Videogaming from a Japanese female perspective
WoW: Burning Crusade is the expansion pack to the extremely addictive game, as you all (should) know. Both Play.com and Amazon UK has it on pre-order for £17.99 (incl. p&p). No mention however of the Collector’s Edition as of yet on either sites. Netherwhelp, eh? I’m almost tempted seeing I missed out on the wonderfully cuddly panda cub. But then again, it does depend on the price…
Other half was looking at this MetalGearSolid4 video, and I happened to peep over his shoulder. I attribute this perfectionist streak in me to my race, but um, couldn’t they have translated it a bit better? About half way through, the words: “No Time for Heroes” flashes by. Trust me, in Japanese, it says “No time left for the Hero”; “No Place in Time” (as confusing as that sounds) should say “No Time to Be”; “No Time to Die” should become “No Reason to Die”; “No War for Snake” to “It’s not Snake’s War” (I know my way would erode the poetic license of the previous translators, but seriously, doesn’t make sense otherwise!); “Some Legends Must Die” to “Legends, sooner or later, ends”. I honestly think my way makes things a bit clearer for non-Japanese speaking folks.
A small-ish patch for WoW today, except I can’t find the patch notes on their site yet. It’s mainly bug fixes to do with enchants, certain armour sets, and World PVP. I closed the damn window before pasting – sorry.
Official now. Isn’t that nice? We get them last as per usual. Even Australia gets it a day before us. It’ll be around £180 for us lot in Blighty. North America will get their’s come 19th November, bundled with Wii Sports, but of course, the native country gets more launch titles. Either way, looks as if Wii will be the only console making it for the mad Christmas rush, seeing that PS3 has been delayed til March next year.
FF V Advance and FF VI Advance will be released 12th October and 30th November respectively. Both costs approx. £25.20 and will be coming out for the GBA.
Meanwhile, Sony has announced that there’ll be no worldwide launch of their new console PS3. One of their spokesmen (so many articles on this out there, so I haven’t made a note of which one) have said that the Europe launch is being left until as late as March next year, because there are so many technicalities. Sure, Europe isn’t exactly a ‘priority’ when it comes to launching games or consoles… ever, because compared to the Americas and Japan, there really isn’t that many gamers. Nonetheless, at E3 this year, there was so much hype surrounding the fact that a worldwide launch was in the pipeline for both Sony and Nintendo that for the former to now say (they might as well have said so, anyway) ‘well, you guys aren’t important enough’… can be taken as a form of betrayal. In any case, it’s a big let down for people over here who had banked on getting it before Christmas, never mind how much it’s supposed to cost!
Talking of PS3, so many games for it are being discussed on Japanese sites. One is Lair which is categorised under Flight/Action Adventure – fly and fight on a nice big dragon. One for Pern series fans perhaps? Afrika, meanwhile has no genre attributed to it, but from what was seen of it at E3 this year, people say it looks realistic enough. Another Action Adventure, Unknown Realms, is set in a tiny European village, and explores what happens ‘after death’, apparently. A third of the same genre, Heavenly Sword wowed crowds at E3 this year, and is touted as one of the best fighting games seen in recent years. So… this recent turn of events – that the PS3 launch for Europe is delayed – must be a bit of a blow for gamers who’d heard so much about the above games since E3.
With all the gaming-related magazines out there, I must admit I’m not in the habit of reading them much. Yesterday, because getting buffetted around by herds of stampeding people can get tiresome (at Victoria), I bought gamestm. Like Edge, it has a little ‘report’ via a Japanese correspondent, called ‘Kongetsu’ (p24, issue 46). The word itself is starred, but no explanations can be found in the two pages. For those of you curious enough, it means ‘this month’.
Now this is where my grievances lie. ‘Teach Yourself Japanese: Lesson 46′ proclaims a top right hand corner box. How lovely… except the Japanese and its apparent meaning in English is a bit too garbled… as if Mr Rogers (author of this article) had asked a non-English speaking Japanese person to say the gist of it in Japanese. It’s misleading to say the least, for people really trying to learn Japanese. (The word ‘hijoushiki’ will appear a lot, so for your info, it roughly means ‘lack of common sense’.)
For example then, ‘Hijoushiki de, reigi shirazu no otoko wa mou iyada’ does not mean ‘I’ve not the patience to deal with a mannerless man lacking in common sense’. If I translate the Japanese into English, it’ll come out as ‘I don’t like men who don’t have common sense or have manners’, and if I translate the English into Japanese, it should come out as ‘Hijoushiki de reigi shirazu no otoko hodo atsukainikui mono ha nai’. Oh, and don’t forget, ‘mou iyada’ isn’t exactly a phrase you will use unless you’re being very informal amongst friends or you’re still at school.
‘Ima no hijoushiki na hito ga oosugiru’ just doesn’t make sense (second one down in the aforementioned box). Apparently, it translates to ‘There are too many people, these days, lacking in common sense’… in which case, it ought to have been written ‘Ima ha(pronounce wa) hijoushiki na hito ga oosugiru’. And that sentence would only make sense as part of a conversation… or you’d be considered rude.
‘Shokudou no tsukue no ue ni aruiteta hijoushiki wo mikaketa’ isn’t ‘I saw some person lacking in common sense walking along the top of the cafeteria tables’. That’s just bad translation either way – if the English is to be assumed correct, it ought to be ‘Shokudou no teburu no ue wo aruita hijoushiki wo mita’. ‘tsukue’ is ‘desk’ or an old fashioned way of saying ‘table’, so if you really wanted to say table, you’d probably have said ‘teburu’. ‘aruiteta’ isn’t strictly good Japanese – ‘aruiteita’ is a correct version of it, though ‘aruiteta’ is, again, an informal pronounciation that is rife amongst those who don’t mind mangling their language.
‘Koshuu no menzen no me no mae ni denwa ni deru koto wa hijoushiki nanode gaman shita’ = ‘Though I knew it was not at all common-sensical to answer my cellular phone in a public place, I endured’…??? What the hell? It actually took me a few mins to decipher both. The Japanese one should say ‘Koushuu no menzen de denwa ni deru koto wa hijoushiki nanode gaman shita’, which would in turn translate to ‘Because it is rude to answer a phone in public, I did not’. Simple now, huh?
‘Kiraina taipu: hijoushiki na otoko’ is probably right – ‘My most-hated personality type: men lacking in common sense’, though unless you were a real hard-core feminist, you’d probably end up saying ‘hito’ instead of ‘otoko’, which would just mean ‘person’.
So I’ve just ripped to shreds the ‘lesson’. Apologies to people who actually like that column, but think for a sec. It’s true that Japanese isn’t the friendliest of languages to learn, seeing some words are context-sensitive, the pronounciations differ according to region, and our grammar’s all over the place. On top of that, there are subtle nuances that cannot be translated by someone who’s been in Japan only a few years, even with fluency. It’s a repeat of the ‘All your base are belong to us’ situation, and this time, the Engrish are doing it to the Japanese.
PS Another cultural thing I suppose, but that entire article, barely made sense. If the author wanted to convey how weird the Japanese can be, I think he succeeded, but wouldn’t it have been better all round if the author could highlight how such ‘brain training’ games are very cultural? ‘Shikakui atama wo maruku suru’-type puzzles/problems are slotted in between adverts on trains (literally, ‘making your square head go round’), in true crammer school styles. So such games become instantly popular… and besides, we’re a race of perfectionists and most of us are competitive to a fault, so it’s not that ‘weird and wacky’, really.
No offence to the Blizzard team who’ve worked so hard on this last patch, but who thought it was a good idea to make the LFG channels worldwide (and not restricted to cities, as before)? The general sentiments amongst my fellow players seem to be negative, as regards this issue, and most of us have turned it off in annoyance. And no, not all of us players uses cosmos and such, so please make it the way it was. Certain flightpaths previously unavailable are a good idea however – especially in Un’goro Crater (no more running from Silithus or Tanaris, hooray!). As the whole list is way too big to be pasted here, try this link instead.
On the DS front, こどものための読み聞かせ えほんであそぼう series (Play with Picture Books for Children, is the closest I can get to translating it) will be out from 6th July. The first three titles to be released are Cinderella, Three Little Pigs and Momotaro (Peach Boy) sets and features moveable animation via the pen or voice, and also can be read/heard in English. Suitable for even toddlers, it might just be the stuff you’re looking for, to learn better Japanese. It’ll cost approx. £15 each (for three stories each).
23.50, server goes down. This time Kalimdor has shut down completely. Nice one, Blizz. I realise patching a game that size must be a huge task – the 3.5hours I spent yesterday downloading the patch itself is testimony enough – but honestly… and you players, talking on channel 4 incessantly – Stop the racket now! Just because it’s WoW-global doesn’t give you or anyone else the right to chatter like a friendless imbecile.
For the first time in a good while, I decide to visit the WoW front page where lo and behold, a great post was spotted. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, I feel violent when some random person in the game decides on the ‘chat-up’ route. (I’m sure there are single female players out there who wouldn’t mind having a relationship with you, but don’t push your luck. Remember, us females in real life do have sharp claws in great condition, ready to scratch your eyes out if you come any nearer.) Other points in this genius of a post got me nodding throughout.
Excessive usage of ‘lol’, ‘rofl’, ‘roflmao’ and the like does tend to set my teeth on edge, as does text-speak. It’s just not necessary. By Jove, the guild to which my lovely little gnome rogue Kera belongs was set up by a group of us who feel the same way about such things. We all know what our respective roles are (we have a good warrior who uses all his stances effectively, for example – and good warriors are really hard to come by!) and even after a few wipes, we grimly battle on without blaming the healer for not doing his/her job. One of our guild rules is to not participate in an almost abhorrent ‘ding/gratz’ cycle.
So… if you’re on Arathor realm (Alliance) and need a mature guild, feel free to apply via comments :)
Wii pricing for the UK is estimated, with VAT, to be about £150. Cheap, then, compared to PS3 or Xbox360. Nintendo has started sale of a DSLite vibration cartridge at about £6, from their online shop. I expect, however, that it won’t be shipped outside of Japan, and that those of us abroad will have to wait for our own release dates.
Capcom’s Shin Onimusha Dawn of Dreams has now a Special Pack in their range, consisting of the original soundtrack (3CDs), Colour Booklet (12page) and a film of The Story. It costs approx. £20, and is available from Capcom’s online shop. Collector’s item as it may be, I honestly don’t know which shops will stock them outside of Japan, so good luck finding it.
Nintendogs is still going strong. Another of the series by the name of Dalmatian and Friends, which is going to be exclusive to Europe only, will make its debut on 16th June. There are no plans to sell them either in Japan or the US as of yet.
According to this, DSLite sold in Europe will be available in Crystal White and Sleek Black, for 150Euros/£99.99. No other colour variations then. My other half was excited that he’ll finally get a neat match with his black iPod. I’m sure many other Apple fans will feel the same way. As for the black version appearing in Japan… no news of that yet.
The director for the new Super Smash Bros. X, Sakurai, has confirmed on the Japanese site that there will be some changes made to the character line-up – that is, some characters from the previous game on the GC will be dropped. No name-dropping (excuse the pun) however.
Just a quick note to all you guys trawling the net for info on when the famed DSLite is out… Heard from two sources so far that the release date in the UK is 23rd next month. No idea of what price it’ll be, though no doubt much cheaper than the PSP. Isn’t that good? Not too long at all :)
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