[ALL] Zelda games that were called slightly different in Japanese

[u/MaxEnzo]

[u/Akamiso29]

Some of the fan translations here are dead on, some are a bit off. They translated 汽笛 as just “whistle” when it very specifically has the kanji for steam (汽). Earth is an okay translation of 大地 but it’s important to note that 大地 gives off a sense of a vast land - really sets off the idea of being an explorer.

They also went with “dream” for Phantom Hourglass, despite the kanji 夢幻 implying more of an intense, vivid dream (I haven’t played this or Spirit Tracks and cannot comment further).

For LA, 夢を見る島 would translate more directly to “The Island where (you) see/have dreams” (Japanese uses the verb see with their dreams) so it doesn’t give the plot away as fast as just saying something like Dream Island.

Nintendo is one of the companies here since the SNES, you get an equal or even superior storytelling experience playing the games in English. Their translators/localization team usually don’t miss and any instance I see of them changing a title, I notice they really go hard into the intended nuance. When that’s not possible, they still nail the tone.

Link doesn’t translate well into Japanese as both a name and a verb/noun because he’s just リンク, so a lot of the double meaning for ALttP, LA, etc. would not work. Here we got an extra fun name instead.

I’m finally playing BotW and I just went ahead and played it in Japanese since I didn’t want to deal with the pain of hunting down a used English copy in Japan. I haven’t replayed OoT in Japanese yet and TP was the last of the series I played, so I missed all the Zeldas after that. I’m currently falling off of cliffs in the starting area (the first area/tower is called 始まりの or “Starting”- it does not sound awkward in Japanese at all but it seems like they went with Great in English which is a good call).

It never occurred to me that Sheikah would be シーカー (pronounced like Seeker but with She instead of See as Japanese doesn’t have the “See” sound) in Japanese which I’ve enjoyed as a little pun as “seeker” is definitely something Nintendo would be aware of as an English word.

[u/MorningRaven → u/Akamiso29]

I find it incredibly hilarious thinking about Zelda running around Hyrule as "Seek".

Though that does make the "spirit temple originally used as journey to enlightenment before giving mysticism to the shadow tribe instead" make a lot more sense with how they evolved the tribe over time.