I think a disclaimer belongs at the top of each of these posts.

More censorship of religion. Church is changed to School, and the cross in the background is changed into an angel statue. However, the sprite of the priest, who is super definitely a priest, was not changed.

Most characters underwent name changes. These are rather senseless and I have no idea why they were changed.

Tim’s Japanese name is kind of interesting. It’s not possible to pronounce the name Tim or Timothy using the sounds of the Japanese language. (As someone who shares this name, this fact kind of sucks.) There are really only 5 vowel sounds in Japanese, usually Romanized as:
A: As in “father”
I: As in “meet”
E: As in “wet”
O: As in “hose”
U: As in “boot”

These can be combined to form diphthong-ish sounds. For example, A + I makes the sound in “kite”. But ultimately, this is all there is. Many English vowel sounds are completely unavailable. Among them:
The mid central vowel, the most common English vowel sound, known as the schwa, ə. (As in the first vowel of about)
The near-close near-front unrounded vowel (as in Tim)
The near-open front unrounded vowel (as in pat)
The open-mid back unrounded vowel (as in jump)
The near-close near-back rounded vowel (as in book)

And several more. Anyway, Tim is impossible to say in Japanese. (So is “Will,” for that matter.) Whenever this happens, Japanese tries to get close enough. For Tim, there would be two options:
テム (temu): like hem
ティム (timu): like team

But if a game names a character “Tem”, does it really mean “Tim”? There’s no way to know for sure. Since every other character in South Cape has a Generic American Name (like Erik, Rob, or Bill), you’d assume Tim does as well. I’m going to call him Tim. You can call him Tem if you really want.

OE is fine, but it leaves out the minor detail that this is the exact day, the anniversary.

Something odd about the original JP is that it uses そうなんし (sounanshi), which means accidental death. But the next sentence establishes that Tim doesn’t believe his father is dead. I used disaster, as did the OE.

The only thing of interest here is that, despite all the religious censorship elsewhere, they translated 化物 (bakemono) as demon rather than one of the numerous other available words. At least in the US, demon tends to be related to fallen angels in Christianity, rather than the any supernatural creature that is evil meaning that you see elsewhere.

Our next name change: Morris became Seth. This is the only name change that makes sense to me, as Seth strikes me as a more common American name than Morris. Not that I’ve checked.

Erik did not get a name change. They added a sentence here for some reason?

The first sentence in the game I’m confident calling a mistranslation.

Japanese frequently elides pronouns when English would require them. So how would you know whether Erik is talking about himself rather than about Tim? You have to use context. First, Erik just finished saying that he had to go home right away in the previous sentence. Second, the mother in question is referred to as 母ちゃん (kaachan). 母 means mother, and the diminutive suffix chan would be much more likely to be used for his own mother. I translated it as mommy to indicate that it’s familiar and maybe a tad childish.

Oh, also Tim’s mother is dead and he lives with his grandparents. Can’t forget that.

Rob was renamed as Lance. I again have no idea why.

Pray becomes recite. It’s a pretty good choice, considering how weird the next sentence would be if it weren’t a recitation of some kind.

I think if I had to censor all this as the original localizers did, I’d scrap it and come up with original dialogue. Something unobjectionable for a teacher to say, like “remember to read chapters 4-7”. This stuff about the world shining is just odd.

Dark Room would also be fine. I think Space is cooler.

I was always surprised that this withstood censorship. “The source of all life”? Gaia all but says that it’s God.

Don’t take the difference between my translation and the original too seriously. I’m just trying to convey the way Gaia speaks, which is archaic. For example, Gaia calls Tim そなた (sonata), an outdated second person pronoun. You could translate it as thou.

Obviously the original game is character limited, but I prefer Power of Darkness to Dark Power. Just nitpicky personal preference, Idunno.

A minor mistranslation. There implies it’s somewhere other than the place you’re currently standing. The original literally says “As for in your travels, always stop by is good.”

If you choose Record:

The original is literally correct. I’d change it just as personal preference.

The original translation’s character limitations make Gaia sound robotic to me.

If you choose Yes:

This is also what it says if you select that you don’t want to record your journey.

If you choose No:

JP doesn’t actually say random ledges, I just think that’s an appropriate choice for the situation. As you can tell from his boohooing, this guy is kind of goofy.

My translation is liberal, and I’m not super confident in it anyway. I think グッグーっ (gugguu) is supposed to be a transformation of the onomatopoeic word ぐいぐい (guigui) which means doing something forcefully and continuously.

That’s enough for now. Next time, we get to meet Gem the Jeweler. His dialogue in English is dull, but in Japanese he’s… much more interesting. (He’s a total weirdo.)