A reader named Arthur recently requested that I take a look at the infamous “Jill Sandwich” line from the original Resident Evil game. The whole game is rife with silly-sounding lines and goofy voice acting, this particular line being one of the most well-known.
Anyway, I don’t have a copy of the Japanese game, but looking around online I was able to find video of it. Here’s the scene in the Japanese release:
As you can hopefully see/hear, the voice acting is still in English, but there are Japanese subtitles to go along with all the dialog. It’s pretty much a straight, basic translation with nothing especially different, but for reference here’s a comparison:
| Japanese text | Basic translation | Official translation |
| Jill: バリー！？ 助けて ドアが開かないの！ | Jill: Barry!? Help! The door won’t open! | Jill: Barry!? Help me, please! The door won’t open! Quick! |
| Barry: 下がってろ ドアを破るぞ！ | Barry: Get back! I’m gonna knock the door down! | Barry: Stay away from the door, Jill! I’m going to kick this door down! |
| 急げ こっちだ！ | Hurry! This way! | Hurry! This way! |
| _ | Jill: Oh, Barry! | |
| Barry: 危ない所だったな | Barry: Man, that was close! | Barry: That was too close. |
| サンドイッチが出来上がるところだったぜ | You were almost turned into a sandwich! | You were almost a Jill sandwich. |
| Jill: 本当ね | Jill: That’s for sure. | Jill: You’re right! |
| _ | Barry! Thanks for saving my life! |
As you can see, the Japanese text didn’t use the phrase “Jill sandwich”, so I guess most Japanese fans missed out on the wacky phrasing unless they could understand the English acting.
There are also a couple of cases where the English lines didn’t get Japanese subtitles even though there’s clearly audio there. This is actually pretty common in movies with Japanese subtitles – check out my big translation comparison article about The Wizard for more examples of Japanese subtitling in action.
I went to Capcom’s restaurant in Shinjuku last fall and was really disappointed that Jill Sandwich was not a menu option.
Great read, as always!
If you listen closley he dosent say jill sandwhich , he says jiffle sandwhich .
Wait, you’re doing something about The Wizard? Ha ha, yes. So looking forward to that!
Ah, I remember the post about the video game restaurants recently. Glad I… got to be a part of that. :\ I think.
I’d never heard of this line before now… But then again, I hadn’t heard of “What is a man?” before, either. Which, by the way, I think sounds quite fitting and epic. Although the terrible voice acting didn’t do it justice.
Quest 58 in Legend of Mana — Gilbert: School Amour — is about Gilbert the centaur falling in love with a medusa, and, in the English, makes multiple jokes revolving around the phrase “get hard,” culminating in the Cactus’ response “he got hard?” after the quest. Does all that play in the Japanese also, or was it invented in localisation?
Thanks for looking into it!
Though I had no idea that the Japanese version had English voices.
When I first heard the line I thought Barry said “jibble sandwich” or something. So it didn’t bother me…..
And yes, I can verify that from Resident Evil 1 to 3 used English Voice Actors, there is only a Japanese subtitle in the bottom of the screen.
Wait! So “jibble sandwich” seems perfectly acceptable to you, yet “Jill Sandwich” is something you had to look up?
I would love it if you did a comparison project someday of the first Resident Evil’s Engrish dialogue compared to it’s Japanese subtitles.
Aw, how disappointing. I was really hoping to see ジル サンド, haha.
Actually Tomato, the Japanese script was written first, then translated to English. The subtitles you see are actually the original Japanese script. Mikami has stated that Japanese actors were recorded but not used because he felt that the quality of the acting wasn’t good enough. Regarding the live action actors in the opening and ending, they were inexperienced actors Capcom hired. While not stated, the ingame voice actors are actually professional actors. It’s assumed that Mikami thought all American horror movies played like a cheesy b movie, which is why the acting was so bad. It was deliberate.
>Mikami has stated that Japanese actors were recorded but not used because he felt that the quality of the acting wasn’t good enough.
Lol
The line got riffed in Dead Rising, as there’s a restaurant called “Jill’s Sandwiches”. The description for it also plugs another famous RE line by calling her “the master of sandwichmaking”.
I think the most interesting mistranslated (I guess) line was Barry’s comment about the acid grenades: “It’s a weapon. It’s really powerful, especially against living things!” It sounds like he’s just stating the obvious at first, but when you’re dealing with both the undead and living enemies (ex: Hunters, Neptune, Plant 42, Lickers, etc.), the latter of which the acid grenades are more effective against, you need to make that distinction.