Kim Kaphwan
Consider...justice.
Copy
Continues Along the Path of Becoming Strongest
Ending
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Kim: I'll train you harder and harder until you repent! | Kim: Train with me and save your soul! |
| Yamazaki: No way that's happening, dumbass. | Yamazaki: Are you an idiot? No way. |
| Kim: Ho-oh Kyaku! A-chachachacha! | Kim: Hoh ,hoh! Keeyah! Cha ,cha! |
| Yamazaki: S-sorry, please let me go. | Yamazaki: Sorry. For give me ,pal! |
| Kim: You still haven't learned! Acho! | Kim: You never lean ,huh? Aaah cho! |
There are a couple nuance differences here. In Japanese, Kim is trying to force Yamazaki to repent, and Yamazaki says that'll never happen. In English, Kim is trying to get Yamazaki to sign up with him willingly, which Yamazaki's not going to do. Then in Japanese Kim uses his super, which is completely lost in English. I can only assume that the translator didn't recognize Kim's super somehow. Since this is really weird for someone who would've been in SNK at the time, I'm going to keep thinking the translator was someone who wasn't part of game development.
And then there's a typo in Kim's last line, but as you can see, that's not really the problem here.
Win Quotes
vs Terry
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You got me revving to go, Terry! | Terry , let's have some fightin'fun! |
Well, it's the same sort of idea, right?
Kim's line doesn't translate into English well at all when you handle it ultra-literally ("Those eyes got me burning hot, Terry!" does not give the right impression. At all.) but the idea of Kim being happy and eager to fight Terry comes across in the official translation just fine.
Okay, "fightin'fun!" is a heckuva way to phrase it, but other than that it's fine, right? Right?
vs Andy
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Despite the face you put up, your attacks are fierce. | You're one tough attacking fury! |
Kishi provided the rough translation after I completely failed to handle it correctly. Thanks, Kishi.
The idea is that Andy looks and acts all calm and quiet, but he goes hard. The English loses that idea of Andy putting up a face, but it gets the rest across. Though again, "tough attacking fury" is a heckuva way to put it.
vs Joe
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| You can't win by just attacking over and over! | You can't win by attacks only! |
Yep.
And what do you mean I can't win like that?!
vs Mai/Mary
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| A strong woman is deserving of the highest honors. | I just love tough broads! |
...hm.
Well, uh...the basic concept....
I guess the nuance difference is that in Japanese Kim just says that he respects/admires strong women, which is somewhat different from loving them. There's less of the idea that Kim is hitting on Mai or Mary in Japanese.
And, you know, it got punched into another dimension.
vs Duck
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Hey! No dancing in the middle of a match! | Hey ,stop dancing. I'm not joking! |
You could say that Kim's specific about not dancing "in the middle of a match" in Japanese and is less specific in English, but I think it's implied.
Either way, rude.
vs Tung Fu Rue
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Thank you, it was excellent practice! | Thanks for the fighting lesson! |
Kim is a little bit more informal in English, which contrasts with him kicking up the formality in Japanese. Unfortunately, it was a bit hard to get that across in English in a good way, but like most polite characters Kim is extra-respectful towards Tung.
Still, it's pretty straight.
vs Bob
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Keep training! You've got some bad habits in your kicks. | You just don't have the feet! |
Whoops.
So yeah, Kim is supposed to be encouraging towards someone who also uses a martial art with heavy emphasis on kicks, but that's completely lost in English. It feels like just the second sentence got translated and then run through the editor or something. It's not the first time an English line feels like it took one word from the Japanese and made up a new line around it, and it probably won't be the last.
vs Billy/Yamazaki
| My translation | Official translation | Portuguese translation | Spanish translation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crime doesn't pay! | I have no taste for evil like you! | Mai never prospers! | I have no taste for evil like you! |
Portuguese and Spanish translations from Snowy
Not sure what happened here. Ultra-literally, Kim's line is "Evil never prospers!", so there's your "evil", but Kim's personal taste never enters into it.
What's even weirder is that it's not even out of character for Kim to say this, it's just not what he's saying in Japanese.
And then Snowy emailed to tell me about the Portuguese version. As you can see, it bizarrely says "Mai never prospers!". I asked a Brazilian coworker about this, and he said that the Portuguese word for evil or bad is "mau". Looking at the keyboard, I suspect what happened is that whoever was doing the Portuguese translation just made a typo - the u and i keys are right next to each other. But man, it's a goofy typo!
But take another look: the Portuguese translation is clearly based on the Japanese line. "Evil never prospers!" is a literal translation of the Japanese original. That tells us that whoever did the Portuguese translation was working off the Japanese, which isn't always the case. It's pretty frequent that translations for European languages will be based on the English translation.
Which, if you notice, is exactly what happened for the Spanish translation! It's clearly based on the English version, which is noticeably different from the Japanese line. Whoa!
What's extra-interesting here is that Spanish and Portuguese are such closely related languages, I would've assumed that either one of the two would be based on the other, or they'd both be based on English. Instead they're totally different! It is true that Brazil has a large Brazilian-Japanese population, so it's possible that SNK was able to hire a direct Japanese-Portuguese translator while they could only get an English-Spanish translator. But then wouldn't it also be easy to get a Portuguese-Spanish translator?
Very mysterious.
Things like this make me wish I had the time and ability to really dig into other language localizations, but alas, I have neither. If anyone sees something like this, please, let me know!
vs Geese
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Still overflowing with evil.... | I brim with luscious evil! |
Uh.
Okay this one I do have a guess for what happened. Kim doesn't specify a subject in Japanese, which happens. A lot of the time the implied subject will be the speaker, but other times it'll be the person the speaker is speaking to, and it's impossible to tell from the bare line. So the translator guessed this was a character speaking about themselves, while I was working with full context and could pretty easily tell that Kim was talking about Geese here. The lack of context also suggests the translator wasn't part of the development team.
That said, I have no idea where "luscious" came from. I'm just gonna blame the editor on that one.
vs Krauser
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Even though you lost, I'm impressed by your powerful moves. | I lost fairly. You're tough! |
Kim, you didn't lose.
I think this is another case of misapplied implied subject, because that would make sense, but it's an even weirder mistake to make. Did the translator not know they were working on win lines?
It's also interesting to me that Kim doesn't flip out about Krauser being evil. I guess he did get kind of de-emphasized, but still.
vs Laurence
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Stop fooling around! That's not hand-to-hand fighting! | Don't mess with me! I'm trouble! |
Okay, so the phrase I translated as "stop fooling around!" is more commonly translated as "don't mess with me" or similar. I felt that didn't really fit in with what Kim was saying in the second sentence there, so I didn't go for it, but that's why it shows up in the official translation.
I have no idea where "I'm trouble!" came from, except as an expansion of the first sentence while ignoring the second. Why ignore that? I dunno, maybe they couldn't come up with a way to fit the idea into the character limits, or maybe it's just SNK.
Funny how only Laurence gets yelled at about this.
vs the Jin brothers
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Idiot! Your parents didn't raise you like this! | Learn some manners , bozo! |
I can see how this happened, but the official translation loses the guilt-trip. It also implies that the problem is that the Jins are rude, not that they're possessed by evil.
Still, you can kind of see how A got to B, right?
vs Kim
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Hey! No copying! | Hey , I know you! |
Well, that's different. The English line is funnier, but it has very little to do with the Japanese. Then again, neither is particularly exciting.
vs Cheng
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| Are you really training? | Hey ,do you really work out? |
Same basic idea here. It's pretty much just phrasing differences, like what happens when two different people take a shot at translation.
vs others
| My translation | Official translation |
|---|---|
| All right! Every move was clean and sharp! | Ya can't stop my fists of fury! |
I struggled with how to phrase this one. Ultra-literally he's saying "there was no scrap of fog in my fists", which will probably conjure up some images but doesn't really make a lot of sense in English. I did my best.
But that explains why the official translation just goes off and does it's own thing - there's not much choice. So overall, I can understand the idea, and some of the basic concept is there, though in Japanese Kim is more proud of how well he's fighting than in how well he's beating his opponents. It's subtle, but it's there.
Also "ya" comes back and it really doesn't fit Kim at all.