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A common question I’ve been getting lately is about a small bit of text in the Final Fantasy X English translation:

Tidus: They say Seymour went to Macarena Temple. Wakka: Macalania Temple. Tidus: Aye.

This is famous among English-speaking fans – right in the middle of a mandatory, main event scene is a reference to the Macarena, complete with the weird-sounding “aye”?! Surely this wasn’t in the Japanese version, right?

First, for the uninitiated, here’s a music video of the Macarena song – it pretty much took America by storm in the mid-90s and hung around for years. The times were crazy.

So anyway, what did this Final Fantasy X line say in Japanese? I did some digging around and got some screenshots for comparison:

And here’s how the text looks side-by-side:

Japanese Version (basic translation) English Version Tiida: They say Seymour went to Malacania Temple. Tidus: They say Seymour went to Macarena Temple. Wakka: Macalania Temple. Wakka: Macalania Temple. Tiida: Yeah, that’s it. Tidus: Aye.

So in Japanese, it looks like Tidus (“Tiida” in Japanese, which apparently comes from an Okinawan word for “sun”) just mixes up “Malacania” for “Macalania” – an understandable mistake.

The Final Fantasy Compendium actually interviewed one of Final Fantasy X ’s localizers, Richard Honeywood, about this Macarena reference many years ago:

Actually, I can still remember when Alex was writing that line. I’m always a sucker for silly humor, and I’m a pop culture junkie. Of course, I laughed and agreed to it at the time, so long as the “Aye!” was done in a way that it wouldn’t seem really strange to people who didn’t know the song (or years later, when everyone has forgotten the old one-hit wonders).

The whole discussion is fascinating and entertaining (he even discusses fan translations and possibly me), so I definitely recommend checking out the full interview here. While on the subject, this 8-4 podcast discussion with him is amazingly interesting too!

Also, just for fun and further reference I’ve put both the English and the Japanese clips of this Final Fantasy X scene into a handy video:

Summary: The Japanese version of Final Fantasy X doesn’t mention the Macarena or make a pop culture reference – it just plays the scene straight. The Macarena reference was added into the English release.