7. Translation notes

[We shall visit the palace!]

Most references to "the palace" or the "palace town" actually refer to the Kingdom of Archanea's capital city, which is known as "Paresu" in the Japanese version and can be transcribed as "Palace." Confusingly, there is an actual palace building in Palace.

To avoid baffling players with phrases like "we shall visit Palace palace," we've followed the official English localisation of Shadow Dragon, where "Palace palace" is just "the palace" and "Palace," the place, is also "the palace" or, if context deems otherwise, "the palace town."

[Hi, Tar-Tar]

In the Japanese version, Tiki affectionately refers to Marth and the Avatar as "Marth-oniichan" and "Avatar-oniichan" (if male) respectively. "Oniichan" literally translates to "big brother," so Tiki is essentially saying "Big Brother Marth" and "Big Brother Avatar."

The English version of Shadow Dragon localised "Marth-oniichan" as "Mar-Mar." However, due to the limitations of our hacking knowledge, as well as limitations of the English language, it's impossible for us do a similar play with the Avatar's name, eg. Vin-Vin for Vincent, and stuff like Chr-Chr for Chris would look silly.

After much argument and apathy, we decided to stick with "Tar-Tar", which is derived from the word "Avatar."

By the way, Tiki still has "Avatar-oniichan" syndrome in Fire Emblem: Awakening, but we could hardly have afforded to wait for Awakening's English release before releasing the translation patch...

[Call me "Honey"]

During Julian and Lena's luvvy duvvy conversation, Lena asks Julian to stop calling her by name and call her "honey." Originally, in typical anime fashion, Lena asked Julian to drop the "Miss" in "Miss Lena" and call her "Lena" directly; in Japanese culture, calling people directly by name is a sign of affection.

However... in the English version of Shadow Dragon, Julian calls Lena "Lena" and not "Miss Lena," so, um, yeah. Ironically, Julian actually calls Lena "honey" during their first appearance in Shadow Dragon, so you could say "honey" in this game is a passing reference to that scene, or a sign of protest.

[Bob's Tome]

Due to space limitations and theming purposes, the following item names were completely changed:

Mediocre Staff -> Healer [Heal + "er" as in "er, this is a crap staff"]
Wrys's Staff -> Polish [what else is Wrys going to do with his staff?]
Nurufire -> Ember [originally "weak flame"]
Yurublizzard -> Sleet [probably "slow blizzard"]
Merric's Tome -> Razor [stronger version of Shaver]
Katarina's Tome -> Hellfire [a "dark" variant of Bolganone]