Translationborne 88: The Beast Hide Assassin

[@arukimania]

Some additional comments/clarifications: 1. Since I spent the entire section on the Fist of Gratia talking about the spelling of “Gratia,” I didn’t get a chance to mention how much I like the official handling of the opening line, “指を差し込む穴が開いただけの鉄塊” (An iron lump with only holes for sticking fingers in opened). The whole idea behind that specific wording seems to be that this is just a solid piece of iron unworked except for some holes created for sticking fingers into it. That the translators were able to convey this same concept by using a simpler wording, "A chunk of iron fitted with finger holes," is something I find to be a particularly nice touch. 2. Another great move by the translators towards the end of the description for the Fist of Gratia is how they specify what the Japanese was referring to with “その様” (that appearance). This is meant to indicate that the appearance of Gratia swinging the weapon at beasts and causing them to reel back was in some sense heroic. Fully restating what was written above in English would be too repetitive, but completely mimicking the Japanese and writing “that appearance” could prove misleading. Thankfully, the solution of specifying that “her unrelenting pummelling appeared oddly heroic” threads this needle perfectly. 3. Looking back, I’m not sure how clearly this came across in the episode, but the reason I wanted to go into why Japanese people have trouble recreating sounds not in their native language is because this then has to be accounted for when translating back from those compromised pronunciations into with English or some other language. 4. Since I didn’t mention the other lines in Brador’s dialog in the episode, I thought I’d clarify here that the other slight alterations don’t bother me at all. Changing Brador’s presumption in the form of a question in his first line, “…お主、聞こえているな…？” (…You, you’re hearing this, aren’t you…”) to the apparently more straightforward question, “Do you hear this?” is something I find is offset by his second English line, “Fear the bell’s toll.” After all, if Brador didn’t think we could hear his bell, he wouldn’t continue by warning us about it in this second line or the rest of the dialog. As I see it, then, the end result is the same in English as it is in the Japanese. Similarly, I feel like both final lines get across the idea that the player character will be inescapably hounded by Church assassins from now on, which is the important thing. 5. When I mention that the various articles of attire in Brador’s set may have had their descriptions changed during development to differentiate each piece after the English translations were locked in, I have in mind something that may have happened with the Deep Sea runes. In the North American release of Bloodborne, these runes all have identical descriptions, whereas in the British English version of the game, the specific resistance that each rune grants is spelled out in the full description. I’ve previously covered this both in the special episode I made about the US vs UK differences and in episode 40 of Translationborne.

[@snakelady647]

Yay it's translationborne day!

[@francescopolesana2328]

Concise and clear as always!🎉