FE16 Three Houses Localization: Scarecrow or Man Dressed as a Woman? [JPN vs ENG]

Spoiler warning: This article involves info about Ingrid and Sylvain’s C Support.

Today’s short post comes from a reddit thread that a friend on twitter shared:

Would be interested in seeing you cover Sylvain and Ingrid’s C support. Depending on the language, it’s referenced Sylvain either hits on a (crossdressing) man or a scarecrow,

The short answer: the reddit user is correct and their thread addresses this issue nicely, so this article may be redundant! I want to post it for archival purposes though. So let’s take a quick look!

The line comes from Ingrid and Sylvain’s C support. Ingrid, Sylvain’s childhood friend, is chiding him over his flirtatious behavior, such as how he hit on her grandmother when he was just 8 years old. There are other students that can hear their conversation.

It leads to Ingrid saying the following line in the localization:

When you were ten, we went to that harvest festival, and you started making eyes at a scarecrow!

To which a random student overhears and replies:

(A scarecrow?!)

Now let’s look at the original Japanese:

Original Japanese + Literal Translation:

１０歳の頃は、収穫祭の余興で女装した男性を本気で口説こうとして・・・

When you were ten, you were pulling some serious moves on that man who was dressed as a woman at the harvest festival…

（へえ、シルヴァンって男まで口説くんだな・・・・・・）

(Wow, so Sylvain even makes the moves on guys, huh…?)

Here we can see that the scarecrow in question was a 女装した男性 (lit: Male in woman’s clothing). The student has a reply beyond simply “A scarecrow?!” in response, which is actually what made this line stand out to people who were playing with Japanese audio and could understand what was being said versus what was being read.

Both ways, Sylvain remarks that the incident was an accident, and the conversation manages to wrap itself back on a consistent track. In that sense, the change is relatively inconsequential, and conveys the point that Sylvain did something that makes a joke about his flirtatious behavior, or to what extent his flirting goes.

When it comes to reasoning behind the change, one can speculate that it was likely to err on the side of caution and avoid any potential offense.

There is not much else to say about this beyond that it is a fun little trivia tidbit, and a look into how some things changed during the localization process.

In short:

Sylvain did flirt with a “man dressed as a woman” in Japanese, which was changed to a Scarecrow in English. Both languages portray the silliness of his flirtatious behavior but go about it with different examples, tying back to the same overall conversation with Sylvain proclaiming “it was an accident” afterward. The change itself was likely to err on the side of caution and avoid any potential offense. Which do you like better?

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Easy references:

Japanese	Lit. Translation	Official Localization
１０歳の頃は、収穫祭の余興で女装した男性を本気で口説こうとして・・・	When you were ten, you were pulling some serious moves on that man who was dressed as a woman at the harvest festival…	When you were ten, we went to that harvest festival and you started making eyes at a scarecrow!
（へえ、シルヴァンって男まで口説くんだな・・・・・・）	(Wow, so Sylvain even makes the moves on guys, huh…?)	A scarecrow?!

Infographic Summary:

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What do you think of this change? Do you like the idea of his 10-year-old self flirting with a man dressed as a woman more than a Scarecrow? Or do you like the scarecrow? Let me know!

I’m taking requests to look into various supports and such in Three Houses, as there are a lot of fun localization things to look into here and there.