I have to know what the joke in the original Japanese script was

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
    English
    18·
    23 days ago

    codec-snake “Raiden, context cues can help you when you mishear something. A terminal is not also called a nerd. What you thought you heard makes no fucking sense. Just go with ‘terminal’ the part you heard and say ‘yeah, sure’ or something and piece it together after talking. Also the codec directly stimulates the small bones in your ear, mishearing something should be borderline impossible. If you want clarification you can come off much cooler by repeating a key word like in this case ‘terminal?’ Or ‘a terminal huh?’ That way when youre half paying attention you can get the info repeated and still seem like you’ve got some chops.”

  • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    23 days ago

    I have to know what the joke in the original Japanese script was

    Without even trying to look it up I’m guessing it was literally that exact joke, making a pun out of the English words “node” and “nerd” which I assume would be rendered into Japanese as almost identical with the “r” disappearing into the vowel like it would in a Br*tish accent. It has the ring of the sort of “English pun that only works in Japanese” wordplay that shows up relatively frequently with loan words.

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        23 days ago

        Probably not, but as a loan-word in a video game? It’s conceivable that the joke would at least be comprehensible. I’ve just noticed watching entirely too much subbed anime that English loan words show up in weird, random places (particularly with tech stuff, like I assume “node” in that is just straight up an English loan word in the original), and the phonetics line up for it to be that sort of loan-word pun.

        I could be completely wrong and it was a completely different pun that the translators had to really stretch to find a usable English “pun” to substitute in, though.

        • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
          11·
          23 days ago

          You put too much faith in me, but looking up “metal gear node nerd” brought me to a Reddit comment quoting from an interview with the translator.

          Finally having an inside source on the matter, I ask about the Nerd/Node piece of dialogue in the game. Looking over the original Japanese file shows that ‘nerd’ was written in Romaji (English letters), while above it, in smaller Katakana-based Furigana (which is usually written in Hiragana and placed above difficult to pronounce Kanji), was the phonetic Japanese word for nerd, and then besides this in brackets were the Japanese equivalents, including the word ‘otaku’. Even as a non-native Japanese speaker, the original set-up for this one line seemed awkward. Agness explained, “Regarding node vs. nerd, I do not remember that particularly. However, I do remember a general pattern of attempts to kick it American-style in the original. I felt it was essentially juvenile name-dropping, whether it was ‘hey, I speak English, look!’ puns like this one, or knowing references to mushers and the NSA. The saddest joke is that Japanese nationals who actually know about this stuff - SDF officers, war journalists, sketchy wanderers - would have been amazing sources for an actual writer.”

          So it looks like @KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net was right, @doublepepperoni@hexbear.net.

          The Japanese Wikipedia article for ナード does not indicate that it is a common word in Japanese contexts, either, basically explaining that nerd is “equivalent to otaku”. So it really does seem like this joke was just an attempt by the game’s writer to flex English skills / Yankee cultural knowledge.