Pokemon X/Y – “Owned, suckah!” [JPN vs ENG]

Not my screenshot. Source.

Today’s post is a small one, and covers a reader request:

“I saw a thread on reddit where someone linked a shot of this sassy old guy in the Battle Maison. What was the Japanese line? Just curious. Thanks!”

I don’t think I ever ran into him, that line is hilarious! So I’m curious what that was too.

Let’s take a look!

Official Localization:

How’s that? Owned, suckah!

Japanese + Literal Translation:

どや！　みたか！ ワシの　ブッチギリや！！
Lookit that! I wiped the floor with ya!

(Super Literal: Well well! See that?! I’m the victor by a long shot!)

So he’s talking super informal in Japanese, for one, with a bit of an accent. The “owned, suckah!” is what localization put in for the Japanese line “ブッチギリ” (bucchigiri). The term can’t really be translated into a single word, but roughly means “to gain a major lead over an opponent” (or “to win by a large margin.”)

You can see in the super literal translation above that it sounds a little stilted, and even my slightly more liberal translation is a little lengthy compared to a single word in Japanese. I could retain the accent but not the concise delivery in the example for the sake of simply conveying the meaning.

Localization however delivered the simple phrase “owned, suckah!” It gets both the informal tone of winning by a large margin in “owned,” and the accented/informal tone with “suckah!”

It really is a silly line in the end, huh? So that’s that in Japanese!

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That’s it for this post! Which do you prefer? The longer Japanese one with a more clear meaning? Or the silly and concise delivery?

I will continue to look at fun differences between the versions of sorts of games when I get time!

Any dialogue you’re interested in? Feel free to send in comments or via email!