Mei Ling's proverbs and MGS1's translation
Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 12:36 pm
There's an interview with Kojima in the Japanese strategy guide for MGS Integral. In it he talks about the translation and Mei Ling's proverbs, among many other things (for instance they first joked about doing 3000 VR missions). I'd like to get the whole thing translated some day, but as it's at the bottom of the priority list right now, here's an excerpt:
Linguistically speaking, did any aspects of translating the game give you problems?
K: When you translate a game from Japanese into other languages, you first translate it into English, then translate that version into the other languages. We ended up doing German, Italian, French and Spanish language versions of the game, and had them checked by native speakers of each language. If we were to sit there and test them ourselves, we wouldn't know what the characters were saying. (laughs) We'd know they were speaking German or whatever, but nothing else. (laughs) So we sent the different versions to Konami Europe, and they had their staff and also magazine writers check them for us.
Did you have trouble translating Mei Ling's proverbs? That seems like it would be a difficult area.
K: Yeah, I'm sorry about that. (laughs) Most of them are different. (laughs) In the Japanese version, she tells Snake the proverb then explains it in Japanese, but in the English version she would say, "This is what they say in China - blah blah blah," and then when Snake asks, "What does that mean?" she would end up saying it again in English if we did a direct translation. That was a difficult area to deal with, so we kept the ones we could keep and changed the rest. And then the English version is the basis for all the European versions, so the same thing happened with them. It was a little disappointing they didn't make it in. (smiles)
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I should maybe elaborate on how the Japanese version works. Mei Ling technically still explains them in Japanese, but in a classical style that isn't used in modern conversation or writing, so some of them can be a little unclear without any explanation. So then after she says the proverb, she explains the meaning in normal Japanese.
Linguistically speaking, did any aspects of translating the game give you problems?
K: When you translate a game from Japanese into other languages, you first translate it into English, then translate that version into the other languages. We ended up doing German, Italian, French and Spanish language versions of the game, and had them checked by native speakers of each language. If we were to sit there and test them ourselves, we wouldn't know what the characters were saying. (laughs) We'd know they were speaking German or whatever, but nothing else. (laughs) So we sent the different versions to Konami Europe, and they had their staff and also magazine writers check them for us.
Did you have trouble translating Mei Ling's proverbs? That seems like it would be a difficult area.
K: Yeah, I'm sorry about that. (laughs) Most of them are different. (laughs) In the Japanese version, she tells Snake the proverb then explains it in Japanese, but in the English version she would say, "This is what they say in China - blah blah blah," and then when Snake asks, "What does that mean?" she would end up saying it again in English if we did a direct translation. That was a difficult area to deal with, so we kept the ones we could keep and changed the rest. And then the English version is the basis for all the European versions, so the same thing happened with them. It was a little disappointing they didn't make it in. (smiles)
-----
I should maybe elaborate on how the Japanese version works. Mei Ling technically still explains them in Japanese, but in a classical style that isn't used in modern conversation or writing, so some of them can be a little unclear without any explanation. So then after she says the proverb, she explains the meaning in normal Japanese.