"10th enemy has the bomb"

[Juno]

​

Poor localization used to cause people a lot of grief back in the day - one famous example being "10th enemy has the bomb" in Legend of Zelda, which turns out was supposed to be "Look for the lion key" (there's a bit of dispute over this one, some people think they just decided to swap the hint with a completely different one).

Modern localization is better regulated, but once in a while, questionable phrases and translations sneak their way into games still. Have you encountered any amusing (or frustrating) examples of this?

 

[Austin]

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Guess I have to, right? =D

Frankly, I loved the translation. Made me more concentrated on the voice rather than the text =D


And Silica-tan is cutest.

 

[machomuu]

Phoenix Wright: Justice for All's little ending blunder, which is full of spoiler so I won't link, but damn. It's a powerful ending, otherwise, but once you notice, it's pretty damn silly.

 

[Aquacorde]

honestly a lot of Ace Attorney translations are kind of questionable, at least in the old versions- I don't remember if they were fixed with some of the re-releases. makes them no less enjoyable, though. :D

 

[SaniOKh]

In Shadow the Hedgehog, there's a mission where you have to follow an enemy tank protected with a force field. Sonic, who is your assist character, basically says that the force field resists gunfire. While in reality, it's a translation error, and what he means to say (and what effectively happens in-game) is that you can pierce the force field if you attack it long enough with weapons... so the exact opposite of what you've been told.

There are other translation blunders in that game, but I don't remember them all.

 

[JJ Styles]

I think everyone remember these beauties:

Ghost n Goblins ending screen

Double Dragon 2's intro

I'm glad someone had a screencap of this. Fatal Fury Special was something of a memory to me.

Translation blunders which often led to either questionable grammar and deliciously funny typos were some of the guilty pleasure sources of entertainment back then. Obviously, cases like these are far less frequent now with better standards.

I wonder though, what about the reverse? As some may have known, Western video games were also localized in Japan. Borderlands 2 had a Japanese release, heck even League of Legends now has a Japanese localization. I wonder if the Japanese themselves have made some English to JP translation blunders.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

I wonder though, what about the reverse? As some may have known, Western video games were also localized in Japan. Borderlands 2 had a Japanese release, heck even League of Legends now has a Japanese localization. I wonder if the Japanese themselves have made some English to JP translation blunders.

Isn't Engrish technically this? :D
I think finding something like this would be pretty hard.
Even if someone did find something, we could as well not get it because it would be something only fluent Japanese could understand.



And LoL has Aoi Yuuki, brilliant localization.