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The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes was recently released in many different regions for the 3DS. Only a few days later, a certain image started making the rounds on Twitter about the English translations:

As we’ve seen before, Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe often work on their own separate translations like this. So it’s no surprise that the text is different with Tri Force Heroes too.

Nintendo of America translation Nintendo of Europe translation Still, coming here has at least afforded me the rare chance to explore these ancient ruins. And that may be precisely why the ancient ruins I encountered had been left undisturbed for me to explore! So ancient. Such ruin.

The European translation sounds like a solid, standard translation of a Japanese line. The American translation inserts an Internet in-joke called the “Doge meme”:

Anyway, the response to this meme in the NOA localization has been interesting. Some gamers are frothing at the mouth out of anger, others argue it’s better than the dry line of the European version. Others scream at others for caring at all, while others just feel indifferent.

All this hubbub did get me wondering: what does the original Japanese line look like? Thanks to PushDustin I was able to get a pic of the Japanese version in action:

I don’t know what the sentence before it is, but the Japanese text translates roughly into something like:

However, that’s precisely why I found the ancient legacy that was likely left behind.

Basically, there’s no meme in the original Japanese text, and the European localization is very close to the original intent while sounding better than a straight, raw translation like the above.

I’ve been seeing a lot of meme-style writing in American Nintendo games lately and I’ll admit it feels a bit childish… but then again these games probably aren’t being marketed to me anyway. Plus, it’s not as if silly, random references in Zelda games are exclusive to Nintendo of America:

Literally every translator I know who’s worked in the entertainment industry has included some sort of in-joke or reference into at least one project they’ve worked on. I don’t know why, it’s just something that we all seem to go through, like it’s a phase or something. The practice comes with all sorts of pros, cons, risks, and rewards, and more than anything it seems to be one of the most controversial things a localizer can choose to do. It’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve been hoping to write about in further detail someday.

For now, if you can think of any especially infamous references to pop culture, memes, and the like in a video game, let me know in the comments so I can start putting something together for a future article!