In the anime, when Yoshiki asks "Hikaru" if he likes him, his response is translated as this in the anime:
In the official English localizations of both the manga and light novel, what "Hikaru" said is instead translated as this:
Edit: additional context on the translations courtesy of @kaboku. Thank you!
(And here's a neat detail for the fic authors in the audience who want their work to feel more "official": "Hikaru" is officially written as italicized in the light novel, to contrast with the original Hikaru and so as not to add quotations to anything that isn't spoken dialogue.)
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I’m currently recording a playthrough of Tales of Symphonia with the Japanese voices, which was at least partly done so I could take notes of the differences between the Japanese and English in this game. The following is a list of differences and other interesting things I noticed from Episode 2 of the playthrough.
Episode 2 is shorter than Episode 1, and also has a lot less interesting facts. I could have combined Episodes 2 and 3 into a single post, but I’ve already been procrastinating on posting this for two weeks now, so...
Watch Episode 2 here!
If you’d rather read this on google docs, head over here!
Notes on Episode 1 (and in the future, other episodes) can be found here!
> When Genis gives Colette her birthday present, in ENG she just says “No it’s fine I love your cookies!!” But Japanese has an added “your cookies are delicious and so I love them”.
> I accidentally skipped the text box before Colette could finish thanking Genis, oops. My bets are on it was just “domo arigatou” but did she add a gozaimasu at the end? We’ll never know!
> I forgot to mention it earlier, but Lloyd has a post-battle line that’s literally just “All right!” in English. (You can see it at 8:50.)
> Marble uses more honorific leaning speech, “sochira” to refer to Lloyd. (It’s a politer version of “sore”/ ‘that (person) over there’). And I thiiink I heard her add the honorific o- to tomodachi. (However, adding the o- prefix to words is also just called “beautification”, something which female speakers tend to do.)
> Marble ends a lot of her sentences with “wa”, which as far as end-of-sentence particles go, carries a feminine vibe.
> Genis and Colette call Dirk ダイクおじさん which is really kind of just “old man Dirk”. ダイク being Dirk’s name in Japanese.
> 16:20, Genis says “What? Aren’t we gonna get in trouble?!” which is still, basically what it says in Japanese, the Japanese is just more literally “Are you sure that’s okay?” “そのことをしていいの？”
> Lloyd says “Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?” In Japanese he says “バカ、いいんだよ” lit. “Idiot, it’s fine.”
> Upon examining the jump Lloyd made down a cliff, Forcystus says “How did a mere human make that kind of jump?” but in Japanese it’s something more like “What happened just now… Is that really just the power of a human?” I probably would have localized it the same way, but noticing even the little differences is all part of my practice, so.
> The scene where Colette and Lloyd say goodbye (starting at 31:00 exactly) is like… It’s translated literally in English and still has the same feel, but knowing that saying “sayonara” in Japan is a loooot less common than saying “goodbye” in English (sayonara being reserved for more permanent goodbyes) the transition from Colette’s “ja ne” (see you later) to Lloyd’s “ashita na” (see you tomorrow) back to Colette with a final, seemingly unnecessary “sayonara” (goodbye) punches just a Lil Bit more.
I’m currently recording a playthrough of Tales of Symphonia with the Japanese voices, which was at least partly done so I could take notes of the differences between the Japanese and English in this game. The following is a list of differences and other interesting things I noticed from Episode 1 of the playthrough.
At the moment, I have someone else’s playthrough done fully in Japanese available for me to compare what the Japanese text looks like, but that playthrough only goes as far as Asgard Ranch. After that point all non-voiced cutscenes (as well as lines I couldn’t understand through hearing it alone) will be unavailable for me to take notes on, at least until I play through this game 100% in Japanese myself.
Watch Episode 1 here!
And if you’d rather view this on gdocs, then head on over here!
> It might be difficult to tell if you aren’t used to the Japanese cast (which you wouldn’t be at the start of the game!), so for the record: the intro infodump is narrated by Kratos.
> Raine uses “verb stem + nasai” command forms almost exclusively. According to… what I guess is an excerpt from the Genki II textbook, this command form has “strong implications that you are talking down to somebody”, which means parents and teachers use it a lot (source)
> Raine’s name in Japanese is “Refill” (Genis’ is literally “Genius”). According to this really neat post (beware spoilers) it’s because Miyajima-san (the woman who wrote the scenario for ToS) absolutely hates naming characters so these were placeholder names that she never got around to changing
> Lloyd answers in casual speech. Casual speech is generally Lloyd’s default, though I know I remember him using polite once to some rando NPC. I’ll point it out when I get there, because i almost definitely recorded it.
(Here’s a quick overview on polite/casual speech, also)
> Genis calls her “nee-san” here instead of “Raine” as he does in English. (4:17). He does this a lot (unsurprisingly). I… can’t remember if there’s ever a time where he doesn’t, so it’s probably safe to assume he calls her nee-san all the time? I’ll update if that’s not true. Anyway like I know why this was a localization that got changed (it’s not natural to constantly refer to your sister as “sister” in English) it’s just a small detail that makes me fond every time I hear it.
> When Genis gives his answer to the question, it’s in polite speech? Raine’s follow-up is also polite speech. (Lloyd’s question is casual, still.) ((Genis uses casual speech almost constantly everywhere else though, so maybe it has to do with the Classroom Setting.))
> Honestly in this scene Raine’s likely switching from Teacher Mode (polite speech) to I Know Lloyd Personally Mode (casual speech) because most of her comments @ Lloyd are casual. So is her asking if Genis knows the answer to the question, but Genis is her little brother, so.
> The word for Chosen is “miko” which you might know as 巫女 (shrine maiden) HOWEVER, it uses the kanji 神子, god + child, which based on the presence of furigana, is probably not a standard reading. Yay wordplay!
> When Colette answers Raine she uses polite speech. She usually uses polite speech when addressing Raine (and Kratos), while using casual for Genis and Lloyd. I’ll point out any times she doesn’t and how she addresses other characters as we meet them.
> Raine uses the honorific “to come” (いらっしゃる/irassharu) when referring to the priests.
> Apparently, Colette calls her dad Frank “o-tou-sama”! (Also hey shoutout to EmiruTheKnight for this playthrough of ToSymphonia in Japanese. It only goes through Asgard Ranch, but I keep peeking at it.) She also uses polite speech to address him!
> Genis calls him “oji-san” (old man), for the record. I think this is actually considered a polite way to refer to someone, though it can also be sarcastic/teasing, depending on the context.
> In later episodes I cut out the footage of battles entirely, which means this is one of the few episodes where you can hear the pre-battle dialogue called out. Lloyd shouts something like “let’s go!” at 11:14, at 12:15 Colette shouts “everybody, be careful, okay?” (She also has a “everyone, let’s do our best, okay?” line). (“みんな、気を付けてね” and “みんな、がんばろう、ね”, respectively.) (I don’t know 100% what Lloyd’s saying, I just got the gist of it.)
> The “Desian” addresses Botta w/ polite speech, but Lloyd with casual.
> The battle at 16:41 starts with Lloyd shouting, literally “alright, let’s go!” (“よし、行くぞ！”)
> When Lloyd asks Kratos “Who are you?” he uses anta instead of omae (both of which are second-person pronouns, the main difference here is that anta is slightly more polite than omae. However I have never heard someone address their friend with anta over omae.) (Lloyd even uses omae with Kratos, later.)
> Botta uses kisama when saying “I never thought you’d show up” re: Kratos. If you don’t know, kisama is known for being Kind Of An Insult (sometimes it’s even translated as “bastard”) though really it’s just an extremely rude second-person pronoun and, like most Japanese swears, is technically only a swear if you translate it as one.
> Genis says “this guy is really tough!” re: Kratos, which is “ano oji-san” in Japanese. Like, there’s nothing of note about the translation except that it’s “oji-san” again instead of like “hito”.
> Colette calls her grandmother “obaa-sama”, first of all (interesting that she uses sama instead of san for her family, if you ask me!) Also “I’m going to the trial now” is in humble form, mairimasu / まいります. Also interesting that she uses polite speech to address her family members, even though casual is acceptable!
> Phiadra (Colette’s grandmother) has a distinct “grandmother” type speech. It’s hard to point out exactly why it makes me feel that way, but probably all of the じゃgoing on at the end of her sentences.
> I only point it out because like every textbook tells you “women will never use omae” (which is mostly true in real life), but anyway Phiadra uses omae @ Lloyd here. (20:32)
> Phiadra also uses casual speech, for the record.
> So does Kratos, but we didn’t expect anything else from him. (Generally male characters default to casual speech, to the point where it’s more interesting to point out when they use another form of speech. If I haven’t told you what kind of speech they use, assume it’s casual.)
> In English Genis says “Lloyd, I figured you were going to say that.” But in Japanese, Genis says “I’m going too”. (Or maybe he asks?) 僕も行くの is what he says, the の might make it a question? (Emiru picks the other dialogue option, which features Colette very politely asking Kratos if Lloyd could can come along too.) Before that he does say 矢っ張り (yappari), which means “as expected” so… The English may have just needed to cut out some extra dialogue because text boxes? Idk. Fun note, regardless.
AN ASIDE FOR FIRST PERSON PRONOUNS:
> Lloyd uses ore! This is kind of the default pronoun for male characters (especially between the ages of 15 and 30) so it’s not a lot to write home about. Ore has a kind of “rough guy” connotation, though honestly it feels normal to me, it’s the one I hear the most.
> Genis uses boku, but he’s literally 12, so this is also expected. Boku has a “softer” connotation, and is the “default” for young boys.
> Raine uses watashi which is the default pronoun for female characters kind of across the board.
> Colette also uses watashi.
> Kratos, interestingly, also uses watashi. Though at this point, I think this is default for his age group? Yuan and Regal (characters we’ll meet later) also use watashi. It especially tends to crop up for use by characters who are “reserved”, while characters who are more rough will still use ore.
BACK TO THE OTHER NOTES
> Lloyd has a pre-battle quote that’s “ugh, this guy’s tough!” (23:00). Also I can’t understand most of Kratos’ pre-battle lines. If someone can, let me know? I’m really interested but my audio processing isn’t quite that good.
> They call Cruxis Crystals “High Exspheres” in Tales of Fandom Vol 2, but it’s definitely still “Cruxis Crystal” at this point. Maybe they didn’t want to reveal the similarity between the two objects this early on? I’ll keep an ear open for late game to see if High Exsphere comes up.
> Remiel uses ware (我) as a first-person pronoun. 我 has it’s own possessive form 我が / waga (vs watashi no) and is kind of archaic. Sometimes it’s used when the subject matter is personal to you (companies use the plural, wareware, often), but if it’s not being used in an “this speech is archaic” context, then it carries Extremely Pretentious connotations. Remiel is definitely absolutely using it just to sound pretentious.
> In English he says “I’m an angel of judgement” but in Japanese he just says “I’m an angel of Cruxis”, so, alright.
> This is… a really interesting line in Japanese. In English Colette just tells Remiel “I humbly accept this task” but in Japanese it has some like… incredibly formal, almost ritual-like phrasing.
> “神子はたしかにその任をうけたまわりました”. It’s something like “the Chosen (miko) has certainly heard/received this duty”. Just… the use of “miko” instead of “I”, and the humble form of “receive”… It’s interesting!!
> Remiel uses 与える / ataeru when saying “we’ll give you the power of angels” as well as “we’ll give you the Tower of Salvation”. Ataeru is kind of like “to grant” or “bestow”, jisho.org defines it as “to give (especially to someone of a lower status)”. Just uh. Makes you think about how Remiel thinks about himself / the other angels, you know.
> Oh heck. I seem to have advanced the textbox at 36:42 a little too quick. After 待って！Colette goes on to say お待ち下さいレミエルさま！(omachikudasai, Remiel-sama!) It’s not different from the English translation at all, just important to note I guess, since I accidentally left it out? Also hello honorific request form…
> When Colette says “I have a question to ask you” she uses ukagau, which is the humble form of “to ask”.
> Initially I was going to say something about Colette calling Remiel “o-tou-sama” instead of “o-tou-san” but since she calls Frank, her actual father, “o-tou-sama” as well I guess it’s really not that interesting!
And that concludes the episode! If you want to keep an eye out for more posts like this, check out the tag for this series!
