Legends of Localization Book 3: UNDERTALE, by Clyde Mandelin

Because the Japanese language has a wider variety of personal pronouns than the English language, this unwavering use of boku gives Japanese players an extra layer of insight into Flowey’s character that isn’t seen in the English script.

This scene offers another example of how the localization process can shine light on extra details that were there all along but were otherwise invisible. It’s kind of like a microscope or a night-vision camera in that sense.  (p. 238)

Clyde Mandelin (known online as Tomato, or Mato for short) works as a professional translator, with credits on series like Dragon Ball and One Piece. He led the enterprising team that made MOTHER 3 playable in English and consulted on Undertale, but his passion project is all about studying and popularizing the art of localization. Rather than trying to render literal meanings of words and phrases into a new language, localization, as Mandelin glosses it, seeks to convey as closely as possible the original intent of the author. As if that weren’t difficult enough, balanced with this search for authorial intent is an effort to carry over the work’s impact on its original linguistic audience to a totally different context.

Enter his long-running website, Legends of Localization. Out of hundreds of posts and articles on quirks of language and case studies of cultural exchange, Mandelin has distilled his insights into three main titles so far: The Legend of Zelda, EarthBound, and Undertale, along with forays into bad translation writ large and the peculiarities of competing translations of Final Fantasy IV. His writing brims over with knowledge of the fascinating mélange of Japanese and American popular media we’re all accustomed to enjoying without thinking too hard about it. The EarthBound book weighs in at over 400 pages; Book 3, on Undertale, is a more manageable 275. But more than most of us, Mandelin is serious and thoughtful about trying to understand why we’re so obsessed with these cultural products, and he takes language to be the key. Through close analysis of the popular discourse in general and of video games in particular, especially JRPGs, he provides illuminating reflections on the many ways their creators communicate and transform ideas across cultures.

The Zelda and EarthBound titles, naturally, show the movement from Japanese to (American) English. Coming as they did in the heyday of the NES and SNES, respectively, these beloved games have entailed more historical and social research for the student of their success. In the case of Undertale, the process of localization moves in the opposite direction. Mandelin himself, while not on the staff of the localization team, is a personal friend of Toby Fox and was consulted extensively on the translation and design decisions leading up to the game’s official release in Japan. As such, he has a privileged perspective on that elusive authorial intent which is his goal to reproduce. Due to his proximity in time to the events of Undertale’s release, he can give a firsthand account, too, of the audience receptions of the game in its new context.

Each of the Legends of Localization books is beautifully made, slickly produced by Fangamer, and packed with information and top-tier commentary. The Undertale entry opens with a primer on Japanese language, localization theory (with copious examples), and the history of Undertale’s development, before launching into the close reading of the game itself. The writing is entertaining, with endearing humor and enough inset references to a range of influential sources, cultural associations, and bilingual puns and puzzles to keep even the most rabidly curious fans intrigued. My only concern is that the presentation of all this erudition and good vibes always skirts the boundaries of triviality, and at times leaps boldly into erm-acktually-level ephemera. I hasten to affirm that I am here for it, though sometimes not all of it, and after all this is a book that hardly demands to be read cover to cover. Like a good coffee table book, it rewards dipping into at leisure. Whenever I feel pushed into TL;DR territory, wherever the level of minutiae becomes too much for my liking, I still find myself charmed by the pictures and captions. Or I simply flip through the glossy pages to another one that blows my mind with exactly the sort of aha moment that I am looking for in such a rich and well-resourced commentary on one of the most influential games of our time.

For instance, whenever my brain was about to shut off due to endless waves of skeleton puns, I turned back to pp. 88-89, where we are privy to some of the notes Toby shared with the translation team at 8-4 regarding determination.

“Determination” – Possibly THE most important key word in the entire game. Should you change it, choosing a good word for this is really important. Meaning of the word determination as most commonly used in the game:

• Resolve to continue
• Will to live
• Refusal to give up/die (appears to be related to fighting spirit in some cases)

(Noting that throughout the book all photos of Toby’s face are replaced by the mascot white dog from Undertale, I was looking for the one with him next to the game’s head translator, Keiko Fukuichi, to include here, but didn’t really expect to find it. What did come up, though, was this short memoir from her about the project!)

I appreciate Mandelin’s awareness of his own bias in favor of Toby, whom he knew from the days of their learning to code by modding EarthBound with PK Hack at starmen.net, and how he weaves this awareness into a reflection on the ways in which positive working relationships contributed to the success of Undertale and its translation. I stand in awe of his stature in the game localization community, all the more because he comes across as being so down-to-earth. Much as I agree with the spirit of Mandelin’s larger effort to popularize what might otherwise be dry and thankless scholarship, however, I have doubts about the value of chasing after an ideal of original authorial intent and first-language reception. For me, the ideal for translation would be not so much to approximate as much as possible the perfect rendering of any individual word or phrase or work as a whole, but to inspire a greater understanding of the original language, our relation to it, and to the power of language itself.

Keiko Fukuichi puts it like this (as translated by Kazari/The DigiLab):

“To translate means to save yourself.”

…I’m sorry, that probably sounds really distasteful, doesn’t it?
But it really does feel that way.

I believe “translation” is this:

“To read the original text, to go deeper and deeper and deeper into what is inside yourself, and finding the perfect way to put it into words.”

I recognize that drive–determination, if you like–behind Mandelin’s overarching project in Legends of Localization, which has certainly aided my own slow process of learning Japanese so as to one day be able to play my favorite games in their original language. I hope that he continues to look up from time to time from the difficulties of wrestling with lines of text on a spreadsheet to survey the state of the art and share his ideas on how, despite everything, we’re still held in the mirror of our reality: the word.

PIXEL PERFECT

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Wesley Schantz coordinates the Video Game Academy, writes about books and video games, and teaches in Spokane, WA.