Lucky Dog 1 Translator’s Corner

To celebrate Lucky Dog 1‘s release today, we have some comments from Lucky Dog 1‘s translator, terracannon876, to share with you all!

Thank you for being patient with the English release of Lucky Dog 1.  This project has been a passion project for me from the beginning, and so I poured my all into crafting a translation that captures the feel of the characters and the setting.  My priority was to translate Lucky Dog 1, the Japanese text, to English in such a way that preserved Lucky Dog 1, the experience – by which I mean, I wanted to translate not only the literal meaning of the text but also the emotions contained in the nuances of the original writing.  

The reason why this was so important to me was because of how big an impression Lucky Dog 1 left on me when I first played it all those years ago.  The pounding adrenaline of the action scenes, the roaring hilarity of the banter between the crew, the heart-wrenching sorrow of the tragedies that molded them and could be awaiting them, the hackle-raising disgust at what unfolds in some of the cruel bad endings… I was on an emotional roller coaster that sunk its claws into my skin as it jerked me around with every unfolding event.  It left an indelible impression on me that I hope to share with everyone playing Lucky Dog 1 for the first time.

For me, translating the experience of Lucky Dog 1 was a multi-faceted endeavor.  Preserving the original meaning was a given.  In every passage, I aimed to capture every speck of meaning in the original paragraph.  Sometimes, these made for very clunky translations when done literally, so there were many layers of editing beyond the initial draft of the literal translation.  Ultimately, though, it was paramount to me that all the information was present in some form in the translation.

For example, one of the rounds of editing mentioned above involved character voice.  Japanese excels at characterization through the use of little more than tone in spoken dialogue, and this, in turn, informed their characterization in English that I tried to capture via word choice and phrasing.  The main character Gian, for example, speaks very differently from Giulio, who speaks very different from Ivan or Bernardo or Luchino or any of the other side characters in the cast.  Gian is a clever motormouth who wears his emotions on his sleeve, so he’d be more creative in his language.  His usual tone has a lackadaisical cheer to it that’s fast-paced and fun, like a good ol’ romp.  Additionally, as the narrator, his language affected the feel of the entire story, so his voice was fundamental to guiding the aforementioned emotional roller coaster.  Bernardo is more comfortable, more “normal,” so his dialogue is straightforward but personable.  Sometimes he can get very technical as well, at which point he gets very precise in his language.  Luchino is bombastic but sophisticated – the classic, somewhat romanticized, gangster of the 30’s.  He speaks a bit rough, but he is also proud and tells things like it is.  He also uses the most Italian, which was included in the translation whenever it was spoken in dialogue (with checks to ensure the Italian was used correctly, to the best of my ability).  Giulio is extremely polite, extremely direct.  His sweetness is unmistakable, as is the strange way his mind works.  Finally, Ivan is straightforward and simple, both in his language and his cussing.  (As a fun aside, Gian’s speech patterns change a little depending on who he’s interacting with, like how people shift personas when speaking to different people in real life depending on their relationship.  Since Gian is rather empathetic, he ends up shifting a little to match the other’s voice.) 

On top of what’s written, I also paid attention to the literal voice, so to speak.  Because the Japanese voices are such a vital part to playing a visual novel (not to mention this game has a star-studded cast, so all the more reason to listen), I didn’t want the translation to distract the reader by being paced vastly different from the audio.  For example, if the passage was, say, question -> short sentence -> long sentence, I would try to keep this pattern as much as possible even if there were other ways to word the sentence that would sound less awkward in English.  To do this, I went through the translation line-by-line with the game playing to check.  As an added bonus, sometimes the emotion in the acting influenced how I phrased certain lines as well.  (Sometimes, there’d also be lines in Italian that would be written in Japanese.  If you’re familiar with Japanese, this would be like having romaji for Italian above the Japanese words as furigana.  These wouldn’t be detectable in the text, but I tried to capture every instance I heard when I went through the lines.)

This “avoid distracting the reader” was rather important to me since I felt it would detract from the Lucky Dog 1 experience if the whole time the reader was focused on the translation and not on the game itself.  As such, I aimed to make the writing read as smooth as it would in a (non-visual) novel that was written originally in English.  Sometimes, I was able to massage the sentences into a good flow while keeping all of the details.  (Other times, though, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, I chose certain rewordings over others that would have flowed more smoothly because of character voice or phrasing in the original lines.  It ended up being a bit of a balancing act of priorities.)  One trick I used sometimes was shifting details from one sentence to another to help with phrasing and to lighten an overburdened sentence.  I also did this when, for example, I wanted the action scenes to feel as fast-paced as they do in Japanese by using shorter sentences than the literal translation would usually have, so I would split one sentence into two.  Additionally, there were times where I felt no native English speaker say certain things (“She was like a small animal.”), so I would replace the singular phrase with one that was approximately the same but had the same connotations (“She was like a small chipmunk.”).

Finally, one of the last rounds I did involved adding slang and jargon.  The setting of Lucky Dog 1 is very specific – the East Coast US in the 1930s, and among the Mafia or Italian American community at that – and in English, that has a very distinct language of its own.  To capture this, I paid special attention to slang, both to make the English more natural and to capture the feel of that era.  Each character also used their own specific set of slang depending on their backgrounds and personalities. For example, this was a big part of Gian’s dialogue since his carefree attitude embodied the fun nature of the “Roaring 20s”, largely untouched by the disasters in real life and in the Lucky Dog 1 story that take place in the 30s.  On top of slang, there was also jargon specific to the gangster life, such as prison, drugs, weapons, etc., not to mention Mafia terminology.  Sometimes military slang would be pulled up, and sometimes there’d be a bit of finance talk, too.  This step required the most research – to make sure I was using the jargon correctly, to make sure the slang came into use prior to 1930s, etc.  I hope my efforts haven’t resulted in “distracting the reader” and instead captured a world that is (hopefully) foreign to most of us in a way that feels “familiar” in the sense that, because the characters lived it and breathed it, the audience would feel just as home, too.  (As an aside, I made an effort to imply the meaning of less common slang via contextual clues, so hopefully that helps a bit.) 

(There were also plenty of literary references here and there, and the original wasn’t shy to reference a couple memes here and there either.  I tried my best to preserve these as well – if not directly, then at least in feel.)

These were the various, sometimes contradictory, factors I kept in mind as I wrote the translation – sort of like a whirlwind of thoughts centered around the original work that would bring the essence that is Lucky Dog 1 through the language barrier unscathed.  I have a lot of thoughts on the translation and its process, but ultimately it is but the vehicle that brings the game to you.  Lucky Dog 1 as a work speaks for itself, so I hope you give it a chance.  Thank you to tennenouji for creating this amazing game and for allowing me to translate the game on my blog.  Thank you to MangaGamer for allowing me to continue working on the game through thick and thin (and for keeping the translation up on my blog).  Thank you for reading this far.  I hope you enjoy this wonderful game!

You can pick up Lucky Dog 1 right now on both MangaGamer and Steam—you’ll save 15% if you grab it during launch too!