Final Fantasy IV Translation Comparison: Tower of Bab-il 2

Cecil, Edge, and friends break back into the Tower of Bab-il that exists above ground. Edge is looking for his abducted parents, and the heroes are trying to find a way back into the Underworld.

Through the Walls

The way into the tower is blocked by a wall. Cecil wonders how they can get inside, and Edge replies by saying it’s no problem at all. He then says:

It’s not much, but this is a good example of how text was slimmed down in the translation, and how even tiny little details were lost in doing so.

On a side note, I wonder if this technique would’ve come in useful elsewhere in the story, or in a sequel or spinoff. It feels like something that the writers would’ve forgotten about though.

Treasure Updates

There are a few treasure chests in this upper area of the tower. Some of these chests had their contents or names changed for the Easy Type and English releases:

Oh Hell

Edge finally finds his parents – who are also the king and queen of Eblana – inside the Tower of Bab-il. Unfortunately, Dr. Lugae performed horrible experiments on them and turned them into grotesque, mindless monsters.

At first, the king and queen sound happy to see Edge again, but then offer this surprising invitation:

This replacement of the word “Hell” with something silly and vague is something seen throughout entertainment localization in the 1990s. It also reminds me of the early Dragon Ball Z dubs that changed things like “death” and “hell” to “the next dimension”.

In fact, once the following boss battle begins, “Hell” gets changed again, but to a different word this time:

For reference, Nintendo of America’s official list of unacceptable content in the 1990s included this part:

[…]ethnic, racial, religious, nationalistic, or sexual stereotypes of language; this includes symbols that are related to any racial, religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group, such as crosses, pentagrams, God, Gods (Roman mythological gods are acceptable), Satan, hell, Buddha;

As we can see, references to “Hell” weren’t allowed, but old mythological references were permitted, which is why “Hades” was acceptable in the above line.

Learning a Lesson

After Edge’s parents die, Rubicante appears and explains that Dr. Lugae was responsible for what happened to them. Rubicante also states that Edge is too emotionally swayed to ever obtain true strength. Edge erupts with anger, and he acquires two new, powerful ninja attacks.

After witnessing this, Rubicante says:

In Japanese, we see that Rubicante discovers something new about humans and their emotions. This fits perfectly with the scene after he’s defeated, in which he learns something else about humans: that even weak humans can become strong by working together. This, together with Rubicante’s sense of honor, adds up to a genuinely interesting villain who learns and grows over time.

In the English version, Rubicante doesn’t remark on his discovery about human emotions – I assume this was again due to script length limitations. Of course, this first sentence isn’t absolutely vital, but I feel it would’ve been better to trim the second line to make room for a longer first line.

Old Chamberlain

After Rubicante leaves, an old man suddenly rushes in to make sure Prince Edge is safe. In the English script, this character is referred to as “Chamberlain”. For reference, the word chamberlain is defined as:

An officer who manages the household of a monarch or noble.

This fits the situation perfectly, of course.

In the original Japanese script, however, the old man is simply referred to as じい (jī), which is an extremely informal and personal way of referring to your grandfather or someone who has a grandfather-like relation to you. This suggests that the old man and Edge are on very close terms and that the old man has looked after Edge most of his life.

Incidentally, this character is called “Gramps” in every English translation after the Super NES release.

For the Power

The heroes explain to Edge who Golbez is and that Golbez wants to go to the moon. Edge responds:

Cecil’s simplified line in the English version always makes me laugh a little – it makes it sound so matter-of-fact: “What do you mean? Everyone knows the moon is made of power, duh!”.

Do Not Like

The chamberlain wants Edge to stay and rebuild their kingdom, but Edge wants to join the heroes on their quest:

Edge’s line about Golbez can also be translated as “kicking his ass”, “beating him senseless”, and other things of that sort. For some reason, this changed into “I don’t like that guy” in the English release.

The text immediately afterward is a bit different too:

I checked, and all of the later translations of the game stay closer to the original text. I wonder why these things changed in the first place.

Okey Dokey

In the English script, Edge says “Okey dokey!”. This is a unique, slang-y English phrase, so I was curious: what was it originally?

It turns out that he says あいよー (aiyō) in Japanese, which is indeed an informal, casual way of saying “yes”.

Given this and other quirks of the surrounding text that we’ve seen, it’s clear that this scene received some of the last-minute, emergency editing work that the English game supposedly underwent.

Rydia and Edge

Edge is excited to join the heroes on their quest:

The difference here might not be clear at first, but it’s basically another small spat between Rydia and Edge. Rydia’s line in Japanese line is a sort of snappy, annoyed response intended as a correction. This isn’t reflected very well in the English script, but you can sort of see it in the English text with this extra Japanese information in mind.

Rydia and Edge constantly argue back and forth like this throughout the game, but I didn’t realize until now that it happens more consistently in the Japanese script than in the English Super NES release.

A few minutes later in the game, the heroes find the latest model airship just sitting around, unguarded.

Edge decides to steal the new airship and give it a name:

In the Japanese scene, Rydia makes an exasperated comment in response to Edge, but her line is completely dropped from the English script. Again, it’s pretty tiny and inconsequential, but this is another example of a mini-spat between Rydia and Edge that is lost in the English release.

Weird Find

I forget if I covered this already, but there’s a weird bug in the English game that effectively puts invisible items in walls and on the ground. One of those invisible items is inside this door in the Tower of Bab-il, after you fall through the pitfall.

I was curious to see if this bug is present in the Japanese versions of the game too, so I checked – it’s indeed in all three versions of the game.