Why do so many “Japanese only” games use a combo of Japanese and English text and voices?

[Razzie.P]

I’ve often wondered this, but never saw what seemed to be a legit answer.  But why do many Japanese only games seem to mix and match Japanese and English?   For example – I was playing Rastan 3 a bit this evening, and some of the story text (cutscenes) are part English, part Japanese.  Then the UI is all English.   

And the voiceover work was the same.  Most was Japanese, but then you’ll hear something like “follow this path” and “So sad… you want to be hero too”

I googled it, but got a bunch of answers like “it sometimes sounds cool and exotic to them,” which seems weird.
 

[Steven Pendleton]

I imagine that part of the reason is that Japanese text takes up double the space of roman letters, and when you have tiny ROM sizes you need to use the space as efficiently as possible.

 

Once you get to CD games and stuff with larger ROM sizes, literally it's just to look cool.

 

I also suppose that with systems with lower resolutions, using kanji isn't really feasible because it's just going to turn into a blob instead of being readable. This is why many older games are kana-only. I hate when they do that, as it makes it much harder for me to read without kanji, and Japanese people feel the same way from what I understand.

Edited March 13, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[Tanooki]

It's a mix of both your answers really.  Storage and resolution forces the use of english, especially the further back you go.  In some cases where it is so minimal it's just dumb not to, like 80s arcade games with a few lines of text on what to do, your rank/shot percentage, hi score and all that just to keep it universal for many regions without making multiple copies of the game.  Gameboy is a great resource for that, as is also the pre-NES Famicom era titles, as in both you'll find a lot on rom dump lists as WORLD releases.

 

As Steven there said, you also have storage size, it's a nice cost savings when you can fit what you need into a smaller space as smaller space costs less money.  That was just as important as having something legible in a low resolution environment which is why 8bit games generally didn't use kanji as it didn't have for standard text height spaces the room to have something legible to read unless sticking to hiragana and katakana.  But as we have moved into spaces not in the lower MB spectrum but into the CD, GB, TB sizes with resolutions going from low to 720p and above skies the limit so if you're seeing a mix it's cool points, design choice, or tradition perhaps but not required.

[Steven Pendleton]

Reminds me of why there is 平 as an option in the high score entry thingy in Raizing games. Something about having enough space left in Musha Aleste after finishing the game to fit a single character and there was a dude there named Hira, so they put his name in the game. When whoever it was that decided to do that moved over to Raizing, they kept putting 平 in all of their games.

 

Yeah, I know a ton of useless crap like this.

Edited March 13, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[CatPix]

You have named both reasons; and here is a 3rd, minor one : even if Japanese are bad at English (mostly due to the extremely conservative and poor way it is taught in Japanese schools) English is trendy; this is one reason for the famous Engrish we see in so many pictures from Japan : It doesn't matter if it's wrong, it just gotta be in English.

In fact, Japanese gamers are used to have most of their games in English; and American arcades games that tried to come up with fully Japanese translated text come out to Japanese gamers as odd (either because they used Japanese or because the translation was off, or both)

Even today Japanese games are still peppered with english, sometime enough to be playable without translation, even despite the fact that today, obviously, display size and storage space are not a problem at all.

[roots.genoa]

And English is also kinda 'exotic' for other countries indeed. In France we use a lot of English words, usually in a very bad way (and most of the time we already have a perfectly fine equivalent in French, but whatever). ? It's quite obvious in European movies, the (awkward) way they try to make them look as if they were from Hollywood. In Italian westerns of course, but also in thrillers in which the main protagonist is very often supposed to be an American journalist or detective, etc. So I guess it's the same for Japan.

[enoofu]

Arcade games traditionally were way more popular in the US, especially mechanical games, and electro-mechanical games, so roughly the late 1800's to 1950's just about all the machines in Japan were from the US. Even Sega was originally founded in the US.

 

Perry Expedition basely introduced Japan to American arcades and Game lingo. So more or less it tradition for some American English.

[Lord Mushroom]

8 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

And English is also kinda 'exotic' for other countries indeed.

Yes, English is cool in most countries in the world. Movie stars (and other celebrities) speak English (both in person and in the movies), and are cool. By association, the language becomes cool as well.

 

French is considered an elegant and cultured language because that is how the world sees the French.

 

8 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

It's quite obvious in European movies, the (awkward) way they try to make them look as if they were from Hollywood. 

I watched a French TV-series once where one of the characters was supposed to be American, but he was obviously played by a French actor. It was very awkward. I think the show was called "Siege" in English. It is about a bunch of workers occupying a factory which was about to close.

 

To avoid these terrible accents that domestic actors have, they sometimes use actual English-speaking people living in the country. But of course, they are often terrible actors. I don´t know which is worse.

[roots.genoa]

2 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I watched a French TV-series once where one of the characters was supposed to be American, but he was obviously played by a French actor. It was very awkward. I think the show was called "Siege" in English. It is about a bunch of workers occupying a factory which was about to close.

 

To avoid these terrible accents that domestic actors have, they sometimes use actual English-speaking people living in the country. But of course, they are often terrible actors. I don´t know which is worse.

Oh, don't get me started on American shows with characters that are supposed to be French... ? At best they're French Canadian so they have a very strong accent, and of course they're never subtitled because we're supposed to understand what they say. We usually don't. ? I know a lot of actors love to brag about the multiple foreign languages they master in their resumes, and I'm pretty sure most of them overestimate their ability (well, like most people do with their resumes). ? Except for bilingual actors like Jodie Foster, there are fortunately a few notable exceptions, but they are quite rare (at least compared to the amount of French speaking in English speaking movies and shows).

[Steven Pendleton]

2 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Oh, don't get me started on American shows with characters that are supposed to be French... ?

You mean this guy?

 

 

[+frankodragon]

It's the same for anime intro/outros as well. 

 

 

[Flojomojo]

5 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Oh, don't get me started on American shows with characters that are supposed to be French... ? 

We are so poor, we don't even have a language, just this stupid accent!

 

[Lord Mushroom]

7 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Oh, don't get me started on American shows with characters that are supposed to be French... ? At best they're French Canadian so they have a very strong accent, and of course they're never subtitled because we're supposed to understand what they say. We usually don't. ? 

It is the same thing when they are supposed to speak Norwegian. Usually, they have just been handed a script with the Norwegian lines, but they have no idea how to pronounce the words, so it is impossible to understand. Once in a while you can hear that the actors have been told how to pronounce the lines, but they still have a very thick accent. Sometimes it isn´t even Norwegian, but gibberish.

 

Luckily, the words are not important to the story. They are just meant to be exotic to the non-Scandinavian audience. And if they words are important to the story, they will be subtitled in English.

[Chris+++]

I've always thought the Oriental characters on the occasional title screen look awesome. They often amount to tiny works of graphical art in themselves. I'm sure there are "cool points" to be had for including those in American media, i.e. vice versa. The cover of Hotter Than Hell, for instance.

 

[CatPix]

To get more on topic, in Castlevania Rondo of Blood, on PC-Engine, there is a speech in German.

According to German folks, it is proper, if a bit stilted, German, spoken by a German, but clearly someone Konami just picked off the street because they needed just that voice speech to be German.

Also a good example of a game that could have been 100% in Japanese yet featuring english (the name and save menu, the options, etc).

 

 

[roots.genoa]

5 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

It is the same thing when they are supposed to speak Norwegian. Usually, they have just been handed a script with the Norwegian lines, but they have no idea how to pronounce the words, so it is impossible to understand. Once in a while you can hear that the actors have been told how to pronounce the lines, but they still have a very thick accent. Sometimes it isn´t even Norwegian, but gibberish.

 

Luckily, the words are not important to the story. They are just meant to be exotic to the non-Scandinavian audience. And if they words are important to the story, they will be subtitled in English.

By the way, I always wondered if Scandinavian would notice that Liv Ullman is Norwegian while mostly known for Swedish movies. I like to joke about it, claiming that movie X by Bergman was ruined for me because of Liv Ullman's Norwegian accent! "It completely got me out of the movie!" ? ?

[Lord Mushroom]

5 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

By the way, I always wondered if Scandinavian would notice that Liv Ullman is Norwegian while mostly known for Swedish movies.

Norwegians and Swedes quickly notice that she speaks Swedish with a Norwegian accent, so we know. She is also very famous in both countries, and were at the time the movies were made, so we would have known even without an accent.

 

Danes may not have noticed, and may not know even today.

[teh_lurv]

19 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

You mean this guy?

 

 

 

To quote Honest Trailers: "Jean-Luc Picard: The most British Frenchman in the galaxy!"

[Steven Pendleton]

1 hour ago, teh_lurv said:

 

To quote Honest Trailers: "Jean-Luc Picard: The most British Frenchman in the galaxy!"

Apparently Paramount has some recordings of him doing a French accent, but someone decided against it for some reason.

[Tanooki]

Probably figured he surrender.

 

Resistance is futile, so why bother.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Tanooki

[Petran79]

On 3/14/2022 at 8:23 PM, CatPix said:

To get more on topic, in Castlevania Rondo of Blood, on PC-Engine, there is a speech in German.

According to German folks, it is proper, if a bit stilted, German, spoken by a German, but clearly someone Konami just picked off the street because they needed just that voice speech to be German.

Also a good example of a game that could have been 100% in Japanese yet featuring english (the name and save menu, the options, etc).

 

 

Princess Maker 5 at least tried harder and used a German tenor 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by Petran79

[Steven Pendleton]

If you really want unexpected language choices in Japan-only games, Thunder Force VI is almost entirely in English and Mongolian. It also uses Tangut for written stuff quite frequently, as well.

Edited March 19, 2022 by Steven Pendleton

[Tanooki]

Sin & Punishment on the N64 is entirely in English, verbally, they subtitled it for the audience in Japanese.  Why those fools never released it here when it was already entirely done was mind blowing as far as a poor choice goes.

[high voltage]

All your base are belong to us

 

All your base are belong to us - Wikipedia

Edited March 20, 2022 by high voltage

[+Black_Tiger]

Check out 6:50 in this video to see what happens when the character from a stereotype of feudal Japan arrives in the Kingdom of "London":