#why is it that I feel understood by this water dragon guy and That Homunculus

[dkniade]

Translating Neuvillette’s Opening Chest (II) & Joining Party (I) Voicelines

UEEE SO YOU UNDERSTAND

(An attempt to translate based on what little I know of his character.) I will show the Chinese line, then the official English localization, then my English translation, then some thoughts on the word choice in Chinese, and English localization. For the first voiceline, I’ll also show the Japanese localization and my English translation of it, to support a claim.

Game: Genshin Impact

Developer: miHoYo / HoYoverse

Fan Localizations: Dusk

Opening Treasure Chest: II

(Original Chinese)

是不错的东西吗？至少打开它的一瞬间是不错的心绪吧。

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(Official English Translation)

Is it what you wished to find? Hopefully, the excitement of opening a treasure chest has at least made it a worthwhile experience.

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(My Chinese-to-English Translation)

Is it something nice? At least the split moment of opening it felt nice, right…?

(Official Japanese Localization)

悪くない代物か？少なくとも、開けた瞬間の期待感は、心地良いものだったのだろう。

(My Japanese-to-English translation)

Is it something nice? Even if it’s not a lot, the anticipation you felt the moment you opened it was pleasant, right…?

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THE FLEETING MOMENT OF ANTICIPATION UE UE

(@ EN ver: my, so formal Monsieur Neuvillette)

It feels to me like Neuvillette doesn’t know what’s in the chest, so he asks if the Traveler—who’s opening the chest—has found something nice. But then it seems he automatically assumes that the Traveler is disappointed at the treasure, so then he assures them that—and this is key—at least the split moment between opening the chest itself and seeing the treasure inside felt nice. (Morphologically, Mandarin Chinese doesn’t really have affix-based verb tenses like English so it’s a bit hard to explain.) It’s so sad… Why does he assume that… I mean, as players we might be more excited to open a chest than to see what random artifacts/materials/weapons are inside, but in-universe, why would Neuvillette say something like this, I wonder…

Though, 心绪 (xīnxù) is a literary word that means state of mind, but that word usually refers to negative emotions (compared to 心情 / xīnqíng which can refer to both positive and negative emotions), so I’m not sure why Neuvillette would use it in a positive sense. You could say it’s because he doesn’t understand human emotions well, but linguistically speaking, Genshin Impact text in general often has Chinese sentences in a strangely wordy structure or overly complicated/fancy word choice, to the point that it either feels like a weird translation, or that it’s just not a syntactic structure native speakers would use (e.g. using too many prepositions where it could all be omitted and simply implied)

Still, 心绪 alone doesn’t make the tone of the whole Chinese line formal, compared to its official English localization. I can’t comment as much on the Japanese localization, but content wise it’s much closer to Chinese, since the two languages are more similar… It seems the Japanese localization is politely casual too since he uses the casual verb form.

Another important thing: In the Chinese line, the second sentence starts with 至少 (zhìshǎo) which is at least, and ends in the question particle 吧 (ba) which marks uncertainty at the end of a declarative sentence. This makes the sentence structure something like a rhetorical question such as At least [statement], right? (E.g. At least it’s not raining, right?) even though it’s not marked with a question mark. This tone is… quite difficult to translate. It’s common in Chinese (and I believe Japanese too) for rhetorical questions or casual comments/observations to end in a period, but it’s not so in English (unless it’s social media, like Tumblr, right).

—

Joining Team: I

(Original Chinese)

感谢你许可…嗯，邀请我同行。

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(Official English Localization)

Thank you for permitting— No, inviting me to join you.

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(My English Translation)

Thank you for permitting… Ahem, inviting me to travel with you.

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Official translation is good here. Granting permission vs invitation huh… Is it out of formality or does he feel so out of place with humans that he thinks he needs permission to even join them on their journey

(There’s that rhetorical question again)