Weird Translations in S3: Suggestions?

Switch

Shenmue analysis at www.phantomriverstone.com
Joined
Jul 28, 2018
Location
Japan
Hi all, one of the topics I'll be looking at on the Phantom River Stone blog in the near future is looking at some of the weird or quirky lines that occur while playing Shenmue 3 in English, and seeing how these compare to the original Japanese lines.

This couple of exchanges between Ryo and the tourist guy is one such example:
g1835.jpg

So If there is a particular English word, line or scene you've come across in Shenmue 3 that seemed out of place or weird in some way, feel free to mention below, and I'll be happy to consider covering it in the post. (A link to the example in a playthrough video would be a help, if available).
 
So while not 100% related I was always curious about NPC Ye Jufang in the Rainbow Basin. She’s the daughter of Ye and she seemed to be mentally challenged/slow when reading subtitles. I just wanted to know if her original lines and mannerisms were intended to be like that?
 
I heard this one a lot during the nightly conversations with Shenhua.

Ryo will start going on a tangent (e.g. revenge) and Shenhua will say “Hi Ryo” to snap him out of it. It just sounds a bit odd.
 

I haven't touched the game for a long time but I vividly remember many instances in the Japanese version where Ryo starts saying something then he gets cut off mid conversation by a npc and thus imply some kind of misunderstanding in their conversation because of it, but in English extra dialogue is added to those scenarios making it look like NPCs are rambling nonsense even though Ryo is explaining an opposite situation to them.
 
One that sticks out to me is Ryo’s angry ‘What’s that supposed to mean?!’ when he’s watching Ma Jialing training in the garden in that secret scene in Niaowu. Not Corey’s fault I’m sure as he probably wasn’t given the full context, or they rushed through certain recordings, but that’s a particularly jarring one. I don’t remember the tone of the Japanese line but I’m sure it wasn’t quite the same.
 
One that sticks out to me is Ryo’s angry ‘What’s that supposed to mean?!’ when he’s watching Ma Jialing training in the garden in that secret scene in Niaowu. Not Corey’s fault I’m sure as he probably wasn’t given the full context, or they rushed through certain recordings, but that’s a particularly jarring one. I don’t remember the tone of the Japanese line but I’m sure it wasn’t quite the same.
This one's always confused me as well. I think the translation was an issue (I read it like "what's going on here?"), but I also noticed they reused that exact English audio (or at least a VERY similar intonation) from Ryo's interrogation of Yanlang.
To that end, I'm definitely interested in the original Japanese.
 
One that sticks out to me is Ryo’s angry ‘What’s that supposed to mean?!’ when he’s watching Ma Jialing training in the garden in that secret scene in Niaowu. Not Corey’s fault I’m sure as he probably wasn’t given the full context, or they rushed through certain recordings, but that’s a particularly jarring one. I don’t remember the tone of the Japanese line but I’m sure it wasn’t quite the same.
This one's always confused me as well. I think the translation was an issue (I read it like "what's going on here?"), but I also noticed they reused that exact English audio (or at least a VERY similar intonation) from Ryo's interrogation of Yanlang.
To that end, I'm definitely interested in the original Japanese.
I have a theory those short scenes may have been added quite late in development as a little gag the developers threw in, and so they had to recycle lines (and let's be honest, the English version of that scene is hilarious because of how much it seems like Ryo's brain broke).

Might not be the case though, as now we also know from the Bill Black interview there was an issue with mislabelled lines in post-production.
 
I heard this one a lot during the nightly conversations with Shenhua.

Ryo will start going on a tangent (e.g. revenge) and Shenhua will say “Hi Ryo” to snap him out of it. It just sounds a bit odd.

I noticed that while streaming tonight with the Japanese dub on...it's more like she is saying "Unnn" to my Japanese ear but they for some reason translated as "Hi, Ryo..."

Didn't really make sense to me as to why they translated it that way.

The cliff temple line at the end is the most obvious one to me...I still can't get over how badly botched that line was.
 
I think a simple “Ryo…” would have sufficed. Don’t know why they added a “Hi” in too, but oh well.
 
Other than the cliff temple spiel at the end, them using “friend” instead of “comrade” when calling Guizang and the two instances of rephrased questions being paired with the wrong responses I can’t think of any mistakes per se, but there were a few things that sounded a little odd in my most recent playthrough that I’m curious about…

- When trying to find out the animal style, they used the same recording of “those moves” for each of the four recollections. Was this the same in the Japanese dub?
- When Ren kicks Lan Di’s henchman in the face and Ryo says “how are we even friends?” doesn’t quite work in the English dub. Does it sound more natural in Japanese?
- At the end when they’re on the wall and Ryo’s internal monologue says “you better not run Lan Di.” Is this a word for word translation? It seems an odd thing to say after just getting one’s ass kicked and being the one who fled.
- When competing at the Rose Garden, the guy in charge says “The entry fee is this much.” (Or something to that extent). Does the Japanese dub do the same or does it give the exact amounts?
 
Back
Top