Back in 2008, Viz Media released the official English translation of the Ocarina of Time manga by Akira Himekawa (FINALLY). Before then, fans released their own translations online to bring the story to an eager audience.

I’m grateful that I can read Ocarina in English, of course. But so much can be lost in translation from the original Japanese! Since reading the manga in Japanese isn’t an option for everyone, I thought it’d be nice to share some of the missing nuance I especially enjoyed here.

Kanji Conundrums

This whole project started when I opened my manga again and saw the title of Chapter One:

The Japanese writing system uses two phonetic syllabaries and borrowed Chinese characters, call Kanji. The title of this chapter struck me because they use the kanji 樹 for “tree,” instead of 木, with which I was more familiar. Both characters have the same basic meaning (tree) and are read the same (ki). So I wondered, why the difference?

The nuance seems difficult to capture exactly, but from what I gather 樹 feels more specific; it represents a mature, living tree. 木, on the other hand, could apply to an immature tree, a dead tree, or even just wood. (By the by, the use of the honorific サマ, while not exclusively for deities, is used when addressing gods. Nuance, I say!)

In a similar vein, I noticed that the Spiritual Stone of Fire, Fire Medallion, Bolero of Fire, and Fire Temple all used the character 炎 (honoo) instead of 火 (hi). Again, not being a native speaker and only knowing that both characters mean “fire” in English, I wondered at the difference.

The idea here again seems to be more about specificity: 火 can refer to any sort of fire in general, in your fireplace or on a candle or torch, whereas 炎 is an intense, blazing fire. They also use 炎 in the expression “Din’s flaming arms” from the creation myth, which to me further solidified the connection between Din and the Goron Tribe/Fire elements. (But maybe I’m just reading into things… T_T)

These differences are tiny but are usually completely lost when something gets translated. Coincidentally, all those examples are also present in the in-game text.

Each Japanese kanji represents a certain idea or meaning, but can be read multiple ways. For example, the character 木 I cited early carries the idea of a tree or wood, and brings that idea to mind regardless of the word it’s a part of. But it can be read boku, moku, ki, or ko, depending on the context. Occasionally manga artists will make up their own readings for kanji, assigning a certain meaning (denoted by the characters) to a word (how it’s read). Let’s consider some examples.

The word for Triforce in Japanese is トライフォース, and to a native speaker has no meaning attached to it (if they knew some English, they might pick up on the “tri” and “force” bits, like we do, but otherwise it’s just a cool borrowed word.) Hence, in the game and manga, we have the words Triforce (トライフォース, toraifosu) and Sacred Triangles (聖三角, seisankaku) and both are used interchangeably.

The cool thing is, though the two words usually appear separately, in the manga there are instances of 聖三角 actually read as トライフォース. Thereafter, the word “Triforce” would always be associated in the reader’s mind with the idea represented in the kanji.

In the same vein, the Spiritual Stones of the Forest, Fire, and Water have alternative names: Kokiri’s Emerald, Goron’s Ruby, and Zora’s Sapphire. But there are instances where you actually see the idea (森の精霊石, Spiritual Stone of the Forest, mori no seireiseki) and read a different word (コキリのヒスイ, Kokiri’s Emerald, kokiri no hisui). The implication is that you would actually write “Forest (森)” to spell Kokiri, write “Fire (炎)” to spell Goron, and write “Water (水)” to spell Zora, and that the Spiritual Stones of those elements would naturally be different (an emerald, a ruby, and a sapphire).

These points were especially cool to me because it makes sense, from a Japanese point of view, that written words should have an integral meaning associated with them, and writing “Goron” with the symbol for “Fire” or writing “Triforce” with the symbols for “Holy Triangle” just seems intrinsic to expressing oneself properly.

As it turns out, we actually know that Hylian doesn’t work that way. Boo! But manga can do what it wants and I like the idea! So there!

(As an aside, most kanji in the Japanese Ocarina of Time didn’t use furigana – the fine print that shows you how to pronounce a word. But Ocarina of Time 3D does, so I thought these alternate renderings might have been incorporated, but from what I can tell, they haven’t. Boo again. I guess it’s sort of a manga-y thing to do.)

Dissecting the kanji usage is fun, but aside from that aspect there are also specific expressions and concepts that are neat to examine in the original language.

Without a fairy, you’re not even a real man!

Mido’s memorable monologue isn’t in the manga exactly as it is in the game, but the same expressions are used.

The expressions translated “not even a real man” (半人前, hanninmae) and “Mr. No Fairy” (妖精なし, yousei nashi) in the original N64 release are revised in the English manga and translated as “defective twirp” and “no-fairy loser.” Both translations convey the general sentiment but the Japanese is fun to examine.

半人前 is an interesting expression! The first two characters literally mean “half (半) person (人),” and the suffix 前 means “a suitable portion or amount”; so if you’re dealing with food, 一人前 (“one (一) person (人) portion (前)”) would be one helping, or one person’s worth. But in this context it has to do with coming of age. 一人前になる is quite literally “becoming one person portion,” and means you have attained to full manhood or womanhood. So to be 半人前 is to be only half a full person, or “half a man.”

With this in mind, “not even a real man” is actually a decent translation, but the English expression has an air of macho-ism and just sounds hilarious when you combine it with the need to have a fairy (a decidedly un-macho requirement). Coincidentally, fairies don’t have a feminine connotation in Japanese culture like they do here, so that wouldn’t have even been an issue, and 半人前 isn’t about being “manly.” It’s about not being full grown (also amusing, since Mido will never be an adult. I guess “full grown” is relative).

The “Mr. No Fairy” bit is cute too. The expression 妖精なし (yousei nashi) is really simple: 妖精 means “fairy” and the なし suffix means “without” or “-less.” So Mido is using the word “fairyless” for name-calling (I guess “fairyless” is the equivalent of “four-eyes” for Kokiri). It makes perfect sense but translates really awkwardly. “Mr. No Fairy” does a good job of conveying Mido’s intent, but it does sound kinda silly. (For that matter, so does GOOD GRIEF!!! But that’s a discussion for another day. ^_^)

Oba?!

In Japanese there are a lot of ways to refer to people. There are a lot of words for “you,” like anata, omae, and kimi, and a lot of words one would say instead of “you,” since “you” is pretty informal. For example, the Gorons call Darunia アニキ (aniki), translated “Big Brother,” which you can literally use to refer to your older brother, or use to refer to a boy or man who is older than you are. おニイちゃん (oniichan) is what the Kokiri call Link when he’s an adult, translated “mister,” and also means older brother.

Then you have words like Obaasan, Obasan, and Oneechan. The first is for an older woman, like a grandmother. The second is for a middle-aged woman, and the last one just means big sister. If you’re trying to get the attention of a woman in, say, her forties, you may rightly call out Obasan. But since some women don’t like to acknowledge their age (to others or to themselves!) they might ignore you until you call them Oneechan, which makes them sound younger.



In this scene when Link is leaving Impa, he calls out Obasan! and we get to glimpse her irritated response in the tiny speech bubble. She just says “Oba…” and then there’s the angry popping vein symbol. Don’t worry Impa, you’re not really old. Link is just an insensitive little turd.

Puns, puns everywhere.

Since Japanese only has 101 syllable-sounds (compared to over 3,000 in English) there are gobs of homonyms and that leads to a lot of puns. And puns are hard to translate, so they’re usually omitted or ignored in translation. BUT NOW ALL WILL BE REVEALED! Or, at least, a couple.

Kokiri no Nokokiri: In the frame above, Mido is holding a saw, the “Kokiri’s Saw,” in fact. The word saw in Japanese is Nokogiri; the symbols for ki and gi look almost identical (キ and ギ), so writing the word saw looks like Kokiri with a No in front of it. Oh ho ho, how clever. Isn’t it hilarious?

Goro-Goro Goron: This one hits a little closer to home, since we already know the word, and you may have heard this explanation before. The onomatopoeia for something rolling in Japanese is goro. As you can see in the frame above, the Goron rolling by is making a big ゴロゴロ (goro goro) sound. That’s why they’re called Gorons. Because… that’s how they roll. OH NO IT’S RUBBING OFF ON ME!

King Zora Dobon: This one exists in both the manga and the Japanese in-game text. King Zora’s last name is actually Dobon. The sign in his throne room that says “Zora’s Fountain / Don’t disturb Lord Jabu-Jabu! / –King Zora XVI” in English actually calls him “King Zora Dobon 16” in Japanese. Anyways. In the manga image above, King Zora explains that the Boomerang was passed down in the Dobon family from generation to generation. So what’s so funny about it? Dobon is the sound of a huge splash, like the one that follows when performing a well-executed cannonball into the pool. Ahaha! Ha. ha. I’m beginning to understand why they just left these out.

終わりです！

Well, that’s all I got from the first book. There’s probably a lot of little things I overlooked but I hope someone is able to enjoy this synopsis. Check back for part 2, about the second volume.

Thanks for reading.