Thanks for your interest everyone! I suppose I was being a
little hyperbolic in my description of my notes... I wanted to point out things that I thought were interesting at least as much as I wanted to criticize. But without any further ado, I will resume from Itory Village...
------------
One line that always confused me occurs when Lilly offers to lead Will to the Moon Tribe Camp, and you choose 'No'. Lilly responds:
If you make him mad, you'll lose your life, so you'd better stop it.
The line was supposed to refer to the Moon Tribe, and should've been more like this:
You're right. It's said that you'll lose your life if you anger them, so it
might be better to give up on it.
------------
I think this has disseminated pretty widely now, but Riverson was originally Leviathan. Considering the Japanese rendering of leviathan,
revaiasan, it's not hard to see how this happened. Was it an intentional corruption of a Biblically-derived name? Was the translator just ignorant? I wish I knew...
------------
There's a little bit of programmer humor near the end of the raft sequence that was removed from the English version. (It's not in the prototype either.) Kara jokes about Will's hair having grown, and adds, 'Yes, about 2 pixels longer'.
------------
The translator consistently reverses the lines that Will narrates and lines that Will actually speaks in the final scenes of the raft sequence. When Will makes a wish on the red star, he doesn't actually say it aloud. In the next scene, Will's comments about Kara are narration in the English version:
Will: Kara doesn't act like a spoiled princess now. If you told someone
she was one of the island girls, no one would doubt it.
Kara: It's terrible! (In reference to the sharks that won't show up for another few seconds.)
But something more like this would've been better:
Will: And you don't seem as much like a princess either, Kara. If you said you
were a girl from an island somewhere, no one would be able to tell.
Kara: You're terrible! (In reference to Will's teasing.)
------------
Later, after Kara talks about sunset and sunrise, Will says:
I wanted to say the same things to you, but somehow the words just
wouldn't come out. I just nodded, saying nothing...
But again, it was supposed to have been narration, like this:
There should have been something I wanted to tell Kara, but for some reason,
the words wouldn't come out. I just nodded, saying nothing...
------------
In Freejia, the two back-alley men who say "A life lived honestly. A life of fun and laughter." and "I don't know who made this prediction, but it's all a lie! I do this to forget." are both drunks, and their dialogue was cut down to hide it.
------------
Erik is routinely referred to as a 'man' in Freejia, despite being the most childish member of the party. In the Japanese, he is called a boy instead. That's just sloppy translating.
------------
There's an awkward bit in Neil's dialogue where the translator(s) gets ahead of him/herself:
NEIL: The ruins Will talked about are scattered over the world, but they have
something in common. Drawing a line among the ruins makes a shape that looks like the
constellation of Cygnus.
KARA: Cygnus?!
NEIL: That's the Tower of Babel, where Will's father got lost. It's in the
middle of the ground painting of the big white bird.
A number of important clauses are either missing or misinterpreted, and it should be more like this:
Neil: The ruins are scattered all over the world, but they have one point of commonality.
When you connect all the ruins by drawing lines between them on a map, it forms a shape
like the constellation of Cygnus, the swan.
Kara: Did you say Cygnus?!
Neil: That's right. And the Tower of Babel, where they say Will's dad disappeared, is
located right in the center of the giant swan.
------------
If anyone thought Neil's use of the word 'organic' in his introduction scene was strange, the corresponding Japanese word (yuuki) has an interesting definition that I had never considered - "Possessing a close interrelation, like that of the body parts of a living thing. Comprised of many parts but sharing an intimate unity". I found a similar English definition - "Constituting an integral part of a whole; fundamental".
------------
The middle part of the game seems to reference some occult theories, including one detailed in a book titled 'Chariots of the Gods?' which suggests that the Nazca lines were built as a landing strip for UFOs, which as we know is more or less the case in the game. The Sky Garden itself is probably based on the Hanging Gardens of Bablyon, what with the statues of winged bulls with human heads scattered about. In the 90s Japanese development teams often regarded their overseas releases as a chance to tidy up things they were dissatisfied with, and apparently with IoG they wanted to beef up the Babylonian theme by altering the sprite for the boss. It went from a rather humdrum giant bird in the Japanese release to the stone head of a Babylonian king that we know and love. Coolest looking boss in the game? Probably.
------------
A lot of unpleasant things get glossed over in this translation, as was (and often still is) Nintendo's habit. For example, when you defeat the Sky Garden boss:
You have defeated the,[sic] huge demon! Look! A Mystic Statue!!
Originally it was...
After defeating the giant bird, you find a Mystery Doll on it's corpse!!
------------
There's an interesting change in the dialogue immediately after getting the 2nd Mystic Statue. The Japanese version uses terms that the player would know, but Will would be ignorant of, while the English version describes things from Will's perspective. The English goes like this:
A strange noise fills the air around you. From out of nowhere, you hear Neil's voice!
And the Japanese goes like this:
Neil's voice rings out over a loudspeaker, along with the sound of a propeller!
------------
In the English version of the sequence where Neil tries to break Will's fall with his plane, there is a joke where Neil says, "Shoot!! I dropped a contact!!". That's not in the Japanese.
------------
The fountain in the Ocean Palace is called the fountain of blood in Japanese, and the liquid in the fountain is a brownish-red color rather than the dark grey of the English version.
------------
In Japanese, Rama is named Ra Mu - the same as the king of Mu in James Churchward's series of occult histories about Mu. The Mu theory seems to be popular among Japanese occultists (probably because they like the idea that Japan is a remnant of the advanced Mu civilization).
------------
The message from Seth in the undersea tunnel suffers from singular syndrome, and seems to suggest that Seth's consciousness is somehow incorperated into Riverson, which is erroneous. There are multiple leviathans... er, Riversons. In English:
SETH: I was swallowed by Riverson... When I came to, the form of my body
had changed to Riverson's. This Riverson is a creature who lives in the
ocean. I don't know if it's human or not. He said that evolution is being
affected by the light of a comet.
Or more properly:
Seth: I was swallowed by the leviathan... When I regained consciousness, my body
had changed into a leviathan. These leviathan creatures may be humans that live
in the ocean. I heard from my fellow leviathans that the light of a comet is
altering the evolution of living things.
------------
The Angel Tribe is the Fallen Angel Tribe in the Japanese version, and Angel Village is Fallen Angel City (which is as close as I can come to explaining the 'Dark Angel' label on the Japanese overworld map).
------------
When Lance asks Will what he should give Lilly for her birthday, the 'language of flowers' is mentioned in the Japanese version when you choose the "bouquet of flowers" option. In this sense, the language of flowers is a 17th-18th century European system which the Japanese have elaborated on, in which certain emotional values are assigned certain flowers. Lance says that the bouquet of rose buds that he decides upon means 'confession of love' in the language of flowers.
------------
The dialogue of the Angel Tribe members in the dance hall is less bleak in the English version (it's kind of hard to imagine, but it's true).
Dancing man 1: People here love to dance.
Dancing woman 1: I dance to remember what it feels like to be human.
But....
Dancing man 2: The picture on that wall was painted by Ishtar. But the
model in the painting was lost.
Dancing woman 2: We are expressionless, but Ishtar painted us with faces
overflowing with human kindness. After that, people wanted to be painted
flocked here.
Better translated, it would be:
Dancing man 1: This is one of the human pleasures, known as 'dancing'.
Dancing woman 1: I want to feel close to human emotion, but despite dancing
like this every day, I feel nothing...
Dancing man 2: The pictures on the wall were painted by the artist, Ishtar.
However, those who model for his paintings go missing afterward...
Dancing woman 2: We are expressionless, but Ishtar depicted us with faces
overflowing with human kindness. After that, countless people wanted to be
painted, even though they didn't know what would become of them.
FAQ
TerraEarth.com
TerraEarth Gallery
Usergroups
Memberlist
Profile
Register
Log in
Why didn't they get it right in the first place?
