Legend of Zelda instruction manual question [Boomerang?]

[TonyTheTiger]

I took a couple of semesters of Japanese in college. I have a dictionary and stuff around here somewhere. I'll see what I can do.

First of all, it looks like the first line is actually the same. "It's dangerous to go alone."

Second of all, translating this is actually a pain because of the katakana. It's not really standard to write it that way in Japanese but they did it a lot in Nintendo games.

独り出端危険ジャ
I think this is how the first line would be written normally. Kanji and all. From what I can tell it pretty much translates to "It's dangerous to go alone." We all knew that though.

The second line of the actual release (just the sword) I'm having some trouble with but "これ" (ko re) means "this" so I'm guessing it's pretty much "take this."

The one with the boomerang and the sword is really weird. The best I can come up with is this: 種の別府取る

But I don't really know what it means. The most I can come up with makes little sense. "Take this kind" or "Take this extension." It's the 別府 (byuu) that's messing me up. I'm making an inference here but it may be offering a choice. Something along the lines of "Take the kind of weapon you want."

[rbudrick]

BTW, folks (Windows users mostly, I think), unless you have the Japanese IME installed, a free download from MS, that Japanese text will just look like blocks.

That byu may be pyu, but I kind of doubt it. I'm just not 100% on the small letters in the second line. This would be so much easier to translate if I could just clearly see the letters.

-Rob

[rbudrick]

I chopped all the little letters out and put them right next to the blurry ones. It makesit far easier than turning your head away or scrolling to compare them.

So, those two little signs are 2 of the 9 at the bottom of the pic.

The signs are a, i, u, e, o, ya, yu, yo, and the double consonant marker tsu. That first one is either a, u, o, ya, or tsu. The same goes for the second one. Every time I think I'm positive which one each is, I second guess it.

Dunno if this makes it any easier for anyone to try themselves.

-Rob

[Rob2600]

Thanks for continuing with this. In addition to posting the screenshots, I'd offer to help with the translation, but I don't read or speak Japanese.

[rbudrick]

I know some of you DPers speak Japanese, so I'm bumping this sumbitch. C'mon, we're *this* close!

-Rob

[ccovell]

The 2nd line is obviously "Suki no buki wo tore."

スキノブキヲトレ

The artifacting in the JPEG obviously blurs & widens some of the parallel pixels in the text, but this seems to be the closest match to the text (and meaning). (An alternative would have the last character as "ru" ル, but "toru" just means "is taken" rather than "tore" which means "take it!".)

[Rob2600]

The 2nd line is obviously "Suki no buki wo tore."

スキノブキヲトレ

The artifacting in the JPEG obviously blurs & widens some of the parallel pixels in the text, but this seems to be the closest match to the text (and meaning). (An alternative would have the last character as "ru" ル, but "toru" just means "is taken" rather than "tore" which means "take it!".)

Thanks, that's great! What does it mean in English?

[rbudrick]

Wow, I would have never guessed those were "ki" characters. I was pretty sure they were one of the little characters. Thanks, Chris!

I know buki is weapon, and wo after a word indicated the object of the action in the sentence.

Hmmm, I don't have my dictionaries with me, but looking around onlne while at work reveals that none of the definitions for suki make any sense besides "liking, fondness, love." Perhaps it is "Take the weapon you like," in proper English. But maybe "Take the weapon of liking," literally? Or to be really literal, "The weapon of liking, take it." Engrish, whatever. I have no idea if I'm right because my Japanese grammar blows.

-Rob

[jb143]

Hey, I'm glad to see that this got bumped back up. Hopefully now we'll finally be able to figure this out.

Of course we could just translate it the way they actually did back then..."It's dangerous to go alone. All my stuff are belong to you"

[ccovell]

Yes, it means "Take the weapon you like", or "Take your favourite weapon." A very short and simple sentence to decode.

[Rob2600]

Yes, it means "Take the weapon you like", or "Take your favourite weapon." A very short and simple sentence to decode.

Wow. After 21 years, the mystery is finally solved. Thanks!

I guess in the beta version, the boomerang was a powerful, viable weapon.

[jb143]

Shoot. None of my guesses were even close

We all pretty much assumed that's what it was saying but it's nice to finally have this figured out

btw...I just noticed that someone editied my title. I was actualy thinking of doing this myself to add something about needing people who read Japanese but couldn't figure out how to do it.

[TonyTheTiger]

I guess in the beta version, the boomerang was a powerful, viable weapon.

That's probably it. But maybe they just swapped the two weapons so depending on what you pick in this cave, later on when you're supposed to get the boomerang the sword may be there instead. If that's the case the boomerang may not necessarily need to be that much more powerful. I would suggest that they just gave you both weapons at the same time in this version but the text doesn't really support that.

[rbudrick]

Yes, it means "Take the weapon you like", or "Take your favourite weapon." A very short and simple sentence to decode.

Yes, I was going to say that I thought the sentence indicates a slant toward "take the weapon you like *most*," but 'favorite' is just as fitting.

So, being very literal, does the first line say "It's dangerous to go alone," or does it say something like "Going alone is dangerous?"

-Rob

[TonyTheTiger]

It's actually pretty literal in the actual translation. It's dangerous to go alone is probably the most literal way to translate it since the verb comes at the end in Japanese.

[ProgrammingAce]

[jb143]

That would certainly help with the not being alone part but then Zelda would be even closer to an RPG if a cat was following you arround everywhere.

[FantasiaWHT]

Dude, can you imagine what modern Zelda's would look like if Nintendo had looked at the two weapons and decided to focus the entire game around boomerangs instead of swords?

*Imagines the master boomerang embedded in a rock*

[Rob2600]

Dude, can you imagine what modern Zelda's would look like if Nintendo had looked at the two weapons and decided to focus the entire game around boomerangs instead of swords?

*Imagines the master boomerang embedded in a rock*

I was thinking the same thing. We'd have The Legend of Zelda: Four Boomerangs Adventures.

[CD-1]

It's also a possibility that the boomerang was only there in the debug version to help the programmers/testers gain easy access to it.

Here's another picture without text.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ual_Page41.png