Editing EarthBound’s Translation

I remember this article and still have this issue of Nintendo Power.

Frankly, the article DOES make it sound like Dan is the translator. Yes, it does say that he “receives rough translations in English and then rewrites them to add an American flavor.” But it also says things like “Earthbound…will be an extremely difficult game to translate. At Nintendo of America, the job falls to Dan Owsen,” which is incorrect if he’s only the editor.

Yeah, being in the profession myself, I’ve noticed that people (especially reporters for some reason) are kind of fuzzy about what a translator does and doesn’t do and get mixed up with that kind of stuff easily.

Anyway, I remembered I had this pic from long ago so here’s this:

Also, somewhat sorta related: http://www.thehylia.com/lost_in_translation.shtml

The thing on the desk looks like the MOTHER 2 box. The booklet in his hands looks like it folds in half, making it a long booklet like the instruction manual. I’ll have a look through my M2 booklet when I get home to see if there is a page that looks like that.

Damn, when this came up on my twitter feed, I thought Earthbound was going to get retranslated by you guys. This was cool too, but i’d certainly love to play Earthbound with a more refined script, and with some of the differences from M2EB in there too.

The Mother 2 instruction booklet does not have any page that looks like that.

I like how they still call it the “Mother of all RPGs.” Pretty much only an inside-joke at that point.

The book he’s holding open is the offical Nintendo/APE published MOTHER 2 guidebook, pages 58-59 detailing monsters in Threed. The other thing with the MOTHER 2 logo appears to be the game’s box.

is it me or does the “The MOTHER of all RPGs” thing at the bottom of the article make you chuckle?

Oh God, “THE MOTHER OF ALL RPGS” made me lol hard

English re-writing takes a lot of time and creativity as well. I always loved his way of phrasing things in earthBound…I’m more strongly considering playing through Link’s Awakening and A Link to the Past since I read here Dan Owsen did the re-writing for those also.

meleemario, tomato does great work but I’m not sure how much better a localization can get than the one EarthBound already has.

Of course it falls to me to be the designated angry defender of the EarthBound localization every time, so it should surprise nobody that I’m taking up this hobby horse again. But: If EarthBound hadn’t been localized as perfectly as it had been–if they had come too close to the Japanese or just half-finished it, a la EB0–I feel totally confident in saying that we probably wouldn’t be on this website.

Earthbound’s translation is pretty awesome, but it’s not like there aren’t things that could stand to be fixed if the GBA version was ever hacked or whatever. Leaving out the line that says what the Apple of Enlightenment did screwed with the English-speaking fan community for years.

It’s official: NCAA Final Four Basketball IS The Mother of All RPGs.

Huh, “Janglish”.

A new word for my collection.

I’m guessing that Mother of all RPGs is intentional.

PK.bobbin – There isn’t nearly as much talking in those two Zelda games as there is in EarthBound. Zelda has always been more about the adventure, gameplay, and puzzles than the story. I don’t want you going in expecting the level of EarthBound’s story, because you will be disappointed.

You can really see Dan’s influence in Link’s Awakening, but maybe that’s because it’s more light hearted than most Zelda games. It’s really just the style he words things. If you pay attention, you can tell when he’s tweeked something.

I see Master Belch in Dan’s book.