Final Fantasy IV Translation Comparison: Mysidia

Swooning

As a kid, I noticed that at this point in the game Cecil could kill some enemies with just one attack, even if the attack didn’t take away all their HP.

I didn’t realize it at first, but it’s because of the sword that the king of Fabul gave you. As noted before, it’s called the “Death Bringer” in Japanese but the “Black Sword” in English.

When an enemy is insta-killed using this sword, it says, “Swoon!” in English. This always struck me as odd until I got older and my vocabulary expanded.

For reference, here’s what “swoon” means:

1. to faint; lose consciousness.
2. to enter a state of hysterical rapture or ecstasy:

When this same situation happens in the Japanese versions, the text box says something that’s literally like, “Fell into an unable-to-fight state!” So we can see how it was a struggle to come up with a good-sounding translation that also fit in the limited space available.

The City of Miss

Translating unusual Japanese names into English is often a lot like quantum physics – sometimes you can translate things one way or sometimes you can translate them another way. And often there’s no real “right” translation, at least until the creator steps in and says it’s one way or the other.

A good example of this might be how “Aeris” from the English version of Final Fantasy VII was changed to “Aerith” in later things.

The reason this came about is because there is no “th” sound in Japanese – it’s instead usually approximated using an “s” sound.

I bring all this up because I’ve often wondered if the translated name “Mysidia” might’ve been intended as “Mythidia”. Probably the only way to know is to ask the creators, but even then it’s easy and common for Japanese creators to get their own English stuff wrong.

There’s no real evidence pointing toward one spelling or the other (well, as far as I know), although there is the whole connection the place has with the myth on the sacred sword that Cecil gets as a Paladin.

Map Reconstruction

Just like Baron and Kaipo, Mysidia’s map was altered in Final Fantasy IV Easy Type and Final Fantasy II to include a building housing the training room.

If you go inside, it’s the same ol’ training room as before, there’s nothing new. But if you’re still new to the genre (and the game) it’s nice to be able to continually reference the helpful info the training room has!

Avenge Me

This black wizard in Mysidia says in English, “You! …I’m avenging my friend!”

In the Japanese version, he says something like, “You! You’re that…! All right, I’ll do this to you!”

After this line, the guy turns you into a toad in both versions.

Devilish Pathway

This white wizard tells you about the special teleport-y thing that connects Baron and Mysidia:

We see that the English line was trimmed quite a bit and some details left out. We also see the name change from “Devil Road” to “Serpent Road”, as we saw earlier back in Baron.

I think the more interesting point is that it’s called a “dimensional pathway” or a “dimensional road” or something along those lines. I think that’s why I was surprised when I played Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and it turned out to be an actual dungeon you go through.

Cranky Wizard

This black wizard says in Japanese, “I have nothing to say to you!”

In English, he says, “Go away!”

Wowee!

What this white wizard says in both languages is a bit different:

The point here is that the wizard is supposed to be extremely scared. The first Japanese line is actually more of a shriek or a scared sound than an actual word.

In any case, the English line gives the wrong impression and makes it sound like the wizard is impressed by Cecil, similar to how the kid back in Baron was impressed by Cecil.

So this explains more clearly why the wizard tries to jump away after saying this text.

Speaking of which, I was always amused by the fact that you could still talk to the wizard even after the initial jumping escape. I was curious to know if it worked in both Japanese and in English, and it does!

Like many other lines in the game, the PlayStation translation takes extra liberties and goes off to do its own thing:

I find it hard to believe this was swear censorship, though, because swearing is commonplace in the PlayStation translation, even right here in Mysidia.

Road Block

There’s a black wizard blocking the building that houses the Devil Road entrance:

Here are some tiny points of interest:

• The Japanese line assumes you know what incident is being talked about, while the English line gets more specific and references the Baronian raid from the start of the game.
• For some reason “The” is capitalized in the English text when it shouldn’t be.
• A non-native writer accidentally slipped in an unnecessary “the” in the second sentence.

Armor Amor

For the most part we’ll look at item changes and item name differences on its own specialized page later on, but I thought it was worth mentioning that much of the armor sold in Mysidia’s shop underwent interesting name changes:

I thought it was interesting how the naming was made consistent in all of the Final Fantasy II items here while the Japanese names are varied.

I think this made it clearer for Final Fantasy II players that a big class change was coming up soon, even before talking to the elder and learning about your new task. It also probably served as a more clear, “Hey, I should buy all that Paladin equipment when I get back to Mysidia!” hint for the player.

Items Everywhere

As a kid, I made it a note to remember that this is the first shop in the game where you can buy Cure2 potions.

It turns out there are some tiny differences in the items sold here, so let’s briefly look:

As before, Ether1 potions are available to buy in Final Fantasy IV Easy Type and Final Fantasy II, but the price is so incredibly high that it’s basically useless to even offer them at this point in the game.

You can also see that a number of items are actually cheaper in the original Final Fantasy IV. How odd.

Cafe Press

Just like we saw back in Kaipo, the local pub has been changed into a cafe for the English localization:

I’m not sure why, but the J2E fan translation still calls this a “Cafe”. It has many other translation issues around here too, but I honestly don’t have the energy to compare every little tidbit of yet another version of the game. Still, it’s kind of ironic that the translation patch that was supposed to uncensor everything wound up not doing that at all.

Can’t Forget This

The poster on the wall in the pub/cafe says in both languages:

The English language version has more fire to it, but makes the actual reasons for being angry a little vaguer. In contrast, the Japanese line has more specifics and thus a more sympathetic edge to it.

Also, I think this might be the first poster to lack special text formatting in the English localization.

Naming Away

In Final Fantasy IV, Namingway is in the pub. But since the training room (where he can also be found) was added into Easy Type and Final Fantasy II, they took him out of the pub for those versions.

Drinks On Me

This black wizard in the pub says in both language versions of the game:

The clear difference is that this guy is drunk in the Japanese text. He hiccups and he talks in drunk talk.

The English version doesn’t really give any indication that he’s drunk, he just seems really rude or mean.

Dancing with the Piggies

There’s a dancer in the pub/cafe. If you watch her dance, you go to sleep and later wake up outside… transformed into a pig!

Then an old lady, who was apparently disguised as the young dancer, says something:

She speaks in an old person style in Japanese, too. I guess she’s saying you lack the training to see through ruses like hers or to be able to withstand her transformation abilities.

Down the Hatch

If you speak to the bartender, he says in Japanese, “You must be exhausted from your long journey. Please, by all means, drink this!”

Basically, he speaks in a very polite and formal way in Japanese, as if being especially hospitable.

In English, he says, “You must be tired. Now drink it!”

…That doesn’t sound very hospitable to me.

The House of Many Names

The building where the village elder hangs out is called something like the “House of Prayers” in Japanese. The “House” part could be translated a few other ways but it’s pretty good as-is.

Obviously, referencing prayers was very much against Nintendo’s policy back in the day, so for the English localization it was changed to “House of Wishes”.

But oops! Someone forgot to fix it everywhere:

Incidentally, this white wizard also says in Japanese, “It sounds like the elder will hear what you have to say.” This part was left out of the English text.

I Have Evil Down in My Heart

There’s a black wizard on the left side of the building that has a really thought-provoking line:

I always found this to be one of the best lines in the game – it applies to the real world and might get kids thinking about philosophy. Luckily it didn’t get changed too much in the localization process!

I suppose the “I cannot say…” part was possibly added in, but it’s no big deal.

As noted above, Final Fantasy IV Easy Type simplified the original text very slightly.

Elements of Design

If you check the bookcases in this building, you can see a couple different book titles.

The English translations are pretty much on par with the original text, but for some reason the English localization decided to center all of the title text.

Also, as seen before, “wind” was changed to “air” in the localization.

Elder Text Scrolls

Once you talk to the elder, an important story event starts:

By this point, a few things of note stick out:

• Clearly some lines were removed in the localization, likely due to memory limitations.
• The word “dead” was removed from the line about the Mysidians who can’t be brought back to life.
• One of the lines removed involves the elder seeing a sparkle of something within Cecil. Since this is now gone, suddenly the elder goes from Mr. Grumpy Pants to Mr. Helpful without any clear explanation for his change in attitude.
• The elder specifically says, “Lost your friends.” in the localization, when he says nothing of the sort in the original text.
• In the Japanese text, Cecil refers to Rosa as a “friend” or “ally”, but in the English text he just calls her “a girl”.
• The way the Japanese name is phrased, it’s a little closer to “Mountain of Ordeals” than “Mt. Ordeals”. That’s pretty long, though, so it’s understandable that it’d be shortened.
• In the Japanese text here, you can replace “holy” with “sacred” and vice-versa if you want. Because of this, I thought for sure that Nintendo would choose “sacred” for all instances, but it looks like they forgot to remove one instance of “holy”!
• It’s just a slight nuance difference, but in Japanese the elder talks about the Paladin stuff as if it’s hearsay – in other words, he doesn’t have firsthand knowledge. In the English localization, he speaks about it with a tone of direct, firsthand knowledge. Given the myth stuff that comes up later, it makes sense that this sacred sword stuff would be similarly shrouded in a bit of mystery.
• Easy Type’s script has a few more word changes, including “wicked” to “evil”, “virtuous” to “just”, and “evil” to “dark”.

The Final Fantasy II manual also shows a screenshot from this conversation – the line with “sacred knight” in it, to be exact. It’s essentially the same line as the final release, but it ends with an ellipsis rather than a period. I guess an editor thought the overuse of ellipses in the script was a little much.

The elder hasn’t stopped talking, though! Let’s continue:

Again, we see some more cases where the text was trimmed down quite a bit. Also of note:

• The Japanese text specifically states that Palom and Porom are twins. This is left out of the English localization.
• The English localization does a good job at trying to convey the different politeness levels that Palom and Porom use in Japanese. I feel like it just needed a little more polishing from a native English speaker but otherwise did very well in this respect.
• The last line is translated as, “Hi, man!” But the word used in Japanese (anchan) seems like it would be better as something like “dude” or something along those lines rather than just “man”. In fact, a little bit later in the game we see that the translation starts using “dude” for it instead.
• The elder says, “It’s for your own good!” in English when he’s actually saying something like, “This is part of your own training too!” in Japanese. I always thought this line was a little odd when I played Final Fantasy II as a kid, so I guess this explains what it was actually trying to say.
• Palom calls the elder something like “old man” or “geezer” in Japanese, but it could possibly be “Gramps” too. In which case the elder would be their grandfather, but I’m not sure if that’s actually the case.
• Easy Type’s script has Palom say “I’m only goin’ with you” instead of “I’m only helpin’ you”. I dunno why they’d make a change like that, but they did.

Anyway, after this, the game says that the twins have joined the party. For some reason, the English localization does some spiffy text formatting with this message that the Japanese text doesn’t quite do:

Twin Names

As with many other Japanese names, “Palom” and “Porom” could’ve been given different spellings – “Parom” and “Polom” are equally as possible, for example.

But, checking the Japanese manual, we see that they were given specific English spellings already:

As a professional translator, I love it whenever I can count on the creative side to provide good English spellings for names so I don’t have to run around and figure them all out myself. I bet the translator(s) for Final Fantasy II felt the same way.

Definite Definition

This black wizard now says something new.

In Japanese, he starts by saying, “A Paladin is a sacred knight.”

In English, a little was added to this: “Paladins are the sacred Knights of Light.”

The reference to “light” was never in the original, although it does make them sound cooler somehow.

Endurance Test

This white wizard in Mysidia now says something new too:

Actually, this line in Final Fantasy II always struck me as odd-sounding.

Fool Me Twice

The scaredy-cat white wizard in Mysidia has something new to say now:

Again we see the weird “wow” translation used here, as well as some unusual article usage and an odd lack of comma.

The last line is interesting in how it’s sort of the opposite in both versions, but they both come around and meet at the same general result of incredulity.

Me Three

The bartender in the pub now has a new line for you:

I can see how the localization tries to bring the sarcasm across, but doesn’t quite make it all the way.

I also couldn’t help but notice the rare use of “?!” here again.

Laugh it Up

This black wizard who was drinking before has a new line to say now too:

The big difference here is that he laughs in the Japanese version and tells you not to make him laugh, while in the English version he doesn’t laugh but says you do make him laugh. How odd.

I was actually pleasantly surprised with the use of “Bah” here in the localization – that’s definitely not a word that many non-native English speakers would know. I wonder how it snuck in here.

Twin Powers

Now that it’s time to leave Mysidia, let’s take a look at Palom and Porom’s abilities.

In Final Fantasy IV, Palom has these two special battle commands:

• Team Up
• Bluff

For Final Fantasy IV Easy Type and Final Fantasy II, the “Bluff” command was removed. When used, “Bluff” supposedly temporarily raises intelligence/wisdom, making magic attacks stronger. Incidentally, this “Bluff” command was (unsurprisingly) incorrectly translated as “Strengthen” in the J2E fan translation patch.

That just leaves the “Team Up” command, which more literally translates to something like, “two people attacking together”.

In Final Fantasy IV Easy Type and Final Fantasy II, this command was called “Twin”, and it causes both twins to cast one of two powerful spells together. These spells have different names in Japanese and English:

So you can see that their Team Up/Twin spells are meant to be smaller versions of some of the most powerful spells in the game – spells the player hasn’t even seen yet!

Porom also has two special command abilities in battle in Final Fantasy IV:

• Team Up
• Fake Tears

Again, only Team Up/Twin was included in Final Fantasy IV Easy Type and Final Fantasy II.

The Fake Tears command apparently surprises the enemy and allows you to run away more easily. I’ve never had much use for it, so I don’t know how useful it actually is, if at all. I suppose that’s why it was removed.