[RHDNBot]

Update By: Hamikon

[ATTENTION: Before reading this News Page, Hamikon is still not fluent at English yet. Because of that, Hamikon's English can be pretty weird, awkward, and bad. So sorry...]



Being a fan of the DRAGON QUEST series, Hamikon decided to make and release the very first Indonesian translation of the DRAGON WARRIOR, the USA version of the first DRAGON QUEST game.

At first, Hamikon wanted to do an accurate translation of. But after playing DRAGON WARRIOR, Hamikon realized that the English translation in DRAGON WARRIOR was very dull. Mr. Horii's writing of the dialogues in DRAGON QUEST is charming and has personalities, but the English translation in DRAGON WARRIOR watered it down and turned the dialogues into a generic westen RPG dialogues.

Not just that, there are other issues that Hamikon have about DRAGON WARRIOR:
- The English dialogues actually uses old Victorian English because the game takes places in middle age western fantasy world. But again, it's pretty generic and doesn't sound like old English.
- The spell names in DRAGON QUEST are made of puns, while the spell names in DRAGON WARRIOR is straightforward about purpose of the spell.
- The monster names are also generic and uninteresting, Slimebeth became Red Slime, Lycanth became Wolf, etc.
- DRAGON WARRIOR has a weird localization, Radatomu Castle was changed to Tantegel Castle, but Radatomu Town was changed to Brecconary Town. The name Domdora Desert was kept, but Domdora Town was changed to Haukness.
- Some contents are censored because the NES systems was marketed as A Kid's Toys in the USA, so all NES games (including DRAGON WARRIOR) are not allowed to show inappropriate contents.

Because of that, Hamikon got an idea: Instead of just translating it, Hamikon's also going to improved DRAGON WARRIOR's dialogues and localize the game.

Here are the things that Hamikon changed from the original USA English version:
- The dialogues has been improved and given more personalities than the original version, it's actually quite humorous.
- Because the original version uses old Victorian English, this translation uses old Ejaan Van Ophuijsen Indonesian and some exotic Indonesian phrases. For examples, all of the "U"s is changed to "Oe"s, the word "Kamu/Kau/Anda" is changed to "Engkau", etc.
- English names that are hard to pronouced has been "Indonesianized" to make it easier to be spoken by Indonesians. For examples, "Slime" became "Slaim", "Erdrick" became "Erdrik", etc.
- NPC names "Nester" and "Howard" is a reference to a comic strip from the old Nintendo Power Magazines in the US. So Hamikon changed their names to the staff of DRAGON QUEST and the Indonesian translator of this translation.
- Spell and monster names has been changed to have puns and to be more appealing. For example: "Red Slime" became "Mak Slime", "Repel" became "Usiri", etc.
- All NPCs that has a name will have their name displayed in the text box, unnamed NPCs will have the " *: " Symbol instead.

There are a couple of issues, such as certain name and text won't fit. But Hamikon fixed it by giving some armor and weapons a new name, and also created some new fonts that are smaller so it can fit into the game. For Examples: "Small Shield" became "(LV1) Tameng", the "BALIK" and "SUDAH" option in the name submission uses these new fonts, etc.



Hamikon has actually made this translation a long time ago, but it was buggy and full of typos. So Hamikon decided to fixed it.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[RodMerida]

I want to hail the creator of this translation for his great contribution to Malaysian/Indonesian, his native language!, which is a great philological contribution, too. Released, besides, just one week after my release of a translation for this ROM to Spanish! I'm sure your work will make this old ROM accessible to many inhabitants from the enormous Indonesian archipielago (that actually comprehend two insular Republics!).

Indonesian speakers are lucky today!

Very well documented, by the way, those differences among Japanese and English-speaking version in this article of yours.

[Hamikon]

Thank you for your compliments!

By the way, congratulations for the release of your Spanish Translation of Dragon Warrior! You're also doing a great contribution, I hope many Spanish people will play and like your Spanish Translation!
 
Also, your translations news about the Spanish Translation of Dragon Warrior is the one that gave me the idea to make a translation news about my Indonesian Translation of Dragon Warrior, I hope you don't mind. I used to promote this Indonesian Translation on my Instagram, but only a couple of people saw it.

Oh, and even thought Malaysian and Indonesian are really similar, I think my translation that uses the old Van Ophuijsen Indonesian will make it unplayable for Malaysian people. Because even many Indonesian people will have a hard time trying to decipher Van Ophuijsen Indonesian... ( ^_^;)

[RodMerida]

It's a good excuse for them to get "updated" in archaic variants of their own language or linguistic branch.

Yes, all the contrary: it's good to know my essayist initiative inspired others to make their translation works to other languages without so many retro translations be promoted. I hope your initiative also inspire others and make the number of works in your language be increased.

Maybe we might even see one day a translation of this ROM to Javanese and those kind of things, with almost no ROMhacks!, who knows.

[Choppasmith]

Congrats to both of you 

Oh, and even thought Malaysian and Indonesian are really similar, I think my translation that uses the old Van Ophuijsen Indonesian will make it unplayable for Malaysian people. Because even many Indonesian people will have a hard time trying to decipher Van Ophuijsen Indonesian... ( ^_^;)

It’s okay a lot of native English speakers don’t understand the flowery Shakespearean English in DQ1-2 either. 

[danuffo]

Congrats to both of you 
It’s okay a lot of native English speakers don’t understand the flowery Shakespearean English in DQ1-2 either. 

And that's basically why some professional translators in the movie/TV industry prefer to use modern language instead, it doesn't matter how anachronistic it could be.

Trying to emulate the archaic forms of any language it's a nice excentric touch but it's not always practical because the translation will lose its own purpose to be understandable.

In the case of spanish, the real archaic spanish (seven centuries ago) looks like another language, it has some characters such as ç and ê that are totally unused and unknown.

[RodMerida]

Danuffo. You have not understood anything. I didn't make a translation to old Castilian, but to modern Spanish with a little of archaic style and resemblance, it's very different.

So this that you say is a nonsense:

Trying to emulate the archaic forms of any language it's a nice excentric touch but it's not always practical because the translation will lose its own purpose to be understandable.

In the case of spanish, the real archaic spanish (seven centuries ago) looks like another language, it has some characters such as ç and ê that are totally unused and unknown.

It's impossible to make a translation of something modern to the kind of "Spanish" talked in the Middle Ages (that was not Spanish because it was not spoken in the whole of Spain, that didn't even exist like an unified political entity, there were different kingdoms, like Castile, Aragon, Navarra, Valencia, Leon, Moorish kingdoms in the south) because whatever is written nowadays, uses too many new words that in those times just simply didn't have an equivalent term in vulgar Romance languages, since they had not had much literary development, and due to that, they had not developped an abstract vocabulary, like Latin, Arabic or Hebrew. That's the reason because of when people wanted to speak these kinds of educated things in Middle Ages they used Latin, with a much more sophisticated vocabulary and syntax. And in the Moorish Kingdoms, like Zaragoza, Valencia, Toledo, Sevilla, Granada, they used Classic Arabic; Jews used Hebrew or Arabic.

So that's why nobody here is intending to translate anything to Old Castilian. Even if you tried you would lack many words and would need to copy them either from Latin or from modern Spanish, and the result wouldn't be the same style of speech people would have used in those times in a vulgar Romanic language.

But in case you really want to see how it would be a modern translation from another language to Old Castilian, you just have to see my translation of the old inscription in Final Fantasy VI, translated to Spanish by Traducciones Mérida / Crackowia. In a moment of the game your party finds an ancient inscription recorded 1000 years ago with old glyphs at the back of three idols, and Locke manages to read it. Since the original was written in Middle Japanese, an archaic version of Japanese language used in Middle Ages and Renaissence, I decided to translate that by immitating the style of speech of Old Castilian.

I copy here exactly how I translated it, so you get a clue (I warn it's not 100% Old Castilian, but a slight version of Old Castilian with more Latin vocabulary, for Major understability by majority of modern speakers):

El nasçimiento de la magia.
III dyosas fueron proscriptas aquy.
Con el tiempo començaron las sus disputas, lo que leuó a vna guerra ssyn quartel.
Aquellos desuenturados omnes que cruzáronse en so camyno tornados fueron en Espers, e gelos empleó cuemo máchinas bjvientes de guerra.

Finalmientre, quando comprehendieron estas dyosas que estauan seyendo obieto de burla de quienes aquy avíen las proscrito, detovieron en un ynstante de lvcidez sus rençiellas, en se transformando a sy mesmas en piedra.

Los Espers fizieron aquestas estatuillas a guisa de symbolo del so iuramento de dexar a las diosas en paz dormir et folgar.
Los Espers iurado han vigilar que nadi non avuse del poder de aquestas diosas.

¿A que lo has entendido?

P.S.: By the way, that ê symbol is not from Old Castilian, but from the written Spanish used during 18th century as a way to difference when X was pronounced like KS and when it was pronounced like KH, like modern Spanish J. If X was pronounced KS they put a circumflex ^ over the next or previous vowel, if X was pronounced KH, like J letter, no ^ was used. Ex.: Exâmen [exam] vs. dixo [said]. But at the end of 18th century the use of X like KH was abolished by the Royal Academy of Spanish Language, and since then ^ circumflex is not anymore used

(Translation below of this last part to make sure you don't misunderstand it:)
P.D.: Por cierto, no hay ningún símbolo ê en castellano antiguo. El acento circunflejo sólo se usa en el siglo XVIII (en que se hablaba un español moderno de la Ilustración muy formado, posterior al Quijote y la literatura barroca, muy parecido al actual). Esto sucedió tras la implantación de la RAE, antes de que ésta desechase el diferenciar entre X y J para el sonido jota. Este circunflejo era una forma de diferenciar aquellas palabras en las que X tenía sonido KS, de aquellas en que X tenía sonido de jota, como sigue pasando hoy por conservadurismo gráfico en algunos pocos nombres como México, Texas, Oaxaca o Ximénez. Así, se escribía exâmen o taxônomía frente a dixo, roxo y traxo. Pero a finales del siglo XVIII la RAE desecha la X con valor de jota, salvo en algunos nombres y apellidos por arcaísmo gráfico, y al hacerlo, desecha también el circunflejo, que no se llegó a utilizar un siglo completo, y que desde entonces ya no se usa en nuestra lengua escrita. Nunca se utilizó en castellano medieval, entre otras cosas porque en esa época ni siquiera se utilizaban los acentos normales, que no comienzan a aparecer como manera de desambiguar palabras (sin una regla de acentuación fija) hasta el renacimiento.