TL Check – Castle Shikigami 2 – Part 1.5: Character Limit Interlude

Hey, guys! We’re about ready to start actually looking at Castle Shikigami 2, but I wanted to get a word in about a special bugbear that lurks in every localization project…

THE DREADED CHARACTER LIMIT

For the uninitiated, the character limit is the amount of text you can fit onscreen/in a text box at once. It’s usually broken up to how many characters per line, plus how many lines fit into the box itself.

This is a very important thing to know about as a translator: if a game is coded with Japanese text in mind, the idea of having 20 characters per line and only 2 lines of text in the box isn’t too unnatural. You can fit a lot of Japanese text in 40 characters. English, on the other hand… well, let’s look at an example after the jump.

ロジャー	……はじめまして。 それとも、久しぶりと言うべきかな。 （声色を変えて） 俺だよ、山さんだ。	Roger	First time to meet. Or long time. (changed voice) It’s me, Yama.
金	そうか、貴方がセプテントリオンですか。 何狙いますか？	Kim	You are Septemtorion. What are you after?
ロジャー	俺の目的はいつも同じさ。 友を助ける。以上、終わり。 それは君も同じだろう？ 我が差し伸べし手を取るか？	Roger	My purpose is always to help friends. Same to you? Take my hand?
金	こんなところで、新しい世界を汚すわけには いきません。	Kim	I don’t want to soil the new world.
ロジャー	では、共に戦おうじゃないか。	Roger	Fight together?

This is the exchange from the video that I’d linked on the first post, Japanese on the left and the official translation on the right.  Before we start dissecting the actual translation itself, I want to point out two things: The longest line in this exchange in Japanese is 20 characters, and the longest line in the English is 21.

Even though the English text takes up less space in the text box visually, I’m left to assume that there was some kind of hard limit that they couldn’t go over, which would possibly explain the unusually choppy/piecy English dialogue.

Now, for the actual translation work: the first line!

ロジャー

……はじめまして。 それとも、久しぶりと言うべきかな。 （声色を変えて） 俺だよ、山さんだ。

Roger

Nice to meet you… Or perhaps I should say “long time, no see.” (changed voice) It’s me, Yama.

I’ve blown the character limit to smithereens on the first line,  to illustrate a point.

“はじめまして” (hajimemashite) is “Pleased to meet you.” In Japanese, that’s 6 characters, giving you 14 characters to play with. In English, it’s a full line of text by itself. The translator would have to tweak the phrase a little if they want to preserve the ellipsis in the dialogue, which is what I did there.

I didn’t touch the second line, as it’s perfectly fine. The issue in the game was Roger’s voice actor not being directed to change his voice.

金

そうか、貴方がセプテントリオンですか。 何狙いますか？

Kim

Ah, so you’re Septentrion. What are you after?

 

This one’s a little weird — it has the longest line in the English version of the exchange, at exactly 21 characters, leading me to assume I was correct about not being able to circumvent a character limit. Additionally, they missed the tone of the line, with the added bonus of not recognizing “セプテントリオン” as “Septentrion.” Doing a little research into the Castle Shikigami mythos, I found that Septentrion is actually an organization, so “You’re from Septentrion” might also be a workable translation. This game isn’t very good at giving context in character dialogue, as we’ll see later on.

ロジャー

俺の目的はいつも同じさ。 友を助ける。以上、終わり。 それは君も同じだろう？ 我が差し伸べし手を取るか？

Roger

My purpose is the same as always. I help my friends. No more, no less. Aren’t you the same way? Why don’t you let me give you a hand?

“我が差し伸べし手を取るか？” could be rendered literally as “Why not take my outstretched hand?”, which is why I went with the more natural “Let me give you a hand,” instead.

金

こんなところで、新しい世界を汚すわけには いきません。

Kim

It’s a new world out there. No sense in making a mess of it.

This line actually gave me a bit of trouble, because I wasn’t sure if I was reading it correctly — this is the sort of line I’d translate and mark with a ? for an editor or another translator to look at because of the relative lack of context and familiarity with the source material. After consulting with fellow translateyman and friend of the site Bast, we came to the literal translation of “In a place like this, you can’t really pollute a new world,” which is totally not conducive to being spoken by a voice actor. Due to the lack of relative context, I went with something a little more figurative and loose.

ロジャー

では、共に戦おうじゃないか。

Roger

Well, we should fight together, shouldn’t we?

And finally, the suggestion that they join forces.

You’ll notice that, without fail, I wound up blowing the character limit on almost every single line of text in this exchange!  With a good editor, this could all be truncated and punched up closer to the 20 character limit, but without the presence of someone on the localization team to try to tweak the coding to allow for more character space, the translation would look really, really terse.

Now that we’ve explored the difficulty of fitting text onto a screen, we’re a little better-equipped to take a look at the game’s actual text! Next time on Castle Shikigami 2: Kotaro’s story. See you then!