I am playing Elden Ring in English, so when I watch Japanese let’s-play videos, “wait, what is that?” happens all the time. For example, misericorde is 慈悲の短剣 (“dagger of mercy”) in Japanese—the first time I heard the Japanese name, I had no idea what it was. 黄金樹に誓って versus Golden Vow also confused me at first, but after watching the videos over and over, I picked up quite a lot.
This post
https://note.com/tokage_otoko2/n/n3ed870c1cb8a
criticizes the article below, and I would like to share a few thoughts on it.
https://note.com/rotten_marz_3rd/n/n54a42f0732eb
The point in the criticized article that blaidd became ブライヴ (“Blaive”) truly makes no sense, I agree (at first I could not figure out who ブライヴ was and had to look up blaidd to get through his questline). But from the standpoint of making a game—as opposed to English correctness—it honestly does not matter much.
As for ふんわり綿 (Soft Cotton), I did not feel anything was off about the translation. Some people assume an imperative sentence must sound forceful, but it really just means “come on, give it a try,” so it is perfectly correct. (You can tell from the context, I think.)
Nothing wrong with Mohg’s lines either.
The Erdleaf Flower also surprised me when I saw the Japanese original. True, with 落葉樹 (“deciduous tree”) it does end up feeling like a flower that fell off some random tree, when in fact it is a flower fallen from the Erdtree—so the English rendering has more flavor, I feel. That said, coming up with a short name is hard. Maybe something like 黄金落葉樹 (“golden deciduous tree”).
On the points about the brass dagger and the proper nouns:
For example, ストームヴィル城 ("Stormvil Castle") is Stormveil,
湖のリエーニエ ("Liurnie of the Lakes") is Liurnia of the Lakes,
レアルカリア ("Rearucaria") is Raya Lucaria,
アルター高原 ("Altā Plateau") is Altus Plateau (altus is Latin for "high"),
and 王都ローデイル ("Royal Capital Rōdeil") is Leyndell Royal Capital.
Likewise, カーリアの城館 and 火山館 are Caria Manor and Volcano Manor,
making it clear that these are manor houses, not mere halls.
Beyond place names, ハイータ ("Haīta") is Hyetta,
セルヴス ("Selvus") is Seluvis, ラーヤ ("Rāya") is Rya,
獣の司祭グラング ("Gurang, Beast Clergyman") is Gurranq Beast Clergyman,
and ファリスの製法書 ("Faris's Cookbook") is Fevor's Cookbook.
The place names in particular diverge greatly.
This one I actually find fair as well. However, I do not know the best practices for localization in game development, so maybe treating these not as translations but as entirely separate words is one legitimate technique. I wonder whether it is done the same way in other languages…
Still, as the criticism points out, Japanese appears to be the original text, so I think the Japanese version should basically be treated as the baseline. Apart from Sekiro, I have played fromsoftware’s games in English, and I remember being moved by the archaic phrasing in DarkSouls3. Compared to that, this time the English felt considerably more modern to me. There were also few of those spots that seemed to have given the translators a hard time like in Sekiro—it was quite smooth and easy to read.