gaming Bad translation in retro games.

[CastletonSnob 3,025]

We all know that a lot of older games have bad translation from Japanese to English. So, what are some such games?

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,298]

This one's pretty minor, but I've always liked it: In Simon's Quest, you don't just "possess" things...

 

And then there's this train wreck of a translation from Ghosts n' Goblins:

I've never seen this screen outside of the internet; GnG is one of those punishingly difficult NES games I've yet to beat.

Edited November 22, 2016 by Ziggy + Angel + Rain

[Megas 27,064]

A good chunk of early Final Fantasy games

 

Most famously "This guy are sick" from FFVII

[cmarston1 5,951]

"All your base are belong to me" Need I say more?

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,284]

Metal Gear on the NES has a plethora of bad translations, like this one:

 

A translation error on the first message in the game. Brilliant.

[Megas 27,064]

Metal Gear on the NES has a plethora of bad translations, like this one:

First Attempt.PNG

 

A translation error on the first message in the game. Brilliant.

In the same game, there's also "I FEEL ASLEEP"

[Ganondorf8 11,118]

What about the famous line in Zelda II: Adventure of Link?

 

" I AM ERROR"

[Kairo 49]

Nobody brought it up, so i decided to.

[Magic Note 2,738]

Actually, the message "I AM ERROR" isn't a mistranslation. The same, however, cannot be said about the person who knows him, as "Bagu." It's supposed to be a theme naming with Bug and Error, but they forgot to translate Bagu's name and left it intact.

 

A classic line from Final Fantasy IV (the original US version, which was never released in Europe until a few years later): "You, the man of darkness, using that has no effect on me, you fools!" This is said by a key character, and comes off as a mindfuck of sorts. Also, speaking of Final Fantasy, VII has the first boss made much more difficult because of a key detail missing: "Attack while it's tail's up! It's gonna counterattack with its laser." Which is confusing, as attacking with its tail led to countless deaths. If it was "Don't attack while its tail is up! If you do, it'll attack with its laser!" the confusion wouldn't be an effect.

Edited January 12, 2017 by Kelldrick

[Lightwing 12,955]

One of my favourite english ones is Bimmy and Jimmy from Double Dragon:

I don't know what's with this one, but it just makes me giggle so much. Most mistranslations were due to poor localization back in the day, which was dumb, but understandable; but this is a pure typo and that just makes it the more fun ;p

" I AM ERROR"

 
Actually speaking, this line is not a mistranslation, in fact, it's just the one half of a joke that didn't made it through to the west. His literal line in japan is, in fact, "My name is Error...", result of an in-joke between two NPCs,"Error" and "Bug", but because the name of the latter was transliterated to "Bagu", which is a romanization of "Bug" in japanese, the joke was lost on the process, and the "I AM ERROR" meme was born.

Most famously "This guy are sick" from FFVII

Pales in comparison to FF VII in various european countries(I've heard that the german translation was atrociously bad), but my most familiar one is Spain, so I'll go with that. If my memory serves me correctly...

-Cloud is refered as a "She" for half the game

-90% of the english terms are used in so many wrong ways (Party is used on the literal sense of the word, like a group of people wanting to be social, not in the RPG sense of "a group of adventurers")

-Some materias are outright wrongly described, with one of them not being translated at all due to, in my opinion, a work of lazyness

-Words don't make any sense and all sorts of absurd changes that would make anyone cry; aka imagine FF VII as we had it in english, but 10 times worse.

 

Even when I was a kid and I knew nothing about english, I knew perfectly that nothing made sense on there, haha.

 

Edit: Oh gods, how could I forget the absurdly bad translation of Breath of Fire 2? I have seen bad translations through the years, but that one just manages to top it off. Unlike most translations, with its quirks and all, this game just manages to be on a league of its own, and there is literally no space to name them all on here.

[Ganondorf8 11,118]

Actually speaking, this line is not a mistranslation, in fact, it's just the one half of a joke that didn't made it through to the west. His literal line in japan is, in fact, "My name is Error...", result of an in-joke between two NPCs,"Error" and "Bug", but because the name of the latter was transliterated to "Bagu", which is a romanization of "Bug" in japanese, the joke was lost on the process, and the "I AM ERROR" meme was born.

 

Really? And I always thought that it was an error, no pun intended there. Guess I made bad judgment so maybe something like this will make up for it.

 

In Wario Land 2 for the Game Boy/Game Boy Colour, when you achieve 100%--beating all levels, collecting all treasures, and collecting all map pieces, it mentions that you achieved "Perfect", but then it says the following:

 

​"Now let's go get the Syrup's Treasure!"

 

​The word "the" shouldn't be there since Captain Syrup is a person and not a thing. In fact, they would do it a second time by saying the following after it mentions that the final level is "The Really Final Chapter".

 

​"Steal the Syrup's Treasure."

[RiseofSpectrum 359]

"Welcome... to DIE!"

 

 

Not true, but hilarious.

[Cash In 21,511]

Ghosts n Goblins was already mentioned, but I always found this particular one funny.

[Denim&Venöm 16,510]

Gundam: Battle Assault.

Not bad translation per say since they reskinned the game to have it revolve around the smash hit Gundam wing series, so most direct translation was abandoned. But it does have a bunch of wonky pronunciations of character and mech names. Pair that with some cheap sound design and the names might as well be mistranslated. 

Lik the cover bot, Wing Gundam being 'Wing Gun-Dem. The storm trooper mechs of the show, the Zaku, being pronounced as 'Zack two' or Gundam Physalis from the 0083 mini-series soundign like "Psy-cannon." Sazabi (Sa-zabi) from the Char's Counter Attack movie being "Sas-a-bee." Even mobile suit was said like 'Mo-byle suit' 

[Splashee 28,537]

On 2017-01-12 at 6:21 AM, Kairo said:

Nobody brought it up, so i decided to.

Maybe the first meme ever on the Internet? I remember seeing this back in 2001!

[Sonic Shimmer 4,116]

Instructions unclear, bathroom is now on fire

[Megas 27,064]

“The miracle never happen” from Ace Attorney Justice For All 

turned an emotional moment into something hysterical 

[Samurai Equine 45,889]

...Does that count?  X-Men is an American franchise, and yet somehow that happened...

[Cash In 21,511]

Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 after watching Biolizard do chaos control...despite the fact that it's literally something he does all the time.