{"id":3506,"date":"2022-02-18T03:19:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T09:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terralocalizations.com\/?p=3340"},"modified":"2025-12-12T07:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T13:20:11","slug":"dragon-quest-localization-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terralocalizations.com\/ja\/2022\/02\/18\/dragon-quest-localization-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Quest Localization – Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the previous Dragon Quest<\/em> blog<\/a>, we looked at some of the accents in the series and their relationship to character development and storylines. Continuing the Dragon Quest<\/em> theme, I would like to share some of the finer challenges the localization<\/a> team encountered and the interesting solutions they took to overcome these obstacles. Given the game was originally written in Japanese, you can imagine there were many examples to choose from!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Onscreen Character Limitation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Localizers could only use a maximum of 18 characters for weapon and spell descriptions. This was because of screen sizes and not wanting to overload gamers with tons of reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take for example the literal translation \u2018weapon that puts enemies to sleep\u2019 (originally written as \u6575\u3092\u7720\u3089\u305b\u308b\u6b66\u5668\u00a0 <\/em>\u2013 teku o nemuraseru buki<\/em>). How would you render this in English with only 18 characters? You see, in Japanese, one \u2018kanji\u2019 symbol can represent an entire<\/em> English noun, so Japanese kanji essentially gets more bang for its buck than one English character\/letter. This meant that English versions usually had to be condensed in some way, which is not easy when you think that localizers also needed to convey the same meaning and replicate (or replace) the humor of the Japanese version. For this example, they chose \u2018a tiring weapon\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Inventory example from Dragon Quest VIII<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Word Expansion<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the Japanese version, there was usually a \u2018root spell\u2019 that characters would learn early in the game that could later be replaced with more powerful spells from the same spell family. In Japanese, spell names often followed an agglutinative pattern, where each new spell name would expand upon the original root spell name \u2013 the localization team aimed to mimic this style. For example, take a look at the \u2018mera\u2019 spell family and its translations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n