What's this? Another translations post…?

As a stopgap, I’d be fine with just swapping in Japanese images for the cards and having all the text be English… But you’re right, a proper localization of the Database would be a massive undertaking.

I just really want to see all the Japanese cards.

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It’s a combination of wanting to stick with four-character phrases and the fact that the art for the ninjas is less Iga School or Koga School than Kombat School (and Mortal Kombat rounds off to being 100% not a thing in Japan). The phrase simply refers to something completely unexpected — you can look it up on Weblio or something if you’d like a J-E dictionary’s take on that particular phrase.

Care to ellaborate on Iga and Koga School (Kombat school??? Lost me there)

Iga and Koga were the two towns that were centers of ninja (i.e. spy) activity in feudal Japan and each had its own techniques and such.

On the other hand, even the modern Japanese depiction of a ninja is divorced from reality (since, being spies, they usually dressed like, say, medicine peddlers) and based on the uniform of a kuroko, or kabuki stagehand (they are read as “invisible” within the artifice of the stage, so if one attacked a character, it was meant to indicate that an anonymous member of a crowd did so) as signifier gradually became signified.

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Great explanation! The only part that still seems unclear is the “Kombat school” part, though that may be because I’ve never seen anything from those games (the most I know is that they have ultra-violent finishers and a character who yells “GET OVER HERE” as he pulls you close – neither of which seems applicable to Setsuki or the Fox’s Den School).

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MK lore is incredibly messed up. You have Japanese ninjas, Chinese ninjas, Hellspawn ninjas, Cyborg Ninjas, and Good ninjas! And then you have Kung Fu badasses, warrior princesses, alien clone princesses, SWAT team guys, SWAT Team Girls, Necromancers, Immortal chinese dudes, literal gods, inter-dimensional conquerers etc etc.

You also have a character called ‘Smoke’ in MK (SMOKER)

But, as @GRAG said, actual Ninjas dressed like farmers/merchants/streetfolk to blend in.

Inverse Power Ninja is more like Mortal Kombat ninjas due to a) face mask, b) kunai on chain thing (Which Scorpian uses to make the other people GET OVER HERE), and c) rad looking leather armour that reveals a lot of thigh.
Glorious Ninja is kind of like Hayabusa from DOA/Ninja Gaiden, but again, doesn’t really look like a farmer.

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What you’ve failed to account for is that farmers in the Fantasy Strike universe all wear face masks and dress up like our pop culture version of ninja. So the ninja in Codex use that to their advantage, perfectly blending into the crowds.

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Now I want a Fantasy Strike universe version of Harvest Moon.

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I can see where you’re coming from, although I’m not sure I’d agree with you. If you’ve ever been to Iga-Ueno (and from what I’ve heard, Koga is very similar), then you’d know that the Japanese depiction of Ninjas can be as historically inaccurate as ours is, especially when it comes to kunoichi (which is essentially what Setsuki is…)

ETA: In hindsight that sounds bad, sorry. My intention wasn’t to be critical of your translation, you’ve clearly put a lot of work into it and have done a great job. And I guess you know the target audience in Japan much better than I do, and the anime/manga references play into that. From the point of view of someone who knows almost nothing about manga or anime, Leaping Lizard had me really scratching my head, although I really enjoyed the Firehouse wordplay :slight_smile:

Heh. Yeah, I’ve lived in Japan for nearly a decade and work as a translator, and I’ve driven to Koka (the town is no longer pronounced Koga) to visit their museum, so I’m at least vaguely familiar with a lot of this stuff. ; )

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I really like the nod to Street Fighter in having identical names assigned to different characters/specs in Japan and the US.

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Oh yeah, just remembered a neat coincidence. For the Yomi translation, in order to match the fighting game terminology, Zane’s “Shenanigans” was translated to 奇襲攻撃, literally “surprise attack.”

Well hey, guess what one of his spells in Codex just happens to be called?

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Sharks :smiley:

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Is this still a thing?
when is the JP version planned for release ?

Eventually™

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I was way too optimistic waiting for a “summer 2018” post
:cry:

Sorry! There’s just been a lot of extremely busy personal life stuff for everyone.

An update: This project is still alive! And perhaps even more excitingly, a HK Chinese translation is also in the works!

Basically, life got real busy for everyone for a while, but things have calmed down and we’re actually gradually approaching print-readiness for both translations. It’s very exciting!

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Which is to say, I never mentioned which summer we hoped to get the Core and Starter sets shipped off to the printer by the end of ; )

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Holy heck! The main thing holding us back from sending the Japanese and Chinese versions of the starter and core sets off to the printers at this point is that I need to add the publisher’s logo to the Japanese boxes, and finish the Chinese token cards!

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