rabidtangerine

[rabidtangerine]

Sav’aaq!

I recently found a neat localization quirk in Breath of the Wild:

There's a race called the Gerudo who dot their speech with words from their own language. Nearly every Gerudo word has at least one V and there are multiple interactions drawing attention to the [v] sound. For example:

A Goron learning Gerudo but struggling with the V sound (who explains this to you in English).

A guard telling you can no “voe” (men) are allowed in the city. You reply “boe?” and they correct you to “voe”, advising you to bite your lip when you say it.

I found this kind of strange to read since English speakers don’t typically mix up B and V. Japanese, however, doesn't natively have [v], normally using [b] in its stead for loanwords. They do have a makeshift way of writing V if the distinction is desired, though it will often be read as a B. So it would appear the Japanese writers used this fancy letter V to give the Gerudo language some foreign flair. Pretty cool! But why wasn’t this element localized for English where V is an ordinary sound?

While only cutscenes and some special events have actual speech (which had to be translated of course), there's a decent chunk of paralinguistic voice acting in the game - grunts, sighs, and the like - for when you’re talking to characters. The Gerudo actually verbally greet you in Gerudo when you talk to them though. For instance, “good day” is <sav’aaq> [sɒˈvɒk~ säˈväk]. My speculation is these Gerudo lines were lumped together with the rest of the non-cutscene material and not re-recorded for other languages. This leaves the localization team with unadaptable voice lines but also text in game referring to how strange this perfectly normal English consonant is, and it seems that they couldn’t find a way to adapt it to make any sense.

What they did do to make Gerudo seem foreign is take advantage of English’s... robust orthography to make some interesting spellings. They make frequent use of Qs - never C or K - and some very Orcish apostrophes, both of which I feel are reminiscent of Arabic. Fitting as the Gerudo are inspired by Middle Eastern cultures, ironic as Arabic also doesn’t have [v] as a native phone.

How could we adapt it? Well the presence of V is far from important to the plot, so I think they could have just added different filler dialogue so as not to break immersion.

If we wanted to keep it relevant to the language maybe the Goron originally struggling with V could be adapted to disappointed that no Gerudo will practice the language with him, as a nod to other language learners. Otherwise, maybe he misses his home on Death Mountain because the sand doesn’t taste as good as the rocks back home.

As for the guard teaching you how to say a V, maybe you simply ask a word that exists in English and sounds similar, like “vote” or “foe”. The flavour could also just be dropped and she simply explains what a voe is (for the 100th time, since most Gerudo you encounter tell you as well). This is less interesting but entirely neutral and won’t cause any confusion.

Then again, I realize most people don’t analyze languagey stuff like I do, so it’s not unreasonable to just try and slip it past, especially if there was a crunch on time and more important things to work on than two minor characters talking about labiodentals.

Now, this is just an observation and not a criticism, and of course my total speculation could be entirely wrong. I just wanted to share where my brain goes when I encounter interesting linguistic problems like this.