SotN's English Translation

[The Grimace]

Castlevania Symphony of the Night is top tier. It's hard to believe, but it's been like 25+ years since its release. After all this time, Polygon caught up with the game's English translator and wrote an article on the game's strange translation situation. I heavily recommend checking it out!

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/506820/castlevania-symphony-night-english-translation-mistakes-changes

While I appreciate the retranslation the game was given for the PSP and PS4 rerelease, I think the original text translation was great. I have been quoting the original translation for 20+ years and that will not stop. The campy English voices for Konami games from this era was something to behold, and something was definitely lost with the new voicework. It's a curious situation- as this excerpt perfectly iterates for me:

"As Blaustein remarked in our conversation, sometimes we humans just don’t know what we want. “People like the corniness,” he said. “They like the indie feel of it. But then they also want to fix it.”"

[Random Encounter]

According to Symphony of the Night composer Michiru Yamane in a 2012 interview with 1Up, translating the Castlevania game at all may have been a last-minute decision for Konami. “When we first created the game,” she said, “we were only planning to release it in Japan. [...] So we were able to complete and release the game, and then I took some time off. When I came back to the office, all of a sudden the company had already made the decision to translate it into English.”

Wow, what a loss would that have been to not get this game at all! I think doing so changed Konami's fortunes for the better.

The voice acting was definitely Hammy, but it was competent compared to a lot of the really bland and uninspired voice work you heard in the early 32-bit era. As far as I'm concerned, the text of the translation itself was great! It wasn't surprising either, given that Blaustein also gave us a really good Snatcher translation.

It was sad to hear him talk about having no support from Konami in his work, and I'm glad that's become less of an issue over time. I haven't played Final Fantasy XVI yet, but it's a testament to how far the industry's come. We went from the 8-bit era where English translations were an afterthought done by people who barely spoke the language to localization teams that are also involved in the story-writing process as with XVI. Love it.

[The Grimace]

Oh shit, Blaustein also did Snatcher? I missed that. That's so awesome! The guy definitely knows his stuff.

Final Fantasy XVI's voice acting is some of the best I've ever heard and it only lost its awards at the game awards two years ago because it was up against Baldur's Gate 3, which had equally as impressive voicework by all rights. But this does go to show just how much value Japanese developers now place in the West as a market, in just three decades.