Official games with bad translation

[Amag0k1]

Not so prevalent not, as day one patches get rid of this in quick fashion for the most part, and i would say this is a loss, as i found some of the bad translations in games funny, and some times they made the game even more memorable.

What games did you officially purchase back in the day, and the translation made you wonder, "wut?"

What are some of the worse offenders to you,

 

[Eclipse14]

Breath of Fire II. This is especially considering I just finished playing through the game last month.

 

[bigstinkie]

frying over a jungle lol
dolphin in flight gear flying a plane over a jungle while also frying chicken in the large pot of boiling oil he has in the co-pilot seat

 

[UnDubious]

The worst I've seen is the Legend of Heroes White Witch remake trilogy on PSP (LOH 3-4-5). We're not talking about a few dubious changes in the script (though that can be bad as well) or minor mistakes, we're talking most of it isn't proper English. I think they tried to hide it too, because each game would read relatively well in beginning, and then after a few hours the translations would get really bad, like they had someone edit the beginning of the game just enough that it would look acceptable. It got worse with each game, so the last one (Song of the Ocean) was straight up gibberish at times. Read like early machine translations. These are really wordy games too, so it ruined them.

 

[Amag0k1]

frying over a jungle lol
dolphin in flight gear flying a plane over a jungle while also frying chicken in the large pot of boiling oil he has in the co-pilot seat

Hay, fried chicken is grate no matter the time or place!

Post automatically merged: May 2, 2025

Hay, fried chicken is grate no matter the time or place!

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

Various Neo-Geo Games (Not All Games) that suffer from having a somewhat weak translation in English but in Spanish/Portuguese it is weaker than it seems and also in some games they come untranslated into Spanish/Portuguese (Like Metal Slug 5 in the How To Play Screen) which is entirely in Engrish or unfinished translated in Spanish/Portuguese like the Samurai Spirits ~ Samurai Shodown Franchise which various texts is in Engrish Anyway. Although there are some Neo-Geo games that are well translated in the 3 languages mentioned (But not 100%) like Super Sidekicks 3 and 4 (The Ultimate 11), Garou Densetsu ~ Fatal Fury Games (Although on the 1st, The Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves Spanish and Portuguese Language Not Available in These Games Mentioned), Some The King of Fighters Games like the ('97 up to the 2003) and The Metal Slug Saga but in English Only because the Spanish/Portuguese is only limited to Translating the Text of How to Play Only, Among other games.

 

[Spike's iconSpike]

Anything by Working Designs.

 

[bigstinkie]

you may find it pleasurable that in the recent lunar re-releases, they removed a lot of the working designs-isms in the translated script

 

[Amag0k1]

you may find it pleasurable that in the recent lunar re-releases, they removed a lot of the working designs-isms in the translated script

I see that as both a good and bad thing. As wile the working designs script was cringe, it was cringe i experience in my youth, and as such i kind of miss it. The re-release would have been elevated a notch in my opinion if you could switch the working designs translation off and on. Heck, i am greedy, i would have wanted the collection to have the PSP remake, and all the Saturn / Sega CD ports too... Then it would be a "True" collection imho.

 

[Iguana-0]

Anything with Ted Woolsey's name on it.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Final Fantasy VII in Spanish is such a joke, my God.

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

Final Fantasy VII in Spanish is such a joke, my God.

"Muy bien, allévoy." if it was corrected it would be "Está Bien, Para Allá Voy." o "Está Bien, Por Allá Voy.".

 

[Felipe]

Onimusha 3 (PS2). The words "adieu", "adieu" being translated as "rest in peace", "my friend" will haunt me in my nightmares FOREVER!

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

"Muy bien, allévoy." if it was corrected it would be "Está Bien, Para Allá Voy." o "Está Bien, Por Allá Voy.".

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have seen an ancient (sadly abandoned) Spanish blog which attempted to play through the game and it was short-circuiting my brain.

 

[Stare best girl]

Megami Ibunroku Persona

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have seen an ancient (sadly abandoned) Spanish blog which attempted to play through the game and it was short-circuiting my brain.

A shame that a JRPG as well-received as Final Fantasy VII has a rather poor writing in both English and Spanish and that is reflected in spelling errors, misuse of periods, commas, quotation marks, parentheses, etc. and sometimes they eat some words losing the sense of the wording itself, but luckily the community made a retranslation of the same game in both English and Spanish, although they are not perfect, at least they tried to give it a corrected spelling errors, corrected the use of periods, commas, quotation marks, parentheses, etc. and even added some different words to make more sense to the wording But hey, sometimes the community makes a better effort to do video game translations than the official video game companies themselves, but you have to be aware that SquareSoft (Square Enix currently) is a Japanese company and several Japanese people have a hard time writing, reading and pronouncing the Foreign Language correctly (English, Spanish or some other language). Although with practice you learn over time.

 

[UnDubious]

Onimusha 3 (PS2). The words "adieu", "adieu" being translated as "rest in peace", "my friend" will haunt me in my nightmares FOREVER!

If the friend is dead then that's completely fine. Saying goodbye to a dead friend and saying rest in peace is basically the same thing. You're just using different words to express the same sentiment.

 

[GamingWarthog]

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth has an English script so riddled with errors that it's not even internally consistent, there are parts where character will randomly start referring to the Eaters as Bakemon, which is an entirely separate thing. And being my first Digimon game it introduced me to a lot of the old regional name changes. Why are you calling that Dragomon when Dagomon makes more sense.

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

The SNK is the goodest localisers in all long earth !

Especially the Samurai Shodown Haikus . Peak engrish wisdom !!!

 

[bigstinkie]

Anything with Ted Woolsey's name on it.

i give the teddster some sympathy
he may have gone a little overboard here and there, but the herculean task of translating the original script into english in such a way that would not heinously go over-memory is a task i wish upon no one

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

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The SNK is the goodest localisers in all long earth !

Especially the Samurai Shodown Haikus . Peak engrish wisdom !!!

That's what I was referring to that several Neo-Geo games have a loose English translation but in Spanish and Portuguese weaker due to spelling errors and sometimes eat some of the words to such an extent that it loses the sense of the wording.

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

Wild Arms 2

 

[UnDubious]

i give the teddster some sympathy
he may have gone a little overboard here and there, but the herculean task of translating the original script into english in such a way that would not heinously go over-memory is a task i wish upon no one

Honestly wasn't bad for the time. All those games were still classics in English, whereas a truly bad translation will ruin a game.

 

[Boog111]

Who doesn't love a little good Engrish? JRPGs are my primary genre so I was willing to put up with poor translations back in the day just to be able to be able to play the games.

 

[Your_Homie_Gale]

SNK vs Capcom: Card Fighters DS. This game had so many typos, mistranslations, but also some funny errors. Literally the 2 Zero cards in the game have their bio's swapped which confused me. X-Zero's stats were weaker than MMZ-Zero. Not to mention that whenever a word like "naive" would show up it was always spelled as "na?ve." It was hard finding actual texts for the cards but these 2 screenshots from gamefaqs managed to copy the bio's word for word.