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Zettai Ryouiki asked the other day about the Lyn character from the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem game:

In Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken for the GBA, known as just “Fire Emblem” in the West, Lyn the main girl was apparently changed in the English translations to have an “action-y” personality, while she was more of a sweet country gal in the original. However, I’ve never seen any lines or proof of this statement. Could you shed some light on this, Sir Mato?

This is actually the only Fire Emblem game I’ve ever put serious time into (although I never finished it because I didn’t want anyone to die ever…) so this is right up my alley!

Now, I’ve only checked her text during the beginning part of the game, but it appears that in Japanese she talks with just a standard speech style. It’s not really a “sweet country gal”, it’s more or less just normal, nice talk. I suppose some of her lines do have the feminine sentence-ending particle わ , but again that’s pretty standard for this sort of character and context.

In the English version of the script, she tends to talk in a “ye olden times” style about half of the time. Here’s an example:

Translated, this is something like this:

Literal translation Official translation …But I’ve been hurt too. But I’ve been injured. I better heal myself with some ointment. I have need of a vulnerary.

As you can see, the official translation has an older, stiffer vibe to it. In Japanese, it’s a little closer to how someone might talk in real life and stays in line with standard Japanese entertainment fare.

Here’s another example:

Translated, this is something like:

Literal translation Official translation Let’s treat my injuries while closing in on him a little bit. I would do well to use this time to administer a little first aid.

It’s hard to convey it well in English, but in Japanese she speaks in a pretty standard, polite way. In the official translation, that’s not really the case.

One last example!

Here, she pretty much asks in Japanese, “What land/where are you a knight of?” As you can see, the English version takes the simple sentence and does its own thing.

Actually, this sort of change is what localization and translation polishing is all about – making bland translation sound better. So I don’t feel the changes here are terrible or anything – in fact, from what I could quickly tell, it sounds like this speech style thing was applied to EVERYTHING in the English release, not just Lyn’s speech. I think the only problem this approach really poses is that in the Japanese version I’m sure there are characters who legitimately talk in ye olde style, so now this unique trait won’t be unique at all anymore.

Also, from what I can tell, this new text “flavor” was either added in afterward, by an English editor who punched up the initial translation, or was translated using what I like to call “reverse translation”, which is something I’ll write about in a future article. From what I can tell, NOA’s Treehouse has editors for this specific purpose, so it was probably the former that happened.

Anyway, hopefully that helps clear things up a little bit. Admittedly, I only played the first 10 minutes or so of the Japanese version, so maybe Lyn starts to genuinely talk with a rural accent later on. I doubt it, but anything’s possible in these games 😛

If you have any lines in games or whatever else that you’d like me to take a look at sometime, let me know in the comments or contact me!

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