I'm sure you're more than well-aware that Danganronpa is not an English-made game. The only reason Western players get to enjoy Danganronpa officially is through the efforts of NISA (Nippon Ichi Software America). However, there comes a slight issue with this...NISA is not known for the highest-quality of work. As such, there are hundreds of mistranslations in the English Danganronpa series, ranging from understandable mistakes to WTF? moments. I feel it's important to bring to light these mistranslations, as many are the root cause of popular complaints and misunderstandings. Danganronpa is no masterpiece of work even in the original language, but the countless errors in the official NISA translation does a massive disservice to many moments in the franchise.

WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOUR WORD?

Honestly? You don't have to - I'm not even asking you to! I understand feeling skeptical. I'm one person with a website, and NISA is a whole company. How could I know better than them?

The fact is: translation doesn't work like that. A lot of NISA's translations suffer from being too literal, at the cost of misrepresenting the meaning of the text. Does this mean NISA's translation is inherently wrong? No, not really. It's wrong in some aspects, but not all of them. Translation isn't like math: there's no one correct answer. A single sentence in Japanese can be worded a million different ways in English. For example, would you say there's any difference between these three sentences?

Some of you reading will tell me only the 3rd sentence is meaningfully different from 1 and 2. Some will say they all mean the same thing, so who cares? Some will say that the subtle difference between 1 and 2 can say a lot about someone's personality. Maybe it even depends on context. So, in the end...which is right, when the original language you're translating from doesn't even work remotely similar to the one you're translating it into?

That is the ultimate hardship of translation. No matter how fluent you are in either English or Japanese, translation itself is its own skill. As such, I do not blame NISA's translators for the many mistakes in the Danganronpa games. Often times, it is not the translators fault, but rather, a result of higher-ups pushing time-constraints, meddling, and a fractured work environment with minimal communication between parties.

So, Why should you trust me? You shouldn't. I don't want you to take my word as gospel, nor assume I myself will never make a mistake. But what I aim to do is provide as much information as possible, show you my own work from start-to-finish, so you can understand each component of the Japanese sentence, and follow my thought process to how I reached my conclusion. From there, you can decide for yourself how you feel.

Remember what I said: translation is not math. There is no one right answer. Just dozens of similar - but different - solutions.

Below are some starter articles. I recommend reading them if you are unfamiliar with Japanese. Don't worry - I promise they're interesting! (Also...pretty integral to understanding the rest of this page).

FOR STARTERS - LITERAL VS. EMOTIONAL MEANING +

I think a lot of people get confused when trying to grasp the idea of a "literal" translation versus an "emotional" translation. The easiest, to-the-point example to help you understand is this simple question:

How would you translate the phrase, "You can't have your cake and eat it too"?

If you just thought, "I'll just write it in the language I'm translating it into", congrats: that's the literal translation.

If you just thought, "I'll re-write the sentence into what the phrase conveys ("two things can't be true at once") and translate that", congrants: that's the emotional translation.

Because, most likely, the other language doesn't have that idiom. So, when say, Japanese players, read the line, "You can't have your cake and eat it too", they won't think "Right, both things can't occur." - they'll think, "Huh? Why are we talking about cake?"

But, what if the exchange goes something like this?

A: You can't have your cake and eat it too.
B: Yes, I can! I'll have my cake, then I'll eat it!

In English, this is a funny argument between two characters, where B's reply serves as both a joke and a point: poking fun at the ridiculous wording of the idiom, while also showing the audience that they're rebelling against A's actual point that they can't have two things at once. I'm sure you can think of many movies or shows with a similar scene.

But now, back to translating: how do we handle it?

Because, now, this scene hinges on both the literal and emotional context of the phrase. If we go full literal, the Japanese audience will still be confused as to why cake was brought up in the first place at all. But if we go full emotional, we miss out on the humorous beat that English viewers would have laughed at; as it stands, Japanese viewers would just view it as a tense argument (which could feel totally out of place, since this scene is supposed to be somewhat funny!).

There are many ways to handle this, but usually, it falls into one of three categories:

  • The "have your cake and eat it too" Method
  • Localization Method
  • T/N Explanation Method

Let's look at each one, and decide which we should go with.

The "have your cake and eat it too" Method

Named after the point of this very phrase, this translation method is a sort of "brute force" one: just try and combine both meanings as well as you can.

An example may look like:

A: You can't have your cake and eat it too. One of those things has to go.
B: Yes, I can! I can have a cake, and then I can eat the cake! Just like what I'm going to do now!

With this method, the audience is taught what the phrase means retroactively, now being able to grasp both the literal and emotional meaning of the scene. They can laugh because arguing about cake sounds ridiculous, but still go, "Yeah, I see both A and B's point."

Now, there's many upsides and downsides to this method as with all translation: it's very hard to pull off in a natural-sounding way. A lot of the time, it can come off as "explaining the joke", which often kills any humor the joke held in the first place. Furthermore, it can still sound confusing if not clear enough. The point of why you're laughing also changes: where in the original, viewers were laughing because they were already familiar with the phrase, thus found the counter-argument amusing, our new audience is simply laughing at the fact that it sounds ridiculous; they have no prior attachment nor knowledge of this phrase since they just heard it for the first time.

You might think, "So, what? They're laughing at the same part English viewers were laughing at. Who care why they're laughing?"

And many would agree with you. Many would also disagree and say it's more important to match the "why" instead of the "how".

If you're one of the ones who disagree, let's take a look at the second method.

This page is under construction! Thank you for your patience.