Hero & Daughter Translation Notes
As silly as this dungeon crawler with bonus affection mechanics is, I actually put a good deal of effort into the translation. I blame tachi's puns.
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Self-Skills were originally named "Chara Skills," since each character has unique ones. "Character Skills" just seemed too long, so Self-Skills worked for conveying that they're skills for a particular character.
The Haremancer was simply called the "ero summoner," i.e. "perverted summoner" or whatnot. But given how his suggestion of starting a harem is immediately followed by Ralph giving him that name, it was the perfect opportunity.
Every girl has an English spelling of their name in the face sprite filenames, but I basically totally ignored them because a lot of them were really iffy. And there were a few which were so bad/obviously puns that I redid the pun for English.
Dieh was ディエ, pronounced "dee-eh," and the joke is that it reads as "d-i-e." Dieh was the best compromise I could get so that was clear, but people would still pronounce it differently from the word "die."
Hauyne is named after the gemstone, so it's pronounced like "Auw-een" (tachi spelled it literally as Auin).
Yumel's ability to read "minds" is interchangeable with reading "hearts" because the same word, kokoro, is used in Japanese. Hopefully that doesn't come off as too weird in my translation.
Selphie's name was originally "Hightech." That is a ridiculous name, so I came up with the best possible pun. Also, her class and first Self-Skill were "uso denwa" (fake call), and while I made the skill simply "Fake a Call," I decided to make her class "Cell Phony."
Holly was literally ホーリー, holy. But it makes more sense to read it as Holly.
Cammy saying "Ralf" was my own invention, since it seemed appropriate for her way of speaking. She does use her name instead of a pronoun in Japanese, though, which is something that often gets removed in translation (young children in Japanese media tend to do it a lot) but fits with her. And yeah, "nyas" and "myaus" sprinkled all over the place.
Robotta was "Roboko." Since Ralph makes up the name and Haremancer notes its lack of creativity, it didn't make much sense for an RPG hero who (according to Akari conversations) doesn't know what Japan is to tack on a Japanese feminine name ending.
Sion uses "boku" and has a generally boyish speaking style. Ralph's "more prodigal than a prodigy" comeback was a perfect storm that came about in the translation; in Japanese, it reads more like "Oh yeah? Well, I'm more of a prodigy than you are, prodigy!"
Iris was straight-up "Ai," or "Eye" as tachi spelled it. Great name. (Even better, the apparent planned name for her, before the update where she was actually added, was "Oneeye.") She began a lot of her sentences with "んぁ" (nn'a), particularly "んぁあんまり" (nn'anamri), which is... weird. It seemed kind of like a verbal tic that "slurred into" the sentence proper, so I tried to go for something similar in English.
Priscilla was just "Prizun." Uh... yeah. Priscilla is kind of a pun on "prison cell."
Cherie was just "Chia." Not like the pet, but from "cheer." Cherie is just a bit less obvious. Although actually, it may be intended to be "Tia," which would be slightly better.
Moski was "Mosukii," so yeah, just short for "mosquito."
Harmony was Wagokoro, "peaceful heart." However, that "wa" is also used to refer to traditional Japanese things, so everything about her has that angle to it as well. Paci-Fist was "Wadoken," which is beautiful, which is why I worked in the "down-right fist" part. Some of her skills also repeated the name of the move in all hiragana in the description, which ties into the whole classical Japanese thing.
Ralphina was "Ralphie." That's not a girl's name at all, tachi. Ralphina is the feminine version of Ralph, so given that future-Ralph probably decided her name, that seemed more appropriate than Ralphette or whatever.
Candy Lix is a cameo from Death Village, tachi's canceled game about the Red Witch's past. Her Japanese name was "Candy Peron," where peron is based on a word for "licking." She also uses "boku" and talks really weird in general.
Apil and Yomi are from an old platformer called Full Swing. Apil's name is probably a pun on "ahiru," duck, but she's also kind of tachi's mascot, so I didn't care to come up with my own terrible pun name. (Not to mention one of her skills is named "Appeal" as a pun on it.)
Dahklorde was simply ダークロード, literally "dark lord" (a typical translation for "maou," and obviously, the one I went with) in katakana.
Dehmon was simply デーモン, "demon," and in fact shares the name with some regular enemies (like Holy Demon). But I felt like it needed a slight modification. Evildeity was エビルゴッド, "evil god," which I'm guessing is meant to be a literal translation of 魔神 (majin).
The King of Evil was "Maou-sama," a combination of "maou" (dark lord) and "ousama" (king). Of course, "Maou-sama" could be used as a respectful name for any old dark lord, but the joke is essentially "you never knew what he was the king of!"
I ended up keeping the name Meiji Staff, but it's probably a pun on "Mage Staff." Maybe I could have made it "Magey" or something. I dunno.
The "My First Dagger!" and "Dagger" relationship was originally based on a Japanese homophone pun. たんけん (Tanken) can mean "exploration" or "dagger," but 短剣 is unquestionably "dagger." So it's like "Yay, let's go exploring!" to "Bah, that's for kids. It's a DAGGER."
Rain Bow is an entirely new pun. The original was 真弓 (mayumi), literally "True Bow," but the description acts like it's a girl's name: "Mayumi! Mayumiii! It's me! Marry me!"
(Take) My Sword For It is a modified pun, but it remains somewhat intact. It was 真剣 (literally "True Sword" - yes, again), which can also be read as "serious/earnest."
Ram Bow is a mostly new pun. It was 剛弓 (Sturdy Bow), and the description had another homophone pun since "lamentation" is pronounced the same way; it was basically like "when shot by a Goukyuu, you goukyuu."
Smile & Bow was 千弓 (Thousand Bow), senkyuu, so the description joked about it sounding like "thank you."
Cross Sword is a new pun for yet another Japanese homophone pun. 魔剣 (Demon Sword) = maken, and the description said "maken" in the "I won't lose" sense (makenai).
To the Point was 短刀直入, putting the word "dagger" into 単刀直入... which means "getting right to the point." So that worked pretty well.
Magic Dagger's description noted the visual similarity between 魔力 (magic power) and 魔刀 (magic sword).
Spear It was "yarikiru," which contains "spear" (yari) and means "to do something to completion." But tachi used it to joke about "finishing up alone" in the description, because of course he would.
Cluelash was "muchi," which means whip, but also means ignorance. Frankly, I'm surprised I came up with anything close.
The Whipper was "mucchi" in reference to "mucchimuchi," a word for supple skin, usually in reference to sexy women. I, uh... just felt it was better to replace that one.
Brawlblade was 剣嘩 (ken-ka), replacing one of the kanji for "brawl" with "sword."
The Flying Sword/Hishoken seems to be in reference to BlazBlue's Jin Kisaragi.
Broad Sword was 太い刀, a joke on how "tachi" is written 太刀, which literally means "fat sword." Yeah, I know it has a katana sprite, but if Chrono Trigger can give a broadsword the name of a katana, I can do the opposite.
The Master Bracelet was the "Sage's Bracelet," and its description was simply "Whew..." (And so it was before I got the reference.) This is in reference to "sage time," a Japanese term for the period of exhaustion after ejaculation. ...Yeah. So my lewd puns there aren't unwarranted.
I don't know what the joke is with the Utah Cap either. It's... it's made in Utah. That's what it said.
Tucker Out, the skill that induces Fatigue, was originally just タイヤード ("Tired"). Yawn.
Assass Innate was just the word "ansatsu" (assassination) split into two with a dot. So, I mean, it's totally the same thing, right?
"Ninja Ninny!" was "Ninja Ninjin!" (carrot).
Quetzalcoatl's Hyper Beam and Kraken's Wrap are 100% Pokémon references; Hyper Beam has its trademark cooldown, and the status change messages for Wrap are exactly from Pokémon (noticeable because they actually put a space after the の).
Kraken's intro dialogue was originally about it having a forced "kurakurakura" laugh, which then turns out to be more of a verbal tic. Anyway I took the opportunity to make a bunch of puns.
Yes, tachi totally made an reference to "It is not your appointed time to die" from El Shaddai with the Challenge Tower retry text. In Japanese, the El Shaddai line is literally "God says... it is not your fate to die here," hence the mention of a Challenge God.