This post is part of a series on reader requested (and personal curiosity) comparisons between various games’ Japanese and English scripts. Last time, I looked into a scene from the demo of the upcoming RPG Project Octopath Traveler.
Today’s post concerns Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Specifically, the boss of Chapter 22 (Solo). There are very minor spoilers, none to the overall story.
A reader said the following:
Can you translate the Japanese version of Schaeffer’s defeat quote in Chapter 22 of PoR? The English version is pretty (in)famous…
This should be interesting, let’s take a look!
For context, Schaeffer (the level boss) had taken some clergymen hostage, forcing them to fight Ike and crew. He says this line upon being defeated:
| Japanese | Lit. Trans | Official Localization |
| ……ぶ……ばっ…… | …B…bah…gah… | …Gwaar… Haaaarr… Haaaaaa… Shoulda brought …more priests… Or some…babies… Dang… |
Well! That’s pretty funny seeing the two side by side. As you can see, Schaeffer got a few extra lines of dialogue, likely just to make him more of a heinous criminal. In Japanese, he’s just grunting as he falls. In English, he’s still thinking of what other things he should’ve done to save himself.
A pretty straightforward case of the localization having fun putting more lines in, be it to make a funny moment or just to make the character more evil than they were originally.
Infographic summary:
So what do you think of the above dialogue? How would you have went about localizing it? It’s pretty silly to me.
I will continue to look at fun differences between games. Any dialogue you’re interested in? Let me know in comments or via email!
