Bloodborne Japanese Retranslation Guide

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2		Welcome to the Bloodborne Japanese Retranslation Guide
3		By LastProtagonist aka Presance Including translations by Aruki Mania
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5	Background
6	This page started after I completed Bloodborne. I, like many others, had many questions over the events in the game. I'd beaten Dark Souls before and after I finished that I watched a few videos on youtube that examined the lore in-depth. Quite frankly, I was blown away by the quality of the analyses and it really opened up my eyes as to how deep the games could be. I appreciated how they functioned on a surface level--a modern day Megaman of sorts, where you had to learn pattern recognition and perfect your timing, lest you fail. The level of analysis of Dark Souls made the game much more approachable and was broken down fairly straightforwardly. Bloodborne, on the other hand still had a lot of ambiguity to it.
7	Bloodborne may have one of my favorite aesthetics in any game I've ever played. I think the game was designed beautifully to be both thrilling and terrifying. I wanted to know more about it. I began looking into the theories surrounding the lore of the game, but I wasn't satisfied. I had a feeling that there was more to it than what was available. Some of these suspicions were confirmed when I went to Reddit and came across a few threads that explained inconsistencies between the Japanese text and English localizations. Due to the nature of the discrepancies, it was fairly clear that despite Bloodborne's audio being developed originally in English, the dialogue the audio was based on came from Japanese source material.
8	After joining the Bloodborne Discord channel and discussing some things with the members of the channel, I began looking at some of the Japanese text to compare what was said in English, basically to reaffirm or deny the interpretations of the text. I began compiling my retranslations partially for my own records, but I also knew that others would be interested in them as well, which has led to the creation of this spreadsheet. Here you will find the compilation of my retranslations. Special thanks go to David Christy for creating the Bloodborne Lore Translation Guide on GameFAQs. Without his work, I probably wouldn't have had the motivation to hunt down the different versions of the text to make this guide as robust as it is. Here's the link to his page:
9	https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/805577-bloodborne/faqs/71777?single=1
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11	Why the Retranslations?
12	I would like to be absolutely clear here that in no way am I trying to disparage those who have worked hard to translate the game for us. I appreciate all of the work they put into localizing the game, and I want to say that I can appreciate how difficult it is to work in a vacuum translating things without necessarily being able to properly contextualize what you're working on. I have the benefit of playing through the game, multiple times, to be able to infer things which are NOT obvious from text alone. I also appreciate that the translators were not giving direct translations of the Japanese material. They were localizing it to be appealing to the Western audience, and overall, I honestly believe they've done a great job of creating a consistent style and making it feel organic and Victorian.
13	So why retranslate this then? Well, unfortunately because the subject material is so dense and packed with information, when trying to deconstruct it without the nuance of the original materials, perceptions can become wildly skewed. No matter how things are worded, there could be valid arguments to phrase them another way, my own translations included. And so to help my understanding of the game text and to guide others as well, I decided to retranslate the Japanese text for additional clarity.
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15	Retranslation Style
16	Since the goal of this is to try and convey the original nuance/intent of the text, I have decided to adopt using more literal translations. These are translations I would not normally share as a kind of "finished product," with the purpose of keeping a player immersed in another world. This is not intended to be localized, therefore things may not always flow very well in English. Generally, I've tried to keep each line consistent between English and Japanese, but there are times information has to be broken up due to sentence structure. It's always a balancing act trying to do "line by line" translations and keep the overall sentence structure the same, and there are going to be inconsistencies within my own translations juggling the two. Sometimes line by line translations may not always sound natural or flow very well in English, but they can still preserve the intent of the original. One goal of this project is to help others get a better understanding of each passage, and to help learners of the language in their studies.
17	Japanese is a high context language and can be notoriously vague or ambiguous. Bloodborne is also intentionally vague or ambiguous, sometimes for literary reasons, making natural-sounding translations that convey the original Japanese nuances even more difficult. When certain aspects of the sentence are implied, but not directly stated, I've used parenthesis () to "fill in the gaps" and make it sound more natural in English, yet remain clear such information technically isn't in the text. If certain things need more explanation, whether it be for uncommon usage of words, or pieces of cultural context that cannot be directly conveyed, I've used brackets [] and asterisks * to denote translator notes. Most of the text I've received is from the Bloodborne Lore Translation Guide by David Christy on Gamefaqs, but I've also had to look up things from other websites. If you find any errors, feel free to let me know.
18	As a fair warning, since I started this project without a particular style established, there are some inconsistencies. Rather than referring to all terminology literally, I've adopted using the official terminology at times for the sake of reader familiarity. I'm also not a native speaker of Japanese. It's possible I've made mistakes or missed certain things like idiomatic expressions. Understand my translations are supposed to be taken with a grain of salt. Others who are also familiar with Japanese are welcome to offer their input as well. Comments are enabled. I just ask that you keep in mind the intent of what this was trying to accomplish.
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20	Now introducing a new contributor: Who is Aruki Mania?
21	Hello! I’m the person responsible for the Translationborne series of videos on YouTube available here:
22	https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5X6GrUkKqPsGvzd1ykSJe6wFpkvCrn8g
23	I started making these videos independently of LastProtagonist in an effort to look into and analyze some of the translation choices made for Bloodborne. Around the release of episode 37, LastProtagonist discovered my videos and reached out to see if I would be willing to share my own versions of literal retranslations from the Japanese, along with any notes I might have. I was happy to discover this project, with the huge amount of work that it represented, and gladly agreed. My hope is that by providing an alternative literal take, some of the interpretation inherent to the process of translation comes through, in addition to providing another reference point for a deeper understanding of the game and its lore. I will also reiterate the caveats above. There may be a few inconsistencies and errors, and since the emphasis here has been on literal translation, the resulting English may be awkward and strange, or it may fail to encapsulate a figurative meaning. I only hope that this proves to be of some use to those interested in Bloodborne and/or the process of translation.
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