Japanese HeroQuest: Quest Translation

[HispaZargon]

Hahaha... I will probably change the text a little bit since they look quite.. robotic? rigid? Anyway I will try to keep the same content of the original text of course.

[Kurgan]

Again these are just suggestions. You could leave them as is if you want to preserve the style in the rough translation. Since I know no Japanese, I am 100% relying upon the translation notes you've provided here of course.

Hi, here is some of my work about page 31 of the Japanese quest book.
...
Goblin:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A small and cruel green monster. It's small, but it will try to hurt you.

I like this. It will TRY...

Skeleton:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A boned warrior corpse driven by the power of darkness. It moves slowly but brutal.

"Boned" sounds very funny, and I'm very tempted to say "leave it" for the smiles. Not sure what I would replace it with... "A warrior's boney corpse driven..." ?

"It moves with slowness and brutality" or maybe "This brute moves slowly." I am guessing the intent here was to show the strengths and weaknesses of the monster (similar to "small but tries to hurt you" above). So maybe that emphasizes the slowness too much (in NA versions, the slow skeletons were sped up in contrast).

"It is brutal but moves slowly" I guess sounds best to get the message across. You could get really fancy and render it "A warrior of bone... a corpse driven by the power of darkness. It is brutal but moves slowly."

Orc:
...

My Best Guess Translation: Orcs are the same kind of monsters as Goblins. However, they are larger and more powerful than a Goblin.

Sounds fine. If you wanted to streamline it you could just say "Orcs are the same kind of monsters as Goblins, only larger and more powerful" but the repetition is maybe more faithful to the original style.

Zombie:
...
My Best Guess Translation: Like the Skeleton, the corpse was revived by the power of dark magic. It still has rotten muscles and blood. It always carries a machete with him.

I love this. Maybe "this corpse" instead of "the corpse" (we are examining an individual example of each monster, like a character, rather than all monsters in general or in a very abstract way implied by "the"). The large cleaver does remind one of a machete (and the remake even has some carrying weapons that could be classified as such).

Monolizard:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A lizard-like monster stronger even than an Orc. Monolizards often have Orcs and Goblins under their control.

No change necessary to this one!

Mummy:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A corpse that has been preserved so that it will not rot in the darkness. Mummies are controlled with more powerful magic than Skeletons and Zombies. It is dangerous in single-handed fight.

Change either to "...in single-handed fights..." or "...dangerous to fight it single-handed." The original context is that one hero taking on a Mummy by himself is going to be a challenge. Or you could just render it simply "It is dangerous in a single-handed fight" just to make it more grammatically correct.

Dark Warrior:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A warrior who succumbed to the power of darkness. He is dressed in armour and wields a cursed weapon. He has great physical strength so it is difficult to defeat.

I love the Dark Warrior, and I love the "cursed weapon."
Maybe render it "...so it is difficult to defeat him." (are we dedicated to preserving gender neutrality or rendering it a "him" in one sentence then an "it" in another? this preserves consistency). Or else "He has great physical strength and so is difficult to defeat."

Gargoyle:
....

My Best Guess Translation: A monster made by giving life to a stone statue of a terrifying monster with the magic of darkness. It is very difficult to scratch its stone's skin in combat.

I love this. Sounds very mystical and cool. "It is very difficult to scratch its stone skin in combat" looks more correct. Otherwise it sounds like the Gargoyle is carrying a stone (with skin!) that you have to scratch to beat him. Maybe like the gargoyle is a flesh creature that wears armor made of stone, rather than being stone brought to life that still carries with it a certain hardness (thick hide, hard to penetrate with weapons).

Those are my suggestions. Once more, your call, but that is how I would render those sentences based on your progress so far.

[Daedalus]

Quest 7, Trial of White Mountain & Quest 8, Curse of Darkness:
. . .
- I am not too comfortable about how I have diagonally written the names of the characters in the map since “Warrior” and “Magician” are too long words to be written inside their squares, so I will try to improve them in future revisions, maybe writing them in horizontal with white background but “invading” a little the two adjacent squares… Diagonal items are not common in Hero Quest so they look quite rare for my eyes. Anyway I think the four names may be written following the same visual criterion in the map.

What about something like this:

_{War-. . . . . Magi-}
.^{rior. . - . . . cian}

- I have a doubt of how to treat “White Mountain”, “Black Mountain” and “Star Lake” wordings in all the quests they appear… In my opinion calling them “The White Mountain”, “The Black Mountain” and “The Star Lake” sounds better since white and black are adjectives but honestly I am not sure how to deal with it since Bob Bob generally avoided to include the article “The” through his quests translations and the original rulebook map does not include them too.

Bob-Bob and bluesun got it right. When the name of a singular lake or mountain is used as a proper noun, no "The" should precede it. However, the plural case of lake and mountain and certain other geographical features use "the", such as the Great Lakes, the Alps, or the Nile. English is a fickle language.

- Bob Bob’s translation called the king at Godo as “King Godot”… Well, in my opinion it is confusing so I have decided to change this to “King of Godo” due to two reasons: 1.- The original rulebook map indicates a place called “Godo”, instead of “Godot” and I prefer to preserve the original names as much as possible. 2.- I don’t like the idea of calling the King with the same name of the place so I added the word “of” between “King” and “Godo” words (In other quests descriptions I have also applied the same criterion to the king of Neef Island referring to him as “King of Neef” instead of “King Neef”).

Sounds good.

Quest 9, Spirits Valley:
. . .
- I prefer to preserving the original names as much as possible so have changed the name “Wisdom Valley” to “Spirits Valley” since it is the name written in the original rulebook map. I know there was in the past a discussion about this since it has not too much sense the parchment text using the “Spirits Valley” name since it does not seem to be connected with wisdom or intelligence in any way but, I think we could survive with this. Then, does anybody have any idea of how to improve the parchment text sentence “Those without wisdom cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirits Valley” in order to provide it more sense without changing the name “Spirits Valley”?

I'd suggest two changes:

"Spirits Valley" > Spirit Valley
"Those without wisdom cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirits Valley” > Those without willpower cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirit Valley

I believe the intent of the translation is Spirit = the quality of heart or psyche, not Spirits = ethereal beings or ghosts. Think, "That kid has got a strong spirit, so he made it through the valley."

- In the original rulebook map, Ricarm seems to be more likely an island or a region… Bob Bob refered to it as a “continent” on his translations but I think its size may not be enough big to consider it as a continent so I have instead called it as the “land” of Ricarm. I think “land” is a more general and friendly term for this purpose.

I agree land fits better for what appear.to be kingdom-sized areas.

[HispaZargon]

Skeleton:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A boned warrior corpse driven by the power of darkness. It moves slowly but brutal.

"Boned" sounds very funny, and I'm very tempted to say "leave it" for the smiles. Not sure what I would replace it with... "A warrior's boney corpse driven..." ?

"It moves with slowness and brutality" or maybe "This brute moves slowly." I am guessing the intent here was to show the strengths and weaknesses of the monster (similar to "small but tries to hurt you" above). So maybe that emphasizes the slowness too much (in NA versions, the slow skeletons were sped up in contrast).

"It is brutal but moves slowly" I guess sounds best to get the message across. You could get really fancy and render it "A warrior of bone... a corpse driven by the power of darkness. It is brutal but moves slowly."

Good analysis! Maybe a mixture of concepts like this could be ok: A warrior's bony corpse driven by the power of darkness. It is brutal but moves slowly.

Orc:
...
My Best Guess Translation: Orcs are the same kind of monsters as Goblins. However, they are larger and more powerful than a Goblin.

Sounds fine. If you wanted to streamline it you could just say "Orcs are the same kind of monsters as Goblins, only larger and more powerful" but the repetition is maybe more faithful to the original style.

Yeah, in this case I prefer to preserve the rigid structure of the original Japanese sentences.

Zombie:
...
My Best Guess Translation: Like the Skeleton, the corpse was revived by the power of dark magic. It still has rotten muscles and blood. It always carries a machete with him.

I love this. Maybe "this corpse" instead of "the corpse" (we are examining an individual example of each monster, like a character, rather than all monsters in general or in a very abstract way implied by "the"). The large cleaver does remind one of a machete (and the remake even has some carrying weapons that could be classified as such).

Good suggestions. I like more the term "cleaver" than "machete" since first one described better the weapon shape. "Machete" is also, in fact a too spanglish word that I think does not match very well on HQ context . Then, I will correct it like this: Like the Skeleton, this corpse was revived by the power of dark magic. It still has rotten muscles and blood. It always carries a cleaver with him.

Mummy:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A corpse that has been preserved so that it will not rot in the darkness. Mummies are controlled with more powerful magic than Skeletons and Zombies. It is dangerous in single-handed fight.

Change either to "...in single-handed fights..." or "...dangerous to fight it single-handed." The original context is that one hero taking on a Mummy by himself is going to be a challenge. Or you could just render it simply "It is dangerous in a single-handed fight" just to make it more grammatically correct.

Ok, thanks. I will just add a "s" to the end as follows: A corpse that has been preserved so that it will not rot in the darkness. Mummies are controlled with more powerful magic than Skeletons and Zombies. It is dangerous in single-handed fights.

Dark Warrior:
...
My Best Guess Translation: A warrior who succumbed to the power of darkness. He is dressed in armour and wields a cursed weapon. He has great physical strength so it is difficult to defeat.

I love the Dark Warrior, and I love the "cursed weapon."
Maybe render it "...so it is difficult to defeat him." (are we dedicated to preserving gender neutrality or rendering it a "him" in one sentence then an "it" in another? this preserves consistency). Or else "He has great physical strength and so is difficult to defeat."

You are definitely right. I will add "him" at the end as follows: A warrior who succumbed to the power of darkness. He is dressed in armour and wields a cursed weapon. He has great physical strength so it is difficult to defeat him.

Gargoyle:
....
My Best Guess Translation: A monster made by giving life to a stone statue of a terrifying monster with the magic of darkness. It is very difficult to scratch its stone's skin in combat.

I love this. Sounds very mystical and cool. "It is very difficult to scratch its stone skin in combat" looks more correct. Otherwise it sounds like the Gargoyle is carrying a stone (with skin!) that you have to scratch to beat him. Maybe like the gargoyle is a flesh creature that wears armor made of stone, rather than being stone brought to life that still carries with it a certain hardness (thick hide, hard to penetrate with weapons).

Perfect, again you are of course right. Just corrected as follows: A monster made by giving life to a stone statue of a terrifying monster with the magic of darkness. It is very difficult to scratch its stone skin in combat.

Those are my suggestions. Once more, your call, but that is how I would render those sentences based on your progress so far.

Thank you Kurgan, many good suggestions from your side. About Goblin and Monolizard texts, there are no changes. Additionally, I am improving my English a lot too! Now, I think I could try to level up with 500 gold

[HispaZargon]

Quest 7, Trial of White Mountain & Quest 8, Curse of Darkness:
. . .
- I am not too comfortable about how I have diagonally written the names of the characters in the map since “Warrior” and “Magician” are too long words to be written inside their squares, so I will try to improve them in future revisions, maybe writing them in horizontal with white background but “invading” a little the two adjacent squares… Diagonal items are not common in Hero Quest so they look quite rare for my eyes. Anyway I think the four names may be written following the same visual criterion in the map.

What about something like this:

_{War-. . . . . Magi-}
.^{rior. . - . . . cian}

Ok, I will try to also write it in that way. I thought avoiding hyphens was better but I think it could be the best option at all, it is the easier solution.

- I have a doubt of how to treat “White Mountain”, “Black Mountain” and “Star Lake” wordings in all the quests they appear… In my opinion calling them “The White Mountain”, “The Black Mountain” and “The Star Lake” sounds better since white and black are adjectives but honestly I am not sure how to deal with it since Bob Bob generally avoided to include the article “The” through his quests translations and the original rulebook map does not include them too.

Bob-Bob and bluesun got it right. When the name of a singular lake or mountain is used as a proper noun, no "The" should precede it. However, the plural case of lake and mountain and certain other geographical features use "the", such as the Great Lakes, the Alps, or the Nile. English is a fickle language.

Excellent explanation, thank you so much. Then I will respect the Bob Bob & bluesun wordings.

Quest 9, Spirits Valley:
. . .
- I prefer to preserving the original names as much as possible so have changed the name “Wisdom Valley” to “Spirits Valley” since it is the name written in the original rulebook map. I know there was in the past a discussion about this since it has not too much sense the parchment text using the “Spirits Valley” name since it does not seem to be connected with wisdom or intelligence in any way but, I think we could survive with this. Then, does anybody have any idea of how to improve the parchment text sentence “Those without wisdom cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirits Valley” in order to provide it more sense without changing the name “Spirits Valley”?

I'd suggest two changes:

"Spirits Valley" > Spirit Valley
"Those without wisdom cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirits Valley” > Those without willpower cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirit Valley

I believe the intent of the translation is Spirit = the quality of heart or psyche, not Spirits = ethereal beings or ghosts. Think, "That kid has got a strong spirit, so he made it through the valley."

Yeah, I understand your thoughts and I fully agree with the approximation, very good analysis. Then, I will change the sentence according to your suggestions. I will also update the rulebook map deleting the plural "s" and also the rest of affected sentences of the quest book.

Problem solved!!

P.D.: However, I will go one extra mile... what do you think about using an apostrophe and calling it Spirit's Valley instead of Spirit Valley, in order to avoid deleting the "s" from the map? Could it mean the same as your proposal?

- In the original rulebook map, Ricarm seems to be more likely an island or a region… Bob Bob refered to it as a “continent” on his translations but I think its size may not be enough big to consider it as a continent so I have instead called it as the “land” of Ricarm. I think “land” is a more general and friendly term for this purpose.

I agree land fits better for what appear.to be kingdom-sized areas.

Perfect. For consistency, I will also apply the same criterion for land of Yushiel in Quest 2 parchment text.

[HispaZargon]

Well... I mentioned above something about the Japanese rulebook map so it suggested myself the idea of trying to draw the approximate sequence of places supposed to be visited by the Heroes in the Japanese quest book and here is the result, separated by quest book chapters:

map_path_v3.jpg

As I expected, it can be checked that they mostly visit every corner of the map... but not all of them. Moreover, the following list of map's locations are not anywhere mentioned in the questbook:

Biala: In the North, near Fortress of Pain and Ruins of Way... is Biala a desert, a swamp, a moor, a tundra, or just a plain? Who knows...

Snow Island: Placed at the Northeast entrance of Frozen Sea. Not too much to say.

Zaus: Located in the South of Frozen Sea... is it the name of an small island there or the name of a strait in the sea? My first idea was thinking about the name of the island but the map uses to also indicate word "island" where it applies so... is it maybe the name of the strait?

Lask: a region between Godo and Spirit Valley... it could be just the name of a plain or maybe the name of some kind of peninsula there, who knows what was the intention of the Japanese designers.

Another non too much used region, briefly mentioned in the quest book is Ladoll. The book suggests from this point is the easiest way to access the Kingdom of Grimdead by walking on the frozen sea. It is quite gratifying to see that the map shows the frozen area of the sea connected to Ladoll region which allows to imagine the heroes walking from there to Feen Island. Description of Temple of Ice location in the quest book also perfectly matches with its location in the map which also suggests designers had quite care on those kind of storytelling and consistency details.

Overall, what do you think about those non used names? Maybe creators defined them planning to use them and they later discarded some of them avoiding to describe too much the path followed by the Heroes in the quests descriptions? Or those places were directly forgotten when defining the quests? The map was includes in the rule book and not in the quest book, maybe rules one was much early defined than quest book and it was already printed in advance and last minute changes of the map were practically imposible after writting the quest book? Could be a reason of why original Spirits Valley name does not have too much sense when reading the reason for such name in quest book? Many questions... probably none of them useful for anything... hahaha, but here are them.

P.D.: Sorry, I noticed that the arrows do not point the Ice Temple in the map since they are pointing to Feen Island but I will try to correct it asap. Minor detail but Heroes visited the temple so it must be suggested there too if posible!
Edited message: Map picture has been already corrected in this post including the heroes visit to the Temple of Ice. Spirit Valley name has been already corrected according to the already translated Quest Book.

[Kurgan]

Why does that start to remind me of the Golden Axe Map? (albeit without the animal drawings)

I don't know the geography of ancient real world (or legendary) Japan, but could be based on something there I suppose, or just adding flavor, to enrichen the experience... giving the impression of the depth of the world where you only have time to visit a few regions. Could be they thought of the future and new adventures. Certainly in EU Hero Quest when we had the map in ROTWL or Advanced Hero Quest, there were many more lands unexplored by the heroes (loosely based on the Warhammer fantasy world, loosely based on historical areas from different eras of ancient earth and surely some fantasy inventions for flavor).

[HispaZargon]

Why does that start to remind me of the Golden Axe Map? (albeit without the animal drawings)

Hahaha... Yeaaaahhh, Japanese culture legacy may have much to say about it.

I don't know the geography of ancient real world (or legendary) Japan, but could be based on something there I suppose, or just adding flavor, to enrichen the experience... giving the impression of the depth of the world where you only have time to visit a few regions. Could be they thought of the future and new adventures. Certainly in EU Hero Quest when we had the map in ROTWL or Advanced Hero Quest, there were many more lands unexplored by the heroes (loosely based on the Warhammer fantasy world, loosely based on historical areas from different eras of ancient earth and surely some fantasy inventions for flavor).

Of course... in my opinion, the high detail of the Japanese map and how it fits with the quest book texts is something I would like to have had at 90s in the EU version of the game since 'looking' at the map where are the places where heroes are playing each quest also contributes to improve the overall gaming experience, especially if you are playing with young people. Maps are always an impressive source of inspiration.

I know that many places were later identified in the sticker album and novels but HQ was only 'loosely' based on Warhammer World so not too much attention to the accuracy of maps was given by creators related to Hero Quest locations. Additionally, sticker album and novels were not sold i.e. in Spain so, many of us did not have access to that during pre-internet era. Fortunately, sites like the Inn alllowed that some years later hahaha.

[Kurgan]

This is great. More new ways to enjoy the Japanese Hero Quest...

[Daedalus]

Quest 9, Spirits Valley:
. . .
- I prefer to preserving the original names as much as possible so have changed the name “Wisdom Valley” to “Spirits Valley” since it is the name written in the original rulebook map. I know there was in the past a discussion about this since it has not too much sense the parchment text using the “Spirits Valley” name since it does not seem to be connected with wisdom or intelligence in any way but, I think we could survive with this. Then, does anybody have any idea of how to improve the parchment text sentence “Those without wisdom cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirits Valley” in order to provide it more sense without changing the name “Spirits Valley”?

I'd suggest two changes:

"Spirits Valley" > Spirit Valley
"Those without wisdom cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirits Valley” > Those without willpower cannot pass, so people began to call it Spirit Valley

I believe the intent of the translation is Spirit = the quality of heart or psyche, not Spirits = ethereal beings or ghosts. Think, "That kid has got a strong spirit, so he made it through the valley."

Yeah, I understand your thoughts and I fully agree with the approximation, very good analysis. Then, I will change the sentence according to your suggestions. I will also update the rulebook map deleting the plural "s" and also the rest of affected sentences of the quest book.

Problem solved!!

P.D.: However, I will go one extra mile... what do you think about using an apostrophe and calling it Spirit's Valley instead of Spirit Valley, in order to avoid deleting the "s" from the map? Could it mean the same as your proposal?

It's a bit different to personify Spirit Valley as it opens the allegorical case where Spirit is some kind of denizen of the valley. So it can work, but a level of ambiguity is introduced.

My own solution (not necessarily better) would be to let Spirits Valley stand but also stick with the non-count spirit in the text, just as it translates. By referring to the map the translation contradiction is discovered, but that shouldn't interfere with the Quest.