Mario RPGs (With bonus translation notes by NerfedFalcon below)

[NerfedFalcon]

Spoiler: Part 6: I didn't think I'd still be doing this by now.

JP: 'Bukki-'
Woolsey: 'Booster'

I made this one larger than normal because the detail's not that easy to see, but I don't have a better shot of it. Booster's/Bukki's name is written on the welcome sign, and it's there in the English version as well.


Bowser's victory pose in the Japanese version is supposed to be him holding his bicep to show off how strong he is. However, thrusting your arm up while holding the bicep with your other arm is a rude gesture in some parts of the world, to say nothing of how his closed fist kinda looks like he's flipping the bird if you squint. So it was changed to the double-bicep pose.


JP: 'Murakke Hanma-'
Woolsey: 'Masher'
Me: 'Rough Hammer'

'Murakke' can be a word for 'rough' or 'uneven', and that's used in the weapon's description, which roughly translates to 'A hammer with very uneven damage'. However, the word can also refer to a step in the process of making mochi, and official artwork of the weapon itself shows that it looks like a mochi-pounding hammer. Ted Woolsey clearly decided to focus on that aspect of it, especially since that led into the description of 'Makes monster mash!', which, yes, I do get the reference, but once again the reference comes at a cost - in this case, the understanding that the weapon has a very wide random damage range compared to other weapons.


This one doesn't work as just a screenshot. If the timestamp doesn't work, it's 10:52. You'll understand why I wanted to mark this one out once you've seen it.

The things we could've had outside Japan in the remake...


JP: 'Clown (Big Bro)' and 'Clown (Little Bro)'
Woolsey: 'Knife Guy' and 'Grate Guy'

I'm not sure if it's made clear through dialogue or whatever else that Knife Guy and Grate Guy are actually brothers, in the English version. But they are. The Clown Bros, more specifically.


JP: 'Strawberry'
Woolsey: 'Bundt'

That isn't a goddamn Bundt cake. That isn't a goddamn Bundt cake. That isn't a goddamn Bundt cake. That isn't a goddamn Bundt cake. That isn't a goddamn Bundt cake.

This is a Bundt cake.

This has been the 'what the hell was he on' rant of this post.

 

[Drathnoxis]

This one doesn't work as just a screenshot. If the timestamp doesn't work, it's 10:52. You'll understand why I wanted to mark this one out once you've seen it.

The things we could've had outside Japan in the remake...

Uh, I'm not sure what the difference from the English version is? I need more explanation.

Also, I know you aren't there yet, but I really hope you answer this question when you do, but what is Toadstool's ??? in the Japanese version? I have to know.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Uh, I'm not sure what the difference from the English version is? I need more explanation.

The synchronization of the text to the music so that it looks like Booster is singing his own theme, which doesn't occur in the English version.

Also, I know you aren't there yet, but I really hope you answer this question when you do, but what is Toadstool's ??? in the Japanese version? I have to know.

...I don't believe I did that particular, eh-heh, 'sidequest' when I played it. The world may never know.

 

[Drathnoxis]

The synchronization of the text to the music so that it looks like Booster is singing his own theme, which doesn't occur in the English version.

Ohhhh, ok. Hard to pick up on that stuff when you don't know what the text means.

...I don't believe I did that particular, eh-heh, 'sidequest' when I played it. The world may never know.

Nooooo!

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Spoiler: Part 7: The end of the filler arc!

JP: 'Hoshi no furu oka'
Woolsey: 'Star Hill'
Me: 'Falling Star Hill'

Given the text space limits, 'Star Hill' is a perfectly acceptable approximation. Paper Mario uses the same names for a similar location.


"I want to be famous gesu!" The tic belongs to Pepput/Punchinello, which makes it a lot easier to identify as his wish than in the English version.


JP: 'Ripple Town'
Woolsey: 'Seaside Town'

It has a proper name in Japanese.


When the townsfolk of Ripple Town speak, the use of katakana and the spaces between words that wouldn't normally be included indicate stilted, almost robotic speech. In most Japanese media, robots (except the human-passing kind) and other machines speak using katakana, and when kanji have furigana those are written in katakana as well.

In the English version, Seaside Town's NPCs only speak two or three words at a time, followed by an ellipsis.


JP: 'Umi'
Woolsey: 'Sea'

I was a bit surprised when I saw this location name when I was watching my friend's stream of the English version, and assumed that it had to be a Woolseyism - after all, you have to go through the entire cave system before you get to the small amount of the sea you have access to before the sunken ship. However, as it turns out, 'Sea' is a completely direct translation of what the area was named in Japanese.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Spoiler: Part 8: Sunken Ship and more

The password in the Sunken Ship in Japanese is 'su-i-zo-ku-ka-n', which means 'aquarium'. In English, Woolsey's password is 'pearls'. However, it is also possible to spell 'corals' using the letters you're given, which fits the oceanic theming and doesn't contradict any of the clues you're given, but it's still incorrect. Even worse, in the multiple-choice quiz in Bowser's castle, you're asked what the password was in the Sunken Ship, and one of the answers you can give there is 'corals' - meaning they knew it was possible to write that, even though it was wrong, and left it in anyway instead of changing it so that the answer was unambiguous.

Because ambiguity is exactly what a good word puzzle needs.

That's my 'what the hell was he thinking' rant quota for today.


JP: 'Anshin bajji: Chinmoku kakashi kyoufu kinoko nemuri doku wo fusegu'
Woolsey: 'Safety Badge: Prevents Mute and Poison attacks'
Me: 'Safety Badge: Prevents Mute, Scarecrow, Fear, Mushroom, Sleep, Poison'

Alternatively, 'Prevents all status effects' would fit in the text space allowed. Which is its actual effect; only listing off those two makes it seem significantly weaker than it actually is. And now that they presumably have the space to write out something like that in the remake, if they don't, they're wasting their potential - even if they kept most of Woolsey's script the same on purpose, they should at least fix stuff like this that's clearly not correct.


The Safety Badge uses the Japanese word for 'safety', which is 'anshin' [edit: it isn't, I'm confusing it with a similar word; 'anshin' actually means 'relief', as in being relieved that nothing bad happened]. But the Safety Ring uses 'safety' in English written in katakana.

Both called 'Safety' in English. Go figure.


JP: 'Jonathan'
Woolsey: 'Johnny Jones'

The Japanese version only ever refers to the pirate captain as 'Jonathan' or 'Jonathan Jones', never as 'Johnny'. That was added by Woolsey to fit the text space limits in battle - though, 'Jonathan' on its own would still have fit...


JP: 'Yaridovich'
Woolsey: 'Yaridovich'

'Yari' is the Japanese word for a spear, which is the weapon Yaridovich represents among the Smithy Gang. For some reason, this is the only one whose name Woolsey didn't change to use the English name for that weapon, or vaguely reference it in the case of Mack, instead choosing to leave it completely the same. Which just confuses me; if you're already changing the names of the other weapons so that their name matches what they are in English, why leave that one alone?

...And I've gone over my rant quota, but at least I don't actually have anything else to say about Yaridovich, so I can just end the post here.

 

[Chimpzy]

@NerfedFalcon, inspired doing these translation notes. Very interesting.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Spoiler: Part 9: Culex is in this one

JP: "...... Omoroid......"
Woolsey: "...I'm resting up for Mother Brain."

'Omoroid' was an advertising tagline for Metroid 2: Return of Samus in Japan. It's a portmanteau between 'omoshiroi', which means 'interesting' or 'fun', and 'Metroid'. Since there isn't an equivalently well-known tagline for any Metroid games in English, Woolsey changed it to a direct reference to the game's content.

It's also possible to find Link in another bed elsewhere in the game, but he doesn't speak.


What the elder of Ripple Town is saying matters less than how he's saying it. He doesn't use katakana, even in cases where he should like for the area name 'Country Road' (Land's End) in the quotation marks. Probably meant to show off how old and traditional he is, that he refuses to use the newfangled system for foreign words, or something like that.


JP: 'Ant Warrior'
Woolsey: 'Shogun'

Calling this enemy 'Ant Warrior' makes it a lot more obvious that it is an ant than I understood just from the visuals, because the visuals of this game are not especially good at making it clear what things are or where they are in relation to each other; isometric pseudo-3D was an "excellent" idea, but that's off-topic. Besides that 'Shogun' doesn't make a lot of sense, given that there's an even stronger variant of this enemy later on that's simple called 'Armored Ant' in English, it also makes the instruction from an NPC in the area to 'follow the ant' make a lot less sense if you don't know that Shogun is supposed to be an ant. I suppose it isn't really possible to miss that you should go into the whirlpool that has the enemy in it, but.


JP: 'Monsutaun' [pr. 'Monstown']
Woolsey: 'Monstro Town'

Yet more onomatopoeia ('monsuta-' to 'taun'.) The translation is as close as it's reasonable to expect.


JP: 'Crystala'
Woolsey: 'Culex'

This is probably the longest single instance of Ted Woolsey deciding to write whatever the hell he felt like instead of translating the scene directly.

I admit I don't fully understand the Japanese story, since Crystala speaks with a lot of kanji and archaic terms about concepts that go a little above my head, but my understanding is that he is a two-dimensional entity of pure evil who seeks to understand the third dimension that Mario and friends exist in, by defeating them in battle to claim the 'power of the third dimension' from them. After being defeated, he comes to realize that the 'third dimension's power is love, friendship, and other positive emotions that, as a being of pure evil, he doesn't fully understand. It's notable that his sprite looks a lot more '2D' than anything else in the game, to make his speeches about the 'third dimension' more meaningful.

What Woolsey wrote for Culex was that he was a being from a different universe entirely, which is incompatible with Mario's, preventing him from carrying out an invasion any further than the in-between space where you meet him. However, rather than go home completely empty-handed, he asks if Mario and friends will indulge him in battle, as he believes they are the strongest warriors of their universe. He's a lot less imperious and a lot more polite and even friendly than Crystala, and other than that he's from a different universe, no real mention is made of the fact that he's drawn in pure 2D rather than rendered 3D.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I'll say it: It sucks how they remake Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario 2 but just ignore Paper Mario 64. Yeah, it's not quite as good as Thousand Years Door but completely ignoring it is still doing it a disservice.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I'll say it: It sucks how they remake Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario 2 but just ignore Paper Mario 64. Yeah, it's not quite as good as Thousand Years Door but completely ignoring it is still doing it a disservice.

The TTYD remake seems like a test of the waters for going back to that style, shared between it and 64. Since TTYD's generally held up as the better of the two, it's the one more likely to sell the numbers needed to get Nintendo back on track.

Make sure to buy three copies so that we get that PM64 remake down the line. /s

 

[Drathnoxis]

JP: 'Ant Warrior'
Woolsey: 'Shogun'

Calling this enemy 'Ant Warrior' makes it a lot more obvious that it is an ant than I understood just from the visuals, because the visuals of this game are not especially good at making it clear what things are or where they are in relation to each other; isometric pseudo-3D was an "excellent" idea, but that's off-topic. Besides that 'Shogun' doesn't make a lot of sense, given that there's an even stronger variant of this enemy later on that's simple called 'Armored Ant' in English, it also makes the instruction from an NPC in the area to 'follow the ant' make a lot less sense if you don't know that Shogun is supposed to be an ant. I suppose it isn't really possible to miss that you should go into the whirlpool that has the enemy in it, but.

When I was a kid I remember getting stuck at this point of the game my first time. The fact that they didn't call the enemy an ant was definitely part of that..

JP: 'Crystala'
Woolsey: 'Culex'

This is probably the longest single instance of Ted Woolsey deciding to write whatever the hell he felt like instead of translating the scene directly.

I admit I don't fully understand the Japanese story, since Crystala speaks with a lot of kanji and archaic terms about concepts that go a little above my head, but my understanding is that he is a two-dimensional entity of pure evil who seeks to understand the third dimension that Mario and friends exist in, by defeating them in battle to claim the 'power of the third dimension' from them. After being defeated, he comes to realize that the 'third dimension's power is love, friendship, and other positive emotions that, as a being of pure evil, he doesn't fully understand. It's notable that his sprite looks a lot more '2D' than anything else in the game, to make his speeches about the 'third dimension' more meaningful.

What Woolsey wrote for Culex was that he was a being from a different universe entirely, which is incompatible with Mario's, preventing him from carrying out an invasion any further than the in-between space where you meet him. However, rather than go home completely empty-handed, he asks if Mario and friends will indulge him in battle, as he believes they are the strongest warriors of their universe. He's a lot less imperious and a lot more polite and even friendly than Crystala, and other than that he's from a different universe, no real mention is made of the fact that he's drawn in pure 2D rather than rendered 3D.

Huh, I always figured he was supposed to be a FF villain, even though he didn't act like it. Odd change.

 

[sXeth]

When I was a kid I remember getting stuck at this point of the game my first time. The fact that they didn't call the enemy an ant was definitely part of that..



Huh, I always figured he was supposed to be a FF villain, even though he didn't act like it. Odd change.

He is, literally uses remixes of FF music. Culex is also a type of mosquito and Golbez was a fly, although that might be just someone reusing their source for "exotic" names lol. (The sprite is also not dissimilar from Kefka's final form, though the crystals would imply he came from an earlier game)

 

[Drathnoxis]

He is, literally uses remixes of FF music. Culex is also a type of mosquito and Golbez was a fly, although that might be just someone reusing their source for "exotic" names lol. (The sprite is also not dissimilar from Kefka's final form, though the crystals would imply he came from an earlier game)

I know he's definitely a FF reference, but he doesn't come across as a villain specifically in the English translation.

 

[BrawlMan]

@NerfedFalcon & @Drathnoxis

​

 

[NerfedFalcon]

snip

I was probably never going to buy this anyway, so you didn't need to ping me here, but I guess it's good to know that they didn't actively make it worse.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I just looked up some gameplay footage from the remake, and it appears that the Koopa Troopas in Bowser's Keep are still called 'Terrapin'.

There went the last little bit of my interest in it. At least 'The Big Boo' got fixed, but seriously?

 

[BrawlMan]

I was probably never going to buy this anyway, so you didn't need to ping me here, but I guess it's good to know that they didn't actively make it worse.

I didn't know you would exactly react, but I wanted to helpful. It's okay, you do what you want to do. I had no plans of getting this game either. I might check out Thousand Year Door Remaster.

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[Silvanus]

Spoiler: Part 9: Culex is in this one

View attachment 10135
JP: "...... Omoroid......"
Woolsey: "...I'm resting up for Mother Brain."

'Omoroid' was an advertising tagline for Metroid 2: Return of Samus in Japan. It's a portmanteau between 'omoshiroi', which means 'interesting' or 'fun', and 'Metroid'. Since there isn't an equivalently well-known tagline for any Metroid games in English, Woolsey changed it to a direct reference to the game's content.

It's also possible to find Link in another bed elsewhere in the game, but he doesn't speak.

View attachment 10136
What the elder of Ripple Town is saying matters less than how he's saying it. He doesn't use katakana, even in cases where he should like for the area name 'Country Road' (Land's End) in the quotation marks. Probably meant to show off how old and traditional he is, that he refuses to use the newfangled system for foreign words, or something like that.

View attachment 10137
JP: 'Ant Warrior'
Woolsey: 'Shogun'

Calling this enemy 'Ant Warrior' makes it a lot more obvious that it is an ant than I understood just from the visuals, because the visuals of this game are not especially good at making it clear what things are or where they are in relation to each other; isometric pseudo-3D was an "excellent" idea, but that's off-topic. Besides that 'Shogun' doesn't make a lot of sense, given that there's an even stronger variant of this enemy later on that's simple called 'Armored Ant' in English, it also makes the instruction from an NPC in the area to 'follow the ant' make a lot less sense if you don't know that Shogun is supposed to be an ant. I suppose it isn't really possible to miss that you should go into the whirlpool that has the enemy in it, but.

View attachment 10138
JP: 'Monsutaun' [pr. 'Monstown']
Woolsey: 'Monstro Town'

Yet more onomatopoeia ('monsuta-' to 'taun'.) The translation is as close as it's reasonable to expect.

View attachment 10139
JP: 'Crystala'
Woolsey: 'Culex'

This is probably the longest single instance of Ted Woolsey deciding to write whatever the hell he felt like instead of translating the scene directly.

I admit I don't fully understand the Japanese story, since Crystala speaks with a lot of kanji and archaic terms about concepts that go a little above my head, but my understanding is that he is a two-dimensional entity of pure evil who seeks to understand the third dimension that Mario and friends exist in, by defeating them in battle to claim the 'power of the third dimension' from them. After being defeated, he comes to realize that the 'third dimension's power is love, friendship, and other positive emotions that, as a being of pure evil, he doesn't fully understand. It's notable that his sprite looks a lot more '2D' than anything else in the game, to make his speeches about the 'third dimension' more meaningful.

What Woolsey wrote for Culex was that he was a being from a different universe entirely, which is incompatible with Mario's, preventing him from carrying out an invasion any further than the in-between space where you meet him. However, rather than go home completely empty-handed, he asks if Mario and friends will indulge him in battle, as he believes they are the strongest warriors of their universe. He's a lot less imperious and a lot more polite and even friendly than Crystala, and other than that he's from a different universe, no real mention is made of the fact that he's drawn in pure 2D rather than rendered 3D.

I completed the Remake over Xmas, including Culex, and the dialogue has had a bit of updating there; he does now talk about the 2D vs 3D stuff.


"Greetings.
I am Culex, Dark Knight of Vanda.
I have crossed into this dimension to fight for the Dark Mage.
You who stand before me... Where does your depth come from? Why are you rendered so three-dimensionally?
The evil power that gave me life mapped out this flat plane as my form.
You are formed from a power unknown to me. I wish to gain the secret of your three- dimensional world!"