Over the course of those 16 months, it was always their policy that they would stop the translation if Nintendo ever asked them to. “Having been immersed in the series for so long, I found it pretty easy to work with Mother 3’s text I rarely had to worry about looking up obscure references or phrases– I already knew them all by heart!” “We looked at EarthBound’s localization and tried to take it in the same direction– we even made sure to include little things like having the game include the word ‘a,’ ‘an,’ or ‘the’ in front of item names as necessary.” “In terms of the translation itself, the project had a lot less stress and the lack of an actual deadline, so it wasn’t as difficult as what I work on professionally,” he said. Luckily Mandelin’s experience with the Mother games helped him through. Luckily, the content of his words still shone through the translation.” The best I could do was try to make sure nothing got left out and that nothing got too mucked up. “He has a way with words that I can’t even begin to emulate. I handled these by using some weak swear words in English, but to this day I’m still not sure if that was the best choice or not.” “I also felt that my writing style paled in comparison to Shigesato Itoi’s original writing,” continued Mandelin. “There were instances of ruder, cruder language in a few spots. “Unlike Mother 2 / EarthBound, Mother 3 had a much darker and almost mature tone to it,” said Mandelin. With years of translation work under his belt, including extensive experience with the Mother series (he had been translating news for since 1999), Mandelin was more than prepared to work on this translation, but that doesn’t mean there still weren’t difficulties, especially since he was working on such a beloved game. “Once I graduated college, I was lucky enough to get work translating anime, movies, and games for a living.” I was only a few chunks of the text into the script when I realized, ‘You know, this is what I want to do for a living.’ ” With his heart set on translation work, Mandelin continued to do unofficial translations for practice while working toward getting his degree in Japanese. While there I learned the language a lot more, and almost on a lark decided to help someone out. I’d studied some Japanese before, so I took a leap and went to Japan for a year. “In late 1999 I’d gotten tired of my computer science courses in college and I felt a little lost. It was pretty much a second full-time job for some of us,” said Mandelin, who has been doing translation work since 1999, when he helped someone with an unofficial game translation similar to the Mother 3 Project. “The project took approximately 16 months from start to finish– very quick for a fan translation of this size. “I wasn’t directly involved with this but I think it either fell through or wasn’t convincing enough.” It was at this point that they decided they were going to have to do it themselves. When learned of this, they got together and prepared a presentation that would hopefully convince the localization team to say yes to Mother 3. The folks refused to work on a fan translation until it was clear an official one wasn’t going to happen.” It was around this time that they found out from an inside source that Mother 3’s localization was going to be up for consideration. That’s when everything came together, actual translation began, and the project blog was opened. “It’s tough to pin an exact time on when the project started,” recalls Mandelin, “but for me things really got underway in the summer of 2007. I spoke with Mandelin about the project, which has now become one of the most famous fan translations ever, and what drove him to take on this ambitious task. This is where the Mother 3 Fan Translation got its start. But what if you weren’t able to recommend the game to others? What if something as simple as language was keeping others from a game you love? What would you be willing to do to share that game with others? When Clyde Mandelin (better known by his screen name Tomato) and his friends at heard that Brownie Brown’s Mother 3, the sequel to EarthBound, wasn’t going to be localized in America, the answer was simple: translate it themselves. This interview may contain minor Mother 3 spoilers.ĭo you have a favorite game, one that you excitedly recommend to every gamer you meet? Most likely a game is coming to mind, one that is very dear to you.
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