Our usual disclaimers:
I’m an amateur. My advantage over the original translation is that I have no deadline pressure, and I have the modern internet to help me. I’m assuredly wrong about some of my translations.
Translation is hard. When I point out a mistranslation, it’s not a judgment of the original translator(s). They had a deadline and poor resources.
Some of my translations are rather liberal. I’ll usually make note if so.
Let’s meet Gem the jeweler. I found him much more interesting in Japanese.
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
私は 7つの海を またにかける 宝石商 ジェム。 | I am the Jeweler Gem. I control the Seven Seas. | I am Gem, a jeweler who travels the seven seas. |
I don’t understand how the original translation got “control”. またにかける (matanikakeru) means to travel all over the place.
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
今日は なにの用かな？ | What’s your business? | Good day to you. What is it that you want? |
If you select option 1:
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
そうかい。 それは ごきげんよう。 | Is that right. How do you do. | Is that so? In that case, how do you do? |
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
ちなみに 宝石を かかげると 私のところへ 飛んでくることに なっているからね | Once you hold up the Red Jewels, you’ll have to come running to my place. | Incidentally, when you hold up a jewel, it will come flying straight to me. |
A minor mistranslation means that players might hold on to Red Jewels long past when they need. (I did, as a kid.) You can clear jewels from your inventory at any time.
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
そして 何をかくそう。 私は へんそうの 名人なのだ。 他の町でも 会うだろうが 君は 気づかないかも知れないよ。 | I am a famous master of disguises. If you saw me in another town, you wouldn’t know me. | Now let me be frank with you. I’m a master of disguise, believe you me. Even were you to see me in another town, you might not recognize me. |
A great lesson in the subtleties of translation.
Gem, it turns out, is actually a villain. If you collect all 50 Red Jewels in the game, he’ll reveal himself as the first boss from Soul Blazer, this game’s predecessor. (Whether IoG is a sequel or a spiritual sequel, I’ll leave to you.) You have to go through an optional dungeon to fight him.
The only hint that something is wrong with Gem, in the OE, is that you have to do something evil to complete his quest. Specifically, you have to tell some slavers the location of an escaped slave. You can headcanon that it’s one of the slaves you rescue in the next dungeon, but the man who was helping the slave is gone forever. Dead, jailed, injured, the player doesn’t know, but we know it’s not good and it’s our fault.
In Japanese, Gem is a little weird. It’s hard to explain, and I’m not totally sure how it would come off to a native JP speaker, but his speech is different. It strikes me as excessively wordy and a little flamboyant. Here he uses the phrase 何をかくそう (nani o kakusou) which means “What do I hide?” The implication is nothing, so it’s another way of saying, “I’ll lay all my cards on the table” or “let me be frank” or “you know what?” But it’s something you don’t hear in normal speech—it has a silly anime feel to it. I think it’s used to comedic effect, because he practically says, “I won’t hide anything from you: I’m going to hide from you.” This might be my inexperience in translating, but that’s how it comes off to me.
I think Gem’s master of disguise thing is supposed to be a hint. Why does he disguise himself? Once you know he’s a monster, you can speculate. It probably takes some effort to disguise as a human. Maybe it’s magic that wears off over time. Maybe the disguises fall apart when he travels extensively. Alternatively, maybe he feels the need to change appearance regularly so nobody will follow him and catch on to his true nature.
In English he says he’s a famous master of disguise. This word isn’t in the Japanese, and it brings in extra implications. If he’s famous for it, that means that he’s well known. If he’s well known, maybe he disguises himself for fun, or because it’s a hobby, or he has a side job as a PI.
But there’s no indication Gem is famous. Seems like he’s a creep who stands around in various towns waiting for children to give him jewels.
If you select option 2 while you don’t have any jewels:
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
でも 君は 宝石を もっていない。 その 気持ちだけ あずからせて もらうとしよう。 | But you don’t have any Jewels. Let me give you some. | Ah, but you don’t have any jewels. |
OE makes another mistake. Gem does not give you any jewels. (What would you do with them anyway? Give them directly back to Gem?)
More interestingly, if you select option 2 when you do have a jewel:
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
うーん．．． これは 実に いい 宝石だね。 大切に あずからせてもらうよ。 | Mmm… This is a rare jewel. Let me hold it for you. | Hmmm… This is a truly excellent jewel, don’t you agree? I’m going to look after it with the utmost care, I assure you! |
これで 宝石の数は 全部で 「X]コに なったわけだな。 | There are now [X]Jewels in the room. | This brings your total count of jewels up to [X]. |
I’ve tried to convey how delighted he is to have received the jewel. And he promises you that he’s going to care for it dearly: 大切に (taisetsuni - with great care). He says this even though you don’t care about the jewels. (If you cared about the jewel, you wouldn’t have given it to him.) He’s clearly obsessed with these things.
I imagine the translators mixed up 全部 (zenbu - altogether) and 部屋 (heya - room). They share a kanji.
If you select option 3:
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
リストに 書かれた数だけ 宝石を 集めたとき その品物を あげるからね。 | I will give you goods for your Jewels as written on the list. | When you collect enough jewels, I’ll give you the goods written on this list. |
Japanese | Original English | Translation |
|---|---|---|
JP: 薬草 3 | Herb 3 | Medicinal herb 3 |
Japanese doesn’t differentiate singular and plural most of the time, so there’s no right answer as to whether it’s my secret or my secrets.
That’s all of Gem’s dialogue until we can gather enough jewels for a prize. Next time, we look at more of South Cape. These posts are gonna get long!