Final Fantasy IV Translation Comparison: Cave Magnes

All right! It’s time to go after the Dark Elf and get the Earth Crystal back!

Name this Cave

The Dark Elf resides in a cave northeast of Toroia. As explained previously, the Dark Elf has a weakness to metal weapons, so he’s set up a magnetic field in the cave that’ll hinder anyone who has metal armor or weapons equipped.

Because of this magnetic field stuff, this cave is known as something like “Magnetic Cave” or “Cave of Magnetism” in Japanese.

In the English release, the cave was given an actual, unique name: “Cave Magnes”.

This localization choice is really interesting – it seems to be the first time someone on the localization team decided to break away from the original location names and create a unique name that didn’t have an equivalent in the Japanese version. So even though it’s a tiny change, it’s clear someone at some point put some thought into this unimportant piece of text.

The PlayStation translation goes back to the more generic term of “Magnetic Cavern”. This choice is A-OK too.

As we’ve seen before, the Game Boy Advance text is usually the same as the PlayStation text, with the occasional minor changes. One such change is evident here, as this cave is instead known in the GBA version as “Magnetic Cave”.

And the DS release calls it the “Lodestone Cavern”. A lodestone is a naturally-occurring magnetized mineral, so this fits pretty well.

So it looks like the cave’s gone by a handful of different names over the years.

Incidentally, the fan translation calls it the “Cave of Power”:

This is a genuine mistranslation. I’m again confused as to why the fan translators had such a hard time with the word for “magnetic”.

Brighten Up

If you haven’t noticed already, this cave looks slightly different depending on which version of the Super Famicom/SNES game you play.

In the original Japanese release, this magnetic cave looks a little dark and mysterious. In the Easy Type and English releases, though, the cave’s been brightened up quite a bit.

I’m not really sure why this change would’ve been made; it’s a pretty straightforward cave and even on bad TVs I never had trouble navigating the cave in the original Japanese version. Maybe it’s a side effect of making hidden passages in other caves more visible or something like that.

Magnetic Mayhem

As soon as the party enters the magnetic cave, a cut scene begins. For the most part, the English translation isn’t too far off from the Japanese text, minus a few nuance differences and such.

The first line here is translated as a question but presented as an exclamation. The original line is more of the exclamation, so I can see how this translation choice came about.

Also, the warning that you’ll be immobilized if you have metallic stuff on is made a little clearer in the original text.

Tellah’s translated line in this scene does sound a bit awkward, but it’s still clear what he means. And, as incredibly minor as it is, I like the use of “do not” rather than “don’t” in his translation, since the original Japanese phrase has a bit of an older, stiffer vibe to it too.

Also, as a quick aside, part of this scene appears in the English manual. Except it appears to be an early version of the script that includes a typo:

Cid: What is this magnetic field!

Metallic things will be to heavy to control!

But I mostly bring this scene up because the fan translation handles Cid’s line a bit oddly:

Cid: Ugh! The gravity here’s so strong!

We won’t be able to move if we wear metallic armor!

Again, the fan translators continue to confuse “jiryoku” (magnetism) with “juryoku” (gravity).

Booty Change

Several treasure chests’ contents have been changed from the original release of the game:

Similar to a previous section of the game, it’s really interesting how Easy Type and the English releases have a chest that gives you less money than the original version. It kind of seems like the opposite of making the game easier, but maybe there was some logical reason for the change.

I mean, at some point someone actually said, “Okay, we should change the amount of money this chest gives to, oh, 500.” So there must’ve been some reason, right?

Slip-n-Slide

There’s a trick I discovered in this cave way back when I was a kid, and to this day I love using it.

Basically, there’s a chest near the final area of the cave, but to get to it you need to walk around a big chasm and then all the way back… which means you’ll probably get into a random battle or two along the way.

But if you just try to move across this particular part of the chasm, you’ll walk right over it and end up right next to the chest. It’s super handy!

I was curious to see if it worked in the different versions of the game, and it indeed works in both Japanese Super Famicom versions and the English Super NES version.

I haven’t tested it, but I assume this works in the PlayStation version too and that it doesn’t work in all other versions, given that they were reprogrammed from scratch. If I’m wrong about these assumptions, let me know!

Meeting the Dark Elf

At last, it’s time to take back the Earth Crystal… but not before an encounter with the Dark Elf!

Right off the bat there’s a number of interesting things at work here.

• First, the Dark Elf speaks entirely in katakana in the Japanese version. This usually denotes a type of voice or speech style that’s not normal – it’s often used with aliens, robots, and supernatural creatures, for example. As such, all-katakana text like this is almost always translated into all-caps text in English to sort of give the same “something’s different” feeling. And, in fact, the official English translators did just that here.

• The actual content of the Dark Elf’s text here has been reduced in size and changed a bit in translation.In the original text, he (is it even a he?) speaks in decent Japanese grammar and with a reasonable amount of intelligence – he even greets the party with a bit of sarcasm.

  In contrast, the English translation has him speaking a little less intelligently. It kind of reminds me of caveman talk or the Hulk in a way. Basically, throughout this entire part of the game, the Dark Elf sounds more like a greedy, simpleminded creature. Which isn’t necessarily bad; I think it sounds kind of cool and fitting.

  Also, his excessive use of “cannot” in the translation is interesting for reasons we’ll see in a little bit.

• After the Dark Elf speaks, Yang and Tellah talk. I always assumed the lines in the English translation were directed at the Dark Elf – in this interpretation, both Yang and Tellah come off as really cool and confident and badass. But looking at the Japanese text, I now see that they were actually meant to be speaking to Cecil, and the “Don’t worry” and “We’ll do it” lines were meant to tell Cecil that they’ll handle things for him, since they aren’t hindered by the cave’s magnetism.

  So in a way, the unintended meanings of the official translation came across as much cooler than what was originally intended.

Other translations of the game actually try to show the Dark Elf’s unusual speech pattern through other means. The PlayStation translation makes the Dark Elf sound a little more intelligent again, plus it mixes lowercase and uppercase letters to create something that definitely has an “unnatural” feeling to it:

I comMEND your efFort. But your excurSION ends here. You will nevER get the crysTAL.

I really like this localization choice. Good job, localizers!

And, as the Game Boy Advance translation is based heavily on the PlayStation translation, he speaks the same way in the GBA version too. In fact, it looks like they literally just copied-and-pasted the PlayStation script into the GBA script – the GBA team didn’t even bother to reformat text to fit in the text boxes more naturally. For text that’s in a main story scene, that’s kind of lazy, I feel.

The DS version of the English script doesn’t use any special capitalization with the Dark Elf’s text. He also speaks with normal grammar and has normal intelligence, so he comes across as your normal bad guy.

If all-caps wasn’t an option for the DS translation or if the idea ended up being vetoed, I think a good alternate option would’ve been to give the Dark Elf’s text a unique font – one that looked a little different but also not too crazy. It would’ve been a neat way to accomplish the task, and it’s something plenty of other games have done in the past.

Anyway, so begins the battle against the Dark Elf!

During the battle, the Dark Elf says some stuff to the party:

This is another good example of the Dark Elf’s text being altered to give him a less-intelligent, wild creature feel. Although it’s strange that the Dark Elf was using the word “cannot” a lot in the English translation just a minute ago, yet now he can’t even get the simplest of pronouns right.

The Dark Elf unleashes some devastating attacks on Cecil and friends. On the verge of defeat, the party has this to say:

The English text was considerably changed here. The hopelessness of the situation is made a lot clearer in the original text. The translated scene still retains much of the tension, but it’s not at quite the same level as the Japanese scene.

The Japanese version of this scene includes a “kuso”, which could be translated to any number of things, it doesn’t necessarily need to be “damn” as I’ve shown here. The fan translation does go this “damn” route though, while the PlayStation translation goes with “Ugh…” and the DS translation goes with “Urgh…”

The scene eventually switches to Gilbert/Edward in bed. He senses that the party’s in trouble and attempts to crawl to his harp. The nurse and the doctor in the room have something to say to him, though:

The difference is hard to explain, but basically I always assumed that the English text here was spoken by one person. Checking the Japanese text, though, it becomes clear that these lines are separate pieces of dialogue spoken by both the nurse and doctor. The original text denotes this fact with little Japanese quote marks, but the English text doesn’t do anything similar, so it always seemed to me as the text was just one big statement made by one character.

The English translation also puts three lines here rather than the original two, which confuses things a tiny bit more. It’s certainly no big deal, but it’s nice to have that cleared up after all this time.

Actually, this whole scene is probably worth a quick look:

Besides the previously-mentioned confusing lines, I really like how this translation turned out. It’s nice and terse and I like Edward’s use of “they” and “them” here. It makes it less clear to the nurse and doctor what he’s talking about and makes his actions seem even more rash and difficult to understand. But we know what’s going on, and that information gap helps up the drama just a little bit.

Incidentally, the Easy Type version here simplifies the line a bit. It’s always tough to convey these simplification differences, but it basically cuts out the word for “properly”.

Gilbert/Edward starts playing his harp, and the music somehow reaches Cecil and company. The scene then continues with:

I’m kind of surprised by this translation, as it’s actually more complicated in terms of vocabulary and grammar than the original. But it’s still clear what’s happening, which is what matters most.

The scene keeps going:

The translation here is pretty close to the original text. The main, significant things of note I can spot are:

• Edward refers to “metallic weight” in the English translation, which isn’t at all in the original text and is such an odd thing to say anyway. Part of me wants to think that maybe this line was the source of the fan translators’ focus on making this cave about weight rather than magnetism. But nope, it’s always been about magnetism, this is just an oddly-translated line.
• Cecil’s line at the end has surprise in the translation, while the original line has more of a “NOW the tables have turned and it’s time to kick butt!” vibe.

The Easy Type script also has a small change here:

This is such a simple little thing to change that at first I wasn’t really sure why it happened, but I guess someone on the Easy Type team really wanted to make it clear to players that Cecil should equip the sword. I can totally see some kids pressing the button quickly to skip through the scene or a kid accidentally pressing the button before reading the entire line, so it makes some sense that this line would be shaved down to its bare minimum.

Incidentally, the fan translation translates the magnetism line here as:

Cecil, attack now!

While this music is playing he shouldn’t be able to control gravity!

Again, the fan translators either mistranslated the word for magnetism or knowingly rewrote all the magnetism stuff to be about gravity instead.

After the party gets reinvigorated, the Dark Elf is angry:

The threat to “kill” the party was removed and replaced with generic anger.

The PlayStation and Game Boy Advance translation also leave out this threat.

You…
GAAAH!

It’s kind of puzzling that this tiny bit of censorship continued past the Super NES release.

But once more, the DS shows that it stays closer to the original than the other translations:

Gah! How dare you? I will kill you all!

The battle with the Dark Elf resumes, and this time he’s not so happy!

Again, the English text makes him sound more like a dumb troll that acts on wild instinct. The Japanese text has a tad more intelligence behind it.

Once the Dark Elf has been defeated, he cries out some final words:

The English translation’s sudden jump to “Give me the crystal.” feels a bit strange here – after all, he already has the crystal. And the phrase “The everlasting life.” doesn’t explain things as fully as the original line does. But in the end, I think most players of the translation could tell what was meant, so it’s not too shabby. It’s kind of neat, in a way.

We can also see that the Dark Elf’s death throes have gone missing in the translation. Although “gu-ga-ge-go” sounds and looks ridiculous in English, in Japanese it’s got a good, creepy feel to it. Those “g” syllables seem to have that effect; apparently even Gyiyg/Giygas from EarthBound was named for that very reason.

Anyway, it’s strange, because any death sound would’ve worked just fine in translation, even just “Graaaargh!” I’m guessing the death sound was left out in order to save space for other text in the script, or because someone on the translation team couldn’t think of a good English equivalent.

A Fool’s Errand

Actually, if you try to fight the Dark Elf before you get Edward/Gilbert’s special item, the battle will go a little differently – the Dark Elf will say, “YOU FOOLS!” and then wipe out the party with extremely powerful attacks.

This text is pretty much the same in all versions of the game, but since it’s a line most players never see, I thought I’d mention it anyway just for trivia’s sake.

Crystal Receiver

The Dark Elf is dead! Now it’s time to take the crystal!

When the party takes the crystal from its spot, it says something like, “Obtained the Earth Crystal!” in the Japanese version. The English translation is basically the same and is 100% A-OK.

I only bring this up because the PlayStation translation translates this line as:

Received Earth

I guess players would still understand what was being meant, but that’s some pretty sloppy work. This sort of thing happens often in the PlayStation translation, actually.