Do You Prefer Danganronpa or Trigger Happy Havoc?
That title may seem confusing at first glance, but it's actually a gateway into an interesting discussion into localization.
Oftentimes, when discussing the official English translations of the Danganronpa series, the first game is referred to often as Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. Even in just casual conversation, this is how we call it. I'm pretty sure the tag here on Tumblr is even DR:THH.
This, however, is incorrect.
Danganronpa is not the title of the first game. It's the subtitle.
It's no secret that Danganronpa takes very heavy inspiration from Ace Attorney. This is flat-out admitted in the leaked confidential files for Danganronpa's development. True to this, it seems the English localization team follows in similar fashion.
Ace Attorney is not the series name in Japanese, but rather Gyakuten Saiban (逆転裁判); meaning "turnabout trial" or, more literally, "trial with a twist".
Now, its not uncommon for Japanese games to get localized titles in English that are either similar to—or even completely unrelated to—their Japanese titles. I just find it funny that, even in English, Danganronpa can't help but take inspiration from its Capcom cousin.
Back on track.
It's very obvious that the first Danganronpa game was testing the waters with a new, English-only title: Trigger Happy Havoc.
This is a clever, albeit somewhat liberal, translation of the word danganronpa. ダンガンロンパ, though a made up word, is merely the combination of two real Japanese words: dangan (弾丸) and ronpa (論破).
Dangan means "bullets" while Ronpa means "debunk (an argument)".
So, in short: Debunking someone's argument with bullets.
Yes, that is literally what Danganronpa means.
Not only does it capture the game's literal main mechanic and plot, but it sounds hella catchy, and so if an English team wanted to make an apt English version, it had to be something that matched the meaning and sounded good. Localization, largely, is more marketing than actual translation, at least in practice.
Therefore: Trigger Happy Havoc seems to be what was settled on. And honestly? I like it a lot. It's succinct, catchy, and kind of silly—which makes it the perfect localization choice.
The first Danganronpa game actually does have a subtitle, but since the English team wanted to substitute the real subtitle for the game's Japanese name (for clarity?), the original Japanese subtitle goes unused. In Japanese, the first game is ダンガンロンパ 希望の学園と絶望の高校生 or Danganronpa: Academy of Hope and Students of Despair
I wonder how different life could be if the game we got in English was Trigger Happy Havoc: Academy of Hope, Students of Despair.
Likewise, could you imagine if they kept this up? Trigger Happy Havoc 2: Goodbye Despair and Trigger Happy Havoc V3: Killing Harmony.
While, in the end, I do love the name Danganronpa more than I could ever love the English name, I won't lie and say I'm a little sad it never went through. It's a cute translation. Also because now it makes the line-up a little confusing. Most sites these days categorize the first game erroneously as Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc but the few that do correctly list it as Trigger Happy Havoc: Danganronpa have to contend with the fact that amidst the catalogue of other games they may have listed, all of "Trigger Happy Havoc"'s sequels will be listed under the D section, and this game alone, under the T section.
Makes organization a hell of a lot harder.
While I'm on the subject of odd title changes, I may as well bring up that the subtitle for SDR2 was also changed, and how this change is displayed.
(Super) Danganronpa 2's subtitle in Japanese is さよなら絶望学園 or Goodbye, Despair Academy. For whatever reason, the official English decided to just go with "Goodbye Despair", which, all things considered, does sound better in English.
What I find oddly fascinating though is how this subtitle is displayed in the intro of the game. You know, with the terminal boot-up.
In the Japanese version, it's rather straight-forward. "Super Danganronpa 2" and then the subtitle in Katakana.
The English version, likewise, is also straight-forward. It's the English localized title and subtitle.
Where things get interesting is the official Taiwanese version. This version of the game was created around the same time as the official English version, but likely had 0 contact with the English development.
Because of this, when they had to use English for their intro, they had to translate the title themselves, and so if you play the Taiwanese version, you'll see:
Super Danganronpa 2: Farewell Academy of Despair
Nothing mind-boggling, but just a neat detail I think about time-to-time.
