Duck King
Still Englishing in the 90s.
Copy
The Great Dance Fighter
Ending
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Duck: You've fallen for me, right, baby? | Duck: You love me ,right babyface! |
| Mai: No way Jose! | Mai: In your dreams! |
| Duck: So, what about you...? | Duck: Bummer. How 'bout you ,hon? |
| Mary: That would be a firm "no". | Mary: No way! |
| Duck: Oh...my...goooood!! | Duck: Oooh Myyyyy Goooooood! |
This is all pretty accurate, and in places I like the official translation better than mine. ("Bummer. How 'bout you, hon?" is great) My only real quibble is that Mary is harsher in English, where she's cool and firm as usual in Japanese. Plus there's the usual weird spacing for punctuation. But overall, this is a great translation and localization. Go SNK!
Win Quotes
vs Terry
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Fighting you feels great, Terry! | Terry ,you are one bad dude! |
This one's kind of odd, but I think I see what they were going for. It's the 90s and we're in full "bad means good!!" territory, so all that really happened was dropping the specific idea that it's Terry's fighting that's good in favor of just complimenting Terry in general. So in a sense, it's good, in another it's still pure SNK.
Absolutely feels like the editor, though. And it is hitting the tone and style of the times.
vs Andy/Hon Fu
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| I'm way faster than you! Zoom! | Phew. I'm just too fast! |
Andy, sure, but Hon Fu? Huh.
In Japanese Duck is specific in saying he's faster than Andy/Hon Fu, not just that he's too fast in general. Then again, the comparison is implied in English.
The zoom vs phew issue is pretty simple: it's an onomatopoeia, and one that's pretty easy to read either way. I thought "zoom" made more sense in context, but I can absolutely see some overworked translator just grabbing the first thing that came to mind.
vs Joe
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Your fashion sucks ass, dude! | You just have no fashion sense! |
Yep.
I tried a bit harder to get the flavor across, whereas it doesn't look like the editor got to this line. So it's stilted, but intelligible.
vs Mai/Mary
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Tears don't suit you at all, baby! | Wow , tears don't do you justice! |
I can see what they were going for in the English, but it feels off. That's not the sort of thing you say to someone when you're trying to cheer them up. I can sort of see the connection ("those tears don't do you justice, get rid of them!") but it just doesn't feel right. Either the editor has a different idea of English than I do, or this was by someone with a good-but-not-perfect grasp of English idioms.
Honestly, the second is way more impressive. Idioms are hard.
vs Duck
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Oh! My brother! That was a good fight! | Dude! That was simply awesome! |
The English drops the idea that 2P is Duck's long-lost brother. However, it adds a dose of pure 90s, which is kind of preferable.
vs Tung Fu Rue
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Whoa! That was an explosion of grey power! | Talk about grey power! |
Hyper literally Duck says "elderly power" here, but both SNK and I saw that turns neatly into the American "grey power". It's come up before on the SNK side, which just continues to show they totally had a native speaker working for them. As if there was any doubt by now.
Anyway, the English line drops the idea that Tung's power is exploding, but the idea is there.
vs Billy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Your fire set my heart blazing! | Your fire heats my heart! |
...huh.
I assume it's meant to be some sort of "heart of fire"/"fighting spirit" thing, but man.
Anyway, this is a remarkably straight translation. It's pretty much entirely phrasing differences, and I can't say the official version is wrong in any way. We just picked different words to use.
So I'm off to create a line of Fatal Fury-themed Valentines.
vs Geese
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Drunk on power, baby? | You're a powerdrunk fool ,baby! |
SNK's just on for Duck. The translations aren't just accurate, they sound good too. The same more-or-less happened in Real Bout with some caveats about how much time crunch that game was under, so maybe the editor just was on Duck's wavelength.
vs Krauser
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Shit! Didn't even have the chance to dance! | Bud I didn't even start dancin' ,man! |
The really harsh swearwords are still a bridge too far, even in the arcade. And yes, he is literally saying "shit" in katakana there.
So there's a mild tone-down just from Duck no longer swearing in the official line, which shifts the feeling of the line from being Duck annoyed he didn't get the chance to dance to Duck chiding/bragging to Krauser about how he didn't even start dancing. I think the idea is that Duck had to concentrate so hard on fighting Krauser he couldn't dance like normal, which is lost in English.
Looking at the line, I wonder if the "Bud" isn't a typo for "but", which would sound a lot more natural in there. That changes the feel of the line again, and to me makes it feel like Krauser was complaining about Duck's fighting, leading to this line. That's pretty different from the Japanese, even though most of the words are the same!
vs Laurence
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| That's some nice matador fashion! | Nice. Where'dya get those threads? |
He does say "nice" in katakana, which is why both and I and the official translator went for it.
The general idea is the same for both, but the English line drops that Laurence is specifically doing matador fashion (well, fighting game matador fashion). Sure it's obvious from looking at him, but the word is there in Japanese and not English so I'm picking at it.
Still, this is basically another very solid Duck line.
vs the Jin brothers
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Playtime's over, huh? You children! | Kid ,playtime is over for you! |
I'm not 100% on this, but I'm fairly sure. Duck does say "children!" in katakana there, which sounds pretty odd to English speakers (he's only talking to one them, after all...), so it's good to see how SNK correctly put "kid" there instead.
The English line in general is a fairly generic line. There's some tone and subtle differences between it and my translation (Duck's pretty harsh if I'm right), but it's also so close I wonder if I'm not misreading something.
vs Yamazaki
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Your eyes are crazy... | Hey ,you are crazy! Take a valium! |
Kishi helped out with the slang here!
The official translation drops the specificity of "eyes", but adds in a big dose of flavor. I think it's pretty good!
vs Cheng
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You're a great comedian! | You're funny. You a comedian? |
Hyper-literally, the line is "You! Good comedian" but I already used the "directly transliterate the katakana to show off how SNK localized" gimmick with Franco Bash.
So starting from that base, you can see that SNK went with a familiar sort of phrasing for the English, which also makes Duck sound a bit...more sarcastic about it? Maybe it's just me.
vs others
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Yeah! No stopping now, baby! | I'm nonstop! Whooo baby! |
This is again, more ways of handling some broken English in the Japanese. So it's all phrasing differences with no real change in meaning. Just enjoy the different ways the official translators and I went about it.