The Gamer's Quarter

[Swimmy]

Not in the usual "this has been translated too literally and it doesn't make any sense" way. There's a little bit of that, but for the most part the meaning of the dialogue is decipherable. No, FF7 is funny in a "whoever was responsible for sitting down and typing the script into the game's program is very, very confused about the English language" way.

So enjoy with me a bit of the game's better dialogue.



Oh, are he?

(Also, Aeris is supposed to be Alice, I think, so let's get that out of the way now. Not a big deal since you can rename your characters. The Wikipedia entry insists on calling her "Aerith.")



I wonder how they set up the building so having a creek in the middle of it wouldn't screw up the establishment?



They've been teaching Barret English for years and he still don't do it right, do he?



This is one of my favorites. I'm not sure if it's a typo or if this is supposed to be the only Italian character in the game.




Main Entry:
2cape
Function:
noun
Etymology:
probably from Spanish capa cloak, from Late Latin cappa head covering, cloak
Date:
1758

1 : a sleeveless outer garment or part of a garment that fits closely at the neck and hangs loosely over the shoulders



Another classic. This is just after Aeris' death. Sephiroth says, "Because.... You are..." Then he flies off and you fight a battle with Jenova. I don't know why Jenova is finishing Sephiroth's line, especially after you kill her (temporarily), but she apparently has a funny way of speaking. This is in the middle of the most dramatic moment in the game.



The Weapon, weapon thing makes sense, I just like how awkward it is. If I were to catalogue the misplaced apostrophes, this post would never end.







This one's actually clever--there are two characters with a distinct laugh, and Cait Sith is making fun of them. But it's funnier that he can't capitalize or place a comma properly.



Maybe I'm stretching here, but is "subconsciousness" even a word?



Tifa's a dirty girl.



I'm guessing Zack's name was two syllables in Japanese. I don't know how Zac......k would be pronounced any differently from Zack.



I don't, know what, but it should be, pretty cool.



Barret gets a lot of shit for being a semi-racist stereotype. I don't think he's so bad. His dialogue has two tendencies. One, he cusses a lot (but not quite as much as Cid). Two, he shortens words. "Just" becomes "jes'," "off of" becomes "offa," etc.

But this line, Jesus Christ.



Not an error in this case, just a programming note. If you name Aeris anything else, it doesn't fix the posessive. For instance, this would say "Aerith' voice. . ."





Cloud is thinking deep thoughts.



That first-place there is supposed to be "Joe."



I SAID I COULDN'T HIT IT SIDEWAYS
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Harveyjames]

That must have taken you forever!

[Swimmy]

Nah, I've just been playing through it to make this week go by faster, and the occasional screenshot struck me as a good idea right at "this guy are sick."
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Max Cola]

The Aeris/Alice thing reminds me (ugh, Aerith)... wasn't "Cloud" originally intended to be "Claude"? But they changed it to sound COOLER and more MYSTICAL.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[wourme]

My favorite one is "Off course!" in that arena part.

[Swimmy]

Oh yeah, I'll have to grab a picture of that when I go for Omnislash.

[D-A-I-S]

[Max Cola]

[D-A-I-S]

I guess one of the few upsides of being an unchangeable antisocial recluse is that I stopped talking about video games with my voice after the fifth grade.

(Has TGQ ever had a topic about playground school ideas? I'm trying to remember one, but I think it might actually be two, because I'm not sure why dinosaurs would be scuba-diving secret agents)

[Swimmy]

I used to really like "Aerith" and went out of my way to change it. Now I'm indifferent. The Claude/Cloud thing is way more interesting. Wikipedia romanizes the Japanese as Kuraudo Sutoraifu. Oh yeah! HIS LAST NAME IS "STRIFE," what is this, Pilgrim's Progress?

More fun: "Cait Sith" is pronounced Ket Shee (or Cat Shee (or Caught Shee, depending on just how Irish you want to get)). See here, Wikipedia romanizes the Japanese as Ketto Shī. Also, I always pronounced Yuffie with a short U, but Wikipedia romanizes as "Yufi." Man, they really could have just called her Yufi.

Anywayyyyyyy, back to the translation. I've always been really baffled by the Honeybee Inn segment. Does anyone know if the dialogue is as vague in the original? Because in English it's totally baffling, and I wonder if they skirt around what's up because of the blatant homosexuality stuff going on.
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[boojiboy7]

The "aerith" thing just always annoyed me because it came up in various ff7 fanboy lovefests and I wanted to vomit.

Good stuff here, though, swimmy. Sister Ray is fucking great. Should have made it a joke about suckin' on a ding dong, haha.

[bleak]

I never appreciated FF7 enough to play it more than one time. The three before it were just so much better
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[Max Cola]

[daphaknee]

Cloud is hella getting anally raped, is what's going on.

ALSO THIS IS COSSIX NOT DAPHNY GODDAMMIT

[Lestrade]

Good post, Swimmy. What version of the game is this? PC or nicely-smoothed PS1?

[daphaknee]

dude i always took a Polaroid when i got to the threesome part

[Swimmy]

[Swimmy]

Even better that "no way" is wrong too, at least according to common usage.



JAMES HARVEY IN LAST PLACE!
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Ashura]

I thought Aerith was supposed to be a pun off of Earth or something like that? I don't know about Cloud, but I remember talk that Barret was supposed to be Bullet and all sorts of other fanwankery? And I've seen Reno translated on official art as Leno.

Fun thread, though. I think it's even funnier that this is top notch localization compared to what was around at the time, too.

I believe the whole Aeris/Aerith debacle started because the first English demo of the game had Aerith as her name and then, oh no, Square changed something!

I'm surprised no one's done a hack to 'clean up FFVII' like all of the undub stuff going around.

[Isfet]

i think mistranslating Cloud as Claude came either from Gamepro or EGM...some game magazine from around the time the game was being developed.

i haven't played this game since it first came out and...wow, i knew there were some mistakes ("off course!") but i don't remember all these errors. perhaps i didn't notice them because i was 12 years old at the time but...those are almost as bad as Final Fantasy Tactics.

[Harveyjames]

[bleak]

Guys I think the best localization of a game has to be Xenogears. "My father? You mean my dad?"
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[boojiboy7]

Xenogears had some fun localization stuff. The random voice samples that play out of nowhere are great, specifically Bart yelling "JERK!" in a very low quality sound file that the first time I heard I swore he yelled "BIIAAATCH!". My favorite moment comes in one of the fully animated cutscenes (of which there are like 2 on the first disc) where from lip movements and such it is really obvious that Fei says like a god-damned paragraph but his voice actor just yells "ELLY!!!". I always laugh at this part.

[Harveyjames]

[wourme]

[bleak]

[Worm]

Subconsciousness is a word. Though it's pretty hard to mess up in English when you take a word and add a prefix/suffix. ex. prejoratively
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Exit stage left, exit stage right, there is no place to run, all the fuses in the exit signs have been BURNT OUT

[Lackey]

I always thought Aeris was just a mixed up spelling of Aesir, what with the whole Midgar[+d?] thing and Square loving their pan-mythological name dropping.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[parkbench]

Wow, I never realised how ingrained in my mind the whole mythology of Aerith/Aeris was. Very interesting. Though I should say the most interesting thing about this thread is the Claude/Cloud translation. Claude! How fascinating. A 17th century RPG starring musketeers and troubadours comes to mind. Too bad we got shitty JRPG slop.
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ich bin aber eine mensch maschine

[Harveyjames]

[parkbench]

oops, I meant jpop, but JRPG works too.
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ich bin aber eine mensch maschine

[Dracko]

So a friend was telling me about the Drakengard games and they sound pretty amazing.

You've got a crew consisting of an incestuous, sociopathic dragon-rider (who hates dragons), a blind paedophile whose fairy familiar keeps calling him an impotent weakling, a barren cannibal, and a small child completely oblivious to just how fucked up his team is.

One mission has you slaughtering child soldiers while the paedophile weeps and begs you to think of their innocence.

So, as anyone played this game or what? How cutscene heavy is it?
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[daphaknee]

I've only played Drakengard 2. It's not terribly cutscene heavy I don't recall, but it's been a while since I played it.

Whoops, this is Cossix.

[Swimmy]

Even in the endgame sidequests, it keeps delivering. We are the dollars and sence!
_________________

"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[the drunken samurai]