Megaman/Rockman 7 script translation

[bobcatmoran]

Finished at last! Behind the fake cuts you can find the following:

( The Japanese game script, in Japanese )

( My English translation of the Japanese game script)

( The English game script from the US release )

And for those who don't want to read through all of that, here's a summary of differences that I noticed.


Notable differences:

•In the Japanese version, Blues is much more vague with his hints when you run into him in Cloud Man and Turbo Man's stages.

•Rightot (Japanese) comes off as much more ecstatic than Auto (English) about getting the missing bolt for his head. He also comes off as much more of a weirdo in general.

•Protoman (English) makes various ominous statements that Blues (Japanese) doesn't make, i.e. "I'll see you later. If you survive…"

•Likewise, in the Japanese, Blues makes absolutely no reference to any sort of pseudo-familial relationship between him, Rockman, and Dr. Light. Honestly, I have no idea why so much of his dialogue got butchered. Forte, IMO, is *way*harder to translate (I have a hard time with very casual masculine speech), although Blues was a challenge, too.

•Shade Man's weapon is "Noise Crush" in English and "Crush Noise" in Japanese. Similarly, Turbo Man's weapon is "Scorch Wheel" in English and "Burning Wheel" in Japanese.

•The Japanese version has little blurbs by each Robot Master's name during the stage intro which were taken out for the English adaptation. Here they are:
Burst Man: Bomb Bomber Bombest
Cloud Man: Watch Your Step
Junk Man: Forgotten Factory
Freeze Man: Don't Slip!
Slash Man: Jurassic Jungle
Spring Man: Boyoyon Paradise
Shade Man: Mystery! The Horror
Turbo Man: Champ of the Roads

•The English version also cut out the random weapon summaries with Roll and Rightot/Auto, which makes me sad. Those are funny, plus I think they might give Roll her biggest part out of any of the Classic series games.

•This isn't so much a difference between the games as just interesting. In the Japanese, Dr. Light is almost always referred to as "Light-hakase" (ライトはかせ). "Hakase" basically is the same as "Doctor," only it's used only for the Ph.D. variety only, not for the M.D.-type doctor. Dr. Wily, on the other hand, is called just that — Dr. Wily, with the "Dr." written out in romaji (i.e. Dr. ワイリー).

•And the award for Line Most Changed in the English Adaptation goes to:
Megaman (English): I am more than a robot!! Die Wily!!
Rockman (Japanese): ……
WTF, Capcom. WTF. Actually, that line, which I've read about elsewhere, was the reason why I took on this crazy project. That, and an obvious surplus of spare time.

Any comments, questions, or corrections are quite welcome!

Comments

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

You win the universe. Alas, if I could only figure out a way to post these results on Tanjou. *grin*

Capcom really IS WTF...

[thefanficpuppy.livejournal.com]

Table. Left column is the translation from Japanese, right column is the scene in the English game. Below that goes commentary. You can even have your little "image-switchy" JS buttons swap between your tables instead.

Yea/nay?

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'll talk to Elaine about it...maybe we can stick it in the Translations section! *grins*

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

I can encode simple HTML tables, if need be. I did a bit of messing around this afternoon (yay day off from work) (I hope this doesn't get eaten in comments).

Example:

[thefanficpuppy.livejournal.com]

Yes, I imagined it being much like this, but with the Rockman Tanjou style page flip buttons and page selector dropdown instead being replaced with html/js DIV switchers to make the tables automagically change.

It'd even fit nicely into their normal layout. Consistency for the win!

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Explain that idea further? I'm a bit confused what you mean (brain's even slower than usual lately). If it'll work better than the format Bobcat wrote, then I want your ideas on it. I need all the help I can get to make it as easy as possible to view!

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Oh, do you have any pictures from Rockman 7 that we can use as a sort of intro-image, just in case?

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

What sort of pictures are you looking for? Title screen? In-game cutscene-ish stuff? I can get them pretty easily, just let me know.

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of a title image and then having the scripts show up per scene (Prologue, then First Stage, etc). 'Course, we're still trying to figure out if there's any way to simply make text tables in the Tanjou coding instead of images, but so far it's a no-go. *Sigh* So, I won't tell anyone, but this'll take up typesetting time after all...*grin* Ah, well. Your translation is more entertaining and at least I won't have to clean anything.

Also, would you mind being a back-up translator? Elaine left me some translations, but there are bits where she didn't bother to translate it or it's very vague and she doesn't want to translate things anymore. (I'm kinda wrenching her arm to make her show me how the coding and website works. Don't tell anyone.)

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

So, like, title screen plus one picture per scene? I'll see what I can do (I'm moving at the end of next week, and I'll lose access to the games, but I'm planning to take with me a flash drive full of stuff anyway).

I guess I could be a backup translator if you need me. I'm not fluent, mind you--I relied pretty heavily on a couple of dictionaries and my old textbooks for this--but I'd be willing to give it a shot. I even have the Megamix manga (which I tried translating once--you guys are way more coherent than I was).

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Phshaw, fluent? Elaine's good, but she also loves her dictionaries ^^ And the coherency is also due to my mad script-editing skillz. (You laugh, but you should have seen some of her early scripts before I'd gone through them.)

And that sounds good. Just thinking....what about having it like this?


[Picture of someone interacting with someone else in that particular scene]

[Japanese translation on this side] [long vertical line] [English script on this side]

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it'd be OK. Would it be like separate pages for each scene, or big blocks, like:

[Picture of someone interacting with someone else in that particular scene]

[Japanese translation on this side] [long vertical line] [English script on this side]

[some sort of scene divider....or not, since there's pictures]

[Picture of someone interacting with someone else in that particular scene]

[Japanese translation on this side] [long vertical line] [English script on this side]

[etc.]

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Nah, separate pages for each scene, like this:


[Picture of someone interacting with someone else in that particular scene]

[Japanese translation on this side] [long vertical line] [English script on this side]

NEW PAGE (trans: new flippy thing like when we display manga)


[Picture of someone interacting with someone else in that particular scene]

[Japanese translation on this side] [long vertical line] [English script on this side]



Heh. Now, just to do it...and we wouldn't bother to display the original Japanese unless someone, like, asks...though I doubt it. *amused* Most come to Tanjou 'cause they CAN'T understand Japanese, so...

[thefanficpuppy.livejournal.com]

It would be nice; it's hard to read when it's on three different pages. (Not that I can read the Japanese one though; my reading-fu is weak!)

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks. *blush*

I'd be tickled pink if this did make its way to Tanjou. I did make a vague attempt at figuring out how to make a table like thefanficpuppy mentions below for the LJ entry, but gave up because I'm not quite sure how LJ handles those sort of things.

And Capcom rules at WTF. I forget which Zero game it is, but there's one where, in the English translation, Harpuia says something to Zero which is very hard to take any other way than, "Wow, Zero, fighting you really turns me on."

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Harpuia says something to Zero which is very hard to take any other way than, "Wow, Zero, fighting you really turns me on."


...*splorfles*

[thefanficpuppy.livejournal.com]

Closest line I found in Zero 1: "Harpuia: Incredible... I underestimated him... I will have revenge someday... Stay healthy until our next meeting... when I shall retire you!"

Closest line in Zero 2: "Harpuia: Ha ha ha... You are still so strong... I like it... No... I love it this way. You are the only one who can make me feel this alive... I enjoy the sensation, I love the pain... You are worthy..."

I think it's that one!

No such quotes in Z3, and he's not in Z4.

Being honest, I don't know how LJ handles users embedding JavaScript in their entries either. It'd be something very abusable that would probably be disabled.

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the quote from Zero 2! So wrong...

LJ doesn't allow embedded JavaScript unless it's put there by the Rich Text Editor, I think. And only certain HTML tags are allowed.

[thefanficpuppy.livejournal.com]

I imagine it's so people can't do malicious crap with JavaScript. Like people kept doing on FF.N that made them get stupidly restrictive and disallow all tags and URLs in stories, ever.

So yeah, you'd have to do it on another site. C'mon Rockman Tanjou! You know you wanna! :D

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Hee. Vote in the poll on Tanjou's poll page :3

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Well, I put up a poll on Tanjou to see how many people would appreciate your hard work (not that I'll pay attention to it, since this will go up regardless), so you can keep an eye on that ^^ What do you want me to link your name to when I mention you? My default is fanfic.net, but...

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

Oooh, awesome! Link would probably be my fanfic.net page, http://www.fanfiction.net/~bobcatmoran. Oh, and it's Bobcat Moran, two words. ^_^

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and I want your icon for my Tanjou picture. So. Much. *stares at the awesome*

[(Anonymous)]

Which one? The chibi Rockman with the pencil? Feel free to grab it (or any of my other ones--just check to make sure if someone else should get credit).

[bobcatmoran.livejournal.com]

...and that would be me, forgetting to log in. *facepalm*

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Eh, I figured. XD

And I shall edit how I misspelled your name when I change the entry to say that I uploaded the new chapters. (Translation: when I get a little more energy and by tomorrow. God I am dead on my feeeeeet. x.x)

[moonymonster.livejournal.com]

Oi, chiquita. I have an Important Message for you on my lj about whether you can help out as backup translator. GO READ NOW PLZKTHX.