#jozerick

[baratrongirl]

I've done some actual research and I can categorically state that it's a translation/localisation issue. But I'm sure you'll want all the details.

As some of you know, my friend @hikari-kaitou is a Japanese to English translator and longtime Ace Attorney fan. I found all of the Japanese text from Jozerick's excellent post on Court Records and asked Hikari to explain.

The usual word which is translated as Fräulein is おじょうさん (ojousan). Hikari says this means "young lady" and "is a respectful term for someone else's daughter". However, Fräulein in the English game version actually covers a number of different words in the Japanese game version, as we will see below.

The Japanese version of Klavier, Kyouya Garyu, uses the term おじょうさん (ojousan) for Trucy Wright (aged 15), Alita Tiala (aged 21), and Athena Cykes (aged 18).

He also refers to Trucy as おじょうちゃん (ojouchan). This is a less formal, more playful version of ojousan, suitable for her as a teenage girl.

e.g. from AA 4-2:

The Japanese text here is:

どうしたのかな？　おじょうちゃん。 こんなところで。

Literally:

What brings a young lady like you to a place like this?

It's important to note that while 刑事クン (keiji-kun) is translated in the English version to "Fräulein Detective", Kyouya is not emphasising Ema's femininity here. He could use the exact same term for a male detective assigned to him.

Kyouya does not appear to use a variant of おじょうさん when he is speaking to Ema Skye, who is 25. Instead, he refers to her as 刑事クン (keiji-kun), which means "Detective-kun". Hikari says "It's perfectly acceptable for a boss to call his female underling "-kun," even though it's an honorific normally used on boys."

e.g. from AA 4-3:

The Japanese text here is:

オーケイ、刑事クン。

よくやってくれた！

Literally:

Okay, Detective. Nice job!

e.g. from AA 4-2:

A third important point is that there are many occasions when Klavier says Fräulein in English when there is no corresponding "female" word in the Japanese text. Sometimes Kyouya says ぼく(boku) meaning "me" instead of Klavier's Fräulein. Sometimes he says キミ (kimi), meaning "you" which "is not rude as long as the subject isn't your superior".

The Japanese text here is

ぼく？　ぼくはね。

ただ、真実が知りたいだけだよ。

Literally:

Me? Me, I just want to know the truth.

e.g. from AA 5-3:

The English localisation team just LOVES to have Klavier say Fräulein.

In Japanese, he says simply:

おや。初めて見るカオだね。ぼくは

Literally:

検事の牙琉　響也（きょうや）。

"Oho? Here's a fresh face. I'm Prosecutor Klavier Gavin."

Take the first example above where Kyouya says, simply, "What brings a young lady like you to a place like this?". Klavier however comes out with a complete pretentious paragraph of "Ah, Fräulein. What is a sweet morsel like you doing in such a dismal place? Can I help?"

I hope it's obvious by now that Klavier is not intentionally sexist or belittling. Neither おじょうさん (ojousan) nor 刑事クン (keiji-kun) are disrespectful words. An interesting point of the localisation is that Klavier speaks in a very much more flowery way than Kyouya does in Japanese.

To answer the second accusation, that Klavier doesn't know much German, I'd like to pull out this screenshot from AA 5-3:

Therefore I would argue that Klavier knows exactly what he's saying, but the amount of inherent sexism in a term like "Fräulein" (and indeed in similar terms like the French "mademoiselle") has changed tremendously between the original AA4 release in 2007 and now. It isn't his fault. It's the translation and localisation team who decided to have him saying "Fräulein" every other sentence.

Klavier might not be German - indeed, the entire point of Kyouya Garyu is that he's a Japanese man who went to study in the US and made "being American" his entire personality - but he studied Law in Germany at the high school / college level. He must be fairly fluent, at least on paper, for him to have been able to pass exams.

im constantly going back and forth between thinking klavier calls the women in aa Fräulein in a demeaning/sexist way or thinking that it was a localization issue and its not meant to be taken that way.

Fräulein is kind of an antiquated word, its akin to miss in english and is meant to signify an unmarried woman. much like how the difference between miss and mrs is falling out of use in english, Fräulein carries a pretty sexist connotation and is seen as belittling, like the woman in question is not as valuable as a married woman who's given the title Frau. (the dimunitive -lein is usually added to words to indicate that they're small, so its essentially suggesting that a woman without a husband is smaller than a married one.)

my question to you is, is this intentional? i could definitely see klavier being a dick to ema, but this is basically his go-to for any woman he interacts with. alternatively, its intentional but its meant to suggest that klavier is not really german and only uses german words for his rockstar persona, so the meaning didn't carry over to him.

[turnabout-trial]

About

Why are you doing this?

I love the Ace Attorney games, but I was immediately put off by the Americanisms in the very clearly Japanese games when I first started playing. I’m super late to the franchise—like two decades late. I started with the trilogy Switch port, so the localization felt really old-fashioned to me. Like a lot of fans, I grew to sort of appreciate the wacky nature of the localization, but this blog scratches a deep itch I have to see un-localized Ace Attorney content and have a glimpse at what a more “faithful” translation could look like.

Where did you get your scripts?

I got the scripts from this post by Jozerick on Court-Records. They are from the DS and 3DS versions of the games and so differ from the Switch (and other) ports of the first three games.

Do you hate the localization?

Actually, no! I have a lot of respect for the work the localization teams have done over the years. My main problem with the decision to move the English version of the game to the States is, of course, the resulting cultural erasure of a lot of Japanese elements. Translation and localization practices have been changing gradually, but dramatically, since the ’90s, especially when it comes to Asian media being adapted for Western audiences. Translation and localization teams are getting more and more comfortable with source-oriented translation practices. I’d like to think that if Gyakuten Saiban had come out in 2010, the American and European versions would have looked a lot different. At the same time, I get why they did it—if you keep the setting in Japan, you can’t have names like “Phoenix Wright” and “Miles Edgeworth,” but then the many many word game jokes like Naruhodou/naruhodo are totally lost on non-Japanese speakers, or you have to spend a lot of time explaining those jokes in a way that might totally take your audience out of the world of the game.

To prove that I actually think some elements of the localization are excellent, here are some great jokes that are unique to the English versions of the games.

(Plus, I will never get tired of fake German Klavier randomly saying “Achtung, baby!”)

How good is your Japanese?

Bad. But I’m learning! I have degrees in linguistics and translation, but English (US) is my native tongue. I have advanced knowledge of German and French, as well as some background in Mandarin, Korean, and Spanish. I rely heavily on Google Translate, Jisho, and translations done by others for my analyses. So of course if you notice any mistakes in my translations or analyses, please point them out to me!

[frost-felon]

So, after trying to fact-check the timeline established in Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice VS. Spirit of Justice, I came across this claim on the aceattorneywiki page for Apollo's Father/Jove Justice. It reads:

"In the English localization of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney episode Turnabout Succession, Spark Brushel claims that Jove died in an on-stage accident.[2] This claim does not appear in the Japanese script."

I wanted to look into this, so I had my friend, @greymousedragon, try to get the gist of the exchange via utilizing Jozerick's compilation of Dual Japanese and English scripts for the Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney games. The files for GS4 and AJ are combined in the post, but the files were stored based on location; the relevant dialogue here is from the "Present Day" Drew Studio encounter, in file "GS4_0084.txt".

+++

Here's the most relevant portion (from the "Thalassa" topic of this encounter):

<Brushel>

なんでも、前のダンナさんも

芸人さんで。

Not quite. Her late husband

was a performer, too.

ステージで

イノチを落としたそうです。

He died in an accident

on stage.

結婚して、１年も

たたないうちの悲劇、ってゆう。

Tragic, really. They had only

been married one year.

+++

Now, she ain't a professional translator, but here's what she said.

Grey: it says "suteeji de inochi wo otoshita soudesu".

Grey: "on the stage, his life seems to have dropped." / "he lost his life on the stage."

(Former translation when she was figuring out conjugation. She has settled on the latter.)

Me: It's fine. Just wondering if there are examples of that phrasing elsewhere.

Grey: yeah, "otosu", which it uses the past form of, means either "lose" or "let fall".

Additionally, she mentioned that there wasn't any explicit mention of "an accident" in the JP version, though there may be a connotation for it.

+++

Can anyone verify what the exchange is in Japanese? If my friend is correct, that is misinformation on that wiki page, and I want to know for the purposes of examining Spirit of Justice in fairness, and assessing the retcon/contradictory issues I believe it has.

[gyakutengagotoku]

Is there a site where the Japanese versions of the Ace Attorney transcripts can be found?

I once found a site with complete transcripts for GS1-4 & GK1 (up to Episode 2), but it's all in Japanese: http://www.aya.or.jp/~kidparty/gyakuten/word.htmBut, that's about it. Other sites I've searched only cover highlights.I obtained mine from a member on Court-Records. I dunno if he's still around, but he went by the name Jozerick. He also helped me with the dialogue changes between the DS and 3DS port.It explains why I don't have GS6, PLvsAA, or the DGS games' transcripts. The 3DS is difficult to hack; needless to say, rip the script from. I have GS5 stuff because it at least had a mobile port.In GK2's case, he didn't want to bother with it since it's a fan localization and the team already has their files locked into a patch. So I don't have transcripts for those either.