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The story
A thread titled “Game titles that instantly become lame when translated into Japanese” popped up on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (“Geha”) board. It took off with posters literally translating the original titles of overseas games — Grand Theft Auto becomes “Grand Larceny of a Vehicle” (車両重窃盗罪, a stiff legalese rendering), Final Fantasy becomes “The Last Illusion” (最後の幻想), and so on. Meanwhile, others pointed out the reverse: the English localizations of Fire Emblem: Three Houses (originally Fūka Setsugetsu, “Wind, Flowers, Snow, Moon,” in Japanese) and Attack on Titan (originally Shingeki no Kyojin) arguably lose the poetic nuance of their Japanese titles. The thread was split on whether this loss of flavor in literal translation runs both ways, or whether people are simply more used to the sound of whichever language they heard the title in first.
What people said
Oh wait, that's lame in English too lol
Wasn't it more like 'grand theft of expensive vehicles'?
Maybe 'Chō Aniki' (a cult shooter known for its homoerotic bodybuilder aesthetic)?
'Super Big Bro' just wouldn't hit the same for a bunch of reasons
Maybe 'Ryū ga Gotoku' (Like a Dragon) → 'YAKUZA'?
Feels like it kills everything that was good about the Japanese title
Did you not finish elementary school?
Translate almost anything literally and it ends up sounding uncool. Same deal as foreigners wearing t-shirts or getting tattoos with weird kanji on them
→ Ultimate Illusion
→ Illusion of the End
→ The End of the Dream
→ [Tragic News] An Amnesiac Man Whose Only Skill Is Wielding an Absurdly Oversized Sword Wakes Up From a Fabricated Dream (Fantasy), Only to Be Dropped Into a Brutal Reality Where the [Final] Fate of the World Hangs in the Balance
Portal (literally 'Entrance')
'Three O'Clock Snack Time, Courtesy of Bunmeido' (a line from a famous old Japanese cake-ad jingle)
Very Shōwa-era vibes (i.e., old-fashioned, 1926–1989)
but TES as 'Scrolls of the Elders' ends up sounding way shabbier than the actual game
'Go For It, Motorized Competition!' (a literal translation of 'Forza Motorsport')
Sounds like a comedy duo lol
→ Chronicle of the Alien God-Slaying
→ Sword (Tsurugi) of the Otherworld
→ Blade (Mono) of the Other World
→ [Good News] An Ordinary Salvager Gets Stabbed Through the Chest and Dies Instantly — But a Girl Wielding the [Sacred Sword of the Otherworld] Shares Half Her Life With Him, So Now He Sets Off on a Journey to Save the World and Grabs His Happy Ending
And it doesn't even have any damn games lmaooo
But sometimes the English title itself is just wrong from the get-go
'King of Idiocy'
Might work better as 'Mom' there
Like in the old dub of the original Alien movie —
something like 'Ol' Mom' (that's how they translated 'Mother,' the nickname for the ship's onboard computer)
Traffic Fever (Transport Fever)
I have no idea what the Japanese word for 'pocket' even is
Never heard that word in my life
Fire Emblem: Fūka Setsugetsu (Wind, Flowers, Snow, Moon) → Three Houses
Shingeki no Kyojin → Attack on Titan
What's another one?
Fūka Setsugetsu is definitely cooler
But
'Triforce of the Gods' → 'A Link to the Past'
Nothing beats this one
English doesn't have four-character idioms like 'Setsugetsu Fūka,' so that whole style is basically doomed to sound lame
Same with 'Tenchi Sōzō' (Creation of Heaven and Earth) — call it 'Creation World' and it instantly turns lame (and the overseas title 'Terranigma' is hella lame too)
Apparently in Chinese, 'Setsugetsu Fūka' (Snow, Moon, Wind, Flowers) is considered the cooler way to say it, rather than 'Fūka Setsugetsu'
Like 'Naturally, Flying Wolf II' (a bootleg Chinese title for After Burner II)
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Scenery of the Changing Seasons
↓
No One Can Stop the Flow of Time (loose translation)
↓
We Can Never Go Back to Those Days (ultra-loose translation)
See? Deep, right?
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Scenery of the Changing Seasons
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'Persona's selling well, so we're adding a calendar system'
Looks like a command-line parameter
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Part of what’s behind this phenomenon is that katakana-ized English has a quality where you can enjoy it musically, by sound alone, without really registering its meaning — but translate it literally into kanji or native Japanese, and the meaning suddenly surfaces, bringing with it a whiff of everyday mundanity or unintentional comedy. Also, a name like “Final Fantasy,” which became fixed in people’s minds by sound first, tends to feel more jarring once you learn what it actually means. The thread was split on whether this is simply a matter of familiarity — “it sounds normal because I already know the name” — or whether it reflects a structural difference in how English and Japanese handle sound and compressed meaning (for instance, English has nothing quite like four-character idioms). It wasn’t raised in the thread, but the reverse problem genuinely happens in the game industry’s overseas releases too: English titles often can’t reproduce the poetic nuance of a four-character-idiom-style Japanese original, so localizers fall back on literal or explanatory renamings instead.";
※This article is composed of excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “[Otherworldly Blade] Game Titles That Instantly Become Lame When Translated Into Japanese [The Last Illusion].”
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