Sokaku Mochizuki
I still maintain the basic concept here is cool.
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! |
Same as Franco. Pretty sure this is the verson of the line that's most common.
Story 2
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Mochizuki Sokaku... | Sokaku Mochizuki!... |
I just feel that Geese is enough of a Japanophile to put the last name first. (and yes, that's what it is in Japanese, of course)
Story 3
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| The secret scrolls? You came to steal that garbage? What a fool... | Secret scrolls? You're willing to die for that garbage? Well ,okay,let me help you! |
Same as Mai. Makes more sense here, though.
Story 4
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Sokaku: Hm! Here, too, I feel an evil spirit. Heheheh....just wait, I'll put you to rest soon. | Sokaku: I sense evil here. This could be fun! Dowaaaaaah! |
| Geese: So you've come: the man of shura, Mochizuki Sokaku. Show me the full extent of your dark power! | Geese: Here at last,Mochizuki. Now I can see what you're made of! |
Man, it's weird seeing a mistranslation I made back when this was me going over Fatal Fury Special quotes for a message board show up in an official product.
I plead inexperience, they'd probably plead crunch.
Anyway, the problem here is the phrase 楽にしてやる/raku ni shite yaru. KoF fans will probably recognize it from Iori - it's one of his catchphrases. It's a fairly common phrase in anime and video games. Literally translated it's "I'll make you relaxed/comfortable", but in use it means "I'll knock you out". The 楽/raku is also the kanji for "fun, enjoyable". Geese uses it a lot in this game, go check through the other pages to find it!
Anyway, you can probably guess where the problem slipped in. A translator working too fast misread the context, saw 楽, and read it as the character looking forward to the match instead of bragging about beating their opponent. The perils of relying on kanji!
Meanwhile, Geese's line drops the concept of shura completely, and of Sokaku having dark powers. His line becomes considerably more generic as a result. Well, I understand not wanting to deal with "shura"...and I guess they just didn't want to deal with how to translate "dark power" again, given they never figured out how they wanted to handle it back in FF3 either.
Win Quotes
vs Terry/Yamazaki/Geese
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I have sealed your shura! | I'll bury you with this battle! |
I believe the idea is that these three are raring for a fight so much that they're becoming shura (basically, fight demons). Which raises the question of why Joe isn't in there...
"Shura" also means "battle, carnage", so that translation isn't completely out of left-field, it's just missing the context of what Sokaku does.
It's got some nice alliteration, either way.
vs Andy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I knew it...the Shiranui have indeed fallen far, heheheh.... | Heh,heh,heh. I thought so. The Shiranui's power is spent. |
These are pretty close, really. Mostly just phrasing differences.
vs Joe/Franco/Bob/Billy/Honfu/Mary/Kim/Duck King
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Hpmh - you stripling! | Geez. What a loser! |
Localized for punks, not monks. Tragic.
The word Sokaku is using in Japanese is more like boy/youth/brat, which is why I went with "stripling" for a bit of an old-timey feel. As you can see, the official translator did not do this. I can see the idea, but the connotations get weird.
This is basically Sokaku's generic line.
vs Mai
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| If Hanzo were still alive, he would be weeping for sure! Hahahahaha! | If your ancestors saw your performance,they'd cry their eyes out! |
Hanzo Shiranui was Mai's grandfather and Andy's master, in case you didn't know. It's also a very generic ninja name, thanks to this guy.
Because of that, I'm not sure if the translator recognized who Hanzo is in this context and cut the name because they assumed Americans wouldn't get it, or if they didn't recognize the reference and assumed Hanzo was there as a generic ninja name. It's hard to tell!
That aside, the lines are pretty close. I tried to make Sokaku sound a bit more old-fashioned, but I don't think I did it all that well. The English does cut his laughing. Huh.
vs Sokaku
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I can see the shadow of death upon you. Leave this place! | Your end is near. Take a long,slow hike,twiddle-bee! |
...twiddle-bee?
So you can see the basic similarity in both translations, I hope. As usual, I tried to fancy up how Sokaku talks to give an idea of how he sounds in Japanese and the official translation didn't have time for that. But they're roughly equivalent in meaning.
Twiddle-bee is pretty obviously an attempt at or a riff on Tweedledee, of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The thing I'm not sure about is if the the bizarre misspelling is intentional, or if it's some sort of weird accident. I'm inclined to go with "accident", but it's really off for that. At very least, I'd expect the "dee" to come through intact. Possibly a non-native speaker who wasn't entirely familiar with the rhyme, or maybe just someone that didn't read the heck out of Through the Looking Glass as a kid? Or it's just a typo that didn't get caught, like so many other things in this game.
...did the editor pass by here...?
vs Chonrei/Chonshu
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You rely on the scrolls too much! | Rely on the scrolls, die by the scrolls. |
The English line is clearly a reference to a famous bit from the Bible, which made its way into the vernacular as "live by the sword, die by the sword" even though that's apparently not the usual translation. From there it further mutated into a snowclone taking the form of "live by the X, die by the X". Except the original Japanese line says "rely on" pretty clearly and I guess they didn't want to throw that out?
Except that's what the "live by" means in the stock phrase, so...I got nothing.
This definitely feels like the editor got a hold of it, though.