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Old Mar 18, 2023, 04:30 AM
zierts zierts is offline
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Join Date: May 2012
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As horrible as they might be, they're official as per the album scans. Titles such as "Warfare on a Constructions" confirm that these were done by someone Japanese with a very limited grasp of the English language (add to that the fact that online dictionaries and grammar guides were not as common in the late 90s/early 2000s as they are now). Still, I'll take an official Engrish track list over five different fan translations any day.

As far as translating track titles, even bilingual people will have problems finding an English equivalent in some cases. As you already mentioned, not only do you have to be proficient in both languages but you'd better know the game inside-out as well. What's worse, the brevity of titles means you're working with very limited context. So a decent amount of general education and even some expert knowledge in a certain field is paramount.

Speaking for myself only, I'd say that the track titles of Koei's Nobunaga no yabĂ´ and Konami's Castlevania series are a total pain to translate or even just to understand what their creator is referring to. The former as it requires a keen knowledge of the period the games are set in along with some proficiency in classical Japanese (it's always fun seeing someone fail at those because it shows they're basically relying on online dictionaries of modern Japanese only), the latter for its punning tendencies.

For Vandal Hearts II, we don't even have scans confirming the Japanese track titles to be legit. You can find them in some reputable sources, though, so I guess there's a booklet that has them.
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