“Translation is not a science; it is an art,” writes Blaustein. “One must take liberties with the text to capture the essence of the words, in an attempt to recreate the feeling of the original for a very different audience with a very different cultural background.”

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Blaustein’s approach led to him using words like Codec and phrases like OSP (on-site procurement) which weren’t in the script but became part of the MGS franchise nonetheless. Blaustein understands that this process will no doubt be considered incorrect by some who believe that he should have just translated the original script as closely as possible and made alterations only when strictly necessary.

Apparently, Hideo Kojima was one of the people who thought that Blaustein went too far. While Blaustein admits that he only heard from others about Kojima’s reaction (and neither Konami or Kojima comment on the piece), his impression was that Kojima frustration resulted in his future insistence that the localized versions of his scripts stick to the original writing as much as possible. This certainly seems to be part of the reason why MGS games and their dialog became a little more…weird after the first title. In fact, you can hear a more “accurate” translation of MGS‘ original script in the GameCube’s Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and the difference really is quite drastic in many spots.

Speaking personally, I do feel that the translator overstepped his bounds in terms of the strict terms of his job, but it’s hard to deny that some of the dialog as it was intended to be translated isn’t quite as sharp as the version that we ultimately got. At the very least, this does go a long way to explaining why the original Metal Gear Solid (at least the PS1 Western version) feels so different from every other game in the series in terms of its writing.