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Nintendo Translator On Miyamoto, Mr. Resetti

Posted by simoniker on from the don-resetti-upset-at-lack-of-mention dept.

Thanks to Game Informer for their interview with Nintendo Of America translator/localizer, Bill Trinen. He discusses being Shigeru Miyamoto's translator for American trade shows, as well as localizing many of Nintendo's top titles, and says a major challenge is that "...up until recently, there hasn't been a whole lot of continuity... I think originally on the NES [Zelda] Ganon's name was spelled with two N's. We've actually been going back and trying to solidify and define all the terminology and the names of all the franchises." He also discusses Mr.Resetti, the mole who chides you when you reset without saving in Animal Crossing, saying: "...in Japanese Resetti had this very, very gruff Osaka accent and [the translator] took that and... as he was writing it he was saying the lines out loud in the thickest Bronx accent you could think of."

28 comments

  1. Zelda spellings by hackwrench · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Then they discover Link is actually supposed to be localized as Rink and then what?

  2. Worst translations ever? by Ophidian+P.+Jones · · Score: 3, Funny

    My nomination would be Metal Gear. "The truck have started to move!" "I feel asleep!" See this link for more fun dialogue.

    1. Re:Worst translations ever? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      You can't forget the venerable Robotrek (for SNES): "That's what you say, but evil is good. Evil is the job!"

    2. Re:Worst translations ever? by Carnildo · · Score: 1

      "All your base are belong to us"

      --
      "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
  3. The N's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think originally on the NES [Zelda] Ganon's name was spelled with two N's.

    I don't know, "Ganon" seems to have two N's to me...

  4. Please Translate by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

    Domo oragato Mr. Roboto

    1. Re:Please Translate by ryokuin · · Score: 1

      its doumo arigatou BAKA

    2. Re:Please Translate by elmegil · · Score: 1

      That's not how STYX spelled it!

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    3. Re:Please Translate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Romanized Japanese, it is. However, that's completely misleading and is completely phonetically incorrect according to English conventions. I'd go with "domo arigato" if trying to convey the phrase to someone who spoke English and not a word of Japanese. AHO.

    4. Re:Please Translate by torpor · · Score: 1

      Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto.

      {4 months in Tokyo, woohoo!}

      --
      ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  5. Narrow vocabulary for a translator... by Echnin · · Score: 1
    From reading this interview, it seems that he uses "like" in every other sentence! "Pretty" and "really" also appear very often. I would have thought that a translator would be educated enough in the English language not to be limited to such simple forms of expression.

    I want his job, though.

    --
    Lalala
    1. Re:Narrow vocabulary for a translator... by AndyBusch · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He also said stuff was simply "funny" a lot. But bear in mind that speaking vocabularies and styles can be dramatically different than written vocabularies. I've always been impressed by how clean and funny the Nintendo translations are.

      Compare that to other games, where they pretty clearly got a Japanese speaker who knows English rather than an English speaker who knows Japanese, and you get things like in Final Fantasy 7 when a certain four letter profanity has an apostrophe in it, as though it was a contraction.

    2. Re:Narrow vocabulary for a translator... by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There are a handful of other companies that do this as well, and many more or less contract out the localization (for better or worse) to companies that normally do English-language games.

      I noticed once that Namco, for instance, was hiring people for translation/localization work in California.

      I've never really understood why people would go through the trouble of localization for a major market without bothering to actually get people from that market that speak the language as their native language to do the translation. The only real reason to do it would be due to cost concerns, and at that point you usually get what you pay for.

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
  6. What's a TSR-80? by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's a TRS-80, as in TRASH 80

    --
  7. umm.. run-on? by quandrum · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe engrish video games are just english people who have bad grammar. From the interview:

    "I had never met Mr. Miyamoto before so we go down to San Jose on a Monday and I meet him, and the speech is on Wednesday night and I was really nervous meeting him, and he was really nervous because he had his first speech in front of a large US audience and we go the night of the speech and rehearse and people had been standing in line for a very long time to get into this arena in San Jose to hear him speak and we're trying to sneak in these back doors and there's a line of people waiting to get in, and we get back stage and we're all nervous and the thing filled up almost instantaneously will about 3000 plus people and it was standing room only and he was really worried because he had to go out and speak in English at first without me, and I felt really uncomfortable because I was just this translator guy and he's going to go out and speak in English and then he's going to introduce me, and I'm like, "I shouldn't be introduced by Shigeru Miyamoto!"

    Holy run-on batman!

    1. Re:umm.. run-on? by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 1

      People speak in run-ons quite often, especially in interview situations. The only major purpose of the focus in writing on not creating run-on sentences is to make it easier for the reader.

      In other words, while that paragraph-length sentence is somewhat of a pain in the ass to read, it's not unthinkable that someone might say something like that, especially when they're uncomfortable with the position in which they find themselves (some people can't deal with attention very well).

      Yes, I write run-on sentences, too, but only on Slashdot.

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
  8. Finally... by Ryan+Stortz · · Score: 1

    Finally, someone to kill for the All your base plauge.

    --
    Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
  9. Oh.. by pr0c · · Score: 1

    I thought Mr.Resetti was an addon to reset your nintendo system until the cartridge worked.

    1. Re:Oh.. by wanderers_id · · Score: 0

      I thought this was about a Vice City port. Versetti / Resetti. Nevermind.

  10. Gannon has three Ns by thelenm · · Score: 1

    I think originally on the NES [Zelda] Ganon's name was spelled with two N's

    Technically, it was " GANNON " which is spelled with three Ns, not two.

    (-1, Unfunny)

    --
    Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
    1. Re:Gannon has three Ns by shadowcabbit · · Score: 1

      At least now I know I won't get funny looks for saying that I got my degree at Gannon University. Bachelor of Science in Global Domination, baby!

      --
      "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
  11. Re:Zelda spellings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then "Link to the Past" would have been "Rink to the Past".. Somehow I doubt that...

  12. Re:posting anon. NINTENDO GC HACKED by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Welcome to three months ago.

  13. Re:Zelda spellings by Ondo · · Score: 1

    Then "Link to the Past" would have been "Rink to the Past".. Somehow I doubt that...

    Actually, I've heard that one was called "Triforce of the Gods" in Japan.

  14. Aaargh! No! by iainl · · Score: 1

    Dear God I detest Mr. Resetti.

    For those that don't know, he pops up on Animal Crossing to tell you not to reset your Gamecube without saving your progress, as its deemed to be cheating; i.e. avoiding saving your mistakes if you have a bad day in the game.

    This is all well and good in theory, but of the three times I've been told of, in a long, unskippable diatribe each time, its because the box crashed. Its bad enough to hit bugs at the best of times. Having the game accuse you of being a cheat because it messed up is a hundred times worse.

    --
    "I Know You Are But What Am I?"