Phantasy Star Generation 2: English Translation

[Blaw-]

This year?

If you read my message carefully, you would notice it's only a few days left before it's released.

[xrick]

Given that, by your reports, everything seems to be in place, right?

[xenowildfire]

Great Job Blaw And I wouldn't mind seeing a remake of Phantasy Star 3, it needs a few things fixed and the battle system needs to be like 4.

[Blaw-]

Still working fine, for now.

[xrick]

Why DARK FORCE? I'm still quite sure it was always meant to be DARK FALZ, like from PSO onwards...

[Blaw-]

Because the description in the japanese dialog imply it should be "Dark Force". I don't have the exact dialog from the english translation, but we already debated about the names long ago and If I retranslate the japanese dialog, it give something like that :

"Inside this box are sealed the power of darkness, which you can call "Dark Force". Seems logical, right? Dark being the abbreviation of Darkness and Force being a synonym of power/strength, like the japanese meaning.

So, don't really trust official names. For example, Squaresoft called the cat in the retranslated version of Secret of Mana for IOS "Niccolo" when the japanese says "Nikita", just because there is a cat with such a name in Legend of Mana and Sword Mana, but it's not the same cat at all.

Anyway, I just finished the beta-test and it's okay, no game breaking-bug and I didn't found new things, except those two monster names which are not displayed properly.

I guess Kyence will try to fix them before releasing the public beta. I can't talk for her but I guess the public beta should be released sometimes during this week.

[BenoitRen]

Because the description in the japanese dialog imply it should be "Dark Force".

I agree on that point, but judging from the screenshot the name that appears below the sprite is a separate text string. Does it say "darukku fosu" there, or (romanised because I don't remember the katakana) "Dark Phallus"?

[Blaw-]

It's written like it has always been written, in katana (ダーク ファルス), but in the dialog, I translated, it's also written like it, and it wouldn't be nonsense to have "Inside this box are sealed the power of darkness, which you can call "Dark Falz".

If people really want to be nitpicky, Falz is not possible. Except a language where "Z" would sound as "s", "z" is usually be retranscribed as "ズ" (zu) and not "ス" (su) so it should be "ファルズ" to sound as "Faruzu". The only three valid choices with the katakanas would be "Phallus", "Farce" or "Fals".

By the way, it's "Daaku" for "Dark" and not "Darukku".

The wiki imply the Dark Falz from PSO is not related with the Genesis ones, so it's better to not use the same name for them anyway.

I also did the same choice as Kyence in my translation, if people want to play a translated game, they should accept the translator choice or else, play in japanese/do their own translation

Like when we talked about it before, it wouldn't be the first time a japanese guy would do a mistake when trying to write a foreign name.

It's not like it's a name you will see often anyway (it only appear a few times at the end of the game), people should rather be happy to be able to play the game in english

[xrick]

Of course, I won't go on bickering because of that, I already came to understand it's a total waste of my time since folks prefer to stick to nostalgia goggles...

[Tryphon]

I already came to understand it's a total waste of my time

Exactly. That said, I'm not surprised you prefer to play with a Phallus

[xrick]

Since you're that eager to provoke me like that, I'll give you all my reasoning...

PSO and PSU, when it came to enemies, items or whatever carried on from the Classics, all had the proper names they seemed to have either in the japanese or english versions.
Then why do I have to believe such case doesn't apply to "Dark Falz", regardless of it's relation to their peers from the Classics?

The japanese staff may have miswrote the name in the Classics? The english team may have made an overlocalized translation to the Classics? I don't care about that!
If the most recent games portray the names as to make reference to the Classics, my common sense leads me to believe "Dark Falz" is a proper name in-universe.

[Tryphon]

I don't provoke you, to the contrary, I think you were totally right and clever when you said it's a waste of time.

As far as I'm concerned, (but I am no translator), PSO and PSU are not part of PS trilogy (I am not even sure Rieko Kodama or Yuji Naka worked on those).

[xrick]

I don't provoke you, to the contrary, I think you were totally right and clever when you said it's a waste of time.

As far as I'm concerned, (but I am no translator), PSO and PSU are not part of PS trilogy (I am not even sure Rieko Kodama or Yuji Naka worked on those).

Well... You stressing that part of my previous statement surely doesn't help...

Also, I don't mind those small things, if the namings nowadays are given as such, I'll just take them regardless of how they've been given in the past.

[Novyal]

Great work everyone!
Can't wait to play the game

...and seriously xrick, don't act so disruptive.

[Blaw-]

Of course, I won't go on bickering because of that, I already came to understand it's a total waste of my time since folks prefer to stick to nostalgia goggles...

It's not about nostalgia at all. If the old games would have used Dark Falz or Phallus, or whatever you want, I would still have choose "Dark Force" personally, because in all objectivity, it's the name which match the most with the description done in the game. And if it was about nostalgia, playable characters would still have their old names, which is not the case. The main character is not called Rolf in the translation for nostalgia purpose, but Eusis, like in the japanese version. Same for the techniques, names aren't the old ones.

That's what we call translation and editing choices. If you change the name, you'll please some people but some others won't like it, so you can never have people fully agree on such things. For example, some peoples wants the old names back, though it might happen later in another version of the patch, for now, it'll only be japanese one.

As I said, the only way I see for someone to be able to do his own choice about that is to do their own translation, I don't really see another way.

Anyway, I already said it could be "Phallus, "Farce" or "Fals" but it absolutely can't be "Falz". I also read somewhere "Faltz" but same, it should be "ファルツ" to be "Faltz".

The problem by choosing Falz is also because in other old games translations, it's refered as Dark Force so even if you use Falz to have a link with PSO, you lose the link for all the other games, which is not better, if not worse.

So, let's see the choices.

Proper ones : Phallus (who would want to name a boss like that?) ; Farce (what the point of the meaning ?) ; Fals (what would it be ?)

Not proper ones : Falz (used in PSO. Again, what could be a Dark Falz ? You lose the references to other games for people who doesn't know PSO, like me for example) Force (used in old games : Evil forces in a box => Pandora's box => Forces of Darkness => Dark Force), oh it looks fine.

This is why both Kyence and I choose to use this name in our own translation, so if some people don't like those choices, we are of course sorry but it won't change, as we you can never satisfy everyone anyway.

Next time, I will remember to not share any screenshots. If I had thought some people who still debate about that, I would have never posted it