a man who used it, way back when... A weakling! | Capoeila? That's just for big loser wimps like you! |
Dammit SNK, I know you can spell capoeira! You did it in this game!
You're killing me here.
The Japanese seems pretty clear that Geese is calling Richard a weakling, not Bob, so I'm not sure how that ended up getting cut. In general, the English versions are less good about referencing previous games than the Japanese versions.
They did pull out "big loser wimps like you", which is a damn powerful SNK insult.
vs Billy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You still need more training, Billy! | Billy,hit the showers. What a loser! |
Geese is much harsher in English. One of the things that stands out in Japanese is that Geese is...marginally nicer to Billy than anyone else, but in English Billy's still a loser. At least he gets to take a shower.
I guess the implication is that they were sparring, which is like training...?
vs Hon Fu
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You might be a cop or whatever, but trash is still trash. | I don't care if you're a cop. A weenie is just a weenie! |
It's zako again, which you might remember from the classic win quote. I translated it as "trash" here because it worked better.
SNK, however, went with "weenie". Powerful. Iconic.
(honestly it's a reasonable translation, it's just a crazy thing for Geese specifically to say. Which is really the theme of the project)
vs Yamazaki
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Hmph! You rat-! | Another rat for extermination. |
Callbacks. This one came over intact!
The English is somewhat expanded, as Geese is just calling Yamazaki a rat. He does cut off, so if you wanted to expand the sentence to make it work in English it's a reasonable guess. I didn't feel like guessing.
vs Sokaku
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Heh, you're funny. You could be a street performer! | Hmm. That was interesting. Laugh,clown,laugh. |
Japanese has the same amusing/interesting conflation as English does in the word "funny", which partially explains what's going on here. I'm not as sure what's going on with the second sentence. I guess "street performer" -> "clown" sort of makes sense, and then they just went for a reference and called it a day.
vs Mary
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Your grandfather was much stronger. | Your ancestors were strong- so what's your problem? |
Ice cold.
So the English does drop that it's specifically Mary's grandfather that Geese says was strong, since he's the only one of Mary's ancestors Geese would have experience with. That said, I love this punch-up and you can't take that away from me.
vs Kim
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You tried, but that's not enough to beat me! | You were adequate. But no match for me. |
...yep.
Not much to say here.
vs Chonrei
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| This is the power of the secret scrolls? Worthless! | So this is the scroll's power. Nothing but nonsense. |
This is basically the same, but the English could've used some editing.
Geese has a few win quotes that stand out, because while the editor was clearly having a field day with the guy, Kim, Chonrei, and Duck get what looks like the direct lines from the translator, no editing at all. Huh. Weird.
vs Chonshu
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Not even both you brothers are enough! Hahahahahah! | Yet another rat to rub out! |
This is a bit different. I suppose the "yet another" could imply Chonrei, but as written it more clearly implies Yamazaki, who Geese did call a rat. I'm not entirely sure how to get from A to B here and I'm thinking they just made the English line up.
It just makes even less sense for them to do that here than anywhere else...
vs Duck King
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You're just trash too. | I bet you're just a wimp,too. |
Scum/trash/weenie/wimp...there's lots of ways to translate zako!
I guess I can see how the translator got "I bet" out of the Japanese line, but it doesn't make a lot of sense as a win quote. It's the kind of thing you say before the match, not after you win. Very strange.
But other than that, it's pretty straight.
vs Geese
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| We'll never meet again, you fake! | And don't let me see you again! You silly little wanna-be! |
This is similar, but clearly touched by the editor. It's not that bad, though "silly little wanna-be" is a bit goofy. I like the first sentence a lot, it sounds pretty Geesey.
All in all, Geese is...about what you'd expect for Geese at this stage in the project. As a token of his status, he's one of the four characters to get unique win quotes for every other character in the game. Good job, Geese.