Translation Errors
Oh boy,
here we go...
Yup, all
those fun translation errors and quirks, chronicled here...
Of course, we do appreciate
the work that the translators went to...
But there's no denying the
translation can be rather iffy in places.
And so that's what this
page is for. Exposing the truth!
Golden Sun
In Imil, the old lady claims Alex was Mia's apprentice. However, this is completely false. Alex was Mia's father's apprentice.
Mia actually refers to her deceased father in the Japanese version of Golden Sun. Whatever did the translators have against Mia's father?
There are some interesting things to be found in the Golden Sun debug room. Most interesingly, they gave Garet and his family a surname, as well as names for his siblings. There's a detailed explanation of this here, so I won't bother going into it here.
The debug room's list of characters has some other oddities as well. One of the names is skipped at some point, so all the names after that are out of order. It's the same in the Japanese version. Strangely enough, while most names are accurately translated, Jenna is referred to as "Jasmine" (her Japanese name) and even her younger picture is called "Jasmine (child)".
Faran also gets the Japanese name treatment, being referred to as "Gyorgis".
Yes, I know that's Shadow Babi. Remember, I said the names were out of order.
I have nothing against the name, but it obviously doesn't fit into the 5 character limit. Hence, why her name is Jenna... (then again, they changed Robin and Mary...)
There are other small errors to be found throughout the game. Menardi's "Death Size" should be "Death Scythe" and the Blessing attacks were breath (buresu) attacks. Buresu can be read as bless, hence Blessing.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age
Hama got a spelling change. In the first game, she's Hama. In the second game, she becomes Hamma. Her name in the original Japanese version was "Hamo".
In a similar vein to Hama, Hsu also became Ulmuch kind of. If you save Hsu in the first game and transfer the password, you'll meet Feizhi in Champa and she claims that Isaac saved "Ulmuch". Hsu's Japanese name is Urumuchi. Turns out there's a good reason for this. Golden Sun: The Lost Age's string compression forbids certain combinations of letters, so they were unable to use the name "Hsu". A better way of working round this would have been to use male pronouns instead of a name.
The Alhafran Mayor calls his servant "Jiya". The term "jiiya" is a Japanese word, meaning an elderly servant. Not terrible, I guess, just mentioning it.
In Apojii, if you read a lady's mind, she thinks that ships have not been coming to "Garapas" lately. Apojii is called Garapas in the Japanese version, so this is a case of them forgetting to use the translated term.
In Trial Road, Felix breaks the muteness code and utters the word "Why?". He is stubborn and argumentative, but he never actually rebelled against his 'muteness'. In the Japanese version, Felix said "?" not "Why?".
So ? is actually pronounced why?, is it?
Ah, yes, there's more. Notice how in Yallam, Sunshine's wife doesn't tell you how much a newly forged weapon will cost you? As a matter of fact, she did tell you the price in the Japanese version. Whoops.
Too bad you don't get to know that it costs 9900 coins in the English version...
Interestingly enough, the dragonsbane Susa is feeding to the Serpent was sake in the Japanese version. I understand why they did this though, to protect the E rating. Can you imagine what would happen? All those poor children seeing Susa feeding the serpent sake and getting the irresistible urge to raid the fridge and cupboards and consume every alcoholic beverage in sight so they can get drunk like the serpent!
If they know what sake is... (I understand alcohol gets censored in media intended for younger people, but it's still silly. The same children will see their parents and even other people drinking wine, beer, etc. so what's the deal with the taboo?)