Mistranslation

[RyanNope]

I feel like us as Zelda fans outside of Japan are truely missing the big picture in Zelda due to mistranslation. I have thought about this alot, due to P/C B/S outside of Japan all religeous references have been removed, this is not all. All/most vulgarity and Alcoholic/drug related references are gone as well, how do we know that certain story parts are missing or even the whole story. Many things that come from Japan are mistranslated and misrepresented. This is very evident in Anime and Manga. Maybe there is a linear timeline but it is lost in translation. This is one of many reasons I want to learn Japanese is so I can see what is really said and happens. Translation can change everything about a game, and still make sense within that game but not necessarily when compared to other games in that franchise.

[linkman8]

It may not be mistranslation at all. I've heard on numerous accounts that Japan's rating system is much more lax than it is over here in America.

[miku]

There are differences in translations here and there, but nothing huge that I know of..

Triforce of the Gods becomes Link to the Past, "You are.. Zelda's.. " becomes "Zelda is your..." speaking of which it's a good thing they shut up all the idiots saying Zelda's Link's sister by changing it to "You must save Zelda" or "She's your destiny" or whatever they changed it to for the 4 Swords cartridge.

I was actually surprised in Wind Waker to see that what mr. fishy says about Chu Chu Island to still say "I'm not talking about the sound you make when you kiss" instead of any type of localization, like maybe sneezing.

All in all, Zelda games don't have a whole lot of complex dialogue, and I doubt there's anything huge we're missing. Though I have thought about this too.

[ZeroLink]

That is interesting, because there could be differences. Hopefully, if the differences are large enough, it'll shed some light on the timeline or something. Then again, the thing is, I doubt people would take out differences that large. Of course they might take out the drug references and other things, but probably nothing too important.

[RyanNope]

I know alot was lost in the Nintendo Final Fantasy games thats where I got the idea that maybe Zelda games lost alot too.

[Avenged]

Its a proven fact that every single Zelda game had differences compared to the original copy.

[PrinceofDarkness]

I don't think we're really missing that much I've played the JP versions of the 2 nes titles and all the dialogue is the same for the most part aside from some words that were moved around to be more grammatically correct for the worldwide release in AoL. The only one I think that really suffers from mistranslation is ALTTP because of nintendos strict control they had over their games at the time and being total wimps and worry warts back then when it came to any kind of negative feedback (accept the nintendo power editor for some reason, that guy was the biggest jerk on the planet :confused: ). I like the original name of the game better and just from viewing the one link that somebody posted here to a couple proper translations of all the instruction booklet text I can already see glaring inconsistencies. The n64 games came at a time when videogames were changing and were starting to not just be considered a computer nerds and kids medium. I think because of this the translations were able to be much more faithful to the original game's texts. And now it seems like nintendo is finally starting to target older people with twilight princess and their policies are also a lot more lax then they were 17 years ago. (man it doesn't feel like ti's been that long where does the time go). I haven't really researched the newer games looking for mistranslations but I would think nintendo would do everything they can to give us the best translations these days especially with all the talk of a hidden timeline at nintendo.