The other week I wrote about four of Dragon Quest's translations. A fan translation group known as Translation Quest contacted me. Their translation project, Dragon Quest: Delocalized, was pretty interesting, so I had a look at what they decided on and picked their brains on a few of the choices they made.
The key members of Translation Quest are Nejimakipiyo, Chicken Knife, and Dattebayo. Their roles are outlined on their romhacking.net group page. I spoke with Nejimakipiyo and Chicken Knife about their process of re-writing Dragon Quest in the most faithful way they could, and why they decided on some of the trickier choices.
This is going to be a smaller companion to the last major article so I won't be explaining quite as much. If you're curious about my thoughts on the official translations of Dragon Quest check out the article linked above.
So let's have a look at what delocalisation even is, and how it fits into the previous philosophies explored.

Dragon Quest: Delocalized is a modification of the NES Dragon Warrior which aims to "delocalise" the game.
Let's quickly clarify what is meant by delocalisation1. Unlike a traditional translation, the focus is on giving players an experience as close to the original language as possible, even in cases where the end result removes quality of life or graphic changes. Nejimakipiyo told me that their delocalised version isn't for everyone. People who prefer the Shakespearian English won't necessarily be satisfied here, and graphic changes that might be seen as neutral or positive such as beach tiles on the overworld were also removed.
Chicken Knife said that the ultimate goal was to provide "a lens into the Japanese experience, with English text that is natural, fluid and aims for a professional level of writing."
1 - It feels a bit ironic that the word "localization" is being localised by my own writing, but I'll stick with Australian English since it's what I'm comfortable with, even with neologisms like delocalisation. Instances using a "z" are referring to the Dragon Quest: Delocalized project.
Dragon Quest: Delocalized boasts reverting sprite changes made to NPCs in order to provide the original designs to players who want to play with them. The original Dragon Quest sprites would only ever face south (down/forwards). One of the changes made in Dragon Warrior was the addition of north-, west-, and east-facing sprites.
Dragon Quest (FC) | Dragon Warrior (NES) |
Manual sprite adjustments didn't stop there. Changes to elements like church signs and coffins (in games with more than one playable character) were also made to provide an experience matching the Japanese versions as closely as possible. Nejimakipiyo told me that "Decensoring was always a major part of this."
One of the biggest surprises when reviewing the changes in this project are the number of creative decisions that were made. I always center in on monster names and quite a few jumped out as noteworthy.
スライムベス (Suraimubesu), called red slime in classic localisations and she-slime in modern localisations, is simply named Slime Bess. Nejimakipiyo informed me that it wasn't a mindless decision to simply transliterate the sounds from Japanese. They told me, "We were looking for a word that 'sounds gendery, but doesn't specify male or female' because that was our take on the Japanese ベス."
The ベス in the original game is commonly taken as a result of character limitations -- it seems to be accepted that the intention was always to write メス, but that the decision makers simply couldn't make it work. Considering another monster, メーダ, exists in the game using the katakana メ character, the limitation theory perhaps doesn't hold water.
This delocalisation decision appears to be an attempt to synthesise a kind of in-universe fictional biology for slimes. I'd call it a hair more faithful than ignoring the ベス in favour of red slime, though it does require a bit of explanation.
A name which opens itself up to a lot of creativity is the iconic メーダ (Meida). The otherworldly cephalapode with a giant, peering eye appears mostly in caves in Dragon Quest. メーダ doesn't really have meaning in English, although Meda or Meida are sort of soft, acceptable names even ignoring semantics. Translation Quest inferred that the original name is a twist on 目玉 (medama, eyeball). Definitely a reasonable conclusion. They went with a parallel approach to the name and called the creature Eyeba (short for eyeball).
Finally, I want to examine the spell names. The Translation Quest team started off transliterating spell names from Japanese (ギラ to Gira, ホイミ to Hoimi, etc.).
When Nejimakipiyo joined the team they pushed for a new system of spell names. The team's goal was to produce names that were more faithful than either the original or modern systems. They created names that combined certain English sounds in order to be simultaneously otherworldly and comprehensible.
Both Nejimakipiyo and Chicken Knife told me that they were proud of the names they came up with. Chicken Knife went as far as to say, "It's very hard for me to play the games with the other spell systems now."
But the cost of creativity can also be opening yourself up to deeper scrutiny. Chicken Knife also said that the new spell names were the greatest source of criticism from players. Here are a few lined up with other versions.
| Japanese | NES/SFC/GBC | Modern | Delocalization |
|---|---|---|---|
| ホイミ (Hoimi) | Heal | Heal | Heali |
| ギラ (Gira) | Hurt/Firebal | Sizz | Flara |
| ルーラ (Ruura) | Return | Zoom | Flyra |
| マホトーン (Mahotohn) | Stopspell | Fizzle | Stopmaju |
I think they're a mixed bag. Flara and Slumbari2 are charming and fit the vibe I get from the Japanese names. I generally think the official modern names provide a more faithful vibe for the series, but I see no harm in having more competing systems to work with.
2- from ラリホー. Sleep and Snooze in NES and modern translations respectively.
All of this is to say fan translation is rarely ever a mindless or simple task. I was informed of the Translation Quest team's process in their closing thoughts to me.
Nejimakipiyo: "For one of our (non-DQ) translations we actually had a few calls where we would read our writing to each other to double-check the flow. Our methods may not have been the most efficient, but we really enjoy the process of making our script the best possible version of itself. Since we were doing this as a hobby, we had all the time in the world to be perfectionists."
Translation Quest is not a professional group. I don't mean that as a pejorative -- they are a group of individuals who volunteered their time for a common interest. While NES development and localisation teams were undoubtedly small, even small projects would have a handful of employees being compensated for their time with the goal of making a financially viable product with editor oversight.
Any project is likely to have a few things fall through the cracks, especially when answers to some questions aren't even known with certainty amongst community members.
The キースドラゴン (Kiisu Doragon) returns again to torment all translations. Translation Quest decided on Kith Dragon, but told me that they were unaware of the potential validity of Keith Dragon. According to Chicken Knife, Dattebayo had suggest Keith after some pressure to find meaning, but it was discarded in the end. Keith is not the 'definitive' word by any means. My own research only had one stray Yahoo Answer make that connection. Some suggested that it could have meant to be アイスドラゴン (Aisu Doragon, Ice Dragon), but again there are no certain answers.
It's a challenge if you're limiting yourself to maximum accuracy, but perhaps less so if you aim to match vibes or leave yourself open to parallel translation systems like what was used with メーダ (Meida, referred to earlier).
Another name which fell through the cracks was だいまどう (daimadoh, Wizard on NES, Vis Mager on modern platforms). This monster is the most powerful of the magician-type enemies. Donning white robes, it drives fear into the hero towards the end of his journey. Translation Quest decided to call the creature Grand Wizard.
EDIT for transparency: The name of this creature has been changed since this article was originally published.
It's an unfortunate coincidence that a white-robed character is called a Grand Wizard (a prominent rank in KKK history) and likely one that a more professional outfit wouldn't allow to happen (although introducing tone-deaf political commentary isn't exactly unheard of in translation). Nejimakipiyo said they were inclined to change it with the new information, but Chicken Knife said it could possibly clash with the project's ideals of containing potentially sensitive topics in the game. He brought up the Temple of Dharma (ダーマの神殿) which has a Manji (卍) in the Japanese version, a symbol they brought back for Dragon Quest 3: Delocalized.
At a glance the Manji can appear to be a controversial symbol, but it's not intended to be connected to the Swastika or Nazism and is a common symbol not only in Buddhism but also generally in Japanese culture, to the point that it's basically uncontroversial in Japanese media. Localising the symbol out of Dragon Warrior 3 to side-step the question west-side was probably wise as a business decision, but delocalising it back in is also an understandable one. I'd say that much is uncontroversial.
Dragon Quest 3 (FC) | Dragon Warrior 3 (NES) |
However, the Japanese name of だいまどう (Daimadoh) is not so straight forward. The name could have a several valid translations. A number of Japanese D&D websites call 大魔導師 (Daimadoh-shi3) アークメイジ (Arch Mage). The creators of Dragon Quest did not have an English name strictly in mind, and it's highly unlikely they would want to allude to members of a terror group. Even in delocalisation it seems that a consideration for your target audience isn't something you can simply ignore. The silver lining here is that unlike an official translation stuck on an NES cartridge, Dragon Quest: Delocalized can be updated when new information comes out. As Nejimakipiyo put it, "That's one great thing about a hack project as opposed to an official translation."
3 - This system for romanisation is a bit unconventional but I tend to worry about "ou" sounds being pronounced like "found" when in Japanese it would be closer to "zone". I find the "oh" is a bit less ambiguous, even if it's technically not correct.
Just like the last week, this article barely scratches the surface of all the content in the examined work. If you're interested in trying the translation for yourself, check out some of the links way at the top.
The Translation Quest team isn't working on anything new at the moment. They're all busy with adult lives, kids, jobs, other hobbies, and the like. In their tenure they managed to finish work on four Dragon Quest titles.
As long as translations exist there will be those with opinions on those translations. In some cases people will go as far as to pick up the pen and contribute their own entry in the pantheon. It's artists responding to art with more art. I think that's kind of cool.
Dragon Quest (FC)
Dragon Warrior (NES)
Dragon Quest 3 (FC)
Dragon Warrior 3 (NES)