#translation quest

[bunnimarae]

SPOILERS

This little riddle he's got going on has me thinking.. Since there are 3 options for both.. Makes me wonder if it depends on our choices this far or... Do we have more choices ahead of us?.. What do y'all think??

[significant-ace-nnoyance]

2024 in: annabeth chase stan era

2024 out: OVERLOOKING AND ERASING ANNABETH'S CHILDISHNESS, POOR SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES, LACK OF SELF WORTH, MASK OVER HER EMOTIONS, ETC.

SHE IS NOT AN ADULT SHE IS NOT A COLD ROBOT SHE DOES NOT HAVE FULL CONFIDENCE IN HERSELF ALL THE TIME THAT IS LITERALLY JUST WHAT SHES PROJECTING TO EVERYONE AS A DEFENSE MECHANISM IN REALITY IF YOU READ MARK OF ATHENA IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES IF YOU WATCH LEAHS ACTING SHES JUST A TINY SCARED CHILD THAT DOESNT KNOW IF SHES DOING HER BEST AND IS TERRIFIED OF FAILURE OR LETTING PEOPLE IN AND IT ONLY GETS WORSE AS SHE AGES AND LOSES MORE PEOPLE SHE TRUSTED AND LOVED

[c6jpg]

CYNO vs SETHOS ⟡ rite of duels, lupus aureus chapter: act II

[zetadraconis11]

HL Incorrect Quote #50

MC: When have we ever been in danger?

Natty: When we went after Harlow?

Poppy: Or when we fought poachers?

Ominis: How about when we went into the Scriptorium?

Amit: Need I mention the disaster at the goblin mine?

Sebastian: Do you want the short list or the long list?

MC:

[marragurl]

Not the first to say it, but damn can’t believe Galladay really went from toxic yaoi to doomed tragic yaoi.

Alright fellow Galladay trash, where’s the modern AU fix-it fics?

I need to see Gallagher single dad with Misha plus their dog/cat Sleepie falling for entertainment company CEO Sunday. Don’t ask me how they met, fuck it, throw in bodyguard AU Gallagher who works part-time at a bar, boom there that’s how they meet, idk I’m making this up on 3 hours of sleep.

You’ve heard of slow burns, now get ready for Galladay blaze it.

They’re speedrunning the relationship from hate -> annoyance -> mild disgruntlement -> weirdly vibing -> ok wow never knew I needed that in my life -> Sunday is way too ok with spoiling Misha -> ok so we got married -> alright we’re dismantling the government now -> Sunday went to jail for 5 minutes for attempting “peaceful” world domination, don’t worry we (Gallagher) forgave him -> Sunday’s stepping down as CEO to run a coffeeshop idk look someone get him some therapy -> Robin is president now while she still goes on tours -> Misha won an engineering competition while this was all going on

Bottom line: Robin is out living her best life while Sunday is in the back somehow having the most insane week of his life. I have no other notes for her here except that she is happy, and successful, and is Sunday’s last remaining brain cell. She and Misha are having some fun Aunt/Nephew bonding times while Galladay are accidentally-on-purpose committing multiple war crimes.

No, we don’t have time to unpack 2.2 and all its trauma, we cope with modern AU :)

[raposarealm]

Here are the quest victory quotes for Yuu! Credit to @muffinrecord for the screenshots.

Top: We can't go back anymore, 'cause there's nothing left. Middle: Alright, we've gotta get to the next one. Bottom: If you're in a pinch, why don't I lend you a hand?

As always, friendly disclaimer that my Japanese isn’t the best, as I’m still learning. If you spot a mistake, please let me know, and I’ll fix it!

[precisemuseum]

Puyo Line Stickers Volume 3 Translated!

(Download here)

[juni-ravenhall]

sso loading screen text "remember that knowledge is power".... imagine the power if the writers knew the lore of the game

[cyphyra]

i think my only big critique of TotK is just the choice of translation for certain words in english

like... seriously... "gloom"? "secret stones"?? two of the most important/widely used names for things over the course in the game, and they're really unassuming

apparently the literal translation for the word they use for gloom in JP is "miasma," which is LEAGUES more imposing than "gloom"

as for "secret stone" they literally could've called them anything that made them sound more important-- magatama (what they're literally based on), zonai keystones, hell, even "sage's stone" would've been more important-sounding

[dkniade]

Contrast and Unity in the White/Black Imagery of Genshin Impact Quest Titles

Dragonspine 1.2 & 2.3 Events, Fontaine Act I

Game: Genshin Impact

Developer: HoYoverse

Fan Localization: Dusk

An aside from when I tried to explain the meaning of Kreideprinz’s Chinese term—

In Chinese, 白垩 is used to refer to Albedo with varying meanings but in the English version the term is even less consistent: 

Concealed Talon item description 白垩层 (baie ceng) = “Cretaceous Layer” (of soil) localized as “Cretaceous”

Albedo’s Story Quest Chapter title 白垩之章 (baie zhi zhang) = “Cretaceous Chapter” localized as “Princeps Cretaceous Chapter”

Albedo’s second Ascension voiceline, 白垩 (baie) = “chalk”/“Cretaceous”, localized as “albedo”, the second stage of the alchemical magnum opus

(even though in the context of alchemy, the albedo (Latin: “whitening”) stage should be 白化 (baihua, whitening) in Chinese because the albedo stage does not refer to chalk/limestone)

Albedo’s title 白垩之子 (baie zhi zi) = possibly varies slightly depending on context that it appears in, localized as “Kreideprinz”

Xingqiu’s “About Albedo” voiceline, 白垩老师 (baie laoshi) = (teacher) “Mr. Cretaceous” (Latin) or “Mr. Chalk” (English) or “Mr. Kreide” (German) localized as “Mr. Kreideprinz”

Version 1.2’s name 白垩与黑龙 (baie yu heilong) = “The White Chalk and the Black Dragon” or “Cretaceous and the Black Dragon”

or one can localize it in German like how they did the 4.0 Chapter IV Act I “Prelude of Blancheur and Noirceur” (French: “Prelude of Whiteness and Blackness” or ”Prelude of Innocence and Darkness”)

though, officially, Version 1.2’s name 白垩与黑龙 is localized as “The Chalk Prince and the Dragon”

Speaking of black and white in titles, another aside—

Don’t you know that HoYoverse loves juxtaposing white/black or light/shadow in its quest titles

1.2 Dragonspine event

Chinese: 白垩与黑龙 (Baie yu Heilong) = “The White Chalk and the Black Dragon” 

Official English: “The Chalk Prince and the Dragon”

2.3 Dragonspine event

Chinese: 皑尘与雪影 (Aichen yu Xueying) = “White Dust and Snowy Shadows” 

Official English: “Shadows Amidst Snowstorms”

皑 from 白雪皑皑 (baixue aiai) usually refers the whiteness of snow specifically, so 皑尘 as “(snowy) white dust” is just their over-the-top way to say “snow”.

“Snowy Dust and Snowy Shadows” sounds too humorous though.

I’VE BEEN WANTING TO SAY THIS FOR A LONG TIME NOW: of course symbolism-wise it’s likely that “white dust” refers to Albedo, “snow” refers to the Cryo Whooperflower Albedo, and “shadow” refers to Primordial Albedo, with Durin encompassing all three as the shadow dragon that lies dead—like dust—in the snowy mountain.

HoYoverse being HoYoverse has found a way to say white and black without even using the hanzi for white (白) and black (黑) back in 2.3.

4.0 Fontaine Act I

Chinese: 白露与黑潮的序诗 (Bailu yu Heichao de Xushi) = Prelude of White Dew and Black Tides

Official English: “Prelude of Blancheur and Noirceur” 

with French terms translated: “Prelude of Whiteness and Blackness” or “Prelude of Innocence and Darkness”

Given the information in 4.0, I would assume that “white dew” refers to Furina and “black tides” refers to Neuvillette seeing how Furina’s always at the front of key visuals and Neuvillette’s always looming ominously over the background, but you can also think of it as innocence vs guilt, I suppose.

POETIC ALLUSION UPDATE: 白露 alludes to the Chinese poem “蒹葭”(Jianjia) = “Reed”

from the ancient collection of poems, 诗经 (Shijing)

The poem is basically the narrator talking about not being able to reach their lover, who’s on the other side of the water (lake?)

The act’s Chinese title is already over-the-top—since most people would look at it and think “ah white and black and something about water, got it”—so localization’s aim is to match the fancy feel and not the accuracy ‘cause honestly if you localize all that into French it’d be too long. This makes sense…

Though, the implication that French holds such a high prestige that its mere presence is enough to balance out some loss of meaning from the Chinese title is… strange, now that I think of it.

白露与黑潮的序诗 (Prelude of White Dew and Black Tides) in French would be “Prélude de la rosée blanche et des marées noires��… I think. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)

This time HoYoverse found another way to say white and black while using the hanzi characters AND STILL BE EXTRA BECAUSE THEY ALLUDED TO A CHINESE POEM OF COURSE THEY DID. ARCHONS, man…

New drinking game: take a shot whenever black/white or dark/light is juxtaposed in a Genshin title/name of any language, take another shot if they don’t actually use the word/character for black/white in the target language, take another if they alluded to a Chinese poem or literature in the original LOL

[stardustdiiving]

You know perilous trails was a good quest when it singlehandedly improved Xiao’s fanon characterization by at least 50%. It seemed like more people began to realize that Xiao is far less of an edgy tsundere who’s snappy to everyone because he has #issues and far more like this tormented stray cat who stares at you from the secluded corner he won’t leave in the most poorly socialized and tense way imaginable when you try to coax him into approaching you because he is clearly starving and all alone in the rain and cold. He bristles defensively and bats at you if you get too close but every time you walk away and then look back you see he’s discreetly following you and is now staring at you intently from the bushes

[atelier-slime]

DRAGON QUEST'S LOCALIZATION SUCKS, ACTUALLY. PART 1

There's a thread blowing up on Japanese twitter right now about the poor quality of localization. It's the first time I've ever actually seen a japanese perspective on the topic, and it's been extremely gratifying to see a ton people from over there talk about specific translation issues they've seen or learn for the first time that japanese media is often given the short end of the stick here in the USA.

Most of the time over here in the US, criticism of localization gets shouted down as whiny fans who think they know better than the translators. It's been heartening to see that people from japan are also annoyed by it, and its inspired me to write up a whole long-ass rant I've had simmering in the back of my mind for years, so buckle up, long post(s) incoming:

Let's start at the beginning with the first thing that ever caused me to start thinking about localization. This little guy:

If you've played Dragon Quest in the past 2 decades, you probably know this guy by the name "Spiked Hare." Not me though! I got into DQ on the game boy, in the brief window of time where DQ's localization was handled by Nob Ogasawara, the same guy responsible for translating every pokemon game up until Platinum. In the DQ games Nob worked on, he chose to translate this guy's name as "Almiraj." Why the huge difference in translation? I'll get to that in a minute.

The almiraj is an extremely minor enemy in Dragon Quest 3. It's pretty weak, and it's only real defining feature is that it can occasionally cast sleep spells on your party members. It's just one of hundreds of monsters in that game, and aside from it's cute design, it's pretty forgettable. As a weird kid overly obsessed with linguistics though, its name always seemed odd to me. You don't really see words that end with a "J" in english. It stuck out enough that one night, when I was bored, I decided to google "almiraj" to figure out what the name meant. It sent me down a rabbit hole (almiraj hole?) that taught me all sorts of cool shit, and permanently altered the way I looked at localization. The path I tumbled down that night went something like this:

The Dragon Quest almiraj is named after the almiraj, a "real" mythical creature described as a hare with a large horn on its head.

The original inspiration for accounts of the almiraj (as well as the jackalope, wolpertinger, etc.) is likely the Shope papiloma Virus, which causes rabbits to grow weird, horn-like growths on their face and head.

It was described by Zakariya al-Qazwini, an Iranian lawyer, author, and all around knowledgeable guy who lived in the 13th century.

al-Qazwini described it in the Aja'ib al-Makhluqat, a massive cosmographical treatise that attempted to describe basically everything in the known universe at the time. It was so popular in the Islamic world that it was copied and translated into dozens of languages, which meant plenty of copies have survived intact to modern times.

The almiraj was brought into the limelight in modern fantasy when it was introduced in the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons, as a relatively weak and unassuming monster as part of a campaign to expand the game with monster suggestions from fans of the series.

Dungeons and Dragons-style role playing games were brought into the digital world with the release of the first Wizardry game in 1981.

Yuji Horii was a massive fan of Wizardry, which he first discovered as part of a developer exchange program when he visited America in 1983. Three years later, he decided to try and recreate the things he loved from the series for console gamers in Japan, and the the original Dragon Quest was born.

One little name was all it took to open up this entire through-line of history that I had no idea even existed before that night. It's a tapestry of human experiences over 800 years in the making, spanning continents, cultures, languages, and medium. It's probably because I'm the type of person who sits around thinking about stuff too much, but I honestly get a little emotional wondering what al-Qazwini would think if he could see the mythical creatures he described all those years ago as little dudes hopping around inside a computer.

And the thing is the tapestry doesn't end there! Dragon Quest is still pretty niche in the west, but in Japan it's fucking titanic. There's an urban legend that the Japanese government banned Square Enix from releasing Dragon Quest games on a weekday, because so many people would skip work or school that it would impact the economy. (It's not true by the way, but the fact that the rumor exists at all is a testament to how huge the series' influence is over there.) I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that what Lord of the Rings did to modern western fantasy, Dragon Quest did to modern Japanese fantasy. Almost every JRPG, manga, or anime with a fantasy setting has the fingerprints of Dragon Quest on it. Countless other works have been inspired by DQ, and those works will go on to inspire others. A million different threads weaving tapestries back and forth across time and borders, all over the globe. And the almiraj is a part of that! It might just be a single, tiny, white and purple thread, but it's still in there helping to tie things together.

So back to the question I asked earlier: Why is it "Almiraj" in Mr. Ogasawara's translation but "Spiked hare" in the current one? Simple: Nob actually translated the name.

You can see on the DQ wiki that the original japanese name of the monster is "アルミラージ" which is literally just "almiraj" written in katakana:

The current DQ team has instead decided that all monster names should be puns. I'm not against puns or anything. "Spiked hare" for a rabbit with a horn is great! I might even raise my eyebrows and exhale slightly if I read it for the first time. Dragon Quest in general tends to have a lot of goofiness in it, so it's not like puns are out of place or anything. My problem is that, by deciding to replace monster names arbitrarily like this, all the little threads start to come unraveled. You lose the ability to look back down the line and discover all these different connections to history and nature and art that you might not ever learn otherwise. The almiraj isn't the only monster to get this treatment. A huge portion of the monsters in Dragon Quest are taken from mythologies around the world, and many of their names are literally already in English, just written with katakana.

The almiraj sticks out in my mind as a particularly egregious example because of just how much I learned because of the foreign-sounding name, but there's plenty of other name changes that have resulted in straight up confusing, ambiguous, or otherwise stupid outcomes in the current localization.

CONTINUED IN PART 2

[kaeyazuha]

how am i supposed to label wanderer in my fics...

I'm sure most people will just use Scaramouche which makes sense but like

I feel bad

I have no idea why (yes I do) but the idea of using Scaramouche for him makes me sad. That's an identity he was abused and manipulated into, one that he doesn't want to associated with anymore. That's the entire point of this quest. Kunikuzushi is another identity he isn't comfortable with anymore, understandably so. But I also don't like calling him Wanderer since it's such a vague name hrgfgff

[beevean]

@simonsquest My part of the art trade <3

I hope you like it!

[electric-plants]

this is what i want to do every time i’m playing hsr’s xianzhou luofu quests and all the characters start being mean to dan heng

[raposarealm]

Here are the Quest Victory Quotes for Uwasa Mikoto! Credit to @muffinrecord for the screenshots.

Top: The snow covers my impurities... Middle: Well? Wasn't I useful? Bottom: Look... I became beautiful.

As always, friendly disclaimer that my Japanese isn’t the best, as I’m still learning. If you spot a mistake, please let me know, and I’ll fix it!

Note: Thanks to @whimsical-vanilla for correction the middle quote!