Talk:Zero Wing

http://www.toaplan.com/zerowing/ is giving 404, removing...

Romaji, perhaps?

This page could use some Romaji or a full Kana transcription... probably the Romaji. The Japanese Kanji text is useless to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese.

I don't think the Romaji transcription is any useful to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese either. —Cousteau (talk) 19:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Extra bits in Engrish translation

I don't think that the extra bits in the Engrish translation (such as the (ed) in "What happen(ed)") are necessary, and distract from the point of the article - they should really be the originals, since the parenthetical parts can easily be implied by an English reader. I'm going to remove them. 69.91.145.178 21:03, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Some new translations

I'm just going to add some new translations. Revert if you disagree. --Mujokan 22:38, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Out Of Scope

I disagree that this is out of scope. The topic is important, and the quotes listed are well known. Could you please explain why you think that this page is out of scope? Zellfaze (talk) 19:04, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Original text

Where is the original text? It's not standard practice, nor very useful, to show only a translation. 207.161.219.24 11:34, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, WQ:CITE: "If quoting from a foreign-language source, an English translation should be given with the original-language quote beside it." 207.161.219.24 11:37, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Massive deletion of text

In June 2014, text was deleted. What happened? Is there a reason for this? Should the changes by Miszatomic be reverted? —Cousteau (talk) 19:00, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

As there wasn't any justified reason to do this, or at least it wasn't explained either in the discussion nor in the edition comment, I have decided to reset this document to its original state as it was before 18 June 2014. As a result, the Cleanup and Unreferenced templates have been restored as well. —Cousteau (talk) 19:18, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Tweaks to English Translation

First, I think claiming this is the "correct English translation" is rather a strong statement, and arguably a matter of debate for any translation, so without some independent (citable) third-party source for that assertion I don't think we can really say it's unequivocally "correct". I have changed things to refer to this translation as "a more accurate" translation, which I hope is a statement anyone can agree on without necessarily needing extensive citation (and without being too weasely).

As for the actual text, I have made the following changes for the following reasons:

• In the second line, the tense of the verb in the original Japanese is more correctly "began", rather than "had begun". This actually makes some sense if we take the first couple of lines as a lead-in for the events that are about to be portrayed: "In 2101, the war began." *boom*...
• I'm not familiar enough with Japanese idiom, and the apparent misspelling of the captain's first line in the Japanese makes it hard to translate, so I'm not entirely sure whether "the heck" is actually warranted in "What the heck was that?". I've left it in for now, but it probably deserves further review.
• In the engineer's (bomb) line, there is no mention of a ship in the original Japanese. Also, the verb used more correctly indicates "planted" rather than "set off" (the detonation is implied, obviously, but not actually stated).
• In the "main screen turn on" line, the operator's text appears to be more a statement of fact than an imperative: He is not telling somebody to route it to the main screen, he is simply stating (presumably to the captain) that it's coming up on the main screen (now).
• I changed "cooperation" to "kind assistance" in the bit about cooperation of government forces, to emphasize/reflect the "respectful" tone of that bit of the Japanese. This does come across as a bit disingenuous, but I suspect that was actually rather the point in the original as well. Also, the bit about the change of ownership should be in the passive voice ("your bases are ours"), not active ("we've taken your bases").
• There is no "I guess" in CATS' statement about the doomed nature of their ship in the Japanese (he actually seems quite confident about it).
• "ばかなっ" does not mean "what you say?", but likewise "it can't be" appears to be equally wrong. The phrase is actually a variation of "ばか" (baka: fool/idiot) directed back at the speaker. A more correct translation, therefore, would be "I'm stupid", or "I'm a fool". (This actually makes the accompanying image in the game (the iconic silhouetted facepalm) make a lot more sense, as well.) My assumption is that the intent was for the captain to be expressing self-recrimination for not seeing this coup coming until it was too late...
• There is no "what should we do?" from the operator in the original Japanese (frankly, I don't see that it's needed in English either).
• Given the context of the game, a "ZIG" is fairly clearly a single fighter ship, and there is no indication of a larger grouping (units) in the original Japanese, so it should arguably be "all ZIGs", not "all ZIG units". The Japanese also does not say "immediate" (though obviously it's implied). I have also restructured the sentence to more closely match the simpler imperative form of the original.

I also reworded a couple of the other lines a bit to make the dialogue feel a little less stilted and flow better, but tried to keep fairly close to the same literal meaning as the original. My hope is that the result overall is much more faithful to the original, but also sounds like a believable dialogue in English. -- Foogod (talk) 23:59, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Removed translations

The page originally contained a direct translation from the Japanese text, to compare it with the broken English in the video game. Any interested reader may read it at this history page. 212.0.102.74 10:45, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

What is the reason of deleting them? Soumya-8974 (talk) 07:21, 10 August 2019 (UTC)