Final Fantasy IV Translation Comparison: Mt. Hobs

West Next Exit

Similar to back in the underground water vein dungeon, the name of this location is ever-so-slightly different.

In Japanese it’s called “Hobs Mountain, West Exit”.

In English it’s called “Mt. Hobs-West”.

“Hobs” could actually be spelled many other ways, but to the best of my knowledge there’s no clear reason to pick one over any others. So “Hobs” it is!

So Brave

As soon as you enter Mt. Hobs, a short scene begins. It’s slightly different in Japanese and English, so let’s take a look:

There are a few tiny points of note here:

• Cecil mentions specifically the Bomb Ring and the village of Mist in the Japanese text. He also doesn’t finish his sentence, which is common in Japanese but it seems like he’s been hesitating whenever talking about Mist lately, not just here. The English text sort of simplifies it all in a matter-of-fact way.
• Rosa tries to help Rydia get the courage to overcome her trauma in the Japanese text, the “Be brave!” line, for example. In the English text it’s mostly just begging and there’s nothing about Rydia needing to be brave.
• In response to Rosa’s “Be brave” line, Edward says, “Brave…” assumedly because what Anna told him in the Japanese text is still on his mind. This too is gone from the English text.
• In general, I felt like the Japanese text – and the way it was presented/timed – gave the scene a much more dramatic effect.

It’s such a short, simple scene that the changes don’t really matter too much, though.

I should also mention that after this scene, it says that Rydia learned “Fire” in Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV Easy Type, and it says that she learned “Fire1” in Final Fantasy II.

The actual spell is called “Fire 1” in Easy Type though, so it’s interesting to see how Final Fantasy II is doing its own thing yet again.

Praise Be Unto You

After Rydia melts the ice, a super-short scene takes place:

The difference here is Rydia’s response. In the English text, you’d think she’s still sad or depressed or not very happy with how Edward has responded.

In the Japanese text, she’s actually making the happy sound a little kid might make after being praised. Just reading it in Japanese, I can practically hear and see her smiling.

The problem is is that it’s hard to come up with something similar in English writing, so that’s probably why the translator just turned it into “……”

So, anyway, just know that Rydia’s happy!

Unboxing

There aren’t many treasure chests on Mt. Hobs, but a few of them did get changed:

I’m still not sure why the versions that are meant to be easier actually give you less money in all these treasure chests.

Invisible Wall

This is just a silly thing, but when I played this game to death as a kid I sometimes wondered why a tile on Mt. Hobs that looks like it’s walkable is actually treated as a wall.

After checking things out, it seems that this same “invisible wall tile” exists in all three games.

Sick Karate

At the top of the mountain we find a mysterious martial artist fighting off monsters.

In English, he keeps saying, “ACHOOOOOO!” before doing his attacks.

I remember finding this hilarious as a kid. I honestly thought it was some kind of weird martial art invented by the game, and that it was a sort of catchphrase or badge of pride worn by people who knew this martial art.

Once I learned Japanese, I realized this is not the case at all.

In the Japanese text, he actually just says, “Hahh!” As in a generic fighting sound.

So where the heck did “ACHOOOO” come from?

First, it wasn’t meant to be pronounced like the sneezing sound. It was meant to said like “Ah-choh”. It rhymes with “nacho”.

Second, you know how in English-language kung fu movies and karate movies and stuff, people go, “Hiyaaaaa!” when doing kicks and stuff?

Well, in Japanese, the sound used for that same thing is “Acho!” I think this was probably popularized by Bruce Lee movies some decades earlier. Here are some random sound clips from some of his movies:

If you listen for it, it does sound kind of like “Acho!” whenever he does stuff!

So the question now is: why did this “ACHOOOO!” stuff get into the English translation when the original Japanese text just had “Hahh!”?

The only answer I can think of is that a non-native English speaker did this translation, trying to hopefully localize it for English speakers since “Hahh!” by itself looks kind of strange in English. Except the translator didn’t realize that different languages have different sound effect words for this sort of thing. Similar to how cats don’t go “meow” in Japanese.

I don’t know how this was handled in other translations of the game. Did “ACHOO” become iconic enough like “spoony bard” to remain in some translations? Let me know!

Yang and the Japanese People

Once the battle between the martial artist and the monsters begins, we see that the guy is named “Yan” in Japanese but “Yang” in English. What gives? Where’d the “g” come from?

It’s actually pretty common for Chinese and other Asian names that end with an “n” like this in Japanese to end with “ng” in English. Names like “Wong” and “Chang” are usually more like “Won” and “Chan” in Japanese.

It all boils down to the fact that those languages convert into Japanese and English in slightly different ways.

For reference, the Japanese manual spells his name in English as “Yang” too:

I’m really liking the skills of whoever did these English names for the Japanese manuals – they clearly had some experience in this field or at least put a lot of work into it.

A Mother Series

The boss you fight on Mt. Hobs is called “MomBomb” in English. I always thought this was a silly name when I was a kid.

It turns out that the name isn’t that different in Japanese – it’s called “Mother Bomb” in Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV Easy Type.

So it looks like “Mom” was just a shortening of “Mother” here.

After you pound on the boss for a while, a text box appears warning you of an explosion about to happen.

In Japanese, it’s sort of playful in tone, something like, “Gonna explooooode!”

In English, it just says, “Exploding!” Which always confused me, because the boss isn’t exploding when the text pops up, and it doesn’t explode until a little more time has passed.

Judging from the Japanese text, it sounds like it’s the boss that’s saying this line. The English text doesn’t make anything clear and it gets the tense wrong.

Mr. Karate Man

After the boss is defeated, a scene between Yang and Cecil’s party begins:

Here’s a list of some interesting notes:

• We see that he went from being a “monk” in the Japanese text to being a “Karate Master” in the English text. This might have to do with the idea that anything religious had to be cut out of the game.
• The fact that the above was replaced specifically with “karate” is kind of funny. Plus karate is a Japanese creation, and Yang is more Chinese than anything. Reminds me of how that new “Karate Kid” movie takes place in China for some reason.
• Yang speaks in a different way than the others – it’s a very… samurai/skilled warrior style, I guess? It’s not as evident in the English translation but there’s still some level of formality in the English text, so that’s good.
• In the English text, Yang starts to say that Cecil’s group can’t get involved because Cecil is a Dark Knight. That isn’t in the original text. In actuality, he just doesn’t want to drag these nice people into the chaos.
• In fact, Cecil never even offers to help in the English text, yet Yang responds as if he has. Now that I think about it, maybe this is why this scene always seemed odd to me as a kid. Cecil later agrees to Yang’s request, though, so not all is lost.
• The English text expands what Cecil has to say about Rydia. Again, in the Japanese text we see him hesitate and feel sad about what he caused back in Mist. In the English text that’s taken out, and everything is just spelled out. What’s funny though is that it uses the word “defeat”, so even though that wasn’t in the original text it still got toned down from “killed”.

There are other little things here and there, but I won’t list every tiny bit here.

For the most part, besides the weird localization stuff, the translation itself isn’t too shabby.

There are a number of small text changes between the two Japanese versions here:

Can’t Yang This

Like most of the other playable characters so far, some of Yang’s special techniques in Final Fantasy IV were removed in the other two versions.

In Final Fantasy IV, Yang has three special techniques:

• Store Up
• Kick
• Endure

“Store Up” could be translated any number of other ways, such as “Gather”, “Accumulate”, “Power Up”, etc. The idea is that he’s storing his energy for a super strong blow. When chosen, he waits an extra turn and then performs a stronger-than-normal attack. Also, his defense is dropped significantly while he’s powering up.

“Kick” makes Yang kick all the enemies on the screen. It’s not as strong as a normal attack, but it’s helpful.

“Endure” is sort of the equivalent of the “Protect” spell which temporarily increases his defense slightly, only it doesn’t cost MP to use.

I think the way these three work was changed in other ports/remakes, but we won’t look at those here.

Anyway, Final Fantasy IV Easy Type and Final Fantasy II have removed Yang’s “Store Up” and “Endure” commands, leaving him with only his “Kick” command. It kind of lessens his impressiveness as a supposed “karate master”, but I guess the developers wanted to streamline battles or something.