I decided to do Lilka’s prologue chapter next. Lilka is a mage, and she seems like she’ll be my party’s main healer, at least for a while. But before we get there, she has to do her own prologue solo. She’s fine in combat. MP is infinite in this game and builds up over time in battle, so her segment is quite easy, though you have to spend the first round of every battle defending.

On my first pass, I found some parts of Lilka’s segment extremely confusing, and thought it would turn out to have an even worse translation than Ashley’s. But I was wrong. Lilka’s prologue is actually better.

The scene opens in Palace Village, where a group of people are sitting around a table yammering about a problem they’re having. They’re interrupted by some speech that seems to be coming from outside the room, and here we run into our first mistranslation.

Yes, she does literally say “ha,” but in this case it’s supposed to be an exhalation, not a laugh. She follows it up with:

The girl teleports into this room and lands on the table, apologizing for being late and claiming that she can’t get a handle on how Teleport Gems work. Quite so—she’s teleported to the wrong place. She wanted to go to the Valeria household (whatever that is).

She’s later shown in a house in the same village, where she chats with a young boy and is served a beverage by the boy’s mother. They have a conversation that’s a bit silly, but the translation is basically accurate. She tells the boy that magic can do anything. Then we see the worst translation of Lilka’s whole segment:

Or rather, a lack of translation. They took it out entirely. But that makes the whole segment really confusing, because all of a sudden, Lilka is inside a dungeon using magic on switchblocks while talking to her sister. In the JP version, it’s clear that this is a flashback. In the US version, I guessed it was a flashback, but it could just as well have been a pocket dimension she astrally projected to, or something. Or the village could have been a flashback.

Anyway, Lilka is shooting fireballs at some blocks and complaining that she can’t get it to work. Her big sister’s voice encourages her, and she shoots some more. Eventually she gives up:

She literally says something like, it won’t say yes or no, which is where the mistranslation came from. This is an expression that means something isn’t responding, and can be used for inanimate objects as well as people.

Lilka laments that she’s not as good at magic as her sister, to which her sister responds:

Japanese doesn’t actually have a word for sister. It has words meaning big sister and little sister. Lilka always calls her sister big sister, and here her sister says big sister as well. If she were addressing Lilka, she would have said little sister. Instead she’s saying your big sister (me) couldn’t do it either.

Eventually Lilka gives up. Her sister tells her that she’ll show her a different way through the gate—a way that’s easier. Lilka asks why her sister didn’t just show her the easy way to begin with.

Literally she says something like, That’s true, huh?

Lilka’s sister points out a smaller switchblock that she wants Lilka to shoot instead of the large one:

This time it works, and Lilka has to plod through this dungeon finding three other switchblocks to open the gate. After a couple, Lilka’s sister encourages her. Lilka says, I’m the little sister of the one called the “Eleniak Witch-Girl!” Lilka’s sister tells her that she’s her own person and she needs to believe in herself and trust her own magic. Lilka responds:

As for the translation of enemy names and attacks, only one is worth any note:

This jellyfish-like enemy uses a move that does nothing; they waste their turn entirely. The JP word in question can mean to drift, but it can also mean to float or to walk around aimlessly. Drift works ok but I think I would have gone with float.

Eventually Lilka opens all the switches and makes it out of the puzzle. The flashback ends, and we’re brought back to the house in which Lilka is talking to the boy. The boy’s father comes in and says that they couldn’t come up with a suitable plan of action. Lilka asks what’s wrong, and the boy’s father says:

This is a preface for the upcoming story he tells without the use of a dialogue box:

Two things of note. One, though it’s not a mistranslation per se, the original English took out the opening of the man’s tale, which he says a bit like it’s a storybook or legend. I think it’s supposed to be over-dramatic and funny.

Two, this is the first of many times that the game will translate 怪物 (kaibutsu) as monsters. But later on, Lilka will help the townspeople and will fight only a single monster. With no other context, I’d have guessed monsters to be plural as well, but with that context it’s almost certainly supposed to be singular. I won’t note the other times this prologue does this, but in my view they’re all minor mistranslations.

Lilka offers to help. The father is skeptical: What can a girl like you do? he asks. The little boy talks up the fact that she can use magic. The conversation ends with an interesting exchange:

The original translation’s dialogue is a bit awkward, but given what they had to translate, I think they did a good job. In the JP, Lilka starts with an idiom: It will be like you’re riding a big ship implies that you won’t feel any waves, because big ships aren’t rocked by small waves. So it means something like you don’t have to worry or your troubles are over, just as the original said.

The man snipes back that the ship in question is tanuki-san’s boat. This is a reference to a Japanese folk tale called kachi-kachi yama which means crackling mountain. It’s a common story most everyone in Japan would know, like Little Red Riding Hood in the US. And just like Red Riding Hood, the original version is more horrifying than the one most commonly told to children now.

In the story, a farmer catches a tanuki and plans to eat it. The tanuki tricks the farmer’s wife into releasing it, at which point it kills her and cooks her in a stew. When the farmer comes home, the tanuki uses its shapeshifting to disguise itself as his wife. After the tanuki tricks the man into eating his own wife, it reveals itself, laughs at him, and runs away. (Modern versions often leave out the cannibalism and have the tanuki simply kill the woman.)

The farmer tells a family friend, who happens to be a rabbit, about the horrid tale. The rabbit vows revenge. It tricks the tanuki in various ways. While the tanuki is carrying wood on its back, the rabbit lights it on fire. When the tanuki asks what the crackling sound is, the rabbit says it’s the sound coming from Crackling Mountain. The tanuki’s back gets badly burned. The rabbit offers to heal it with some medicine, which is actually a poultice made of hot peppers. Eventually the rabbit challenges the tanuki to a boat race. The rabbit makes a boat out of wood, while the tanuki makes a boat out of mud. During the race, the tanuki’s boat dissolves in the water. As it’s drowning, the rabbit refuses to save it, revealing that he’s friends with the farmer and this is the tanuki’s punishment for its evil deeds. Then he hits the tanuki with his oar, and the tanuki drowns. The rabbit tells the farmer, who gives thanks in return. The end.

So… Lilka says it’ll be like you’re riding a big ship, and the father retorts that it’ll be a shitty mud boat that dissolves and kills those on board.

Finally, in the original, Lilka responds with an angry symbol: 💢. In English they changed this to a frowny face emoji. I think this change is great.

Lilka gathers information from townspeople about the monster. It always attacks the wheat field, and never hurts any villagers. It always comes from the northeast, which is where the town’s granary is located. (This is another cultural thing that doesn’t translate well: A townsperson tells Lilka that the northeast is an unlucky direction. Here’s a blog post with more information about this belief. It has to do with feng shui, and the idea that demons can sneak into your house from the northeast corner.)

Once Lilka’s talked to everyone, the monster will attack. Lilka tells people to take shelter while she deals with it. Then she says to herself:

Yeah, they got that pretty wrong. Anyway, you fight a boss and it’s easy. When the fight’s over, the townspeople celebrate Lilka. The little boy from earlier says:

やっぱり (yappari) can mean after all, but here I think it more likely means as expected.

Before responding, Lilka thinks to herself:

This one’s tricky to translate. The boy always calls Lilka お姉ちゃん (oneechan) which means big sis. He literally says big sister’s magic. Lilka then thinks to herself, big sister’s magic, huh? But お姉ちゃん is what Lilka has been calling her actual sister this entire time, so it’s clear that when she says it, it’s in reference to her sister. The boy has caused her to think of her sister’s magic, not her own. I spelled it out a bit more in my translation.

The original English translates it as your magic, which makes no sense at all, considering she’s saying this to herself.

This is quite minor, but at this point in the game they translate 村長 (sonchou) as Village Mayor. Back in the beginning of the segment it was translated as Village Elder. This should be kept consistent so it’s clear that it’s the same character.

The villagers offer her a reward—a Teleport Gem. The Elder says that they could give her a better reward, but Lilka says she really needs to hurry up. Then she says…

The second sentence is accurately translated, but it doesn’t follow from the previous sentence in the original English. These people have use for your magic, and that’s why you’re happy to get the hell out of here? Rude. Really she’s saying that other people need her help.

Lilka teleports away, after which a couple of things happen. First…

Second, a black cat shows up:

In the US, black cats are considered an omen of bad luck, but it’s not so in Japan, where they’re considered good luck. The broken shoelace thing, on the other hand, is a Japanese superstition regarding bad luck or death.

Lilka ends her prologue by lamenting that she should have asked for a lunch bag, and hopes that they’ll feed her at the Valeria household. And that’s it for her prologue.

I liked this prologue, though the dungeon segment was a bit inconsequential to the central conflict of the story. Overall it seems like Lilka is a comic relief character, in strong contrast to Cecilia in the first game. Anyway, this was better translated than Ashley’s segment.