Clyde “Tomato” Mandelin is one of the English-speaking world's foremost experts on the classic video game EarthBound, and with his book Legends of Localization Book 2: EarthBound, he channelled that expertise into something inspirational and educational. I’m a regular visitor to Mato's Legends of Localization website, which compares the English versions of various video games to the Japanese versions, and I read his first book (Legends of Localization Book 1: The Legend of Zelda) in a single weekend. He did good work with the first book, but next to the sophomore installment, it felt like a practice run. There are few video games whose localization deserves an in-depth, book-length analysis more than EarthBound’s does, and no one more qualified to write such a book than Mato. Legends of Localization Book 2: EarthBound told me everything I could ever hope to know about EarthBound, and quite a lot of things I never thought to wonder.
EarthBound is the English version of the second entry in copywriter Shigesato Itoi’s MOTHER trilogy and, until EarthBound Beginning’s Virtual Console release in July 2015, the only one legally available in English. EarthBound was notoriously underappreciated at first, but its dedicated fanbase kept it alive as a cult classic for over two decades. However brilliant Shigesato Itoi’s work was, however, most of it would have never shone through in EarthBound without Marcus Lindblom, who localized the game. One of the great things about Mato's book is that it never forgets that. It’s common to hear people whine about every little change and imperfection in a translation, but Mato is a localizer himself, and it’s obvious that he’s as much a fan of Lindblom’s work as of Itoi’s.
A perfect translation of MOTHER 2--or anything, really--is impossible. About a month before reading this book, I read The Divine Comedy, written by Dante Alighieri but translated from the original Italian by John Ciardi. In the introduction, Ciardi says, “Obviously no sane translator can allow himself to dream of success. He asks only for the best possible failure.” Word choice is a big part of writing, and different languages don’t have perfect equivalents for each other’s words or expressions, so translating a text is the same as rewriting it. And that's just concerning the meaning of a word--what about the intention? What if someone in a Japanese video game mentions a type of food that is common in Japan but exotic in America? Or what if someone makes a pun? Should the localizer translate the feeling the writer intended by completely rewriting the text, or go for a literal translation that creates a completely different feeling? No localization, however good, can ever perfectly reflect the tone and nuances of the original, so it falls to the localization team to figure out how to best convey the original writer's intention, which makes every translator an artist in their own right. This is the mindset that one should approach (and almost certainly will leave) Legends of Localization with.
The most important part of this book is its layman-friendly insight into the Japanese language. I’m purely monolingual myself, but I enjoyed reading about the Japanese language, its nuances, and how they worked in MOTHER 2. There's a lot of interesting information about Japanese puns in this book, but I personally preferred hearing about some of those words with no simple English equivalent, such as makyou (which, in Japanese, refers to an evil or dangerous place; translated in EarthBound as Deep Darkness) or nushi (which a Google search suggests simply means “owner,” and was translated as such in EarthBound, but Mato says often refers to the biggest and baddest beast in a particular area--a giant alligator in a swamp, for example). In all of these cases, Mato explains the connotation of each word, and talks about some other ways the word has been translated.
What I enjoyed the most about this book, though, was its insight into all of MOTHER 2's cultural references. Lindblom seems to have spent quite a bit of time cutting or changing Itoi’s allusions to TV, music, literature, comedy, and history. The odd Beatles nod got through, but the Japanese version has a wide range of references ranging from those familiar in the west (Superman) to those little-know outside Japan (Natsume Sōseki’s I Am a Cat). Many of the lines containing Japanese cultural references were literally translated, losing their cultural significance in the process (the gang member in Onett who recites a poem about gum and spit falls into this category), while western references were often cut entirely, presumably for legal reasons. It seems like such a small detail, but learning about these references gave me a different impression of MOTHER 2 than I had of EarthBound. The English version of the game usually feels familiar but still like another world, in the same way Middle-earth resembles our own past without being set there, so when a blatant pop culture reference does slide through, it’s jarring. MOTHER 2 knows so much about our world that, for all its obvious fantasy elements, it may as well take place here. Considering one of the game’s initial selling points was that it's set in modern times, I think it sounds like MOTHER 2 gets that feeling across a bit more effectively.
And the research that went into this book--both in depth and breadth--is incredible. This is the main difference between the book and the website--sentence-long descriptions from the web often grow into paragraphs and adopt photos on the page. Anything mentioned in either language is fair game, regardless of how minor. For one example, there’s a vendor in Fourside who becomes enraged and calls Ness a “mod-boy jerk” if the player talks to him without buying anything. On the website, Mato says that this is a reference to the United Kingdom’s mod subculture and provides a Wikipedia link; in the book, he explains in detail what that subculture is and why it would seem like a good insult for that particular shopkeeper.
There’s also plenty of info in the book that is completely absent from the website. Take the lady in EarthBound’s Onett who expresses a fondness for cottage cheese. In MOTHER 2’s Onett, she prefers a different food item. I won’t tell you what, but if you buy the book, you'll get a description of that food item, a picture, a bonus picture of cottage cheese, and an explanation of why that particular snack would be turned into cottage cheese. All this for one inconsequential line from a minor NPC.
Of course, everyone makes mistakes, and Mato provides plenty of insight into where and why the EarthBound localization messed up. There are a few typos, and a few lines that were translated without proper context, resulting in someone saying something that is just a bit off. But even when pointing out a mistake or an oversight (in either the translation or the original!) Mato prefers to understand and explain the mistake rather than just snark about it. I find that approach far more insightful and interesting.
It’s difficult to think of anything negative to say about this book, especially since there are no alternatives on this subject, but one thing does come to mind: the book sometimes feels a little incomplete. The website has nice lists of all the weapons, items, and enemies in the game, as well as their Japanese names. I was surprised to see this was missing from the book. Granted, this information is freely available on the web, and it’s not the sort of thing that most people would sit down and read through anyway, but, frankly, the lost list was missed.
But then that is pretty much the very model of a minor quibble. I can definitely recommend this book without hesitation to anyone with even the slightest bit of interest on any of the subjects it covers. If you’re a fan of video games, then you’ll learn a lot. If you’re a fan of EarthBound, you will learn a bit less but probably value what you do learn a lot more. And if you’re interested in becoming a localizer yourself, you need this book. When people write about something they love, it's easy to degenerate into so much fanboyish gushing, but Mato has written an insightful book that is both loving and honest, a look at what makes this translation great and what makes it imperfect. There are no other books quite like this one, but if there were, I doubt they’d match the competition.
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