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The early Zelda games were known for having weird and goofy English text – in fact I’ve already done a full analysis of the first Zelda game here.

Probably one of the most well-known instances of wacky Zelda text is from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link . One of the guys in one of the first villages says, “I am error.” And that’s it. That’s all he says.

This particular line is known as one of the biggest mistranslations of early NES games… but it’s not actually a mistranslation at all. He really, genuinely says that in the Japanese version too:

For reference, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the line in each version:

Japanese text Literal translation Official translation オレノナハ エラー ダ… My name is Error… I AM ERROR.

I guess if they had translated it as “MY NAME IS ERROR.” it might have sounded a tad less mistake-y, but however you look at it, it is a pretty weird line in any language.

…But wait – there’s more!

A little bit later in the game is a guy living in seclusion. If you talk to him, he says in English, “Bagu is my name. Show my note to river man.”

That’s pretty awkward writing as it is, but when compared to the actual text there’s a little more to get out of it:

Japanese text Literal translation Official translation オレノナハ バグ ダ My name is Bug. BAGU IS MY NAME. ワタシバノ オトコ二 コノテガミヲ ミセロ Show this letter to the man at the river passing. SHOW MY NOTE TO RIVER MAN.

Basically, we see that in Japanese his name is actually “Bug”, as in a computer bug. Apparently the designers decided to call one guy “Error” and one guy “Bug”, but that thematic connection was lost in the translation. The mistake came about because “bug” is phonetically written in Japanese as “bagu”, but apparently the translator didn’t pick up on the “error” and “bug” connection and left it as “bagu”.

Anyway, so that solves that mystery. The next mystery is, “Why did they call these characters these names?” But I don’t even know how to go about getting answers to that. Have any of the game’s staff members commented on it before? If so, let me know.

Incidentally, this very same Bug and Error thing also appeared in another Nintendo game – MOTHER for the Japanese Famicom and EarthBound Beginnings NES game.:

The mystery of Error and Bug continues…