#also incidentally. robobot actually had TWO english translations.

[queensectonia]

i know it's a popular position to take in this fandom that robobot's english translation totally butchered the original japanese script, but i gotta say, i'm with kaialone on this one - i don't agree. the english translation wasn't FLAWLESS, no such translation exists but it's nowhere near the complete trainwreck people make it out to be.

the biggest problem robobot's english script had was the sheer difference in information density between japanese and english. japanese is a logographic language, so it can fit way more information per character than english can. this is a pretty common translation issue for this specific combination, actually! the vast majority of "errors" in robobot's english script were simply the localisation team being forced to cut content because they physically could not fit the same amount of text in the english game. luckily, 90% of this only applies to the pause text screens, and imo the team did the best they could keeping the essential information intact. most of what was lost was more capitalism-themed jokes, like how bosses mention how many haltmanns they cost and things like that.

the one big thing people usually point to to talk about how bad the english translation is susie's motivations re: stealing star dream. in english she says "I just wanted to teach the old man a lesson" and in Japanese she says "I just wanted to make him pay, make him come to his senses". these say the same thing! this is once again the english script needing to condense things. they both express a desire to force haltmann to acknowledge who susie is, or at the absolute least make him pay attention to her by stealing the thing most valuable to him and his company. of course, the tragedy here is that susie had no idea what happened to her father, and haltmann had no memories left of her.

either way, this is another one of those issues where i just have no idea where it started. seriously, robobot's localisation team did a great job. we have examples of objectively bad translation in this series, and robobot is not one of them. through both my own personal translations, and reading other fan translations like kaialone's, i have to say: star allies this is not! i strongly recommend checking that compilation out if you still have doubts about robobot's english script. you'll see what hard work the team put in and how they succeeded despite their limitations.