"Blue" Mary Ryan
Hey, they made her fun to play!
Story
Story 1
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Ripper: Here's the current winner's picture, Mr. Geese. | Mr.Geese,we got this graphic of the guy. |
| Geese: ... | Geese: Hmph! |
Story 2
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Your grandfather was strong. Ah, the screaming in his death throes...I remember it fondly. | I remember your grandpa's touching battle yell...when I ripped out his spleen! |
The English line drops Geese complimenting Mary's grandfather. It also specifies that he gave a "battle cry", while the Japanese makes clear that it was his death cry. There's also the slightly comedic addition of Geese ripping out his spleen. I'm not entirely sure when the spleen became the funny organ, but it is.
In general the rough meaning is the same, but the English is punched up to be a little silly.
Story 3
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I'll test your strength. Hurry, advance through the tournament and face me. Ahahahah... | I can't wait to see how strong you are,big boy. |
English version runs into gender trouble, as so often happens.
Story 4
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Mary: Hiii~, Geese! I'm not going to turn a blind eye anymore. | Mary: Hey,Geese. This time I won't look the other way! |
| Geese: Your precious commando sambo can't defeat me. | Geese: Your old Command Sanbo is a bit lame,pal! |
Mary's line is pretty much the same. I did some slightly unorthodox things to get the right feeling, forgive me.
"Command Sanbo" is a pretty good guess from looking at the katakana, it just happens to be wrong. (I made the same mistake in FF3 and Kishi had to correct me) As usual, it was more difficult to research the names of various fighting styles in the 90s and SNK apparently didn't care very much. It is capitalized, which is not usual for the names of martial arts. Huh.
Geese's Japanese line is incredibly generic, but gets shifted in English to be...um, something different. Generic bragging is turned into mild, slightly inexplicable insult, possibly because the bragging was too generic. Even if the insult is a bit lame.
Win Quotes
vs Terry
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I hate weak men. Come back after you've toughened up! | I hate weaklings. Take a hike,scum! |
"after you've toughened up" is my own interpretation, she's technically just saying "come back and start again", but in context it most likely means what I said. In general this is still playing off the Terry/Mary relationship SNK decided to get into during/after FF3, but with her rejecting him after winning.
In English this is made somewhat less clear. Mary hates "weaklings", which is gender-neutral, and just tells Terry to leave instead of telling him to come back when he's stronger. It's generally stronger than the Japanese, which is consistent with other SNK translations. It's not strictly an inaccurate translation, just one that drops some nuances about the characters...which is really interesting when it was the American branch that added those nuances in the first place. Again, I'm guessing crunch and a lack of context for the lines, the former probably feeding into the latter.
vs Andy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Ninja? Your moves look similar to mine, but they're so weak. | You call yourself a ninja? You're just too weak,dear. |
The English drops the idea that commando sambo and ninjitsu have similar-looking moves, and that Mary isn't really sure of what a ninja is. Instead, English Mary does know what a ninja is, and says that Andy is too weak to be one. That's a pretty big change. Two words are the same, but the ultimate line is very different, which is another SNK translation habit we've seen before.
vs Joe
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Come on, what's wrong with using a stun gun? All the girls have one! | Now that were finished, I'll take the stun gun. It's scary out there! |
Now this is a big change. Once again, there's a key word in both (stun gun), but everything around it is different. Japanese Mary is justifying her bringing a stun gun to the tournament by saying that all the girls have them (not by pointing out that other fighters brought sticks and knives), while English Mary makes it sound like Joe's got the stun gun and she's taking it because she's scared of what's "out there". It's just completely different.
I can't see an obvious way this was a mistranslation, short of the translator just glancing at the katakana and constructing the sentence from there...except then I'd expect it to have "ladies" in it (as Mary said in Japanese, I rendered as "girls" here) and it does not. Very odd.
vs Franco/Honfu/Sokaku/Kim/Chonrei/Chonshu/Duck
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I wonder if I overdid it a little. | Whoops,don't know my own strength.Sorry. |
Basically the generic line, it is indeed very generic. It's still technically changed compared to the Japanese, but there's a clear line from Japanese Mary wondering if she overdid it to English Mary apologizing for going too far. There's a bit of a nuance difference between overdoing it vs not knowing your own strength, but it's pretty subtle.
vs Mai
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You stand out too much. | Wow,you really stand out! |
This is another nuance difference, where Japanese Mary is criticizing Mai for being too flashy, while English Mary sounds more like she's complimenting Mai (for being flashy). I suppose it could be read as slightly negative...but it's hard.
vs Bob
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| That was fun, Bob. | Wow,Bob,that was fun! |
...why does she have a special quote with Bob...?
"Wow" returns, and makes English Mary sound much more excited than her Japanese counterpart. Other than that...look, there's just not that many ways to translate that sentence.
vs Billy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| There's no way I'd lose to you. | Lose to you? Wa,hah,hah!!! |
That's a Geesey laugh if I ever saw one.
The English is punched up, but otherwise this is pretty straight. Someone was having fun at the SNK offices, though...